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“I made that,” he informs his father.
“Good to know,” his dad grunts. “So I can avoid it.”
“Theo supervised.”
“How closely?”
“Close enough to know there aren’t any bits of finger in it.” I smile at Sullivan, dishing up an extra-large helping of salad as a vote of confidence.
Sullivan and his father totally ignore the salad and attack everything I made.
I laugh. “Aren’t you even going to try it?”
“If I have room after the good stuff.” Sullivan’s mouth is full of steak.
“Sully’s a carnivore,” Merrick remarks. “Wouldn’t eat anything green for the first ten years of his life.”
Sully.
I like that. It suits him.
Or at least, this part of him.
Sullivan smiles at his dad. “I hope I’ve matured a bit since then.”
“Oh yeah?” Merrick eyes the bits of pepper Sullivan pulled off his skewer and pushed to the side.
“Peppers don’t count. But look…” Sullivan grabs a cube of cucumber out of the salad and tosses it in his mouth. “Impressed?”
I snort. “You showed him.”
Merrick is suspicious of the pineapple wedges. “Hot pineapple?”
“It’s good,” Sullivan assures him.
His dad takes an experimental bite. Then heaps his plate.
Sullivan laughs though he’s also offended. “You never take thirds of anythingImake!”
Merrick scoffs, “Neither do you! How’d you come up with this, Theo?”
I tell Merrick the truth. “I had it at one of those Brazilian grills once—you know where they bring meat on skewers to your table? They only brought the pineapple by once, and that was the best thing in the whole place. So I had to figure out how to make it myself.”
“Where’d you get the recipe?”
“No recipe—I just gave it a go for the first time today.”
“Theo’s really talented,” Sullivan says.
“I can tell.” Merrick shovels up his food like he hasn’t eaten in a month. Maybe he hasn’t—his clothes hang on him like he used to be bigger.
“What do you do, Mr—Merrick?” I stumble a little over his name.
He pretends like he doesn’t notice. “I used to be a stunt man.”
“That’s how my parents met,” Sullivan explains.
Merrick’s eyes flick back toward the house. It’s too dark to see inside the bedroom anymore, but I know as well as he does that the portrait’s still there.
