The Swallow's Nest. Emilie Richards

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      Regan Donnelly was looking on as Lilia painstakingly shot photos of a moisture-beaded glass pitcher nearly overflowing with pineapple chunks, citrus slices and a haze of red wine floating on top of white. At Lilia’s words her friend cocked her head. “What on earth are you talking about?”

      Lilia hadn’t realized she’d spoken—or more accurately, mumbled. She had begun talking to herself during the long stretches when her husband was in the hospital. She had been so lonely, she had needed the sound of her own voice.

      “Nothing. I was just thinking about happy endings and failures.”

      Regan sing-songed in a high-pitched voice. “Lily-ah, Lily-ah, you are being Silly-ah!” She grinned. “Today is your happy ending.”

      “I wish I’d never told you my brothers used to say that.”

      “But you did.”

      Lilia straightened and stretched before she moved the pitcher to the back of the counter where sun from a large window over the sink wouldn’t strike it quite so directly. She turned the handle to one side and took another shot.

      “Well, if nothing else, my pineapple sangria is a happy ending. I worked on and off for a week on this recipe. I think you’ll like it. My readers will, too.”

      Regan would not be deterred. “Graham’s in remission. His last two CT scans were clear. You’re afraid to be happy, aren’t you? You’re afraid the gods will descend and whack you all over again.”

      Lilia sent her just the faintest smile, because as different as they were, Regan knew her inside and out. Although they were the same five foot five and both twenty-eight, Regan was fair-skinned with a collar-length bob the color of butterscotch. Her pale green eyes had been Lilia’s inspiration the last time she had painted this kitchen. In contrast Lilia’s hair was nearly black and waved down her back, and her skin turned a distinctive brown in the sun. She had what novelists liked to describe as “almond eyes,” in her case the color of almonds, although the crease of her eyelids also hinted at whatever Asian ancestor had bequeathed them to her.

      She decided the pitcher had finished its moment in the spotlight and stepped away. “I come from superstitious people. This morning I blogged about how happy I am. I don’t want to jinx Graham’s recovery.”

      “We Irish can match you Hawaiians, superstition for superstition. But I think you’re allowed to be happy. His doctor told you relapses occur quickly, right? It’s been a year since the initial cancer diagnosis, but he’s here today, having a great time.”

      It had been a year marked by nearly insurmountable hills and valleys. Lilia was still too exhausted not to question fate.

      “My tutu trotted out an old Hawaiian proverb whenever things went wrong. ‘He ihona, he pi’ina, he kaolo.’ It means we go down, we go up, we walk on a level road. A level road is all I’m asking for. Graham, too.”

      “He’s looking so much better. Hair’s appealing on a man, don’t you think?”

      Lilia allowed herself to laugh. “We weren’t sure what color it would be after chemo, but I think it looks the way it did before he lost it, only shorter.”

      Graham, dark blond hair a couple of inches now, was standing outside their sunroom door with newly arrived partygoers, receiving good wishes. Employees and clients from Encompass Construction, the design-build firm he had created from the ground up, were shoulder to shoulder with neighbors, college friends and some of Lilia’s clients, too. But in the middle of a conversation with another young man, he stopped and turned, looking straight at her, as if he knew she was talking about him. Then he smiled.

      For a moment she fell back in time to the first day Graham Randolph had smiled at her. She’d been ten; he’d been eleven. She’d been barefoot, and he’d worn stiff leather loafers with heavy dark socks. Until that moment she’d written him off as sullen and self-absorbed. Then she fell in his swimming pool trying to make an impossible Frisbee catch.

      Remembering that now she winked at him, and his smile widened before he turned away.

      Graham, even after months of chemotherapy, after losing all his hair and almost twenty pounds, was still easy on the eye. He was handsome in a prep school way, even though he was still puffy from steroids and sported nearly invisible chemo ports in his chest and scalp. Once again his blue-gray eyes were rimmed with dark lashes shaded by darker brows. Despite his illness he was still broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, and today, as usual, he was clad in scruffy jeans and a T-shirt—the more or less official dress of the Silicon Valley.

      Best of all he was alive and hers.

      “Do you ever get tired of this?” Regan swept a manicured hand at the pitcher and at a platter of hot and sour wings that Lilia had photographed first. The wings weren’t quite finished, but sometimes food photographed best when it was still slick with sauce that later would darken in the oven.

      Lilia set down her camera so she could slide the wings back to a foil-lined baking sheet. “As much as I’d like to forget my website this once, I don’t have the luxury. These days my online presence is the largest portion of our income.”

      “Didn’t readership grow during Graham’s illness?”

      The larger audience had surprised Lilia, but so many people had hung on every word she’d carefully crafted about Graham’s illness. Prayers had been said all over the world. Uplifting emails had flooded her in-box.

      “It did grow, but now my readers want a celebration after a year of gloom.”

      Regan was still piling up the happy endings. “The Swallow’s Nest will be even busier and more productive now that you won’t be at the hospital so much.”

      The Swallow’s Nest had been named after the Tudor Revival cottage in San Jose, California, where they stood. Lilia’s aunt Alea Swallow had always called the house “my nest” and, on her death, had bequeathed it to her niece, who had taken care of her at the end of her life. Now Lilia’s website and blog were devoted to nesting, to creating a snug, beautiful home in a small space like this one, to feeding loved ones and launching fledglings.

      That last, of course, was something she wouldn’t be doing, at least not for some time.

      She closed the oven door, setting a timer with her voice. At that moment Carrick Donnelly, who’d circled the house to the patio, abandoned his date and came inside through the sunroom, bending over when he reached Lilia to kiss her cheek.

      Carrick and Graham had been friends since childhood, and Lilia had known him almost as long as she’d known her husband. He might be Regan’s older brother, but in the sunshine there was only a faint tinge of red in his brown curls, and his eyes were a much deeper and muddier green. He was also as different from Lilia’s husband as the ocean from the shore, lankier and less patrician, but equally as pleasurable to look at.

      For just a moment he rested his hands on her shoulders. “Anything you need help with?”

      “No, you ought to get back to Julie.” Lilia hoped she had his date’s name right. She’d met the woman once, another associate at Carrick’s Palo Alto law firm, but keeping up with the names of his ever-changing girlfriends wasn’t easy.

      “She’s already engrossed in a bitcoin discussion with somebody from Google. She’ll СКАЧАТЬ