All This Time(28)

Chill out. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

I think of what Marley said, about how I’m trying to control things. Trying to keep a part of her here.

The shadow’s arm reaches for the slicer again, and I close my eyes, focusing on that. It’s in my head. It’s—I jump when a hand touches my neck.

“What the…” I whirl around, coming face-to-face with my mom, her hand in midair.

“I’m sorry,” she says, studying my face. “I thought you heard me.”

I glance back at the deli clerk to see him making a normal slice, with a normal shadow.

It’s been almost a week since my last weird vision. I’m pissed at myself.

“You okay?” my mom asks, feeling my forehead. She’s been better at giving me some space to figure things out now that I’m not staying in bed for twenty-three of the twenty-four hours in a day, but that still doesn’t stop her from poking and prodding me after the slightest trace of a headache.

“Yeah,” I say as the deli clerk puts the wrapped meat onto the counter. I grab it, put it into the overflowing cart with a thunk. “My head’s just bothering me today. What else is new?”

I can still feel her looking at me, so I try to reassure her again. “Nothing a little Tylenol and some food can’t fix.” I look down at the pile of groceries in the shopping cart, the bag of potatoes hopefully buried somewhere at the bottom. “Where’d the wind blow you?”

She shrugs coyly and holds up a tub of ice cream, making the both of us laugh as we head to the checkout.



* * *




Exactly twenty-four hours later, I’m in way over my head. The steak? Looking great. Veggies? Steaming. My mom’s béarnaise sauce recipe?

A catastrophe.

I’m surrounded by two empty egg cartons, shells and yolk guts littering the entire counter, and for what feels like the millionth time, the sauce comes out lumpy.

Why is it so lumpy?

My mom always makes this look so easy.

I glance at the clock, panicking a bit when I see it’s 5:45. I only have fifteen minutes to get this sauce right, reheat everything, and probably change my shirt, since I’ve sweat clean through this one trying to figure out how to make this fancy-ass sauce.

After speed-watching a YouTube how-to video, I finally realize that I’ve had the temperature too high this entire time. I scan through my mom’s handwritten recipe card for the thirtieth time, and there is no mention of temperature. So I toss it back onto the counter, doing a double take when I catch sight of a tiny note scrawled on the back: lower temp before eggs.

Great. Just great.

I lower the temperature this time, and when I whisk the yolks and then beat in the butter, my wrist screaming, it actually turns into a smooth sauce instead of a lumpy mess.

“Holy shit. I did it,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief as I give it a taste. Creamy. Perfect. I add a pinch of salt just to be safe.

Moving quickly, I put down the plates and fold napkins underneath the utensils and even make sure to have a flower centerpiece.

A branch of cherry blossoms.

I ran to the park earlier just to make sure they’d be here, so a few of the blossoms look a little worse for wear.

While the rib eyes reheat, I pour the sauce into tiny ramekins instead of over the meat, since Marley is particular with her sauces. The second one takes a long time to fill, the sauce pouring out at a glacial pace. Impatiently, I tap the bottom of the saucepan, and of course, it all comes rushing out at once, overflowing past the top of the ramekin and onto the countertop like a damn mudslide.

I’m crushing this cooking thing.

Sighing, I grab a towel and clean it off, then plate the meat and get everything on the table with just enough time to sprint downstairs to change my shirt before the doorbell rings.

Marley.

I smooth down my hair as I take the steps by twos, then slide into the entryway to pull open the door.

She’s wearing a lemon-yellow rain jacket, the color standing out against the cloudy gray sky, the rain falling all around her.

“Hey,” I say, leaning casually against the doorframe.

“Hey,” she says, squinting to look at me through the rain. She nods up at the steady downpour. “Can I maybe… come in?”

“Oh, right. Yeah,” I say, pushing the door fully open. She steps inside and pulls her hood down, her hair wavier than usual because of the rain. I find my eyes zeroing on a stray strand trying to break out of her ponytail.

I want to tuck it behind her ear like she always does, but instead I take her jacket from her. I hang it on the basement doorknob to dry while she looks around the entryway at all the pictures. She stops in front of me, peering down the steps.

“What’s down there?” she asks.

“A couple of dead bodies,” I joke, to which she rolls her eyes, nudging my shoulder, the tiniest bit amused. “My room’s down there.”

She looks intrigued. “In the basement?”

“Yeah. I moved down there my sophomore year of high school, after my mom got it finished,” I say as I nod down the steps. “Sam and Kim used to sneak in through a door down there. Leads straight to the backyard.”

She smiles at that, definitely amused now. “Ah, a bad boy,” she teases.

I roll my eyes. “You ready for dinner?”