His eyes twinkled. Or was it the way the muted light hit his face as he talked? Meena glanced away from his lips. He was flirting, and she didn’t want to encourage him, but she liked it. Too much. She changed the subject. “I found another note.”
“That’s why you were sitting on the kitchen floor.”
“She told me her ashes should be buried under the big tree in the backyard,” Meena said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was the one who took care of it.”
Meena nodded. “I was baking a pie when I found it.”
“What kind?”
“Apple,” Meena said. “Tanvi brought me a dozen Granny Smiths from the farmers market on Sunday. That’s not the point. I want to know more about her, Sam. Not as a replacement for my parents, but to understand who I came from. Do I resemble her in any way? Am I like her? I know she liked to be alone, and so do I.”
“You’re not like Neha.”
“Really?” Meena frowned. “I can be cranky.”
“So can I,” Sam said. “All of us can be certain ways at different times.”
Meena didn’t know how to voice it, this desire to find a connection with someone she’d never known.
Sam leaned in over the table. Reached for her hand only to stop at touching the tips of her fingers. “I tried to tell you on Saturday but didn’t get the chance.”
Meena put down her fork.
His voice dropped lower, to a whisper. “Neha wasn’t your birth mother.”
Meena stilled. The synapses in her brain zapped around. Made it difficult to think. She took a breath. Then another. And calmed. She put her hand over his. “I understand. You were friends and you can’t see this side of her. Maybe you’re upset that she kept this a secret from you.”
“That’s not it,” Sam said. “She probably had secrets. This isn’t one of them.”
“How do you know?” She believed Neha. Needed to believe her. Wanted this connection to the house, to a legacy. She wanted to belong somewhere. No, not just somewhere, but in the Engineer’s House. “I have the notes.”
“Does she say it explicitly?”
“She . . .” Meena mentally ran through the clues. “I’ll show them to you. Let’s go back. I’ve been through them over and over again. She defined my name. Then there’s the apartment. She left it to me, the next generation.” Meena called over their waitress and asked her to wrap up their food. “I know her. I can feel it. I wouldn’t just believe something like this. She wanted me to find out.”
The server brought empty containers. Silently they packed up. Sam had to be wrong. Or he wasn’t convinced. Had she misread the notes? No. She’d been so hesitant to admit the possibility when she’d arrived. And she wasn’t impulsive, not by a long shot.
He paid their bill as Meena wrapped her scarf around her neck and buttoned up her coat. She walked out of the restaurant and took long strides back to the apartment. Once Sam read the notes, he would see that Neha wasn’t a stranger. Neha was the answer to a question she’d stopped asking. Neha was an anchor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Meena chewed on the loose cuticle of her thumb as she watched Sam go through each note, from index cards to fronts of fortunes from cookies. They were scattered on Neha’s scuffed coffee table. She sat on the floor opposite him with Wally, who’d been freed from his crate after their silent walk back to the Engineer’s House.
Meena knew she was a good journalist. She didn’t jump to conclusions. She’d kept her mind open, allowed the story to unfold instead of forcing it together. The threads were all there, the inheritance, the messages Neha had written specifically for her. Meena stroked Wally’s fur as he chewed on a toy that might have once been a raccoon.