Chap­ter 9

Nina is at her PTA meet­ing tonight—the one I ruined by throw­ing out her notes. She is grab­bing a bite to eat with some of the oth­er par­ents, so I’ve been tasked with mak­ing din­ner for Andrew and Cecelia.

The house is so much qui­eter when Nina isn’t here. I’m not sure why, but she just has an ener­gy that fills the entire space. Right now I’m alone in the kitchen, sear­ing a filet mignon in the fry­ing pan before stick­ing it in the oven, and it’s heav­en­ly silent in the Win­ches­ter house­hold. It’s nice. This job would be so great if not for my boss.

Andrew has incred­i­ble timing—he comes home just as I’m tak­ing the steaks out of the oven and let­ting them rest on the kitchen counter. He peeks into the kitchen. “Smells great—again.”

“Thanks.” I add a lit­tle bit more salt to the mashed pota­toes, which are already drenched in but­ter and cream. “Can you tell Cecelia to come down? I called her twice but…” Actu­al­ly, I called up to her three times. She has not yet answered me.

Andrew nods. “Gotcha.”

Short­ly after Andrew dis­ap­pears into the din­ing room and calls her name, I hear her quick foot­steps on the stair­case. So that’s how it’s going to be.

I put togeth­er two plates con­tain­ing the steak, mashed pota­toes, and a side of broc­coli. The por­tions are small­er on Cecelia’s plate, and I am not going to enforce whether she eats the broc­coli or not. If her father wants her to eat it, he can make her do it. But I would be remiss if I didn’t pro­vide veg­eta­bles. When I was grow­ing up, my moth­er always made sure to have a serv­ing of veg­eta­bles on a din­ner plate.

I’m sure she’s still won­der­ing where she went wrong with rais­ing me.

Cecelia is wear­ing anoth­er of her over­ly fan­cy dress­es in an imprac­ti­cal pale col­or. I’ve nev­er seen her wear nor­mal kid cloth­ing, and it just seems wrong. You can’t play in the dress­es Cecelia wears—they’re too uncom­fort­able and they show every speck of dirt. She sits down at one of the chairs at the din­ing table, takes the nap­kin I laid out, and places it down on her lap dain­ti­ly. For a moment, I’m a bit charmed. Then she opens her mouth.

“Why did you give me water?” She crin­kles her nose at the glass of fil­tered water I put at her place set­ting. “I hate water. Get me apple juice.”

If I had spo­ken to some­body like that when I was a child, my moth­er would have smacked my hand and told me to say “please.” But Cecelia isn’t my child, and I haven’t man­aged to endear myself to her yet in the time I’ve been here. So I smile polite­ly, take the water away, and bring her a glass of apple juice.

When I place the new glass in front of her, she care­ful­ly exam­ines it. She holds it up to the light, nar­row­ing her eyes. “This glass is dirty. Get me anoth­er one.”

“It’s not dirty,” I protest. “It just came out of the dish­wash­er.”

“It’s smudged.” She makes a face. “I don’t want it. Give me anoth­er one.”

I take a deep, calm­ing breath. I’m not going to fight with this lit­tle girl. If she wants a new glass for her apple juice, I’ll get her a new glass.

As I’m fetch­ing Cecelia her new glass, Andrew comes out to the din­ing table. He’s removed his tie and unbut­toned the top but­ton on his white dress shirt. Just the tini­est hint of chest hair peeks out. And I have to look away.

Men are some­thing I am still learn­ing how to nav­i­gate in my post-incar­cer­a­tion life. And by “learn­ing,” I of course mean that I am com­plete­ly avoid­ing it. At my last job wait­ress­ing at that bar—my only job since I got out—customers would inevitably ask me out. I always said no. There just isn’t room in my messed-up life right now for some­thing like that. And of course, the men who asked me were men I wouldn’t have ever want­ed to go out with.

I went to prison when I was sev­en­teen. I wasn’t a vir­gin, but my only expe­ri­ences includ­ed clum­sy high school sex. Over my time in jail, I would some­times feel the tug around attrac­tive male guards. Some­times the tug was almost painful. And one of the things I looked for­ward to when I got out was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with a man. Or even just feel­ing a man’s lips against mine. I want it. Of course I do.

But not now. Some­day.

Still, when I look at a man like Andrew Win­ches­ter, I think about the fact that I haven’t even touched a man in over a decade—not like that, any­way. He’s not any­thing like those creeps at the seedy bar where I used to wait tables. When I do even­tu­al­ly put myself back out there, he’s the sort of man I’m look­ing for. Except obvi­ous­ly not mar­ried.

