Page 85 of All Her Broken Pieces

The kitchen feels warm and inviting when he’s in it with me, and I’ve grown to love our time cooking together over the past few months. Ethan walks to his overnight bag and pulls out a small green plastic box. It looks worn and resembles something I’d once used in grade school to organize notecards for studying before I came up with my study guides.

“What’s that?”

“This is probably the most valuable thing I own.” He sets the box in front of me and gestures with his hands for me to open it. My hands glide along the cool granite of the island before clasping the box, its texture slightly bumpy in my hands. Small pieces of dried food and flour dot the surface of the box.

“For a chef, I figured this would be cleaner.”

“That’s part of the magic of what’s inside.”

Popping the lid open, my fingers trace over the rough edges of multiple note cards before settling on a random card near the middle of the box and pulling it out. “Peach cobbler,” I announce.

“Number thirty-seven. That’s a good one. It tastes better when you use fresh peaches. I prefer Red Haven, a variety of peach from Michigan. It’s a sweet peach with very little fuzz. Nonna and I tried numerous other varieties, but Red Havens always made the best cobbler.”

I glance at him in confusion, but he nods his head toward the card. I turn it over to see a small “37” written on the top left of the card. With the way I was holding it, there’s no way he would’ve seen the number on the back. “Do you have all of these memorized?”

“I do. My Nonna is the one who taught me how to cook and encouraged me to go to culinary school, much to my dad’s disapproval.” I look at him curiously. “He didn’t go to college, and I think he was hoping I would, but my dreams were elsewhere. Ever since Ashley brought Nonna into my life, cooking became my passion. We’d spend weekends making almost every recipe in that box, perfecting each one. For my eighteenth birthday, Nonna gave me her recipe box with every meal we’d ever prepared and a few more we’d never tried. She’s the one who supported my cooking more than anyone else.”

“That’s incredible. It kind of feels serendipitous, in a way, to be standing here with this.” I say, gesturing to the recipe box.

“How so?”

“Well, you do make my favorite meal, and I assume that’s because of her.”

His dimple is out on full display as his emerald eyes bore into mine. “It is.”

“And now we’re going to pick something from here to make together.”

I continue flipping through the cards, struggling to find a rhyme or reason for how they are arranged. “Is there an organizational system here? My left brain is freaking out because there are desserts next to appetizers. I think my eye is starting to twitch.”

The sound of Ethan’s low laugh fills the room. It’s deep and booming, small crinkles appearing around his eyes as he throws his head back, tremors rocking his body, shoulders heaving. “Fuck, I love—” Another laugh escapes his body, cutting him off.

For a second, I wonder if he’s about to make a declaration, and in this moment, I decide that the way he could finish that sentence doesn’t scare me. I try to maintain my composure. “I don’t understand what’s so funny.”

Strong hands wipe at his eyes, the tears gathering on the pads of his fingers. “I just love how your mind works. How you’re unabashedly… well, you.” He sobers a bit as he stares at the box. “A part of my heart breaks every time I look at one of these notecards. Seeing Nonna’s handwriting and smelling the weathered cards always gets to me. I’m half convinced that my tears are a secret ingredient at this point because it’s hard not to be overwhelmed with grief when I use these cards. I usually don’t have to pull them out that often since I have them all memorized now.”

“Bullshit.”

“Try me. Give me any number, one through two hundred eighty-six.”

“One hundred ninety-one.”

He lets out a small chuckle. “That one is a crockpot lasagna. She was so pissed at me. I think I was around fourteen, and I had so much going on with school. I was helping watch the girls in the afternoon, so I didn’t have much time to cook and finish my homework by the time track practice was over. Ella was around eight, I think, and was super picky. All she wanted to eat was lasagna, but I didn’t have time to make it, and she wouldn’t eat it if it was frozen. Said that she could ‘taste the ice crystals’ or something, and I needed a lasagna recipe that wouldn’t take me a lot of time. Nonna was born in Italy and thought cooking lasagna in a crockpot was a sin, especially because you could throw the uncooked boxed noodles in. She gave me so much shit.”

He smiles briefly before clearing his throat and continuing, “It’s the only Italian meal we ever prepared where she allowed me to use premade boxed noodles. Normally, we made our own from scratch. It wasn’t half bad. I mean, nothing compares to her actual lasagna—number forty-three, in case you’re wondering.” I flip through the cards and grab number forty-three and blink, stunned that he can remember that. “But it was good, and Ella liked it. I’d throw everything in the crockpot before school, set it to low, and it’d be ready by dinner.”

The shock on my face must be evident, so he nods to the box, and it feels like he’s daring me to pick another one. “Number two hundred sixty-one.”

“Oh, that’s a good one. My buddy Maddox had invited me to a cookout, and I had the best potato salad I’d ever tasted. I came home and told Nonna all about it, and we tried so many variations to replicate it. Turns out it was an Amish potato salad that was sweet and tangy.”

“That sounds delicious.”

“It is.” He grins at me, his dimple on full display. “Satisfied?” I nod slowly, in awe of this amazing man. “So, like I was saying, I usually can’t look at these recipe cards without breaking down at some point because each one is a memory of a time with her that I’ll never get back. But you healed me by simply being you, pulling me out of my head before I could spiral.”

“How’d I do that?”

“Your fucking left brain. Of all the things you could’ve said or asked. You couldn’t get over the lack of organization. I bet you want to go through this box and organize them, don’t you?”

I can feel my face flush at his suggestion as I nod in agreement. That’s exactly what I want to do, and it’s bothering me that there isn’t a system in place to organize them. How do you find what you need quickly? It doesn’t seem efficient. His hand glides up my cheek, gently squeezing my face and pulling me out of my thoughts.

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