The soup was made with love. The love was the problem.
I catalogued sixty-three facts about Isla Chevalier before she hugged me. The ring she twists on her right hand, her mother's, not her own. The half-second she holds on too long when we embrace. Women who tip forty percent are women who need to be liked by everyone in the room.
Jeanette Marshall was supposed to be the one. I joined her book club, learned her schedule, built a careful four-month friendship. But the daughter of an alcoholic monitors a room at a frequency no protocol could survive. She was too observant to use. So she introduced me to her best friend instead.
I keep a cabinet behind a panel that doesn't look like a cabinet. A journal that begins with Day 1. Extracts I harvest before dawn.
By October, there is a metallic taste on Isla's tongue. By Thanksgiving, she cannot hold a fork. On Tuesdays, I am at her kitchen counter with homemade broth, staying late, making myself the only person she can rely on. Isla's world is shrinking to the size of her bed, and I am the only one allowed inside it.
But Jeanette has started asking questions. She's watching my jars. She's counting my visits. And I am running out of time.
I touched Isla's hair while she slept, and it came out in my hand. I put the strands in my pocket.
