The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient 3)

The entryway of her parents’ house is the showstopper kind. There’s a long marble hallway lined with paintings and a grandfather clock. To the side, there’s a sitting room with a grand fireplace, exposed wooden ceiling beams, elegant furniture, and the most expensive-looking drapes I’ve ever seen. They look like they’re made of gold, but I’m pretty sure it’s just silk—really nice silk. A ways down, I can see a formal dining room with an antique dining table that seats ten and a crystal chandelier.

This place is nothing like my mom’s house, where aesthetics take a back seat to utility and cost but the food is always good. The only thing that’s familiar to me here is the rug by the front door with all the shoes lined up in neat rows. I think my mom owns that same pair of orange plastic sandals, actually.

I toe my shoes off and follow Anna down the hall, feeling the coldness of the marble seeping through my socks to the soles of my feet. I make a discovery that should have been obvious, but wasn’t, because I never walked on so much marble without shoes before now: Marble is hard. Anna is going to get plantar fasciitis walking on this shit all day.

At the end of the hall, she veers left and enters a humongous kitchen / great room area with a twenty-foot-tall ceiling and more of those gold drapes. Anna sets her box of food on one of the granite islands (there are two) and opens one of the Sub-Zero refrigerators (there are also two) with custom wood paneling to match the cabinetry.

As we’re shuffling stuff around, trying to make room for all my mom’s food, a third person joins us.

“Hey, can you get the heat packs from the microwave for—” It’s a woman, older than Anna, more compact, a little shorter, but clearly related to her. They part their hair in exactly the same place, too.

I smile and wipe my hand on my jeans in case there’s fish sauce on it or something before holding it out toward her. “Hey, I’m Quan. Nice to meet you.”

For a split second, she stares at me just like their mom did a week ago—wide-eyed, slack-jawed, amazed in a horrified way—but then she sees the boxes of food. She can probably smell it, too. There’s fried chicken, and fried chicken smells fucking delicious. My mom’s is the absolute best, too, with crispy salty skin that crunches on your teeth and then melts on your tongue. She recovers, and a grateful smile warms her face as she shakes my hand.

“I’m Priscilla, Anna’s sister. This is so nice of you. Thank you.” Everything about her, from her posture, to the direct way she makes eye contact, to the confident sound of her voice, tells me she’s in charge of this place. If I need to work on impressing someone, it’s her.

“Don’t mention it. My mom likes to feed people,” I say.

Anna scratches her head as she frowns at the inside of the fridge, looking slightly panicked. “You might have to take a box back with you, Quan. I don’t think we have room for all of this—”

“What?” Priscilla interjects. “We have room. There’s also the extra fridge in the garage and that big freezer.”

“Oh right. I forgot,” Anna says, and her voice sounds so different that the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s high-pitched and hesitant, extremely soft. Not herself. “Should I put most of this out there, then?”

“No,” Priscilla decides. “Put as much as you can in here. I think Mom will like it.”

“Okay,” Anna says in that same unnaturally young voice, smiling like the idea of refrigerating things is really exciting.

I glance back and forth between the sisters to see if Priscilla notices Anna’s dramatic change. She doesn’t seem to.

“You should freeze some of the wontons. There are a lot. The chicken is best if you eat it today with noodles,” I suggest, acting like my girlfriend didn’t just age back twenty years. “Did you eat yet? I can show you how to put it all together.”

Priscilla’s face brightens with something that looks like glee. “I would love some—” She stiffens and glances over her shoulder toward a part of the house I haven’t seen, like she’s heard something no one else detected. “I worry when he coughs like that after we feed him. We have to space things out more.” She grabs a bundle of fabric from the microwave, slams it shut, and races away.

“She has superhuman hearing now, like moms do. My dad is basically her baby,” Anna says, and her voice and demeanor are completely returned to normal. She’s the Anna I know again as she takes cartons out of the boxes and lines them up on the table with geometrical precision.

I give her a questioning look, and her expression turns confused.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” she asks, touching her cheek.

“No, I was just—did you . . .” I’m not sure what I’d achieve by pointing things out—she’s got enough on her plate—so I ask, “Should we heat up something for your sister and bring it in to her? Also, should I say hi to your dad?”

Anna shakes her head. “We don’t eat in there. That would be wrong, you know? Because he can’t. But if we get a bowl ready for her, she’ll come out and eat it real fast. That’s why we have that baby monitor.” She points to a small screen on one of t

he counters. The volume is off, but a grainy video feed shows Priscilla hovering over their dad, adjusting his pillows and things while he sleeps.

“I guess I shouldn’t say hi while he’s sleeping.”

“Yeah, when he’s awake is better,” she agrees. “But don’t be offended when he doesn’t respond. I’m not sure he’s aware of what’s happening most of the time. I’ve tried talking to him, showing him movies on YouTube, playing music. Nothing reaches him. Nothing that I do, anyway.” She lifts a shoulder and touches the bent corner of a foam container.

For a long moment, she seems lost in her thoughts, but she eventually blinks out of it, focuses on me, and smiles. “Let’s eat. I’m hungry, and this smells so good.”

I show her how to reheat things for maximal deliciousness. My mom gave me specific instructions: broil the fried chicken in the oven for five minutes so it stays crispy, reboil soup broth in a pot over the gas range, and microwave the egg noodles, wontons, and barbecue pork. When everything is hot, I put it together, fried chicken on top, and sprinkle chives and pickled jalapeños over each bowl. Anna runs to get her sister, and the three of us seat ourselves on the leather barstools at the outer granite island and eat while the baby monitor crackles, the volume now turned up to the max.

“This might be the best wonton noodle soup I’ve ever had,” Priscilla says as she somehow, astonishingly, empties her entire bowl. Even her chicken bones are picked clean.

“Thanks. I’ll tell my mom you said so,” I say. “She loves to cook and is constantly working on improving her recipes. You should see when she tries out a new restaurant. She orders one of everything and analyzes each bite.”