"Good." She yawned enormously. "Ms. Reed needs real food. Not sad apples and carrots."
"She does," I agreed quietly. "She really does."
"You could make pancakes. Pancakes are real food."
"I'll look into pancakes."
"With bananas. She likes bananas."
"How do you know Emma likes bananas?"
"She told us in class. We talk about things." Another yawn. "Night, Uncle C."
"Night, sweetheart."
I walked out to the main room of my cabin and retrieved my phone from the kitchen drawer. For the next hour, I did something I'd never done before in my entire adult life. I searched with intense, focused determination:How to make pancakes from scratch. Easy breakfast recipes. What to cook for someone with a sensitive stomach.
I watched videos of cheerful people whisking flour and cracking eggs like it was easy. I read about baking powder versus baking soda. I learned the difference between "fold" and "stir."I was a thirty-five-year-old man watching a teenager explain basic pancakes on the internet. Rock Bottom had a basement, apparently, and I'd found it.
I made a list. A real shopping list. Not survival rations designed to last forever, but fresh things that actual humans ate: eggs, milk, ripe bananas, plain yogurt, real butter, whole wheat flour.
Three items became ten. Ten became fifteen. I'd started wars with less preparation than this.
It was a new kind of survival. Not surviving the wilderness, but surviving my own inadequacy. Not just being enough to keep someone safe, but being enough to help them actually thrive.
If Emma Reed was going to let me into her life, I couldn't offer instant noodles and good intentions and expect that to be enough.
The mountain had taught me resilience over fifteen hard years.
Now I had to teach myself tenderness.
One recipe at a time.
10.Emma
Nobody should be knocking on my door at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. I had sent apologetic texts to all the parents yesterday explaining my situation and why the tutoring session had to be canceled. I was supposed to be resting, elevating, and recovering. The universe, apparently, had other plans entirely.
The banging came again, insistent and impossible to ignore. "Emma?"
Cole's voice. Rough, familiar, and entirely unexpected at dawn on my mandated rest day.
I grabbed my crutches and hobbled to the door, my mind still fuzzy with sleep and the lingering fog of pain medication. I hadn't brushed my hair. I was wearing faded flannel pajamas dotted with cartoon owls. It was a comfortable relic from my old life that I'd never bothered to replace. This was absolutely not how I'd imagined our next meeting.
I opened the door, squinting against the pale morning light.
Cole and Sarah stood on my porch, bathed in the cool gray-gold glow of early morning. Cole was laden with grocery bags, at least four of them hanging from his large hands, his arms straining slightly with the weight. Sarah held a single, smallerbag carefully in both arms, her face arranged into an expression of solemn importance.
For a moment, we all just stared at each other. Cole's gaze swept over me, taking in the crutches, the owl pajamas, and my thoroughly sleep-tousled hair. A faint flush crept up his neck.
"What are you doing here?" I finally managed, my voice thick with sleep and confusion.
"We're making you breakfast," Sarah announced, beaming with obvious pride. "Uncle C said we're going to feed you properly."
Cole's face was set in that familiar stubborn expression I was beginning to recognize. He gently but firmly nudged me backward with his elbow. "Sit. Rest your ankle. We've got this completely under control."
"You really don't have to?—"
"Yes, we do." He cut me off, already moving past me into the cabin with determined purpose. "Yesterday, I got you food that you couldn't eat. That's not happening again."
