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Patty looked offended. “How did you know?”

“I saw inside the cabinet in a cupcake photo.”

I turned toward him. “You remember where I store bowls based on a picture from the group chat?”

His eyes met mine. “I remember most things you send me.”

My heart fluttered before I could prepare for it.

Patty looked from him to me and smiled with enough satisfaction to make me want to slap her. “Great,” she said. “We’re all emotionally compromised. Let’s bake, shall we?”

I turned to the open cookbook. The cover had faded to a dull red, the corners worn from decades of use. I had found it at an estate sale in a box beneath several water-damaged encyclopedias. The photographs had made me stop. Bright pies, glossy roasts, delicate cakes, and cheerful women smiling through domestic labor with terrifying composure.

I had bought it for three dollars. At the time, I had imagined using the artwork for inspiration. Instead, I had read nearly every recipe.

Patty leaned over my shoulder while I turned the pages. “How old is this?”

“Almost as old as Grandpa Alfonse, but not quite,” I said.

Hudson came to stand on my other side, his shoulder bumping mine.

I focused on the cookbook. “Here,” I said.

The recipe was in a section titled Holiday Pies and Hospitality Desserts. The photo beside it showed a perfectly arranged pecan pie on a lace-covered table.

Hudson read over my shoulder. “Brown sugar, butter, eggs, cane syrup, vanilla, and pecans.”

Patty pointed to a note near the bottom. “Bake in a hot oven, then reduce heat.”

“That part is really important,” I said. “Old recipes often used a temperature shift to set the crust and filling.”

Hudson glanced toward my oven. “Can it handle that?”

I placed a hand against the appliance. “She’s temperamental, but loyal.”

He looked at me in a way that reminded me of our late-night messages and the private jokes that had existed before either of us knew what the other looked like.

My little galley kitchen wasn’t large enough for three adults, multiple grocery bags, and the growing emotional complication occupying the space between Hudson and me.

Somehow, though, we made it work.

Patty claimed responsibility for the crust because she had watched three videos in the checkout line at the grocery store. I handled the filling. Hudson was put in charge of chopping pecans, mostly because his hands were large enough to control the knife.

“Don’t pulverize them,” I warned.

“I know how to chop nuts,” Hudson grumbled.

“You repair fences and move furniture. Those skills don’t automatically transfer to pastry.”

He waved the knife in the air. “Knife skills are knife skills.”

“That statement is how people end up with salsa-textured pie.”

He gave me a patient look. “Do you want to do it?”

“No. I want to supervise.”

“Of course you do.”