Page 48 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

He learns where the sheet pans go, and he starts quietly putting them there. He learns which towels are for hands and which ones are for dishes, a distinction I have been trying unsuccessfully to teach Lucy since 2019.

He knows not to touch my knives. He doesn’t ask why.

This alone may qualify him for marriage, although I keep that thought firmly to myself.

No one in Black Harbor says one word about any of this to my face, which is the most Black Harbor detail of the entire autumn. A mystery in a beautiful coat starts loading my dish rack several evenings a week, and a community that once held a public meeting about a fence maintains a perfect and courteous silence.

They say plenty behind my back. Harriet reports the numbers to Eunice daily. Mabel has begun using the phrase “you two.”

And I am completely, unmanageably happy. I hum more. I hum badly. I sleep badly and get up early anyway. And every single time the loading door goes up at five, something rolls through me that I would deny under oath in any court in this state.

The Ellises’ fortieth anniversary is a hundred-and-ten-person sit-down and it is going to kill me.

We prep on Friday. By we I mean me, from four in the afternoon, and Julian from about five thirty.

There are forty heads of garlic on my counter. I’d like it understood that this is not a provocation. It’s a menu. Cindy Ellis asked for the roasted garlic and white bean thing in writing, with an exclamation mark, and forty heads is what forty heads is.

Julian comes through the loading door, stops four feet inside, and looks at the counter.

“Don’t,” I say.

“I have said nothing.”

“You’re doing a face.”

“I have an ordinary face.”

“Come inside.”

He considers the garlic. Then me.

“I am evaluating my options.”

“Cindy specifically requested it.”

“Then I wish Cindy Ellis every happiness.”

He takes off his coat and goes to the very far end of the kitchen. I laugh so hard I have to hold on to the counter. At eight I am tying rosemary when I say, “Forty years. Can you imagine?”

Julian is putting away a crate. He stops.

“Forty years,” he repeats slowly.

“Cindy and Ray. Same person for forty years.”

“Yes.”

There’s something in the way he says it that makes me look up.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Julian.”

He looks down at the crate.

“It doesn’t seem very long.”