The kitchen smelled like garlic and something I was inventing as I went, which was either genius or a disaster, and I had decided not to decide which until it was finished.
Kira sat at the island.
She had not offered to help. She seemed to understand, with the specific attunement of someone who had been watching me for longer than I knew, that the cooking was not a social activity right now. It was what I did when I needed my hands busy and my brain quiet enough to handle something large.
I was handling something very large.
"You can ask," she said.
"I'm not ready to ask yet."
"Okay."
The garlic hit the pan and the kitchen filled with the particular smell that meant something real was about to happen, and I focused on that — on the heat, on the timing, on the specific sensory negoti
