Page 52 of Just a Heartbeat Away

For the second time in as many minutes, Via hid her smile from a Dorner boy. “All right, well at least go and lie down on the living room couch.”

He looked for a second like he might argue with her, but it wasn’t long before he ambled into the other room.

Via kept an eye on Matty in the dining room as she slapped together some peanut butter crackers and a handful of grapes. “Matty,” she said in a warning tone, “does your dad let you climb all the way onto the table when you do your puzzles?”

“Sometimes!” he insisted with the defiance of a kid who got caught in wrongdoing. His neck went a little red and he slid back into his chair, eyeing the plate that Via set down. “Can I have water, too?”

Via grabbed him some and then went back into the kitchen, checking to make sure that they had everything she needed to make dinner for Matty. She noticed a few other things in the fridge and pulled them out.

She found a pot and the rest of the ingredients she needed and started chopping vegetables. It wasn’t twenty minutes before she had the soup on the stove and she washed her hands. Via and Matty got a good jump on the puzzle, working on it for half an hour before she had him washing his hands and helping her make his dinner. He carefully buttered the bread and laid out the cheese slices for the grilled cheese. And then he studiously stirred the cheese mixture for the mac and cheese.

She grinned at his solemn little face as he cooked. Like it was a science experiment that might explode out of the beaker if he put in one drop too much milk. She wondered if Sebastian ever had Matty cook with him.

“Do you cook very often?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Only sometimes with Grandma Sullivan.”

“I used to cook all the time when I was your age.”

“Really?”

“Yup. My parents were from Italy, and cooking and eating is a really big deal in their country. So even when I was a kid, I already knew how to make marinara sauce and pasta from scratch. All sorts of things. Stew and bread, all kinds of pastries.”

“Do you still cook?”

“Every day,” she told him. “I love it. It calms me down. I like to cook the way you like to do puzzles.”

“Yeah, but you can’t eat puzzles.” Matty cracked up at his own joke.

“And you can’t spread out macaroni and cheese all over your dining room table.”

He laughed harder. “Well, youcould. But then Dad would get really frustrated and make me clean it up.”

She checked on Sebastian, who was snoozing on the couch, curled on his side with a blanket up to his shoulders.

She and Matty carefully shoved the jigsaw puzzle down to one end of the table and she sat with him while he ate. He really was a very competent conversationalist. He always had been, even when he was in her pre-K class, but it was easy to forget that he was just six years old. After dinner he brought his plate to the dishwasher, but he needed reminding to wash his hands and face.

“It’s not bedtime yet,” he told Via, just in case she got any crazy ideas.

She nodded solemnly. “Of course not. It’s only 6:30. But I think we should go easy on your dad. Do you ever play outside after dinner?”

“Yeah. Lots of times. But not really when it’s dark out.” He peered out the sliding porch doors and grimaced at the glowing blue twilight creeping over the trees.

“You can play a video game, buddy!” Sebastian called from the other room with a voice that sounded like he’d swallowed some rough grit sandpaper.

Matty was in the living room like a shot, and Via followed after. Sebastian was just pulling himself up to a sit and clicking on the lamp next to the couch.

“Can I use volume, Daddy?”

“Only if you wear the headphones.”

Matty was busy pressing buttons and plugging in jacks and putting disks in slots. He was a whir of digital-age action until he popped the giant headphones on, grabbed up the controller and plunked his butt down in front of the TV. Via was relieved to see that he was playing a soccer video game, not a fighting one.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Sebastian said, still lying partway down, his gray eyes squinting.

“I’m happy to do it.” She lingered in the doorway. She knew it was probably time to go home, but she found herself wanting to stay until Matty’s bedtime so that Seb wouldn’t have to worry about it.

“What smells so good?”

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