Oakley Ponciano laughed softly. "Yes—when you're back, we'll go devour half the city together."
"Good, good. And you—how are you really? Are you happy?" Her mother's smile held a crease of worry, the kind that doesn't smooth out just because the camera is kind. The last weeks had been a tide, savage and loud. A mother can't eat when her child's name is being ground under so many careless heels.
"I'm okay," Oakley said, brighter than worry. "Happier, actually. Fewer things looping in my head. I'm eating more regularly."
While they talked, Grace Barron slid the dishes closer and glanced up, quiet as a cat crossing a windowsill. She said nothing, but listened. The air between Oakley and her mother was easy—borderless, tender. It reminded Grace of something she'd only ever watched from the far side of glass: Devin and Hannah with her little sister, all warmth and in-jokes. The scene was familiar as a room she'd never been invited to enter.
"Happy? Then I'm happy." Oakley's mother peered at the screen. "I think I saw a hand just now—is Grace there?"
Grace looked up.
"She is," Oakley said, already rising, already bringing the lens to both their faces. "We're about to eat."
Caught unprepared, Grace was a fraction slow, then found the rhythm and said, "Mom."
A delighted "Oh!" from the other side. Oakley's mother studied them with open pleasure. "You two look… very well matched. It's just—"
Grace lowered her eyes, followed the older woman's gaze to her own frame. "What is it?"
"Isn't Grace a bit too thin?" Concern drew Oakley's mother's brows into a pale knot.
Oakley looked at Grace and grimaced fondly at the camera. "She doesn't eat properly. You can't nibble and expect to gain, right?"
"I don't eat that little," Grace protested, mild and a touch wounded. She tried.
"She does." Oakley held a hand up to the camera and pinched the space between finger and thumb. "This much rice in one sitting. Maybe a little more than half my fist."
"That won't do." Her mother focused on Grace again. "You're not a songbird. You'll make yourself ill."
"But… eating too much is what makes her ill," Oakley said, then paused when the paradox landed. "Her stomach's fussy."
Oakley could push and bend her own body without much protest; if she didn't get reckless, it mostly forgave her. Grace was different—too much and she wilted. Perhaps it was the way energy had to be rationed: where the mind worked too hard, the gut abandoned its post.
"Have you seen a doctor?" her mother asked, voice gentling, worry sharpening.
Grace was ready to answer, but mother and daughter had slipped into their duet again. For a breath she felt like a hamster in a clear cage, observed and diagnosed by two benevolent gods.
She found a gap. "I've gone. I'm fine—it's just workload. Rice is light. I do eat plenty of vegetables." She heard herself and almost laughed. Between them, they had her halfway to a convalescent ward.
And yet the fussing warmed her like a shawl.
"That still won't do," Oakley's mother said. "When I come back, I'll bring you a tonic—oh, the name's slipped my mind—but it helps. It really does."
Grace blinked, then smiled. "Thank you… Mom."
"No thanks between family," came the cheerful reply.
Family.
The word hit like a hand to the sternum—steadying and strange. She was, it seemed, part of something soft and domestic. She hadn't planned for that.
They chatted a few minutes more before the call clicked off. Oakley tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and dropped into her chair. "Where was I?"
Grace prompted, "The merchant with the giant packaging and average portions."
"Oh, right." Oakley huffed. "Devious."
Grace saw it differently. "Honestly, I think they're generous. Plenty of meat, good produce. But they don't understand how to stage it. Big boxes are a mistake—bad optics. If I ran it, I'd shrink the containers so the food mounds higher. People eat with their eyes first. I'd probably cut the meat by a quarter and pad with vegetables to protect margin. As it is, they're working hard for less love. I don't know if their cash flow can sustain it."
When Grace stopped, Oakley was frozen mid-bite, chopsticks resting against her lip, eyes wide and blinking—as if a hamster had eaten too many sunflower seeds and forgotten the point of dinner.
Grace realized how far she'd gone and lifted her gaze. "What—?"
"You," Oakley said, setting down the chopsticks with dramatic care, "are a menace."
She'd always known Grace wasn't as simple as she seemed. She just hadn't expected this much not-simple to spill out over takeout.
As someone whose head is usually stocked with nothing loftier than food, fun, and the next sweet thing, Oakley had never once thought about any of this. Was this what people meant by a merchant's mind? Even off the clock, the habit of weighing and placing, of reading for leverage, spilled across the edges of life.
Grace paused. "I only… analyzed it a little."
"Mhm. A little analysis," Oakley said, nodding as if she were taking notes. "Which means the owner can't read people, but you can. Right?"
"Sometimes you have to," Grace answered after a moment.
That's how the world works. If you want to succeed, you sketch the customer first, then press the right seams. Do it long enough and 'insight into human nature' becomes something your hands remember even before your head does.
"I see…" Oakley's brows tipped up. Curiosity flared. "So—full confession. Have you been… handling me? Laying snares from the moment we met?"
She did think Grace capable of it. Otherwise how else explain her own speed—this breathless, uncharacteristic sprint into marriage? It couldn't be that she had rushed; she refused that verdict. She'd never rushed like this for anyone. It was as if not choosing Grace would mean misplacing a rare thing forever.
Grace could only laugh, rubbing at her temple. "Of course not."
Perhaps there had been a sliver of intention. Grace called it rightful pursuit, not a setup. "Setup," in her lexicon, meant half-coaxing, half-deceiving. She hadn't done that to Oakley. She didn't want to.
