“I guess they didn’t teach you manners in Texas when they were teaching you how to do hair?”

Portia swallowed and glanced over. “Seriously, Stan, have you tasted these things? They’re amazing.”

Stanley rolled his eyes, shuffled over, and sat in the chair next to her. “How long do you plan on staying here?”

“You said I could stay as long as I liked.”

“No, Marcus said you could stay as long as you like. The only reason I didn’t slam the door in your face when you showed up like a half-drowned cat in a storm was because I felt indebted after those chocolate nuts you gave me.” He sniffed. “Lucky for you, you showed up when I was experiencing a moment of weakness.”

Portia shot him a dark grin. “You better work on your gruff thing. A person only has to know you for more than a minute to realize you’re a softie.”

Marcus strode into the room. “He’s a mean old man, don’t let him fool you.” But he leaned down and kissed Stanley on the top of his head.

A twist of yearning hit Portia’s gut at the sight of two people committed to each other for so many years. That was what she had wanted out of life: a partner who knew all her traits, good and bad, and loved her anyway.

She unwrapped another cake in a crackle of clear plastic, then took a giant bite.

Stanley scoffed. “Where’s the woman who made all those chocolate nuts and figs? The one who cooked and baked, the one who went on and on with all her talk about the joy to be found in food.”

Portia raised the half-eaten prefabricated cake in the air. “Don’t know her, never met her. But if I did, I’d tell her to stuff a Little Debbie cake in her obnoxiously cheerful face. And, really, you can’t be tired of me yet.”

“I’m hiding the Hostess Sno Balls,” Stanley grumbled.

Marcus laughed.

After Stanley and Marcus went back to the kitchen, Portia slouched lower in her seat. Stanley was right. She had hardly moved from her spot in front of the television. For all her pull-herself-up-by-the-bootstraps pep talk about fixing her life, she didn’t have the first clue how to do it. So she hadn’t. For the first time ever, Portia was just sitting around and feeling sorry for herself.

Even in Texas, when everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, she had been proactive. Sure, she had fled. But she had actively fled.

Right now, all she wanted to do was flip through cable stations until she found yet another show filled with people who probably couldn’t spell kitchen much less know what to do in one.

And she refused to feel one bit guilty about it.

Thirty-five

PORTIA WAS GONE. Vanished.

For three whole days, Ariel listened and watched as her dad tramped up and down the stairs to Portia’s apartment. Every time he returned back upstairs he still didn’t have any idea where she was. For all three of those days, Ariel tucked in her shirt, folded her ankle socks neatly around her ankles, brushed her hair, and even wore a headband she thought her dad would like. Like that would help.

He only looked at her oddly, and didn’t say a word. He also didn’t say a word about their missing neighbor.

She even tried to get him to talk about it, doing her best Shrink Speak, but finally he snapped, “That’s enough, Ariel. She’s gone.”

Anyone who didn’t know him would have sworn he couldn’t have cared less. But Ariel knew better. She knew he was hurting. Her dad dealt with stuff just like she did, swallowing it back, not letting on. It was one of the ways that she and her dad were exactly alike.

Plus, every night he went down the fire escape like a lovesick burglar. Of course he didn’t stay down there long, because really, what was there to find?

The problem was that unless her dad went out and found her, Portia wasn’t coming back. And there was no sign that he was planning to do that.

It was getting her worried. What if he didn’t get the Portia Problem fixed? She’d have to do it for him.

But she had promised to be a good daughter and let him fix things. So she continued to tuck in her shirt and worked hard to smile and be polite. Being a perfect daughter was proving even more difficult than her genealogy report.

But on the fourth day, she’d had it. She woke up knowing that her dad wasn’t going to get the job done. Here she was being, like, so perfect, and what good was that doing?

She started thinking, taking notes in her journal, figured things out. With a start she realized that she was doing perfect wrong! She needed to do the kind of perfect Mother Teresa did, and based on every photo she had seen, Mother Teresa didn’t worry about tucking in her blouse. She was out there doing, helping, mucking around doing the dirty work. If it had been up to Mother Teresa, she would be out helping Dad right along with the lepers! She wouldn’t sit on the sidelines!

