“Yeah, no, totally.” Gabe nods quickly. “I know.”
I busy myself with the pancakes, wondering if he’s also thinking about last summer, how close he came to doing a lot more than just visiting. I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have him so close by: if we would have been able to make things work between us. If I could have looked him in his face and told him I was pregnant. If I would have needed to reinvent myself quite so hard.
I add milk and baking powder and a teaspoon of cinnamon to the mixing bowl, olive oil when I can’t find vegetable. Outside in the courtyard I can hear crickets singing their lonely song, the night air cool through the open window and the faint smell of chlorine from the pool. I drop a pat of butter into the frying pan, listen to it hiss. “So how was your day?” Gabe finally asks.
“It was fine,” I say eventually, spooning a silver-dollar-sized amount of batter into the skillet and completely failing to elaborate. “How was yours?”
Gabe’s eyebrows flicker, but he doesn’t comment. “Good,” he says at length. Then, watching me: “You remember when my dad used to make us pancakes after dances?”
I make a face. “First of all, it was only you who ever went to any dances, if you recall.” Patrick and I were notorious for keeping to ourselves back in high school, the two of us camped out in the den watching movies or holed up in the collapsing barn behind the Donnellys’ house, locked in our own private universe. Still, Chuck could usually coax us out into civilization with the promise of late-night breakfast, the smell of butter browning on the stovetop and the corny yacht rock he loved, Steely Dan or Hall & Oates, playing on the ancient boom box above the fridge. Even Pilot used to get in on the action, all of us dropping bits of pancake onto the floor for him to snarf. “Second of all, do Iremember? Dude, where do you think I got this recipe?”
Gabe’s mouth drops open, surprise and delight. “Seriously?”
“I got your mom to give it to me,” I confess, flipping the first batch of tiny pancakes as their edges start to bubble. “Like a hundred years ago, before—you know.” I wave the spatula vaguely. “All of it.”
Gabe doesn’t answer right away and for a moment I think I’ve ruined it, shattered this careful détente with my tanks and my machine guns, but when I chance a glance in his direction he just looks sort of sad. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot since we got here,” he tells me, opening an overhead cupboard and pulling out a couple of plates. “My dad, I mean.”
“Did you guys find his parents’ house?” I ask. “I nevereven asked you that, I’m sorry.”
Gabe shakes his head. “We tried,” he says. “We found the right town and street and everything, but not the house. I think maybe it isn’t there anymore.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking rueful. “It kind of was.”
I consider him for a moment. “Can I ask you something?” I begin carefully.
Gabe raises his eyebrows, smirking a little. “I mean, you’re going to anyway, aren’t you?”
“Yes, actually,” I say, making a face in return. “Because it’s important. I just—” I break off, shake my head. “You know he’d be proud of you, right? Like, whether you go to med school or you don’t, or whether the shop folds or it doesn’t, or whether you find your grandparents’ house or you can’t. All Chuck ever wanted for you guys—all three of you—was for you to be good, happy people.”
Gabe wrinkles his nose at that, like he thinks I’m being corny—but I notice his shoulders drop a little, like maybe some of the knots there have loosened up just a bit. “No, I know,” he says quietly. “You’re probably right.”
“I am,” I say firmly. “Not often, maybe. But about this, for sure.”
I nudge the first batch of pancakes onto the plates and we eat in companionable silence, leaning against the island side by side. It should be horrible, the quiet stretching out all around us, wide and black as the Atlantic Ocean itself, but itisn’t, really. It’s actually kind of nice.
“Well,” I say when we’re finished, holding my hand out for Gabe’s plate and loading it into the futuristic French dishwasher. “I should probably get to bed.”
Gabe nods. “Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t make any move to go. “Me too.”
“Okay,” I say, lifting a hand awkwardly. “Good night.”
“Night, Molly. And, um. Thanks.” He pauses for a moment. “For the pancakes and for what you said.”
That makes me smile. “Anytime.”
I slip back up the stairs to the room I’m sharing with Ian, careful and quiet. I stare out the window for a long time.
Day7
Ian wakes me up in the morning with coffee and fresh, flaky croissants from the bakery down at the bottom of the hill. “I’m sorry,” he says, the bulk of his body making a dip on the edge of the mattress. His eyes are red and bleary, his normally ruddy face hangover-gray. “I was drunk. I was a huge asshole.”
“Okay,” I say uncertainly, drawing my legs up to my chest as I take the coffee cup, arranging the sheet over my knees. “Thank you.”
Ian winces. “I mean it,” he says, lifting his hand and letting it fall again like he can’t decide if he should touch me or not. “Of course I don’t want you to do anything you don’t feel ready for. And I don’t want you to feel like I do.”
I shrug. “Okay,” I say again, rubbing my thumb around the lip of the mug instead of looking at him. “Because youkind of made me feel like that was what you wanted.”
