Margo stood in her yard with the lemon tree behind her and her grandson’s cooking disaster happening four blocks away, and she didn’t go fix it. She stayed where she was. Her hands kept moving—picking a leaf off the tree, smoothing it between her fingers.
“He’ll figure it out,” Stella said.
“He’s a Walsh. He’ll figure it out or he’ll burn the building down. Either way, he’ll commit. Tell everyone—Tyler’s tonight. Six o’clock.” Margo handed her one more lemon. “Let me know later how it goes.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I’ll get a full report.” Margo looked at her lemon tree. “This one’s theirs to figure out.”
“Even the eggs?”
“Especially the eggs.”
Margo handed her two more. Stella stuffed them in the bag and walked home, the October afternoon turning the hills gold. When she came through the door, Tyler stood at the stove with a fresh pot of water and a small bowl—he’d looked it up himself while she was gone.
“Small bowl,” he said, not looking up. “Crack it in here first. Then slide it in.”
“Margo said the same thing.”
“Great minds.”
He cracked the egg into the bowl. Lowered the heat until the water barely moved. Tilted the bowl to the edge of the pot and let the egg slide in, slow and careful.
They both held their breath.
The white curled around the yolk. Held. Didn’t feather. Didn’t stick. Just sat there in the water, turning gently, becoming something that looked—for the first time all day—like an actual poached egg.
“Don’t touch it,” Stella said.
“I’m not touching it.”
“Don’t even look at it too hard.”
“I’m looking at it a normal amount.”
Three minutes. Stella timed it on her phone. Tyler lifted it out with the slotted spoon, trembling slightly, and set it on a plate.
They both stared at it.
“That’s an egg,” Tyler said.
“That’s an egg.”
It wasn’t perfect. The white was slightly uneven on one side and the yolk was maybe a minute past ideal. But it was recognizably, undeniably a poached egg, made by a man who had burned pasta water and put cardboard in an oven and once created chicken that was simultaneously raw and charcoal.
Stella raised her camera. Click.
Tyler looked at her. His eyes were bright. “One more. I need to do it again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.”
“You have eleven eggs.”
“That’s eleven chances.”
By the time Stella texted Margo—he did it, five out of six, we have breakfast—Tyler had poached four more. Three of them held. One was a casualty, but even the casualty was better than the morning’s disasters.
He stood at the stove, slotted spoon in hand, grinning at a plate of poached eggs.
Stella photographed that too.
