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“It was yellow,” Troy said. “And it had circus things around on the walls.”
“Wallpaper border,” Beckett told Quinn. “Halfway up, so he could see it.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sounds good.” Remote as the stars.
“In our new house,” Janey said. “I remember you carrying Mum through the door the first time. She said she was too heavy, because she was pregnant, and you said it was a tradition, so shut up, and she laughed. We put together Troy’s cot, too. I remember that a bit. I handed you the tools. It was hard for Mum to bend down then, because her belly was so big, so I did it instead.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We had a new one for him, because when we had you, we had a carry-cot, and that was all. Our flat was pretty small.” He stood up. “I can do that,” he told Quinn. “Sit down and eat.”
“You have to time them,” she said.
“Makes sense,” he said, and then, when she kept standing over the waffle maker, he suggested, "Suppose you tell me for how long.”
“Oh. Sure. Five minutes—uh, two minutes and twenty-eight seconds now, or until the steam stops coming out.”
“Your waffles are very good, Quinn,” Troy said. “Except they’re kind of hard to cut.”
She said, “I can fix that,” and went to do it, cutting up his waffle with perfect efficiency. After that, she finally ate hers, and then, when Beckett was sitting down again with the last waffle on a plate, she popped up again and said, “Well, I’ve got lots of meal prep to do, so I’ll just clean this up and get started. My parents did invite you all to dinner, remember, Beckett. Six o’clock. If you don’t want to go, tell me now, before my mom starts cooking. I also want to finish raking the leaves before it snows, so they won’t rot on the—”
Beckett had had enough. He shoved his chair back and said, “I’ll help you rake the leaves. Let’s do it now.”
“If I put the casserole in first,” she said, “it can bake while I do the raking.”
“I’ll help you with the casserole, too,” he said. “Let’s go rake.”
“We’re not done with the attic,” Janey said, looking between him and Quinn.
“We’ll finish it,” he said. “You’re on washing-up duty.”
“I don’t—” she started. He turned and stared at her, and she subsided.
Troy said, “I can help rake, too.”
“That’s great,” Quinn started to say.
“Nah, mate,” Beckett said. “You can help us later, in the attic.” He told Quinn, “Let’s go.”
* * *
If she’d wonderedif Beckett loved her—which she hadn’t, because that was stupid—she was certainly clued in now. He looked, if anything, mad. Why? She’d made him waffles. She’d hadsexwith him. On a dropcloth! What else was a woman required to do? She couldn’t exactly run her hands over his body during breakfast and tell him she had to have him now, like Craig had suggestedrealwomen did, the kind who’d been created for a man to love. They’d been eating with his kids! Besides, the waffles would have burned.
She put on her Stanford sweatshirt and a windbreaker, tugged on her rubber boots, said, “I’ll get the rakes,” and headed outside. If he had something to say to her, he could say it.
He clearly did, because when she headed into the shed, he came in after her and said, “Stop running. Just stop.”
“Excuse me?” She turned to find him about ten inches behind her—her garden shed was pretty small—and asked, “What? You hate waffles? You hate sex? You resent drywalling my attic, which I never asked you to do in the first place or would have expected? What the heck could I possibly have done?”
He had a hand in his hair and a sort of … baffled look on his face. “What?” he asked.
“What?” she said. “The waffles were too much of a commitment for you? Sorry, I make waffles on Sunday morning. I made a bigger batch, that’s all. I ran more than nine miles this morning, and anyway, why shouldn’t I have waffles? Because my butt’s big? My butt’s always been big. It’s muscle, and it’s genetics, because my mom has it, too. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to look at it, and you definitely don’t have to touch it. You don’t have to do anything at all, and by the way? You need to get over yourself. I didn’t make waffles for you. I just madewaffles.”
“I don’t care about the bloody waffles!” It was a roar, and he didn’t look one bit calm anymore.
“Thenwhat?”she asked. “If you’re feeling guilty about your dead wife, I can’t help you. I’m sure she was beautiful, since your kids are, and that she had an extremely perky and probably tiny butt and was generally much more perfect than me. That is not my problem, and you have no right to take out your feelings on me!”
He stared at her like he didn’t get it. Really? He didn’t get it? “What?” he said again.
“You were almost completely silent all through breakfast, like you didn’t even want to talk to me. Oh, except when you were talking about your wife. You look furious, and you’vebeenlooking furious. What am I supposed to think about that? And all right, I heard you talking to Janey. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, and I should have left right away, but I didn’t. Which was a moral failing. I accept that.”
