Page 44 of Nocturnes & Nightmares

“People tend to perceive the world as inherently good.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“I believe in balance. Yin and yang. Positive and negative energy. For all the good, there’s an equal amount of bad to keep the universe in check. And if that’s the case, there must be a whole lot of good somewhere in the world. Just isn’t here.”

“Somebody hurt your son.”

Clearing her throat, she lifts her glass to her lips, pausing before she takes a sip. “Not directly, from what I can gather. But those are the worst scars, right? The ones you don’t see.”

She brushes her knuckles across her cheek and jawline, and I watch, fascinated by the beauty in her sadness. The way her eyes carry desolation, the same way a painting captures a single moment in time. “He watched his father brutally murdered by some meth-head. Some … junkie who valued money and drugs over human life. Who had no idea a little boy watched on while his whole world caved in on him.” The shine in her eyes fails to dull as she blinks at the tears gathering in them. “It’s a shitty thing when a child is forced to hand over his innocence, that magic of childhood.”

Her comment tugs at the dark cluster of thoughts sequestered in the back of my mind. Ones I refuse to entertain at the moment. “You’re right. Those are the worst scars. The invisible ones.”

Lowering her gaze, she sits quietly, and the way her eyes shift only slightly, it’s as if a thousand thoughts are passing behind them. An observation that leaves me curious to know what this woman has been through in life that she can speak so matter-of-factly about pain, like a scarf she puts on when it’s cold. The murder of a husband is tragic enough, and I’ve watched plenty of women try to piece life together afterward and fail to achieve any level of normalcy. But I get a sense that pain is home for Nola, just as it once was for me.

Without warning, she pushes up from the table and reaches for her son’s untouched plate of food, stacking it on top of hers. As she flicks her fingers for mine, I gently brush her hand aside and push to a stand across from her.

“I’ll help with dishes.”

She rears back her head with a guarded smile. “Well, that’s unexpected. Most of the men I know would sell off a kidney to keep from helping with the dishes.”

“I suppose I value my organs a bit more than that.”

Following her into the kitchen, I try not to stare at her round ass filling those tight jeans, but I find it impossible to look away from things that stir my imagination so vividly. The thought of how symmetrical it’d look with her straddling my leather barrel horse back at home.

Standing beside her as she fills the sink with soapy water, I glance over at the unused dishwasher.

“Sorry, it’s broken. Haven’t gotten it fixed yet.” She sets what clearly looks like handmade dishes, based on their differing sizes and slightly off colors, into the basin. One of the plates slips from her hand, landing on the sink divider with a clash. The plate cracks in half—one falling into the soapy water, the other into the rinsing basin. I lift the non-submerged one out of the sink and turn to toss it in the trash, when I feel a tight grip of my arm.

“No, wait.” Taking the broken plate in hand, she runs her finger over the edge of the break. “It’s clean.”

“You’re gluing it?”

“Um, something like that. It’s called Kintsugi. My mother taught me the technique.” At what must be a look of confusion on my face, she glances up and smiles. “My mother believed that everything had a lifeline, so to speak. A history. Even this plate. And to honor it, she would seal the pieces with gold.” She sets the plate halves onto the counter and opens the cupboard, reaching for a bowl set off from the others stacked inside. A map of gold lines decorates the outer and inner surface of it, some very thin, others thicker, creating a beautiful webbing across the black glaze. “My mother ate oatmeal out of this bowl every single morning when she was alive. Her shakes were so bad, she must’ve dropped the damn thing and broke it a dozen times over the years. The morning I found her, though, the bowl was lying on the floor beside her, perfectly intact, in spite of the oatmeal splashed everywhere. The cracks had made it so strong, it didn’t break the last time she used it.”

I stare down at the bowl, the business half of my brain wanting to reject the poetry that breathes inside this woman. The other half of me is intrigued by her, so much so, I gently set the bowl back onto the shelf and grab a towel.

For the next twenty minutes, we wash the dishes, the pans and the countertops through benign conversation about her grandmother, who traveled the world and spent a good chunk of her youth in Japan. She apparently left the love of her life there and returned to the States to raise Nola’s mother alone.

“So, that’d make you about a quarter Japanese?”

“Something like that. My dad was Swedish, so all the Scandinavian has kind of taken over.”

Now that she says it, though, I can see it in her—the almond shape of her eyes that pairs beautifully with the chestnut brown, and the very pale tan of her skin that holds a soft peachy glow.

“I’m going to have another glass of wine,” she says. “Want to join me?”

It’s a risk, spending so much time with her, but one I’m willing to take for the sake of gathering as much as I can on Harvey and Bethany.

“Yeah, sure.”

Back in the dining room, she plops down on the same chair as before, and I follow suit, taking my seat across from her. She kicks her legs up onto the table, and her long slender feet covered in thin socks leaves me to wonder how they’d look slung over my shoulders, digging into my back.

The raising of her glass to her lips draws me out of those thoughts. “The wine is good,” she says before taking a sip.

“The food was better.”

“Dale’s special sauce. I agreed to stay an extra hour at the diner last week, in exchange for his secret recipe.”