of paint he’s poured for her.
“I heard that!” Miriam says from the living room, making Gloria cackle.
Andrea climbs onto the ladder in the kitchen and dips her paintbrush into the paint, placing it at an angle right next to the ceiling line of paint. Lauren watches her with interest. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“We’ve moved five times in our marriage, and Bill and I have painted every room of each house! You just learn things.”
“Did you know how to cook when you got married?”
Andrea smiles. “Like I said, you learn things. A good recipe makes all the difference, I think. Do you like to cook?”
Lauren uses her paintbrush to cut in a straight line against the window. “Not really. I’m hoping to learn, though. We have to feed our kids more than hamburgers, right?”
“My kids would have loved hamburgers every night! Miriam says you bought a really cute table.”
Lauren stops her work, looking up at her. “It probably sounds kind of stupid but I imagined me and Travis and our kids sitting around the table, eating together.”
“That doesn’t sound stupid,” Andrea says, peering at Lauren over her shoulder.
“I don’t remember doing that with my mom and dad, and I’d like to do it with my family.” Lauren doesn’t recall mealtimes with her own mom and dad. She has hazy memories of her dad before he went to prison, sitting on the sofa in their cramped apartment and eating a bowl of cereal now and then. Her mom never cooked, and when she began her jail stints, Lauren began the rounds of foster homes. She did have a couple of foster moms who were good cooks, especially Lori, from the last house she was in, but she remembers eating a lot of sandwiches and hot dogs growing up. To this day, if she never ate another hot dog again it would be fine with her.
“And you will enjoy lots of meals together around your table,” Andrea says. “In a beautiful green kitchen.”
“It’s gray!” Miriam yells from the next room. “What is wrong with you people?”
Andrea and Lauren laugh out loud as Gloria hoots from the living room.
EIGHT
June 2012
When she finishes her shift in the floral department at Clauson’s Supermarket, Lauren shops for ingredients she needs for some of the recipes she and Travis discovered inside the table drawer. “These are more groceries than you’ve ever bought,” Ben says, bagging them. He drops one of the handwritten notes that has made him famous in Grandon into one of the sacks and places it inside her cart. “Are you having a party?”
“If I was,” Lauren says, “you would be invited!” She leans closer to him, whispering. “I’m learning how to cook.”
“Is someone teaching you?” Ben asks, his face lit up with the childlike wonder she loves most about him.
Lauren thinks for a moment. “Actually, yeah. Someone is teaching me.” She gives him a quick hug before leaving. “Hopefully I’ll be having you over real soon for dinner!” She loads the groceries into her car, finds the sack that includes Ben’s note, and reads it: New things are ahead. Just be sure your eyes are open so you don’t miss them! Have a great day, Ben. She smiles, tucking the note inside the glove compartment, where she has kept every single note from Ben since she first met him.
She loves the way the kitchen now makes her feel with the fresh paint over the once-bland walls, and the cute table positioned right in front of the small bay window. The groceries are soon put away. Lauren pulls out the recipe for chicken enchiladas and sits down at the table, reading through the card once again.
Hello, my sweet girl! Your grandma and I worked together on these enchiladas and finally got the recipe to where it was a winner for all of you. Remember how many your dad ate each time I put these on the table?
Lauren looks at the handwriting with its perfect slant to the right and soft tails that trail the m and n and the curlicue atop the o and imagines a mother so unlike her own, a woman who obviously made dinner for her family each evening and then took the time to write down favorite recipes for her own child. She envisions them sitting down at the dinner table that now sits inside her own kitchen and wonders where they lived and in what era. She glances at the card.
These are nice and plump and perfect for company!