in what you’re wearing, not what anyone else thinks of it.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I rubbed my hands over my biceps. “I hope you can see me,” I whispered. “I’m wearing this for you.”
* * *
Spencer was the first to arrive, looking handsome in a navy blue suit. His dark hair was slicked back and he had a red kerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He shook Dad’s hand, then pulled him into a one-armed hug, and they patted each other’s backs like they were trying to burp a baby.
“Hey there, monkeys,” he said to us, and Max and I both gave him a little wave. We liked Spencer. Whenever we visited the restaurant, he made us a special garlic cheese toast and snuck us bites of expensive desserts. “Can I help set up?” he asked, looking around the living room. Grace had kept the house so clean all week, it barely looked like anybody lived there.
“I still need to move the dining room chairs in here,” Dad said. “So people will have a place to sit.”
“Let’s do it,” Spencer said, slapping his hands together. They made their way into the other room, and Max and I walked over to the couch and dropped onto it together.
“What’re we supposed to do?” Max whispered, and I shrugged. There weren’t going to be very many people coming over—maybe Diane and her son, Patrick, plus a couple of people from Mama’s work. Dad said her parents couldn’t come because their health wasn’t good enough to travel. I supposed if I knew them I’d have been upset, but I honestly didn’t know how to miss someone I’d never met.
Before I could answer my brother, Melody walked in through the front door wearing a simple black dress and matching ballet flats. Her hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck, which was encircled by a strand of pearls. She looked like a blond Audrey Hepburn. Grace gave her a big hug, then offered to take her coat. Spencer and my dad emerged from the dining room, each carrying a couple of chairs. Melody saw them, did a double take, then nudged Grace. “Who is that?” she whispered.
“Spencer,” Grace said. At the sound of his name, Spencer set the chairs down and walked over to them. “This is my friend Melody,” Grace continued. “Melody, this is Spencer. He’s the chef at the Loft. The one whose food I’m always raving about?”
“Nice to meet you,” Spencer said with a small smile, and held out his hand. Melody shook it and nodded, and I thought I caught her giving him a second glance after he’d already looked away.
“Ava, what’re we supposed to do?” Max asked again, pulling at my sleeve. I yanked away from his touch.
“I don’t know!” I snapped. His eyes glossed with tears and I immediately felt like crap for being mean to him. “Why don’t you go eat something?” I suggested in a much nicer voice. “There’s a ton of food on the table.” He shook his head, then leaned it against my arm. I sighed and took his hand in mine. His fingers were warm and sweaty, but I held on to them anyway. I knew he couldn’t always help being a pain. He was only seven.
I felt Grace’s eyes on me from across the room, then she made her way over to the couch. “I brought some of your mom’s photo albums from her house, remember?” she said quietly. “Do you two want to look through them?”
I shrugged again, my stomach flipping over inside me. I’d forgotten about those albums, and suddenly, I wanted to do nothing else. Grace gave my arm a gentle touch before going into the den and returning with a stack of albums. She sat down in between Max and me, giving me one I didn’t recognize from the top of the pile—it had a worn black vinyl cover and spiral edges.
I ran my palm over the front of the album and wondered why Mama hadn’t shown it to me. She had stacks and stacks of albums from when Max and I were babies—I made fun of her for how many pictures she took of us just lying on a blanket on the floor, doing nothing. “What was so interesting about that?” I asked her, and she’d smile. “Every single little thing you did as a baby was like magic,” she said. “I couldn’t take my eyes off of you for a second.