As Claire and I walked home together, she pulled a folded recipe card from her purse.
“My mom’s cookie recipe,” she said with a small smile.
I laughed softly.
“Thank you,” I told her honestly. “For bringing part of my childhood back to me.”
Claire looked at me carefully.
“You know,” she said, “maybe we don’t have to treat this like just a contract anymore.”
I smiled.
“Are you suggesting an actual date?”
“Maybe.”
Later that evening, while eating warm homemade cookies in our tiny kitchen, I finally understood something Martha had known all along:
Love had never existed in my parents’ wealth.
It existed in kindness.
In warmth.
In the people they considered beneath them.
