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“You’re using that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The voice you use when you’re pretending not to manage me.”
Jessica’s mouth twitches.
“It’s one of my better voices.” She reaches for the flowers. “Sit down, Paul.”
This time, I do.
Jessica fills the pots. She doesn’t arrange them the way I would have. The colors are not evenly balanced. I want to get up and fix them.
A flash of gray appears under the breakfast table.
“Baxter?”
The flash vanishes.
Jessica comes in through the sliding glass doors, brushing dirty hands over white pants.
“Shit, that was dumb.”
She goes to the sink. It doesn’t escape me that she washes the mug while washing her hands. I almost stop her.
She opens cabinets until she finds a plate, then raids the refrigerator. She takes out the chicken salad I made yesterday, a container of grapes, and half a loaf of sourdough wrapped in beeswax cloth because Renny went through a period of being passionate about sustainable food storage after watching a documentary.
There’s something humiliating about being fed by your older sister at forty-two. There’s also something relieving about it.
She cuts the sandwich in half diagonally, puts grapes on the side, and sets the plate in front of me.
“Eat what you can.”
I look at it.
Chicken salad with too much dill because Renny liked too much dill. Green grapes, which he bought even though I prefer red. Sourdough from the bakery downtown because he believed supermarket bread was “defeatist.”
Everything on the plate is evidence.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“That’s usually implied by a plate of food.”
“You can be clever after three bites.”
I pick up half the sandwich and take a bite.
Jessica nods like I’ve performed a basic trick. “Good.”
“Please don’t say good like I’m Baxter.”
“If you were Baxter, I wouldn’t have to say it.”
Somewhere under the table, there’s the soft scrape of claws. Barret appears first, easing out from behind one of the chairs. He pauses when he sees me, then immediately turns his head toward the hallway.
Waiting for Other Daddy. The smallness of it almost takes me down.
