He looked over at her, grinned. “Yeah? Why do you think I’m looking in your fridge?”
“And you were supposed to cook today.”
“I was,” he said, with a nod. “Remember that part about checking your fridge?”
“Yeah, remember that part about there is never any food?”
But he kept rummaging through the fridge, the freezer, and the cupboards, gathering stuff.
When he came back with two chicken breasts from the freezer, mushrooms from the fridge, and pasta from the pantry, she nodded. “Well, anything with pasta is always good.” But she looked at his selection and asked, “Can you really make something out of that?”
“Absolutely.” Then he stopped and said, “Nope. You’ll make something out of this.”
“Oh, and here I thought you wanted to eat tonight,” she grumbled.
He burst out laughing. “We will be eating tonight, and it’s not hard.”
“Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that before.”
He smiled and waved her over. “Come on over here. Let’s get to prepping. And, while we’re cooking, you can tell me what you found out about whatever this other problem is.”
“Oh.” She stopped and looked at him. “It’s Wendy.”
“What about Wendy?” he asked, as he sliced up the chicken. And then he stopped. “Oh no, you don’t. You’ll do this.” He changed places with her, handed her the knife, and said, “Slice it like I did.”
So moving carefully and much slower than him, she slowly sliced up the couple chicken breasts until they were thin. He nodded. “Now get your fry pan, toss in some butter, add some minced garlic, maybe a chopped onion.” He watched as she heated the pan and the butter. And then he nodded, got an onion out of the pantry, and—before she had a chance—he had it diced and threw it into the pan already. Then he quickly mashed a couple cloves of garlic.
She said, “I thought I was making it.”
He winced. “Sorry. Yes, now stir that.”
And they went back to her following his instructions. But it was pretty hard on him to take a back seat and to watch her do this for the first time, when he could have finished it in no time. Still, she needed to know that she could do this—even if he weren’t here standing over her. So he’d handled his lack of patience and his growing hunger pretty well. By the time she had the onions simmered and the chicken mostly cooked, she already had the pasta pot on and smiled. “Hey, cooking this meal, so far, isn’t too bad.”
“The rest of it isn’t bad either,” he noted.
And, before she knew it, she was seriously busy making a sauce.
“And you still haven’t told me about Wendy.”
“Oh, yes.” And she quickly told him about what she’d seen in the alleyway behind Wendy’s store.
He stopped, turned toward her, and asked, “Seriously?”
She nodded. “A couple days ago when I was down there”—and then she winced—“okay, so I was there recently, but I was there a couple weeks ago maybe. It seemed like something weird was going on that time too.” She shrugged. “I should have told you straightaway, but I didn’t really have any theory, didn’t really understand it,” she noted. “And I know how you hate it when I jump to conclusions and operate on a hunch with no evidence. So I didn’t mention it the first time it happened. Yet I kept thinking it over in my mind, but I had no answers. Still, it kept nagging at me. But obviously there was some problem again more recently. I should have mentioned it to you then.”
“Not a whole lot I can do if there’s a personal problem, not a legal problem,” he noted. “Remember. These people have a right to their own life too.”
“Maybe,” she noted, with a sniff, “but this was definitely odd.”
“Odd happens a lot, as you should already know,” he teased. “So what is it that you think was odd?”
“Well, last time she just looked like she was … nervous. She kept watching over her shoulders, as if something was seriously wrong. And when I told her that she could always, you know, tell me whatever was wrong and how I might help, she did tell me that there was nothing I could do.” And then she stopped. “How is it people always say that?”
He smiled. “Because they don’t want, for one, to get people in trouble with them, and, for two, they don’t know how to explain the trouble they got themselves into, revealing their vulnerable moments,” he noted quietly. “A lot of the time they’re just ashamed of it, or they think there’s no way to get out of it, regardless of who helps.”
“Maybe,” she noted. “But I would have thought that maybe she would let me help a little bit.”
“Why, because of your reputation?” he asked, with a raised brow. She glared at him. He smiled. “Get back there, stirring your pan.”
She stepped to the pot with the sauce and stirred it vigorously.
He reached out a hand on her shoulder and added, “Gently.”
She sighed, slowed down her movements, and noted, “There’s really an art to this.”
“No, it’s not so much an art, more science. It’s a matter of relaxing and letting the pan do its thing and the heat do its thing,” he explained quietly. “And going with the flow instead of trying to force it.”
She nodded but wasn’t sure that he knew exactly what he was talking about.
And obviously he could guess at her thoughts from the look on her face because he laughed. “I’m not lying, honest.” He smiled.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because it sure seems like everything here could be going a lot faster.”
“You can turn up the heat,” he suggested, “and then the rest of it will cook faster, but you’re pretty well done. However, if you don’t stir it every once in a while, things will stick.”
“Right, and then we get those horrible pans to clean.”
He snorted. “Exactly why I told you to stir.”
“Okay, got it,” she replied. “I am getting there, you know?”
“You’re doing quite well,” he told her. “And considering where you were when we started,” he suggested, “you’re doing very well.”
She smiled up at him. “That’s a lovely lie, thank you.” He burst out laughing. She grinned and added, “I am worried about Wendy though.”
“Maybe the next time you’re at her shop, see what she’s like, how she’s acting, and you could offer your assistance again,” he suggested. “But, if people don’t want help and if they don’t want to confide in you, then there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.”
She nodded, but she didn’t like anything about that. “I hear you. I just don’t think it’s fair.”
“Why? Because you don’t get all the answers that you want from people?” His voice cracked with suspicious laughter.
She shrugged. “I get it. You think it’s funny, but there’s an awful lot going on right now.”
“There is, indeed,” he agreed. “So let’s focus on all that and not so much on everything else.”