Page 180 of The New Place

No, he’ll still worry. It’s what he’s best at, but the worst case he’ll conjure up and the jangle of nerves will be farther away, Abbot’s confident calm between Ned and any reality he’s so afraid of.

This damn man. Ned leans into him, resting his forehead on Abbot’s shoulder.

He stays like that until Abbot draws in a breath. “She’d like that,” Abbot says. “But she’s also upset that I, well. Perhaps you two can commiserate. That I don’t talk about our mother enough.” Abbot clears his throat. “Or at all, really.”

This is painful for Abbot. Ned can see it on his face and feel it in his grip. Both talking about his mom and talking about the fact that he hasn’t.

Of course it is. It’s different from every other time the subject has come up, Abbot pushing it aside or finding something else he needs to immediately do. To just sit here instead in the evening quiet of his house with an acknowledgment of all the years of careful silence.

“I’m sorry,” Abbot says, his voice a whisper.

“Hey.” Ned touches his cheek. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I do. To you and to Liesl both. I didn’t realize how much I’d been hurting her, and I’ve done the same to you. So I am sorry. Very much so.” Abbot lets out a soft laugh.

Ned looks at him, surprised by the sound, then more surprised when Abbot stands up. He doesn’t leave, like Ned is half expecting him to, like with those words he’s given himself permission to escape. He just walks to the little table by his door, retrieves an envelope from its drawer, and holds it out for Ned.

“What is this?” Ned asks as he takes it. He knows, he realizes. It’s the envelope Beverly brought, with whatever cards or pieces of paper are filling it. It seems untouched since Ned last held it, though that’s hardly surprising for how Abbot’s looking at it like it could explode at any moment.

But Abbot draws in a breath, sits again, and softly says, “Open it.”

Ned does, half ready for something to jump out at him for all of Abbot’s nerves.

Instead, he finds a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, handwritten on an index card in a neat, looping cursive. Beneath it, another is labeled for chocolate mousse, and then eclairs and a galette and an apple pie and blueberry muffins.

“Beverly and my mother used to bake together,” Abbot says, staring down at the recipes as Ned goes through them. Clafoutis, macarons, madeleines, soufflés, crepes, and profiteroles. “They were roommates after college, and whenever Beverly visited us, they’d keep the tradition.”

“These are your mom’s?” Ned turns over a card for birthday cake, an underlined note in the corner: Henry no sprinkles! “You—you don’t like sprinkles?”

“Liesl used to pick them off even the portions that weren’t hers.”

“Oh. Gross.”

“Yes.” Abbot draws in a breath. “I’m not sure she remembers. She was a toddler, and thought all sprinkles were her personal property. My birthday cakes used to be rather pockmarked.”

“You know, I can probably arrange a sprinkle-covered cake for you. This great guy I know taught my daughter to bake.”

“The last time it happened, I insisted I was too old for a cake anyway,” Abbot says. “And my mother was—she was really very ill, but she made me another one, and—” He stops, his lips pressed tight.

Ned barely dares to breathe, watching Abbot’s chest rise and fall on shaky breaths.

“I think Liesl does have a point,” Abbot says eventually. “If I don’t tell her about that, or tell you, or tell anyone—my father was away at a conference. So nobody else knows that my mother made a second cake.”

“I do now,” Ned says, and dammit is he going to hold onto it. Carry it close, always.

“I don’t want to forget her,” Abbot says to his lap. “I’ve never meant to.”

“It’s hard,” Ned agrees. “Losing her. And carrying all your own guilt about it, too.”

Abbot doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t disagree either.

Ned lets him sit for a long time, rubbing his thumb over the back of Abbot’s hand, their knees pressed together, their shoulders touching.

“Can I ask you something?” Ned asks eventually. He thinks back over the past few weeks, picking apart what he knows and putting it back together. “Was your dad gone a lot? When you were growing up?”

“Some.”

“And when your mom was sick?”