You Have a Match(79)

“The spring rolls, maybe?” my mom asks.

My dad shakes his head. “Dale’s allergic to cilantro.”

Pietra reaches over Savvy to nudge Dale. “He says he’s allergic.”

“It tastes like soap.”

“That’s not an allergy,” my mom and Pietra protest at the same time, with the exact same inflection.

Dale holds his hands up in surrender. “Wow, it’s been eighteen years since the two of them have ganged up on me, and somehow it’s still just as terrifying.”

“Well, they’re not the only girls ganging up on you anymore,” says my dad mildly, acknowledging me and Savvy.

I freeze like a bunny in an open field, but Savvy leans forward, addressing us all in turn with a meaningful look. “Okay. We’re all here. We’ve survived a public spat and a mud pit and cilantro. Can you tell us the rest of the story, maybe?”

Crickets from the parents, until Dale takes it upon himself to say, “There’s not much to tell.”

Savvy falters, and I pick up the slack. “Sure there is. You told us the end of it. What happened at the beginning? How did you all meet?”

I feel my parents’ eyes on me, but before I meet them I know it’s less from annoyance and more out of surprise. I’m not usually the one taking charge of conversations. And while I’m still getting used to this new Abby, they haven’t seen much of her at all.

I can see the adults starting to relent. My mom drops her shoulders. My dad stops staring at his empty plate. Dale stops cracking his knuckles, and Pietra stops intermittently taking large sips of her wine. It’s like they’re all finally willing to go the distance, but have no idea where the journey begins.

I pull the keychain out of my pocket and set my magpie charm on the table. Savvy pulls hers off and does the same.

“It’s your names, isn’t it?” Savvy asks. “Maggie and Pietra.”

The look on my mom’s face when we first pulled these out is so fresh in my mind that I almost keep my head down, but her posture softens, her lips giving way to a quiet smile. She and Pietra stare at the little charms, disappearing to some other time together, far from the rest of us.

My mom looks up, but it’s Pietra’s eyes she meets, not mine. Like she’s waiting for Pietra’s permission before she says anything. Or maybe the beginning is Pietra’s story to tell.

Pietra leans forward, grazing the charm with her fingertips. “We bought these at Pike Place Market. Some little artisan seller. They were the last two.”

“We were both near broke.”

“Worth the money, though,” Pietra murmurs. “They’ve held up through the years, haven’t they?”

“That they have.”

Pietra lets go of the charm, looking from me to Savvy. “I was twenty-two when I started at Bean Well. I’d moved out of my parents’ place—less than politely. Told them I wanted to make it on my own. Ended up crying in the first coffee shop where I could find parking, certain I was going to turn right back around and undo the whole thing.” She turns to look at my mom, her eyes misty, but her voice wry. “But some nosy teenager butted in with a free scone and wrangled out my whole life story instead.”

My mom ducks her head, and when she looks up I can imagine her as that nosy teen, smirking this exact same smirk. “Well. Dad helped.”

“He did.” Pietra’s smile widens. “And for some reason I could never begin to fathom, he offered the girl scaring all his customers away a job.”

“I had to train her.” There’s a pause where my mom bites her lip, and her eyes meet Pietra’s, and she says, “She was so bad.”

Pietra puts her hand up in surrender. “I’m a tea drinker, I’d never made coffee in my life—”

“Forget coffee—you couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the vacuum,” my mom says, trying to muffle her laughter.

Pietra’s mouth drops open in mock offense. “You mean that piece of junk your mom dragged out of the eighties? Honestly, I was half expecting it to turn into a Transformer.”

My mom does what appears to be an impression of Pietra trying to figure out where the “on” button of an invisible vacuum is, and Pietra lets out a sharp laugh, saying, “Mags, you jerk.”

I watch, riveted. My parents tease each other, but not like this—not this lawless, almost teenage banter, the kind of shit I would get away with saying to Connie or Leo in full awareness that I could never say it to anyone else.

Pietra leans over the table and sips some of my mom’s wine in what appears to be retaliation. My mom lets her, easing back with a smug look on her face. “At least you were a quick student.”

Pietra rolls her eyes, returning the wineglass. “I was managing the place within the year. I was your boss, if you recall.”

“Hmm,” says my mom, glancing up at the ceiling. “And yet your lattes were never so good that you had lines out the door to order them.”

“Puh-lease. The boys who were mooning over your lattes were just trying to get in your—”

“Is everyone ready to order?” asks the waitress, saving me from nearly choking on my Sprite.

The waitress takes down everyone’s dinner orders and flits off. I’m afraid there’s going to be a lull, but Pietra jumps right back in, her cheeks flushed from the wine and her voice giddy in that way adults are when they’re talking about something they almost forgot about from a long time ago.