Page 28 of The Forbidden Secret

I sat out in front of the apartment, holding a cigarette between my fingers as if I were smoking it. I nodded at the other residents as they walked inside, and most of them nodded back. I waited, and when I saw nothing concerning, I turned and walked back into the building. I took the steps slowly as my mind once again drifted back to the way Evelina had flushed bright red when I had noticed the novel she had chosen.

Why couldn’t I get her out of my fucking head?

When I walked in the door, the sound of her in the kitchen met me. I walked around the corner and found her… chopping vegetables. I leaned into the countertop as I watched her nimbly dice them into small pieces, her eyes going between the vegetables and the book in front of her, propped open with a salt and pepper shaker on either side.

She scanned the pages while cutting mindlessly.

“Need some help?”

She jumped and squealed, straightening as she met my eyes. Her rapid movement shifted the saltshaker from her book, and it slammed shut. “What… I thought you were outside.”

I had not been quiet coming inside, so I smirked. “Is the book getting interesting?”

“Very.”

A small flush covered her cheeks as she got back to chopping.

I moved forward and grabbed a pepper from her small pile, then a knife. “What are we making?”

“We?”

I glanced over at her, knowing it was stupid—sostupid to deepen the connection between us. I had done everything to push her away, but Evelina somehow managed to unravel all my attempts at staying away with one look.

When I didn’t respond, she gave me a small smile and flicked her hair over her shoulder before continuing her chopping. “I’m not much of a cook,” she admitted. “I’m making a salad. I noticed the veggies in the fridge and didn’t know what else to do.”

“Jaimie brought them by,” I explained.

“Is she making progress?”

“There’s nothing new if that’s what you’re asking.”

She shrugged. “Oh.”

I couldn’t unravel the meaning behind the word. The tone sounded disappointed but not angry. She didn’t recoil from me at the thought of staying in the same house, and I wondered what had shifted.

I cut the pepper quickly and reached for a head of broccoli before she slapped my hand away and pointed toward the chopped pepper in front of me. “That’s a monstrosity,” she laughed. “Fix the pieces.”

I glanced down at my work and compared it to hers. Maybe the cuts weren’t as even, but at least it was chopped. “It’s going to taste the same.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nobody wants half a pepper in a bite. It has to be way smaller.”

I exhaled a long, suffering breath before getting to work on cutting it into smaller pieces.

“Why are you so good at this?” I scoffed as I sawed at the pepper and found it still unstructured and lopsided, unlike her pristine slices.

“A meticulous eye for detail,” she replied easily. “Cooking is like art, if you think about it. Every detail matters as it all comes together.”

“What got you into art?” I pushed.

She didn’t look up, but I saw how light filled her eyes. “Honestly, it sounds really stupid.” She chuckled at herself and shook her head. “In second grade, we went to an art museum, and it was fine. I was more interested in being outside of school than paying attention to the art. But I was messing around with a friend and ran into a middle-aged woman, and she didn’t even acknowledge me as I tried to apologize. She just kept staring at a painting in the corner of the room.

“It wasn’t even one of the headlining art pieces, but she was so fascinated just looking at it, so I looked too. I wanted to see what held her attention, so I stared at it for a few minutes. I didn’t see anything extraordinary. I turned to leave, and she finally spoke. I’ll always remember what she said. She told me that it wasn’t what was on the canvas that made the painting so meaningful. The importance was in the artist’s decision to leaveoutcertain details.”

“That made sense to a second grader?” I pushed.

“Not even a little bit. But when I went back to the same museum for a middle school trip, I sought out the same painting. It was still there, and through the eyes of a young teenager, Ididsee it. I saw the blues and cool undertones of the woman’s painting. I saw the emptiness in her eyes, and I looked for what was missing. It all fell together, and I understood how muchwent into paintings. I saw that it was so much more than just drawing a picture. The choices an artist makes can add so much weight to a painting. So much depth and importance are in every choice and meticulous move.”

I dropped my knife as she spoke and watched every change in her expression. I swallowed any response to her words and allowed her to continue for long minutes, talking about her favorite paintings andwhythey meant so much to her.

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