Seth hangs up, laughing. “Pure chaos over there.”
“Are you regretting not going?”
“Not even a little bit,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my neck. “Now, what can I do to help?”
I put him to work peeling and slicing potatoes for the gratin while I grate cheese and chop onions. Cooking elaborate meals with Seth is a joy. Maybe, I think, as I watch him squint at the potatoes to cut them as thin as possible, I really do want this.
Full-time.
Full stop.
Forever.
“Spuds chopped, chef,” Seth says, presenting me with a cutting board of potatoes sliced with such precision they’re nearly translucent.
“Beautiful work.”
“Is it weird that I’m sad we’re not making green bean casserole? Are you sure we don’t want green bean casserole?”
“I told you. No beige, cream-of-mushroom-soup-based foods are allowed.”
He sighs tragically. “Your loss, McMarkson. What else can I do?”
“We’re good for now.”
“Mind if I explore around the property? I’m a little antsy since I didn’t run.”
“Of course.”
I focus on assembling the layers of the gratin, adding dots of butter and sprinkles of flour and pepper and salt and thyme and Parmesan. It’s meditative, and I feel content.
I put it in the oven. That’s the last of my prep, so I decide to call my mom.
“Hello, darling daughter!” she trills into the phone. “I’m hosting lunch for Bruce’s family and we have a houseful at the moment. Can I call you back in a few hours?”
“You little scamp! You didn’t tell me you were meeting his family!”
She giggles. “Surprise!”
She finally introduced me to her boyfriend when I was in Florida for Jon and Kevin’s wedding. He’s a soft-spoken retired financial advisor with kind eyes who dotes on my mother and told me about all her latest sales achievements with so much pride and excitement I wonder how she ever fell for my dad.
Look at us. The Marks women, in healthy relationships with men we love.
“Okay, Mom,” I say. “Let me know how it goes. Love you.”
Just as I end the call, I get an incoming one from my father.
Well that’s out of character. He usually doesn’t even text on Thanksgiving, let alone phone me. Things have been polite, if a bit strained, since the scene at the airport, which we’ve tacitly agreed to pretend never happened. When I saw him in LA we stuck mostly to business—him not asking about Seth, me not inquiring about Celeste.
I did not try to hug him.
But he’s had surprisingly detailed notes on my drafts of the screenplay, and I can’t help but take a certain satisfaction in his close attention to my work. Apparently, it took a script to get me a seat at the table when it comes to receiving his respect. I wish simply being his daughter would have conferred that privilege. But he is who he is.
“Hi, Dad,” I say. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Thanks, toots. Same to you.”
“What are you doing to celebrate?” I ask.
