He arrived exactly on time, which she hadn't expected.
She'd half-thought he wouldn't come — that something would pull him back into the world he ran, some fire that needed putting out. But at ten a.m. on Tuesday his motorcycle pulled into the small lot behind Sugar & Salt and he came in through the back door she'd left unlocked, ducking slightly under the frame out of habit even though he didn't need to.
He stood in the center of her kitchen and looked around the way she'd watched him look at the valley from Blue Ridge — slowly, taking inventory of what mattered.
It was a good kitchen. She'd made it one. Stainless steel everything, spice racks organized by region, a chalkboard wall where she sketched menu ideas, the good copper pots her culinary instructor had left her when she retired
