In Love With My Ex's Cousin

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Elena

Sunday started at my mother’s table.

Isabella had cooked too much, as promised. Bread, roasted tomatoes, a fish I had not asked for, a salad she kept adding to as if the bowl might look neglected. The painting was already leaning against the dining-room wall: dark blue, a thin line of gold leaf through the centre. It was better in the room than it had been in the photograph.

“It needs a quieter wall,” I said.

“That’s why I wanted you here before I hung it.” She poured more water into my glass. “You look tired.”

“I worked this week.”

“You always work. That is not the same as tired.” She sat. “Eat.”

I ate. We talked about the gallery, a collector who wanted the painting to match a sofa, a junior at my firm who still treated samples like decoration instead of material. Ordinary things. Good things. I stayed longer than I had meant to.

After lunch she made coffee and would not let me help with the dishes. I stood in the doorway of her kitchen and watched her move around a space she had arranged the same way for years: bowls stacked by size, knives on a magnetic strip, a single chair pulled out because she liked to sit while something simmered.

“You’re somewhere else,” she said, not unkindly.

“I’m here.”

“You can be here and somewhere else at the same time. You’ve always been able to do that.” She dried her hands. “Is it work?”

“Partly.”

She accepted that. Isabella did not pry in a straight line. She left a space and waited to see whether I would walk into it. I did not. Not today.

I left in the late afternoon with a container of leftovers I would not finish. She kissed my cheek at the door.

“Don’t work until midnight.”

“I’ll try.”

The walk home was cold and bright. I passed the bookshop I liked and did not go in. I already had enough of the day. At my building I climbed the stairs, put the food in the fridge, and took off my coat.

The apartment was quiet in the way I liked on Sundays. I changed, washed the lunch plates I had left that morning, and called Sofia because I had said I would after I saw my mother.

“Did she feed you into a coma?” Sofia asked.

“Almost.”

“Good. Did you hang the painting?”

“Not yet. It needs a different wall.”

Sofia snorted. “Of course it does. You’re both impossible.” She paused. “You sound all right.”

“I am all right.”

We talked for a few minutes about her campaign and about Wednesday’s dinner. When I hung up, I made tea and sat at the counter with my notebook closed.

Tomorrow was Monday. The office. The junior designer’s stone. The installer still scheduled for the coming week. Riverside would be windows and access, the same as it had been on Friday.

I finished the tea, set the alarm, and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Sunday had done what I had wanted it to do. It had belonged to my mother, to food, to a painting that needed a quieter wall.

That was enough for one day.