She exhaled, then squared her shoulders. Rowan and his team were heading into the dark. She didn’t know the details, nor did she want to; she had enough of her own nightmares. But she would send them off with some good Southern cooking that stuck to their ribs and tasted like home.
She pulled open the fridge and she scanned the shelves. Ground beef, check. Eggs, check. “Meatloaf. Everyone likes meatloaf, right?” She’d have to hunt for the rest of the ingredients, but this was a ranch kitchen; if they didn’t have breadcrumbs, she’d make her own.
She grabbed the beef and set it on the counter. Then the eggs, a bottle of ketchup, and a half-used onion. The pantry yielded a can of tomato paste, a box of saltines she could crush into crumbs, and a jar of dried oregano. She lined everything up like soldiers, but when she reached for the Wash Your Sister sauce, her fingers stilled.
Shit.
She could see her mom’s hands in her head and could almost hear the clink of the bottle against the mixing bowl.
A glug for the meat and a glug for the glaze, don’t skimp, baby, that’s where the flavor lives.
But how much was a glug? Two teaspoons? A tablespoon? She should know this. She’d stood at her mom’s elbow every Sunday, watching, learning how to make her daddy’s favorite supper.
Before she could second-guess herself, she wiped her hands on her jeans and grabbed her phone from the back pocket. The screen lit up with half a dozen missed calls from her mom, all from the last few days. Guilt twisted in her gut. She’d been so wrapped up in her own head, in the rhythm of Stronghold and the way Rowan’s presence seemed to take up all the air in a room, that she’d let the calls go to voicemail. But her mom wouldn’t care; she’d just be happy she was calling her now. She hit the call button before she could chicken out.
The line rang twice. “Enya?” Her mom’s voice was warm, and filled with a tinge of relief that filtered down the phone.
“Hey, Mama.” Enya’s voice came out smaller than she intended. She cleared her throat. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been… busy.”
“Baby, I was starting to worry. Your daddy said you were doing okay, but?—”
“I am.” The lie tasted bitter, but she swallowed it down. “I’m good. Really.” Her momma didn’t need to know that she wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be ‘good’ again. She picked at the edge of the countertop, her nails catching on a groove in the wood. “Actually, I, uh. I need your help.”
“Anything.”
She could hear the smile in her mom’s voice and could picture her wiping her hands on her apron, turning away from whatever she was doing to give Enya her full attention. It made her eyes burn.
“I’m making meatloaf,” she said. “For Rowan and his team. They’ve got a thing tonight—”a mission, a job, something that could get them killed— “and I wanted to make them something good. But I can’t remember how much Wash Your Sister sauce goes in the bowl.”
Her mom laughed, and just like that Enya was ten again, standing on a stool to reach the counter, her mom’s arm slung around her shoulders as she made multiple attempts to pronounce Worcestershire sauce. From that day on, in their house, it had become Wash Your Sister sauce. “Oh, honey. You always overthink it. It’s not rocket science.” A rustling sound, like she was shifting the phone to her other ear. “You got your notebook?”
She blinked. “My?—?”
“Your little blue notebook. The one you used to write all my recipes in.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. She had had one. A spiral-bound thing with a faded cover, pages stuffed with her mom’s scrawled instructions and her own messy notes. But she had no idea where it was now. “No,” she said, her voice thick. “I think it’s in my bedroom there.”
“That’s alright, baby. We’ll walk through it together.”
Just like that, her mom was there. Not in the kitchen with her, or with her hands guiding hers as she measured and mixed, but there all the same. Enya grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper from the junk drawer to scribble down the measurements her mom dictated.
“Two pounds of beef. One egg. Half a cup of breadcrumbs. A third of a cup of ketchup in the mix, another third for the glaze.”
“And the Wash Your Sister?”
“A glug, Enya,” her mom said, amused. “You’ll know it when you see it. Just tilt the bottle until it feels right.”
Enya huffed a laugh, “That’s not a measurement.”
“Sure it is. It’s a soul measurement. You remember how we used to make it together? You’d always try to sneak a bite of the raw mix.”
“And you’d smack my hand.” Enya leaned against the counter, the phone pressed to her ear. “Said I’d get salmonella.”
“You did, that one time when you were about ten. Lord, you were sick as a dog. Your daddy had to carry you to the truck to take you to the ER.”
“Mama,” she whispered.
“I miss you, baby.” Her mom’s voice wobbled a little. “I know you’re where you need to be right now. But I miss you.”
