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Or maybe my test.
She had dropped off Emma’s sunhat, and I had invited her to sit for iced tea.
When Jackson’s car pulled into the driveway, Rachel stood immediately.
“I was just leaving,” she said.
Jackson paused halfway up the walk.
Emma ran past him.
“Daddy! Rachel and Nana both like lemon cookies!”
Jackson looked at me.
I prepared myself.
For anger.
For betrayal.
For that old, wounded expression.
Instead, he just sighed.
“Everybody likes lemon cookies, Bug.”
Rachel laughed softly.
Jackson heard it.
For a moment, they looked like two people remembering that before pain, there had once been ordinary things between them.
Cookies.
Jokes.
A baby name chosen in a hospital room.
A life that had cracked open but not disappeared completely.
“Do you want one?” Rachel asked him.
Jackson’s eyebrows lifted.
“A cookie?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me again.
I shrugged.
“She made them.”
“You bake now?” he asked Rachel.
“I learned.”
He took one from the plate.
Bit into it.
Chewed.
Then said, very seriously, “Too much lemon.”
Rachel rolled her eyes before she could stop herself.
“Still impossible to please.”
The air changed.