Those dimples are doing nothing to help my composure.
He kisses my forehead. Simple, unhurried. I stay where I am.
The creek runs and the woodpecker works and the afternoon goes on around us. Neither of us is in a hurry to be anywhere else at all.
We walk back in the early afternoon, when the light has shifted from gold to white and the heat has settled into the property with its summer permanence. He carries the quilt and the thermos. I don’t argue about it. We take the long way back, along the fence line where the purple coneflowers are thickest, and he asks questions about the property the way he asks questions about everything: unhurried, genuinely interested, not filling silence for its own sake. I find myself telling him about how my great-grandmother made the lace, and about the butter churn on the porch that nobody churns butter in, and the oak tree on the north end that lightning split thirty years ago and that half survived and is still going, which my grandmother said was its own kind of comment on things.
“She sounds like someone I would have wanted to know,” he says.
“Most people did,” I say. “She had an honest quality that cut to the heart of things.”
“You have it too.” He says it matter-of-factly, no performance around it, the way he says things that are true and not up for debate.
I don’t know what to do with that, so I don’t do anything. We walk.
Back at the house, I go to the kitchen on autopilot. It’s past noon, the coffee is long gone, the logical thing is food. I pull things from the refrigerator with the efficiency of someone who eats alone and has a system: bread, the good deli ham, the sharp cheddar. Ham sandwich. Efficient. Done.
“Sit down,” he says from the doorway.
I look up. He’s leaning against the doorframe. He’s learned the doorframes of this house by now, knows which ones require ducking and which are merely close. And he’s looking at me with that unique expression that isn’t quite a smile but is adjacent to one.
“I’m making lunch,” I say.
“I can see that.” He comes into the kitchen, and the room shrinks around him a little. “Sit down and tell me where things are.”
I look at him. He looks at me. I look at the ham and bread on the counter. I look back at him.
“The cutting board is in the cabinet left of the sink,” I say. “Knives are in the block. Whatever you’re planning to do with a ham sandwich, I want you to know my expectations are not high.”
“Your expectations,” he says, pulling the cutting board, “are about to be adjusted.”
I sit down at the kitchen table. My hip exhales in a way I didn’t realize I was waiting for.
He moves through my grandmother’s kitchen like a male who knows his way around one, which is not what I expected. Efficient without being showy.
He investigates the refrigerator with the focused attention I’ve only seen him direct at wood stock. He comes up with the good mustard I forgot about and two eggs.
“You cook,” I say.
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m reassessing.”
He finds my butter, adds it to a cast-iron skillet, and while it melts he builds the sandwiches—mustard, ham, the cheddar I already pulled, bread pressed together with the confidence of someone who has done this before. He lays them in the pan, and they go down with a sizzle that means he knew exactly how hot the butter needed to be.
“Where did you learn?”
“Bar kitchen. Walt hired a real cook for about six months in year two, and I paid attention.” He watches the sandwiches, not me. “Useful thing, paying attention.”
“It is,” I say.
He glances back at me over his shoulder when he says it, and I look out the window.
He plates the sandwiches, wipes the pan, adds more butter, and cracks both eggs one-handed. A few minutes later, he carries both plates to the table and sits across from me.
“Croque Madame,” he says.
I look at it.
