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I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The memories bubbled up now that I knew what to look for.

Him turning on the radio when driving to the hospital with Mom.

A new sponge at the lake house.

A plate of nut-free food materializing at a party.

How he’d whisked me away that same night because Mike was drinking—how bad had it actually been? Lying on pee-soaked carpet bad?

Something told me it had been.

And it was more than just the tangible things. I knew it was. More than the EpiPen and the hydroplanter and the jewelry box. It was probably advice and guidance too. He probably made Mike a better human in ways I’d never know.

And I wanted to know.

I wanted to watch the last ten months in the third person. Assign credit where it was due to the man who deserved it so I could decide how to feel about it. But right now I couldn’t even begin to process. So I pet my dog, made an active attempt to de-escalate myself. Drank my coffee, let the sound of Chris moving around the kitchen calm me, and the doom loop in my head started to quiet down.

I was already feeling a little better by the time Chris sat next to me with two bowls of mac and cheese. “Thank you.” I stared at the food for a moment. “I cannot believe this is my life,” I whispered.

“You hate mac and cheese that much?” he said, taking a bite and smiling at me.

“Ha. You know what I mean.”

“You still have the graze boards,” he said. “Do it full-time, use the kitchen.”

I sniffled. “I can’t. You don’t have the room. Not for the amount of orders I’d need to do to make a living off it.”

“How much room does it take?” he asked.

I poked at the noodles. “I need table space to do the boxes in an assembly line. I need racks for dry storage, refrigerators—”

“How many refrigerators?”

I shrugged. “I filled Donna’s side-by-side every week, and I’d need to do twice the volume to replace all my other jobs. Your whole living room and kitchen would have to be converted to production space to make it work.”

“Okay. What about opening a storefront?”

I laughed dryly. “Well, first of all, I have no credit. Not yet. But even if I did, I couldn’t afford the build-out.”

He ate while he thought about it. “What about doing big events?”

“Like what?”

“Like the table at the pool party.”

I’d love to. One large order to deliver instead of fifty small ones for the same price. Three or four of those tables a week and I’d be making really good money.

I’d thought of doing full graze tables before, but I just never had the time to pull it all together. It was harder to sell than the boxes. I’d have to advertise. A lot. Update the website, figure out a pricing scale. It would take me a few weeks to get that all up. And I’d need pictures. That was the thing that really held me back. It was like the chicken and the egg. Most people wouldn’t spend two thousand dollars on a graze table unless they could see pictures of the caterer’s previous setups, so I’d never gotten any orders for any. And I couldn’t afford to make a fake setup just to get photos. A graze table was made up of hundreds of dollars’ worth of food, the mock-up alone was more than I could afford.

“It would work,” I said. “But I don’t have the startup money for that either. And if I did manage to pull it off, it could be months before I get any orders and start making anything.” I let out a deep breath. “I think I just need to give it up. Maybe I should just find another waitressing job. A place with a bar.” I grimaced.

He shook his head. “No, you’re not giving it up. I’ll help you. How much do you need?”

I gave him a look. “No.”

“How much?”

“Chris, no—I can figure it out myself.”