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I look toward the orchard.

“My mother didn’t tell me she was sick at first. By the time I found out how bad it was, staying in school didn’t make sense anymore.”

Maddy stays quiet, giving me room to continue.

There wasn’t anything noble about it. She was my mother. There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be.

“We had a few months together.”

Maddy doesn't say she's sorry. I'm grateful for that.

“Those days I told you about, with her sitting at the kitchen table correcting me, meant more than I knew at the time.”

Maddy smiles faintly.

"Was she usually right?"

"Always."

"That must have been annoying."

"Extremely," I say. "I'm giving myself some credit."

Her quiet laugh eases something inside me.

"Those were some of the best months I had with her. And some of the hardest." The words come easier than I expect. I haven't said that out loud in years. Maybe ever. "She gave me everything she could. Recipes. Technique. All the little things she'd learned from my grandfather."

I pause.

"And after she died, I stopped cooking."

Maddy's gaze stays on mine.

"I didn't see the point anymore. Everything about it reminded me of her." The smell of garlic in olive oil. Bread in the oven. Tomatoes simmering on the stove. All of it led back to a kitchen that didn't have my mother in it anymore.

"So I enlisted."

"That's when you met Jack?"

I nod.

"Not right away. But once we ended up together, that was pretty much it." Somewhere along the way, trusting each other with our lives became trusting each other with everything else. "We were brothers long before we ever came to Oakridge."

Maddy listens. She doesn't try to finish the story for me.

"Eventually I started cooking again. Nothing fancy. It wasn't planned. We'd had a rough stretch. Everyone was tired. Morale was bad. So I found what I could and made dinner, whatever I could put together."

"For your unit?"

"Yeah." I smile at the memory. "First time was because everyone was miserable and complaining about the food."

"Let me guess. You couldn't take it anymore."

"I have standards."

"Obviously."

"I made dinner."