Then his eyes flicked to the side to look past me. “Uh, Pen?”
“Yeah?”
He pointed at the stove behind me. “There’s a lot going on over there.”
“Oh!” I whipped around and sure enough, the meat sauce was bubbling, splattering red all over the stovetop, and the pasta was on the verge of boiling over.
I fumbled for the dials and only succeeded in turning the other two burners on. Realizing my mistake, I turned them off and reduced the heat on the sauce and pasta. I gave the meat sauce a quick stir—I’d clean up the mess later—and swirled the pasta so it wouldn’t stick to the pot.
When I turned around, Theo was watching me with a subtle smile that puckered his dimples.
“We’re fine.” I adjusted my glasses, not because they were crooked, but because I was so jumpy. “What I mean is, dinner is fine. Nothing burned. There’s a bit of a mess, but that’s okay. Messes happen.”
“Thanks for cooking. I was just coming out to see if you were hungry.”
“I don’t mind.” I glanced over my shoulder at the stove to make sure nothing was going awry again. “Spaghetti is easy, especially when you use jarred sauce. But it’s not actually spaghetti, it’s linguine, because we don’t have spaghetti noodles, even though I could have sworn I bought some.”
He opened his mouth but paused, like he wasn’t sure what to make of my babbling. “Linguine will be great.”
“So great.” My voice probably had too much enthusiasm, but I was still trying to keep from crying over the lack of spaghetti. I turned back to the stove and stirred things again. “Can you peek in the fridge and see if there’s Parmesan? I forgot to look.”
I heard the fridge door open as I stirred the pasta.
“Yep, right here,” he said.
“That’s good. I guess you can have spaghetti that’s not spaghetti but linguine with meat sauce without Parmesan, but really, who wants that?”
I stopped babbling—thankfully—and focused on the food, although there wasn’t really anything for me to do. I stirred a few more times and adjusted the heat, as if it were necessary.
“Hey, Pen?”
The softness of his voice felt like a caress. Pressing my lips together so I didn’t keep babbling at him—or burst into tears over pasta—I turned.
He opened his mouth to say something, but my phone buzzed on the counter. Craning my neck, I glanced at the screen. It was the assisted living center.
“Sorry, it’s Grandma Colleen. I should take that.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
I turned off the stove to avoid burning our dinner, then picked up my phone to answer. “Hello?”
“Penelope, this is Janine at Tilikum Assisted Living.”
“Hi, Janine. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, but I wanted to let you know your grandma had a minor incident today. She’s fine, I’m only calling to keep you updated.”
Despite Janine’s reassurance, a sick feeling spread through me. “What happened?”
“She felt lightheaded and nauseated. She was able to call for assistance and our medical team responded.”
“What was wrong? How is she now?”
“Her doctor believes it was related to some recent medication changes. She’s much better now. The symptoms subsided, and we’ll be monitoring her closely.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Of course. I’ll put you through to her room.”
