She'd been cooking for one for so long that the arithmetic of it had become unconscious — single portions, small pans, one cup of rice, the specific efficiency of a person who'd never had reason to account for anyone else at the table.
The first time Zane stayed for dinner, she made too little. She didn't notice until they were already eating, and she noticed because he finished before she did and held his chopsticks in the careful, neutral position of someone declining to draw attention to the fact that they were done and there was nothing left.
She made more rice.
He tried to say he was fine.
She made the rice anyway, and he ate it, and didn't say anything further, and she filed the arithmetic problem for future reference with the same precision she filed everything else.
The second
