I waved at her. “Hi.”
Thomas took Rain’s hand, held it to his chest. “She dropped Sammy off. We were just having a little chat.”
Rain forced a smile. “Is that right?” she said.
I pointed toward the door. “I can go.”
Rain shook her head. “I didn’t ask you to.”
Then it got quiet, awkward.
Thomas looked back and forth between us. “I’d leave you guys alone, but you know . . . not gonna get up unnecessarily.”
I looked at my sister. “Can we go somewhere and talk?” I said.
She kept her hand on Thomas, motioned around the small house. Sammy was in the loft above the living room, Thomas was taking up the kitchen, the bedroom was all bed.
“It’s raining really hard out there,” she said. “There’s not many places to go.”
I held up the key to our childhood home. “I have one.”
49
So this is super freaky,” Rain said.
We walked into the foyer, Rain taking in the house. The walls, the art, the enormous portrait of the celebrity and her husband in the dip-down living room.
“We can’t just be here,” she said.
“Humor me,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s a defense for the cops.”
But she kept walking down the hallway and into the kitchen, taking in the enormous stoves, the bay windows leading out to the porch, and the gorgeous views of the beach and the ocean beyond it. The rain was still coming down hard, the wind whipping up, making it all feel slightly magical.
“Please tell me she’s a good chef,” Rain said.
“No idea, but . . .” I reached into the fridge and pulled out a loaf of our favorite bread. “You hungry?”
“Now we are just stealing.”
“She’s got a stocked fridge, and it’s all going to go to waste.”
“That’s what we’ll tell the police.”
“Grilled cheese?”
She considered. “All right,” she said. “But I’m taking the seat with the view.”
Here was how I made the grilled cheese:
First—and the ordering of the ingredients mattered—I took a loaf of country boule bread and sliced two pieces half an inch thick. Not from the ends, but from the middle of the loaf. This was the second-most important part of building a great grilled cheese—the bread itself, and then its ratio to everything else. Once I’d cut the bread, I buttered the inside of each slice and started to add the goodies. I added a generous layer of good quality Swiss cheese, then very thinly sliced cherry tomatoes. Of course, cherry tomatoes were small and difficult to slice thinly—and, it was summer, so I could have used any fresh tomato—but the rest of the year, only a cherry tomato was sweet enough. I put five tomatoes on each side, then another layer of Swiss, even more generous than the first. If Danny was there, I would have added a top layer of avocado, but avocado (a grilled-cheese purist might say) is a controversial ingredient. And not needed. What was needed was that I focused on the most important part: I put the sandwich together and coated the outside of each slice with mayonnaise. No thin layer, a solid coating. The salty goodness of the mayonnaise sealed the sandwich together, and made it grill on the grill pan more smoothly. Five minutes or to your desired level of toastiness. (But the right level of toastiness is five minutes on each side.)
This might sound simple. And that is because it is.
It is also, without a doubt, the most delicious sandwich in the world.
I found the house’s sound system and attached my phone, turning on “Moonlight Mile.” I listened to it all the time now—I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t just that I loved the song. It felt like there was something else it was supposed to be telling me.