As quietly she could, Ariel sneaked downstairs to Portia’s apartment, using the key Portia kept hidden under the mat, regardless of the fact that Dad always did the whole growling thing whenever something came up about it. Once inside, she walked from room to room, looking for a clue.

“Where are you, Portia?” she said aloud, feeling like an idiot, especially since the walls didn’t talk back. “Where did you go?”

Finally she ended up in the kitchen. She was about to leave when she saw a slip of paper on the floor. She read it a couple of times before dashing upstairs, bursting into her dad’s study, and handing over the sheet of paper.

He gave it a quick look, then eyed her. “What’s this?”

“A recipe!”

“I know that, Ariel. But why are you showing me?”

“Dad,” she said as nicely as she could, since she was still sort of trying to be the perfect daughter, even if it was the Mother Teresa version, “it’s a recipe. For chocolate-covered peanuts and figs.”

Her dad sat back in the leather chair and stared at the piece of paper. Ariel saw the resistance on his face. But she wasn’t completely sure what he was resisting.

“Dad,” Ariel repeated. “Like Portia always said, some things are true whether we believe them or not.”

She watched as he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing.

“She left us, Ariel. Even if I were inclined to look for her, I don’t know where to find her, and a fig recipe isn’t going to tell me.”

Ariel’s mouth gaped. Finally, she gave in and rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You can’t figure it out based on the chocolate chili recipe? The one Portia made. The one she told you about because all the extra bags disappeared.”

The chocolates that had drawn her in like a pathetic puppy to her sister’s soiree. Not that her dad knew that part of it.

“You can’t figure it out based on that?” She enunciated each syllable, unable to hold back the sarcasm any longer.

Her dad’s eyes narrowed even more, but then he drew a breath and his face kind of softened. “I’m glad to see my old Ariel is back.”

She peered at him across the massive desk. “What do you mean, the ‘old Ariel’?”

“The one who doesn’t measure her words.” Then he stood. “What you’re telling me is that Portia’s been right next door all this time.”

“There’s hope for you yet,” she cheered, racing around the desk and throwing her arms around him.

Thirty-six

PORTIA JERKED IN SURPRISE when she heard Stanley and Marcus’s buzzer.

“Well, well, well,” Stanley said, glimpsing out the window. “Look who’s here?”

“Who?”

“Our neighbor.”

“Ariel? Miranda?”

“Nope. Their father.”

“I’m not here!”

Marcus tsked. “You’re here. You’re sitting right there.”

“No way! He lied to me! He … he…” She cut herself off. There was nothing to explain. “I am not here.”

Finally, Marcus conceded, and told Gabriel she wasn’t available.

“That’s not the same as I’m not here!”

“True, but it also isn’t a lie.”

He had her there.

Portia stayed in front of the TV. In fact, she sat there for the whole next day, too. A Top Model marathon kept her glued to the screen. Stanley threw up his hands and grumbled. Marcus tsked, but was utterly kind. Finally, after a total of five days, Marcus said, “Portia, sweetie, don’t you want to go outside? Get some fresh air?”

Portia sat in front of the television, wearing a pair of old Adidas sweat pants Marcus had donated to the cause, and a misshapen Chorus Line T-shirt he had given her outright when she had run through the few clothes she had of her own. But she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t talk to Gabriel. What would she say? How could you not have told me that you owned the apartment? How did you make love to me over and over again, all the while you knew that you owned the only thing I thought I could call my own? How could she ever trust him?

Or even, to herself: What in the world am I going to do with my life?

“How about we take a walk in the park?” Marcus suggested. “Or, say, you change up your clothes?”

“I changed. I wore a Cats T-shirt yesterday. And before that, I wore the one I found in the bag headed for the thrift store: Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

“Of course. How could I forget the black Magic Marker you used to cross out Ain’t?”

She glanced over, eyeballing him to see if sweet Marcus was being sarcastic. “You’re sounding an awful lot like Ariel.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Portia felt even worse. She missed Gabriel more than she knew how to say. But she also missed Ariel. Even Miranda, a bit. Still, she couldn’t bear thinking about Gabriel making love to her while knowing he owned her apartment and not telling her.