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“Yes, a little.”
“She was the one who taught me that trick,” Margaret smiles. “She always thought most people struggle to make soup because they don’t stir the stock long enough.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She points to a long spoon.
“Go ahead. Try it.”
I have nothing to lose, so I grab the spoon and start stirring the boiling pot. Margaret turns the heat down so the stew settles to a low simmer, and I keep stirring and stirring and stirring. She’s right. I can tell that this is changing the consistency of the stew and it’s changing the way it feels. It even looks better now that I’m stirring it more.
“The more you stir, the better the flavor is,” Margaret says.
“I didn’t know that,” Adalee says.
“Some people might beg to differ,” Margaret tells her. “But this was how Miss Lily liked to make her stews, and it’s always worked well for me.”
“It’s cool to me that my mom was able to teach you something,” I blurt out.
“Why?” Margaret looks at me, questioning.
“Because you know everything,” I tell her honestly.
Margaret only laughs.
“I hardly know everything.”
“Seems to me like you do,” Adalee tells her.
“There are plenty of things I don’t know, children,” Margaret says. “But I do know one thing,” she lowers her voice, and she says this in a way that makes me think she’s about to impart some horrible or terrible wisdom that’s going to hurt us just as much as it’s going to help us.
“What?” I whisper.
“You need to be careful,” she says.
“About what?” I ask.
Margaret doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then she finally speaks again.
“There are people in this house who are loyal to your father,” she says carefully. “And there are people who are loyal to your mother. Those aren’t always the same people, Harrison, and you need to watch your back.”
It’s the first time, perhaps, that Margaret has called me by my first name, and I hate the way it sounds so damn ominous on her lips.
What the hell does that mean?
Only, as much as I want to misunderstand and pretend I don’t know what she’s talking about, I do know.
I totally know.
She’s telling me that there are people in this house who will turn me in to my dad if they so much as have a guess that I might like Adalee as more than a friend.
There are people who will hand me over to the dogs for looking at her the wrong way or at the wrong time.
I know that Margaret is sharp as a tack, and she’s got my back in everything. This is no exception. She’s one of those people who was always loyal to my mom. Even now, I know that Margaret misses her, and I’ve always kind of had the idea that Margaret’s loyalty transferred not to my father, but to me when my mom died.
“I understand,” I finally say.
