“Tell me why, then. I want to hear more.” Steph said, crossing her long legs.
“The university campus is clean and easy to navigate once I got used to it. My students are all quite capable and haven’t needed too much counseling, which is a relief. Greg is the most enthusiastic, and I even kind of enjoy his company in the lab.” Ade drummed her fingers on the table. “The lab shifts are flexible, so I can get as much time as I like in there, and the manager seems to admire my work.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“And then there’s Sylvie,” said Ade.
Steph raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Sylvie? Tell me about her.”
“She’s my supervisor. You met at the concert by the church a few weeks ago.” Ade’s mind rewound to that moment, and a vision of Sylvie’s profile in the candlelight filled her vision.
“Of course,” Steph said. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“She’s become a friend. Sort of. She helped me when I had the attempted break-in. She’s good to talk to and great to listen to. I’ve really missed her this week.”
“What do you mean?” Steph asked.
“We haven’t seen each other. It’s unusual. We’d usually bump into each other or catch up on a supervision.” Ade folded her arms.
“She sounds like someone you’ve really connected to.”
Ade sat with her sister’s assumption and rolled it around her mind. Theyhadconnected. She didn’t want to get into it with Steph: it was her secret for now. Her heart rate spiked at the memory of Sylvie walking across Place Jean Jaurès.
She avoided Steph’s glare as their coffee arrived. “Did you like Emeline?” Ade asked.
“Yeah, she was fun to hang out with.” Steph tore at a packet of sugar and dumped it into her foam-topped café crème, leaving a dusting of granules in its wake.
“Why did you leave her in Barcelona then?”
Steph rested her head in her palm. “What’s all this about? You never ask me about my hook-ups.”
“I just wondered whether you’d connected with her, that’s all. What it might have been like.”
“Okay, precious, let me tell you. I did feel something with Emeline, but it was purely physical. We chatted, for sure, but about nothing in particular. Nothing too deep.” Steph shrugged. “I guess that’s a connection of its own kind.”
“Did you feel comfortable with her? Like you could be yourself?” Ade asked, desperate to understand more about the kind of relationship her slightly older and much wiser sister had known.
Steph frowned, as if she was working out the hidden meaning of the question.
“It’s not a trick question.” Ade smiled. She’d been told the same so many times.
“I just want to give you an honest answer.” Steph sighed. “We didn’t know each other for all that long, but I guess I wasn’t always myself. I was flirty and hilarious. I was upbeat and chatty. When I was out of sorts or lonely, I didn’t tell Emeline because I didn’t want to bring the mood down.”
Ade had shown Sylvie her most vulnerable self. As the Halloween revelers had paraded around the city in costumes, she’d unmasked, allowing her new friend to see all her fearswithout a filter. “Do you think Dad and Pops bonded emotionally before they got together?”
“What is this? Some sort of relationship 101 you haven’t warned me about?” Steph’s brow creased with confusion. “What’s going on with you?”
“I just wondered, that’s all.”
“You don’t wonder, Adelaide. You hypothesize and interrogate, and you find the answers. All this meandering around a topic is unnerving me.”
Steph was right. Her patterns were way out of character. But she couldn’t level with her sister, because she hadn’t worked out what was going on inside her head.
“Okay, if we’re done on that, let’s make a plan for the day.” Steph said. “Thanksgiving isn’t going to organize itself.”
Ade pushed a cart into the warehouse-style grocery store, keeping her shades on to avoid the glare of the overhead light. “I already picked up all the basics: butter, eggs, flour, sugar, oil, red wine vinegar.” She tapped her earbud back into place to block out the unbearable noise.
“So we should pick up a turkey and herbs a little later in the week, but we could get the dry and canned goods.” Steph scanned the overhead signs for clues. “Do they have bake-at-home rolls?”