An idea occurs to me: if I ever want to release a lit­tle ten­sion, Enzo might be a good can­di­date. No, he doesn’t speak Eng­lish. But if it’s just one night, it shouldn’t mat­ter. He looks like he would know what to do with­out hav­ing to say much. And unlike Andrew, he doesn’t wear a wed­ding ring—although I can’t help but won­der about this Anto­nia per­son, whose name is tat­tooed on his arm.

I wrench myself from my fan­tasies about the sexy land­scap­er as I return to the kitchen to retrieve the two plates of food. Andrew’s eyes light up when he sees the juicy steak, seared to per­fec­tion. I am real­ly proud of how it came out.

“This looks incred­i­ble, Mil­lie!” he says.

“Thanks,” I say.

I look over at Cecelia, who has the oppo­site response. “Yuck! This is steak.” Stat­ing the obvi­ous, I guess.

“Steak is good, Cece,” Andrew tells her. “You should try it.”

Cecelia looks at her father then back down at her plate. She prods her steak gin­ger­ly with her fork, as if she’s anx­ious it might leap off the plate and into her mouth. She has a pained expres­sion on her face.

“Cece…” Andrew says.

I look between Cecelia and Andrew, not sure what to do. It hits me now that I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have made steak for a nine-year-old girl. I just assumed she had to have high­brow taste, liv­ing in a place like this.

“Um,” I say. “Should I…?”

Andrew push­es back his chair and grabs Cecelia’s plate from the table. “Okay, I’ll make you some chick­en nuggets.”

I fol­low Andrew back into the kitchen, apol­o­giz­ing pro­fuse­ly. He just laughs. “Don’t wor­ry about it. Cecelia is obsessed with chick­en, and espe­cial­ly chick­en nuggets. We could be din­ing at the fan­ci­est restau­rant in Long Island, and she’ll order chick­en nuggets.”

My shoul­ders relax a bit. “You don’t have to do this. I can make her chick­en nuggets.”

Andrew lays her plate down on the kitchen counter and wags a fin­ger at me. “Oh, but I do. If you’re going to work here, you need a tuto­r­i­al.”

“Okay…”

He wrench­es the freez­er open and pulls out a giant fam­i­ly pack of chick­en nuggets. “See, these are the nuggets Cecelia likes. Don’t get any oth­er brands. Any­thing else is unac­cept­able.” He fum­bles with the Ziploc seal on the bag and removes one of the frozen nuggets. “Also, they must be dinosaur-shaped. Dinosaur—got that?”

I can’t sup­press a smile. “Got it.”

“Also”—he holds up the chick­en nugget—“you have to first exam­ine the nugget for any defor­mi­ties. Miss­ing head, miss­ing leg, or miss­ing tail. If the dinosaur nugget has any of these crit­i­cal defects, it will be reject­ed.”

Now he pulls a plate from the cab­i­net above the microwave. He lays five per­fect nuggets on the plate. “She likes to have five nuggets. You put it in the microwave for exact­ly nine­ty sec­onds. Any less, it’s frozen. Any more, it’s over­cooked. It’s a very ten­u­ous bal­ance.”

I nod solemn­ly. “I under­stand.”

As the chick­en nuggets rotate in the microwave, he glances around the kitchen, which is at least twice as large as the apart­ment I was evict­ed from.

“I can’t even tell you how much mon­ey we spent ren­o­vat­ing this kitchen, and Cecelia won’t eat any­thing that doesn’t come out of the microwave.”

The words “spoiled brat” are at the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say them. “She knows what she likes.”

“She sure does.” The microwave beeps and he pulls out the plate of pip­ing hot chick­en nuggets. “How about you? Have you eat­en yet?”

“I’ll just bring some food up to my room.”

He rais­es an eye­brow. “You don’t want to join us?”

Part of me would like to join him. There’s some­thing very engag­ing about Andrew Win­ches­ter, and I can’t help but want to get to know him bet­ter. But at the same time, it would be a mis­take. If Nina walked in and saw the two of us laugh­ing it up at the din­ing table, she wouldn’t like it. I also have a feel­ing that Cecelia won’t make the evening pleas­ant.

“I’d rather just eat in my room,” I say.

He looks like he’s going to protest, but then he thinks bet­ter of it. “Sor­ry,” he says. “We’ve nev­er had live-in help before, so I’m not sure…