“If you’re up for it, that’s a good idea,” Arlo tells me.

I’m stuck on the word girlfriend. Did Keller tell his dad and sister I was his girlfriend?

I take a sip of the wine, just for something to do, and my eyes widen. “Oh, this is good.”

32. Keller

32

KELLER

“And then, he said he’d pay me!” she says in complete awe. “For my drawings. Can you believe it?”

I flip through the blue leather notebook. “Having seen them, I absolutely can.”

Damn, she’s seriously talented. And I thought I knew her so well. What else are you hiding, little ghost?

I’m picking her up from the house tonight. I’m proud of her for checking if I was available to drive, after the couple of glasses of wine. The fact that she’s starting to think of me as a solution to whatever problem she encounters is good.

That means we’ve been invited for dinner, which is a tragedy. On Friday, Lisa cooks. Or rather, she thinks she can cook.

“It makes sense. There's a full-time design team of course, but after a while, they've exhausted their skills and creativity. It gets repetitive. Hiring freelance artists to inject some freshness is a good tactic; but finding someone, talking rights and stuff with them, can be a bit of a headache. Dad commissions people he knows—people he can trust, business wise—if he can. The fact you just drew it right here on paper means you’re not going to use AI to just generate it with one click. That’s a reassurance he can’t have with just anyone."

"He asked if I could send a sketch by Monday," she says while beating some eggs.

Dad's in his home office, Octavia's watching a cartoon, Lisa's strangling an unfortunate chicken, and Claire offered to prepare dessert, which is good. At least there'll be one edible thing tonight.

"You're going to spend the entire weekend drawing, aren't you?" I guess with a sigh.

And here I was, looking forward to an entire full day of her intention exclusively on me. I can tell that's not going to happen.

Dammit, Dad.

"I have so many ideas!"

Dinner is strange in its normalcy. The chicken is awful, dry as fuck, and we all tease Lisa about it. Everyone except Claire; she simply winces and doesn't lie. Normally, at this point, I would have just called for pizza, but Lisa says, "All right, how about we clear up this atrocity and have Claire's cake for dinner? It smells so good."

It turns out, Claire made a three-layered chocolate cake, with custard—or creme anglaise, she tells us—and it occurs to me that I need to start shopping for rings.