Besides, much as I liked margaritas, they were a special occasion drink. Most of the time beer was just fine. If I had one now, though, I would either say something I really regretted or just fall asleep on Elliot’s kitchen island. Neither of those was how I wanted to start this—whatever this was—off.
I finished my sandwich.
“Do you want the tour?” Elliot asked me.
“Tour?”
“Of the house.” He gestured around us.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
The house was trapezoid—not quite a true square, but roughly—the hallways forming a courtyard around a small garden in the middle. One hallway led past the garage and to Elliot’s old room, where I was sleeping. Continuing around the corner led down the hall to the master bedroom with its own bath. Continuing aroundanothercorner put you on the hallway with the office—its door closed. There was also another room, a closet, and another half-bath on that hallway. The last one—the one you’d end up in if you turned left instead of right from the front door—led to the kitchen and living room, with the door to the basement next to the kitchen.
The whole thing was on a hillside—you drove up it and around a corner from the highway—with a dug-out exposed doorway in the basement accessible from the side. It was a single door, though, which is why Elliot apparently used the garage, with its wide garage door, for the large-sized projects.
Almost everything in the house was natural—granite counter tops in the kitchen, polished slate on the kitchen and entryway floors, stone tile on the bathroom floors, wood paneling andtrim, solid wood cabinets and tables and desks. Nothing laminate or particle board.
Probably because I was in the house of a master carpenter.
But it was everything—woven rugs and baskets made from reeds or needles, and artistic pieces woven from wool and feathers and leather or carved from wood or stone or a mixture of materials, like a stylized deer head with what appeared to be real antlers. The whole house—aside from the carpets and walls and giant glass windows—seemed to be drawn from the natural world.
It was stunning.
I wondered how much of that was Elliot and how much had been his parents’ choices. It seemed possibly rude to ask, though, so I didn’t.
It did make me wonder if this was a house or a shrine—if this stuff was Elliot’s, or even partly Elliot’s, that was one thing. But if he’d just moved in and changed nothing, made nothing his own… then that was a little worrying. And probably not healthy. You shouldn’t live your life in someone else’s house.
I know, pot-kettle.
I was working on it.
I’m a pretty good cook,but so was Elliot Crane. In my head, I’d imagined somehow wowing him with my cooking skills, being able to offset his generosity by providing almost-gourmet meals that he’d appreciate the way Noah appreciated my cooking. Noah was not a particularly good cook—he wasn’t terrible, but his cooking skills were pretty limited. He could put together pasta and a jar of sauce and cut things up, but he didn’t have an understanding of how to combine flavors or choose spices.
Elliot definitely did.
“It’s Judy Hart’s recipe,” he informed me when I told him, around a full mouth, that the chicken was amazing. “Hers is better.” He let out a soft, almost grunting laugh. “Val says that she must be some sort of kitchen witch.”
“Hart’s mom?”
He nodded, cutting another piece off his chicken. “Yeah. I can use the same recipe, but hers is always better. I’ve even done it alongside her—and hers isstillbetter.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just smiled at him.
“Do you cook?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Yeah. I did most of the cooking for Noah and I, because Noah really doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t like to cook?”
“He’s… not good at it,” I replied, loading both chicken and potato on my fork and putting it in my mouth. “He’s not going to set the kitchen on fire or anything, but if it doesn’t come packaged with five or fewer steps, he just gives up.”
Elliot grimaced, eating a forkful of green beans. “I’d learn how to cook just to avoid having to eat boxed or frozen dinners all the time.”
“Noah is a living garbage disposal,” I told him. “He will literally eat anything.”
So would I, although I tried not to have to make that choice. But the way we’d grown up, we learned to eat what we could, when we could. Because before we left home, we never knew when our parents were going to institute a fast to cleanse our souls, and after, it wasn’t always easy to get enough meals in a day for Noah’s metabolism in the public school system. So I often gave him at least half of mine.
I was a skinny kid. So was Noah. I didn’t put on weight until I was in my twenties and finally had enough stability in my life that I could eat mostly what I wanted, when I wanted it. At leastuntil last year, although at least there were some halfway decent dairy-substitute options so that I could still have things like ice cream and cheesecake—that were almost as good. Give me a few more years, and I might not even remember what the real thing tasted like.
