I’d just sat down to my laptop after dropping the kiddos at school the next morning when my phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered without looking.

“You’re a goddess.”

My lips twitched at my sister’s voice. “Tell me more.”

Kelly laughed, but her voice was sincere. “Thank you, Miss. For bailing me out.”

“And for writing a full page of instructions that even you couldn’t mess up.” I’d finished up the food, leaving it all to warm in the oven, before gathering the kiddos and scooting home.

“Hmpf,” my sister said, then sighed. “Okay fine, it’s true. And the MacAlisters loved your food. I was going to take credit for it all, but then I knew I’d have to attempt to replicate it and—” Abby shrieked in the background. “Hold on.”

I listened to Kel gather up Abby, sounds muffled as she attempted to hold toddler and phone alike. When she came back on, she was panting.

“I—ouch. That’s Mommy’s hair, Abby-girl. I just want to—ow—tell your auntie something.”

“Want to call me back later?” I asked as I went through some photographs from the previous night. “Oh, did you happen to take any pictures of the prepared plates? I forgot to take some.”

A pause. “It wasn’t on the instruction sheet.”

I grinned, tapped a few keys on my laptop. “So that’s a no. It’s okay, I guess my mind was somewhere else.”

“You could always make it again,” my sister said, way too innocent. “It’d be a real struggle, but I could be employed to make sure it didn’t go to waste.”

“Nice try,” I said and glanced at the clock. I needed to get off the phone in the next couple of minutes. I was volunteering in Max’s class in addition to my normal work stuff, and time was already tight. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Oh! So Tammy MacAlister is the wife of Justin’s work colleague. I guess their fathers invested in the same tech start-up or something, and now the boys are trying to figure out if they want to put more capital into the business.”

I struggled to prevent my eyes from glossing over. “Okay.”

“But that’s not the exciting thing,” Kel said.

“What is the exciting thing?”

“Tammy works for that food channel. You know the one on TV with all the celebrity chefs, and she loved your food. Like, loved it. Raved about it.” Kelly was talking fast, and my heart was pounding, blood swooshing past my ears as I tried to process what my sister was telling me. “And then I showed her your blog and Instagram—which damn, I didn’t realize you had ten thousand followers, Miss! That’s amazing.”

I held my breath.

“Melissa?”

I released it, strived for a calm voice. “I’m here.”

“She wants to meet you. She wants to run a camera test and see some more of your food and—”

“Holy arancini.”

“I know—what?”

I collapsed back against my chair. “They’re fried balls of rice. Italian. Super delicious.” I waved my hand through the air. “Never mind that. How? When? I—”

“I told Tammy I would pass along your information to her if it was something you were interested in.”

That gave me pause.

Okay, not really. Because this—a cooking show! Eek! It was something I’d always fantasized about, but had never believed was remotely possible.

“Yes, please,” I said calmly.

“Can we squee now?” my sister asked.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I hope so.”

And then we squeed.

After Kelly and I completed our squeal-fest and hung up, I fired off a quick text to Rob.

I settled in for the long haul, editing pictures, finding the perfect descriptive words for my soup recipe from yesterday. Of course, I shared a few more details of our recovery from the Plague—not too much, because it was a food blog, after all—but I did think my readers liked it when I let them in to my own life a little.

And the sick kids, dog eating my shoe, it was too real not to share. I purposely didn’t say funny, either. It was too soon after the plague to be funny—

My poor shoes.

But I fully expected to be able to laugh about it all in approximately . . . eight and a half decades.

Snorting, I scheduled the post then moved on to selecting which photograph would look best on Instagram when my phone rang.

I lurched for it, thinking it could be Tammy and all my cooking show dreams, but it was Rob.

Which was almost as good.

“Hi!” I said. “I’ve got the best—”

Wind wove through the speaker, rattling against my eardrums. “Are the kids okay?”

I stiffened at the shortness in his voice. “They’re fine. Why?”

“You said to call.”

“I need to tell you something. I have really awesome news—”

A voice intruded on their conversation. “Sorry. You’ll have to tell me later,” Rob said. “I need to go.”

“But—”

“I’m at work, Miss.”

“Yeah.” I paused, throat tightening, eyes tearing up.

“Bye.”

Before I’d opened my mouth to reply in kind, he’d hung up.

My heart twisted, aching as though it had been stabbed. I tried to tell myself that his job was dangerous. Important. That my text had been ambiguous so he’d called right away.

Because he’d been worried. He cared.

But he hadn’t asked about me.

And the voice on the other end of the phone, the one that had barely reached my ears over the wind and noise, was female.