Here.
I looked down.
Pot roast, carrots, green beans, dinner rolls, cheesecake.
What’s this?
The grocery list.
I looked at her, Mark, then the paper again.
You cut up my dress and now you’re giving me a grocery list.
Patricia sipped her coffee.
Well, people still have to eat.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
She frowned.
I don’t see what’s funny.
That makes two of us.
Mark lowered his phone.
Claire.
There was that warning in his voice.
I hated that warning—the sound someone makes after already deciding you’re unreasonable and expecting you to behave accordingly.
I slid the list back across the table.
I’m not cooking tonight.
Patricia’s mouth tightened.
Then what are we supposed to serve?
I don’t know. That sounds like a question for the person who invited 12 people.
She looked at Mark.
He looked at me.
I took my coffee and left.
It would be nice to say that was the first time I’d ever done something like that.
It wasn’t.
But it was one of the first times I didn’t return 10 minutes later to make everybody comfortable.
Making things easier had always been my specialty.
I married Mark when I was 29. Melissa was nine.
Her mother remained in her life, and I never tried to replace her.
I simply became the extra adult—the one who picked Melissa up when schedules collapsed, remembered she hated mayonnaise, and somehow knew at 9:00 at night that she needed poster board because children apparently remember school projects only after office supply stores close.
When she was 16, she called from a gas station outside Dayton after a boy abandoned her at a party.
I drove nearly 3 hours through freezing rain.