"Really?" Oakley kept her skeptical face, then let her eyes gleam. "Fine. I guess my charm just isn't great enough to make you want to 'handle' me."
Grace blinked. "What?"
Sometimes Oakley's brain-lines were an amusement park—loop-the-loops, sudden drops, laughter spooling out behind her.
"Kidding," Oakley said, popping open the takeout. "But don't you dare try anything wicked."
Grace smiled. "Why would I?"
"Who knows?" Oakley rested her chin on one fist, thinking. "Even if you did, I wouldn't be scared."
"How so?" Grace angled her head.
Oakley lifted a fist into the air, fierce as a kitten bristling at a mirror. "You do me wrong; I do you wrong right back."
Grace watched her like a small animal startled into fluff, shoulders shaking with contained laughter. "And what wrongs can you do?"
"Don't mistake me for a rabbit," Oakley said, palms to her cheeks, tapping idly at her skin. "I can go dark if pushed."
"Dark?" Grace was unconvinced. "Define 'dark.' What villainies have you committed, exactly?"
In Grace's private ranking, Oakley didn't even qualify for bronze. Charitably: very pure. Less charitably: empty-headed in the innocent way.
Oakley speared a chunk of chicken, soaking it in sauce while she weighed whether to air her tiny crimes. She truly thought herself dreadful in those moments; saying them aloud might crack the illusion of perfection.
She couldn't keep it in. "For example… there was a boy in our class who was awful to girls. I slapped him once when I saw him bully one. After that he hated me. When someone scribbled all over his textbook, he blamed me—no proof, just noise. We fought. After class I was so mad I took a marker and blacked out every single page of his book. Terrifying, right?"
Grace had been braced for an explosion and got a sparkler. She dropped her eyes and laughed.
Oakley sobered. "What are you laughing at?"
"Miss Ponciano," Grace sighed, "that's 'injure the enemy a thousand and yourself eight hundred.' Now he knew it was you, didn't he? I'm guessing it didn't end there."
Bull's-eye.
Oakley rubbed the shell of her ear, deflated. "Yeah. He saw the book, came at me, and we fought again. The teacher made me write a thousand-word apology and deliver it in front of everyone. What could I do? The anger wouldn't swallow."
Grace looked at her, helpless and fond. "You're terrible at being terrible."
There are two kinds of people, she thought. One does a mountain of wrong and still crowns themselves a saint. The other—Oakley's kind—commits a pebble's worth of mischief and calls herself a scourge of the earth.
Oakley balled her hand into a fist again. "Are you looking down on me?"
"Not at all," Grace said truthfully.
How could she? If anything, the story only underlined the obvious: Oakley was too straightforward for the world and sometimes too trusting. How had she made it this far unbroken? The impulse it woke in Grace was simple: protect.
"Then tell me—what would you have done?" Oakley asked. "Just swallow it?"
"No." Grace met her eyes, solemn. "I'd go straight to the teacher."
"That's it?" Oakley stared.
"That's it." Grace shrugged. "It's not complicated. If I'm in the right, I get the adult to handle it. He gets scolded. Either way, I don't end up gnawing on my own fury and writing a confession."
"Oh." Oakley puffed out her cheeks.
Fine. Perhaps, sometimes, she was not quite rational—charging headfirst and turning an easy thing into a labyrinth.
She bit into a piece of chicken and considered a serious question: when God made Grace and God made her, what exactly happened at the workbench to produce two such different species?
Strangely, even after knowing for certain that Grace Barron had more angles than anyone Oakley Ponciano had ever met—more levers, more quiet calculations—she didn't feel afraid. By logic, a woman like that should be the most dangerous of all. Instead, the hunger to know her deepened, rooting down another inch.
Ruined. Maybe she was the kind of person who keeps learning the same lesson the hard way, again and again, and still reaches for the stove.
They ate and talked; thirty minutes passed like a single warm breath. After their goodnights and a quick sweep of takeout boxes, they retreated to their rooms.
Outside, Skylark lurched into wind. A hard, slate-colored gust muscled through the streets; tree crowns turned their leaves inside out, shivering like waves. The sound at the windows was a low animal keen, storm-raw, like the end of the world deciding how to begin.
Oakley had just latched her window when she stopped, mid-turn. A thought—ridiculous, bright—lit up behind her eyes.
She pivoted. Halfway to the door she veered, snatched a plush rabbit from the bed, patted stray lint from its fur, and cinched it by the neck with one hand like a talisman. Then she hurried down the hall to Grace's room and lifted her knuckles.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Grace had only just climbed under the duvet. The sound tugged her back upright. She looked at the door, considered, and said, "Come in."
The latch clicked. The door cracked, then opened wide to the sight of Oakley standing there, clutching the rabbit, bottom lip caught between her teeth, all dewy-eyed and implausibly fragile. "Grace, I'm scared."
"Hm?" Grace didn't follow. "Of what?"
Oakley tilted her chin toward the window. "The wind is so loud. I'm scared."
She held up the rabbit in both arms like proof, still heartbreakingly earnest. "Even with this, I'm scared."
Grace's brow lifted a millimeter. "So?"
Oakley crossed the room on light ankles and crouched by the edge of the bed, looking up with bright, liquid eyes. "Can I sleep with you tonight?"
Grace blinked.
Oakley tipped her lashes, as if to say she'd already made up her mind to stay, storm or no storm.
Unbearable.
Grace surrendered, eyes closing on a short exhale. "Get in."