We returnedto Linden's house and there was no debate as to whether I was coming inside with him.
There was stew in the fridge, he'd said by way of explanation.
We'd have stew and we wouldn't talk about any of my confessions, I'd decided. Though I didn't say it, Linden picked up that signal without a problem. From the moment we stepped inside, he chattered on about a golf course on Cape Cod he visited frequently because they insisted on planting trees that didn't belong in this region, the baseball game he recently attended with his siblings, and something about neighborhood Halloween festivities.
I leaned against the countertop while he poured the stew into a cast-iron pot to warm and went on about the baseball season and how it was running long this year. Everything he said hit me about ten seconds after he said it, as if my brain was stretched beyond the point of withstanding regular conversation. I knew it was happening because he'd stare at me expectantly in moments when I was due to react or respond but I'd only blink at him.
"What was that?" I asked. "I'm sorry. I didn't catch the last part."
"No worries," he murmured, setting several muffin-y things on a baking sheet. "I just asked if you like popovers."
I pointed at the sheet. "Those are popovers, I take it?"
"Yeah. My mom bakes them whenever she's cooking stew. She believes it to be a symbiotic relationship." He cocked his head to the side, frowned. "Are popovers not a thing in the South?"
"I can't speak for the whole of the South but they're not a thing where I'm from."
Nodding, he shoved the tray into the oven. "They won't be as stunningly bad as your cupcakes so you might not like them."
"It's a risk I'll have to take."
Linden pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and I decided it was pure coincidence he had the same bottle I was drinking last week on hand. Lots of people drank sauvignon blanc. It was nothing. This was nothing.
"Would you like a glass?" he asked.
"Please." I wanted to cross the kitchen and stand beside him while he prepared the meal, letting our hands and hips bump as we worked together. I wanted to drop my head onto his shoulder and be content for one minute. I wanted to wrap my arms around this thick torso and bury my face in his shirt. I wanted to crawl into his lap and let him hold me. I wanted to link my arm with his, tip my head toward the bedroom, and let him lead me there. I wanted to be the person who asked for those things without talking myself out of it, without convincing myself he'd refuse me. Without believing I didn't want or need it. "So, this stew. Does your mother cook for you frequently?"
He barked a laugh into the refrigerator as he reached for a beer. "Hardly. I mean, she always has a freezer full of soups and casseroles and will send me home with twenty pounds of rice if I'm not careful."
"And somehow you ended up with half a dozen popovers and a week's worth of stew."
He rolled his eyes. "My mother was in rare form today. I took a lot more than stew."
"What does that mean?"
"Some of the shrubs in her yard died over the summer—that drought was a bitch—so I agreed to meet her at a garden center to pick out replacements. To say my mother is a kid in a candy shop when it comes to garden centers would be an insult to kids. My mother doesn't care whether a tree is too big for her land or she doesn't have room for more potted plants. She will buy it all and then she'll get back to the house and holler at me to make it work for her."
"The next time you accompany her on one of these shopping trips, I'd really love to come along. I won't say a word, I just want to watch."
"You're hilarious." He tapped his beer bottle against my wineglass. No disasters occurred this time. "But here I am, thinking I'm along to help with the shrubs, and she busts out with all this—" He stopped himself, taking a deep pull of his beer. "Well, she had a lot of little things she wanted to share with me and then she casually says she and my father are having a fortieth anniversary party because they don't want to wait in case either of them die before they hit their fiftieth."
An unpleasant wheezing noise came up from my chest. "Oh. Oh, wow. That's—"
"It's fucking nuts," he said. "And, like, do I need to think about my parents dying sometime in the next ten years? No, I really don't. That's what we have my brother for. He's the one who handles that shit. Not me."
I stared at my glass for a moment, my pointer and middle fingers on either side of the stem. There was never a time when this topic didn't hurt like hell. "But you got stew out of it, so that's not a terrible bargain. Right?"
"The stew only came my way because my dad took off on a last-minute golf trip with some of his friends yesterday. I'm told she gave him a very hard time about choosing between golf and the stew, which she'd spent all day making."
"Sounds fair," I replied. "It also sounds like you see a lot of your family."
"I do." He pulled open the oven door, bent down to peer inside. "My brother and sister both live in Boston and my parents are in New Bedford. I'm always seeing one of them."
"That must be nice." There was a note of bitterness in my tone that I hadn't intended and Linden noticed immediately.
"What about your family? Are they in Georgia?"
I shook my head because no, I didn't have any real family there but more importantly, no, we couldnottalk about this now. "Not too much. Can I get out some dishes or set the table? Tell me what to do. If you don't, I'll invent something to do."
