“So I’ve eaten all your food.”
“All the fresh food is gone, yes,” he said. “But there are cans of vegetables, and ten pounds of flour, powdered milk, and so on, regular staples you would have living in Montana. Even folks in town stock up before a blizzard because it’s smart.”
“So I’ve eaten all yourfreshfood.”
The idea of it made me go still because it meant that in my other life, the one beyond my memories, I’d been a selfish asshole who figured it’d be okay if I ate all the eggs, and drank the milk, and gobbled down all the bananas and other good stuff, simply because I was hungry and without any regard for the man who’d actually made the effort to purchase things to get through a blizzard.
“There are still cake donuts left.”
“I didn’t even know there were cake donuts,” I said, shaking my head.
“There are two.”
He got up and went to a cupboard to bring out a small box made of thin cardboard. I watched him put two donuts on a plate and then crumple the box. He brought the plate to the tableand set it down. Then, as we ate our breakfast, those donuts sat between us.
They were days old, not fresh. Simple cake donuts without decoration or even a sprinkle of sugar to break up the deep beige color. Still, I knew they were a kind of reward. My mouth watered at the thought of biting into one, or dunking it in my tea.
With my chin dipped down as I pretended to focus on my oatmeal, I looked over at Wolfe. He was not looking at the donuts. He was simply eating his meal as though the sweet treat didn’t matter at all. But, by his disinterest, I knew that it did.
I sat up and, in a voice I hoped implied utter truth, I said, “I don’t actually like cake donuts.” I rolled my eyes. Boredom. Even annoyance.
“Oh?” Wolfe’s eyebrows rose as he looked at me. “How do you know?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Some things come back to me and then they leave. But I do know I don’t like those. Never have.”
“You did eat some, you know,” Wolfe said.
“Then I must have been out of my mind,” I replied. There was no way I was going to eat that donut.
We finished our oatmeal, and I watched Wolfe eat one cake donut.One. He broke off some donut and dunked it in his tea, a sigh running through him as he enjoyed it.
My mouth worked as he took the other donut and put it in a little plastic baggie. Saving it for later, as though it were the last donut in the world. Maybe for him it was, or maybe it seemed like it was. I held myself still and didn’t say anything about it. But I would do my best to make it up to him.
Hobbling, I took my dishes to the sink and picked up a kitchen towel, drying as he washed and rinsed. He dried them again and put everything away. I watched so that I could provide more help next time.
There was nothing to wrap up and put away because we’d eaten it all, but when he opened the fridge to put the baggie with the single cake donut in it away, I could see that the fridge was mostly empty. There was a metal can labeled bacon grease, a wilting bundle of celery, half a packet of mushrooms, half an onion with the skin still on, wrapped in a piece of cellophane. No bread, no milk, no butter.
He shut the fridge, a hurried slam, and looked at me. “I’ll get the steak out to thaw,” he said, as though I was some kind of teenager with a hollow leg who needed reassurance that there was more food coming. “We’ll have steak and noodles and mushrooms for dinner.” He paused, then added, “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to the store tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said. Like it didn’t matter. As though I couldn’t see it in his eyes that he was trying to avoid the issue altogether. But I had an obligation to him. Whoever I’d been in my other life, I owed him. To that end, I said, “So how about those lanyards?”
Morning chores done, he opened the back door and led the way to the workshop. We didn’t even put on our coats because the wind was so still and the sun was so fierce that we could walk the snowy path without even feeling it.
Once inside the workshop, Wolfe closed the workshop door behind us, turned on both heaters, and pulled the topmost box of gimp thread over to the desk. He was going to teach me how to make a lanyard, and I was going to make a million of them so he wouldn’t have to.
I would have thought that a braid as square and sturdy as a lanyard would need a kind of frame that one might build it on. But it was done entirely freehand.
Wolfe in the chair, and I sat on a box while Wolfe had me watch a few instructional YouTube vids on his phone, mostly done by high-voiced young girls eager to share what theyknew, and one solemn older man from India, who was creating lanyards way more complicated than I ever wanted to make.
Then Wolfe showed me how to start a box braid, one of the simplest. Two strands, one yellow, one blue. Over under, over under, flip, repeat.
When it was my turn to try, I casually pushed back items on the edge of his farm table desk and sat on the desk right above where the small space heater was going. Wolfe raised his eyebrows at me, as though I’d committed a sacred sin, only he considered me too young to know any better and had to bite back everything he wanted to say.
“Is this okay?” I asked. “There isn’t really another chair in here, and if I cross my legs like this—” I demonstrated. “Then I can be like the brave little tailor.”
“The who?” he asked, his mouth forming an O shape that stayed in place as if he simply couldn’t believe that I’d started speaking Urdu and he was very frustrated with me.
“The brave little tailor?” I repeated. “Seven at one blow?”
