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Her smile turned into a grimace as she glanced away from the phone. “Shit! Hang on. I’ve got to set the phone down.”
“Tess?” I sat up, worried she’d hurt herself somehow. All I could see on my screen was a view of her ceiling. A weirdly hazy view of her ceiling. “Is that smoke?”
“No,” she said from somewhere off camera. “Maybe.”
“What’s happening over there? Do I need to call 911?”
“I’m baking. Or trying to.” She didn’t sound panicked, so I figured she had it under control. Hopefully.
“Yeah? How’s it going?”
“Not great, as you can probably tell from the smoke.” There was a clattering sound, followed by, “Well, fuck.”
“What were you baking?”
“It was supposed to be cookies, but instead I seem to have made a tray of carbonized hockey pucks.”
“Sounds delicious. Can you send me the recipe?”
“Laugh it up, fuzzball. It was your mother’s butterscotch cookie recipe.”
“How’d you get my mother’s cookie recipe?”
“I asked her for it when I called to thank her for dinner. And you better not tell her I messed them up this bad.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
There was more clattering. “Fuck a duck. I think I figured out the problem. Somehow I accidentally put the oven into self-cleaning mode.”
“Use your oven a lot, do you?” Since she couldn’t see my face, I didn’t bother hiding my smirk.
“When’s the last time you used your oven, Paul Hollywood?”
“Where do you think I hide my dirty dishes when the kids come over?”
Tess picked up the phone again, and her face bobbed across the screen as she carried it through her apartment. The image stabilized as she sank down on the couch with a sigh. “Well, that was a total bust.”
“What inspired you to bake cookies, anyway?”
Her eyes lowered. “I thought it’d be nice to take them to the caregivers at my father’s facility tomorrow.”
“You’re going to see your dad tomorrow?”
“I go see him every Sunday.” She chewed on her lip, still not looking at me.
“That must be hard.”
She shrugged as if it was nothing, but the way she avoided meeting my eyes said otherwise. “I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know I’m there most of the time.”
“But you still go anyway.”
“He’s my dad.” Her eyes lifted to the phone finally, and her mouth pulled tight. “He’s the only family I’ve got.”
I hated how sad she looked. I wished we were having this conversation in person so I could pull her into my arms and hold her. “No he’s not. Erin’s your family. And I’m Erin’s family, which means I’m your family too.”
She pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger without saying anything.
Not gonna lie, I’d been hoping for a little better reaction than that.
