Free Pieces by Michelle D. Argyle

understand.”
    After another hug, Naomi rolled her luggage onto the main walkway and entered the airport. When she looked back, her mother was answering a call on her cell phone. Some things never changed.

    B ECCA WAS home when Naomi walked through the door. The house smelled like salt and limes.
    “What are you making?” Naomi called out, shutting the door with her foot.
    Becca poked her head out from the kitchen. “Welcome home!” She looked over her shoulder. “It’s a new recipe I’m trying—margarita chicken. I hope it turns out. Derek hates chicken if it’s too dry, and I can never get it just right.”
    Naomi licked her lips. “That sounds good. If you want, I can show you how to cook it moist.”
    “You can?” Becca’s eyes widened as she wiped her hands on her apron. “How?”
    “Let me get my bags to my room and I’ll show you.”
    A few minutes later, she was in the kitchen placing raw chicken breasts between two pieces of plastic wrap. She opened a drawer and pulled out a meat pounder she hadn’t used in a long time. “The trick is to get it all the same thickness,” she explained, and whacked the center of one of the chicken breasts with the pounder.
    Becca jumped. “Guess if you’re pissed off at someone, that’s a great way to let it out without killing them.”
    “Hah, yeah.” Naomi continued to pound the four chicken breasts to get them a quarter-inch thick.
    Folding her arms, Becca rested her hip against the counter and watched. “So where did you learn all this?” she asked over the whack! whack! whack! of Naomi’s pounding. “I swear, every time you cook it’s like some amazing gourmet thing. Did your mom teach you or something?”
    Naomi stopped pounding. “My mom can chop vegetables, and that’s about it. I think she barely learned how to use the coffee maker, like, two years ago. She relies on the housekeeper most of the time. Or my dad. He likes to cook, but he never has time to show me anything. I’m pretty sure I know more than him.”
    “Okay, so who taught you?” Becca leaned forward, waiting for an explanation. She hadn’t dyed her hair in a while, and her dark brown roots were starting to show against the raven black. Naomi noticed she wasn’t wearing her usual red lipstick.
    “How’s Derek?” Naomi asked, wishing she hadn’t offered to help. In the two years she had lived with Becca, she had somehow managed to avoid telling her about the kidnapping.
    “He’s fine.” Becca pinched her lips together. It was the face she usually pulled when Naomi got evasive about her past. Naomi knew Becca was only trying to get to know her better, but her approach was a little too courtroom. She always felt like she was being examined on the witness stand. Why she kept avoiding the subject, she wasn’t sure. This time it felt wrong. If she was going to keep living with Becca—her only friend outside of Finn and Jesse—she had to tell her the truth. She whacked each piece of chicken a few more times and then set the pounder in the sink as her mind filled with memories from the house.
    “A lady I knew a few years ago taught me how to cook,” she said while peeling away the top layer of plastic wrap. “She was Italian and she made the most delicious things. I used to hate mushrooms, and now I love them. Her food was that good.” She smiled. “Although I still hate seafood. She couldn’t seem to push that on me while I was there.”
    “While you were where?”
    Naomi spotted the bowl of marinade Becca had prepared. She set it by the chicken and carefully dropped each piece into the mixture. “I know this is going to sound insane,” she said, “but haven’t you ever put together my name and hometown and a big story about a kidnapping a few years ago? I thought you’d put two-and-two together pretty fast, being in law school and all. It was a major case. I got national coverage.”
    Becca took a step back. “The CEO story? That big software company?”
    After