"That's because they're native, silly," Lulu purred. "But you'll be Chinese one day, too, when you're my husband. You'll be Lu, like me. And I'll be a Bennett."
Maybe not Mexican, she thought, though Spanish had always struck her ears as warmth. English was a spreading patch of darkness, and Mandarin like broken poetry spat in increments.
But she pushed her plate away, too, to match Jon's sudden lack of appetite.
"What d'you mean, energy?" Lulu asked. Her accent had grown thicker in the space between one sentence and the next, as it was wont to do: sometimes the only warning of an impeding mood swing. "You've got your own energy. It's the same no matter where you are, isn't it?"
She lifted her eyebrows at him, slipping backward to rest against the arm of her chair. Lulu had a habit of mimicking body language as a means of hiding her own; she relayed his back to him now, but her eyes flickered with increasing heat. "If you don't like leaving me, you should've stayed. Why'd you ever say yes to Springville? I don't understand you."
That's not entirely true.
Lulu almost always understood more than she bothered to express. A bad childhood habit. The habit of a selfish little girl.
When Jon took her hand, though, she let him.
"Don't you think a year is a long time? It is. It is."