Page 68 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
It doesn’t taste bad. It doesn’t taste good, either, but Nathaniel thinks he can improve on it with some effort. Patrick and Susan seem impressed, at least.
A few days later, Nathaniel opens the same cookbooks and uses index cards to mark a few promising recipes that he thinks even Patrick can’t mangle. He finds Susan at the cash register reading a magazine.
“Where’s Patrick?”
She turns a page and doesn’t look up. “Oh, it’s a warm day, so I guess he’s out buying ice cream cones for hobos.”
“You’re a terrible person,” Nathaniel says, but he’s laughing.
“Come on, you know he’s done it at least once.” Her eyes are lit up with trouble. “Bet you five dollars.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to say hobo.”
“Please. Anyway, Patrick took Eleanor to the doctor.”
Nathaniel feels like something icy is dripping down his spine. “Is she all right?”
“What? Of course. She needs to get measured and weighed and all that.”
“And you sent her with Patrick.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you saying I should have taken her myself?”
“No, settle down. It’s good, that’s all.”
“It’s good,” she repeats.
It’s none of Nathaniel’s business to ask whether she and Patrick have had any kind of conversation about what their future will look like. But he doesn’t see anybody else around here who’s about to broach the topic, so it’s up to him. “Her first day of kindergarten, he’ll need to be there, you understand that, right?” He thinks of all the milestones parents line up in their minds, stretching forwards: the moments they think will go in the photo album. “Her first date and her college graduation. He’ll need to walk her down the aisle. I don’t give a damn if there’s a stepfather in the picture, Susan.”
Her jaw is set and she looks mutinous. “I know that.”
“Does Patrick know that you know that?”
“I can’t very well go up to him and say, hey, Patrick, you know how you’ve taken care of us for the past six months? Well, you’re emotionally on the hook for the next eighteen years and more, thanks in advance.”
“Be serious. Patrick wants nothing more than to be on the hook.”
The door opens and Patrick comes through, tugging the carriage behind him, Eleanor asleep against his shoulder. “Did I interrupt another fight about mandolins?”
“Yes,” Susan and Nathaniel say together.
Patrick narrows his eyes. “Okay, fine, lie to me.”
“Meatloaf, pork chops, or pot roast?” Nathaniel asks, holding up the cookbook.
Patrick raises his eyebrows at the cover. “Which of us is the new bride?”
“New bride is a euphemism for helpless idiot. I’m afraid we’re both very much new brides.”
The meatloaf is serviceable. Nathaniel figures if they each make dinner once a week, they can have leftovers or takeout the other nights and not worry about Eleanor growing up with either a nutritional deficiency or insufficient feminism.
Whenever he catches himself thinking like that, he tries to stop. He isn’t going to be a permanent part of the cooking rotation or anything else. They’ll want him gone when they find out who he is and what he’s done. But it’s hard to remember that he won’t be a part of this forever. Heisn’ta part of this. He happened to be there when Susan and Patrick needed help, and so they folded him into their fractured little family. None of that is permanent. Susan and Patrick treat him like it is, but that’s likely because they haven’t thought that far ahead, and also because at this point it’s too late to draw a line between family and not family. The time would have been in February, and none of them were thinking straight back then.
If he were braver, he’d tell them now, but he wants to keep every minute of this that he’s allowed. He pages through the cookbook, trying to decide what he’ll make the next time it’s his turn to cook dinner. The pot roast looks manageable, so he dog-ears the page.
* * *
It’s slow in the shop, a rainy July weekday, so Nathaniel doesn’t have much to do during his shift. The store is clean, the inventory is updated, and he’s about to find something to read when the shop bells chime.
