Page 63 of Hushed

“I kinda guessed.” I give him the bags in my hand. “There’s more in the truck.”

He looks over my shoulder at the Ford F-150 parked next to his. “You have a…truck.”

“I don’t tool around in a motorcycle all the time,” I answer with a smile. “If you can get these into the fridge, I’ll grab the rest.”

“The…rest,” Bastien repeats. He swallows and smiles nervously at me. “I’ll just leave the door open.” He scurries away while I make it back with my duffel and the rest of the groceries.

I close the door with the back of my heel and kick off my boots next to the door. “See? I’m already housebroken,” I joke to Bastien.

“Sure.” He looks visibly nervous.

Bastien lives in a townhouse that looks identical to the ones on either side of the street and on either side of him. It’s long and narrow. On my left is a stairway. To the right is a living room that looks a bit barren. Directly ahead is a dining room. It has the quiet feeling of a place that hasn’t been lived in yet, in which the furniture has been placed but the personal touches are still waiting to be unpacked.

The kitchen is large enough to have a small table in it, and Bastien is just closing the refrigerator door. “I already had milk,” he says.

“Well, now you have more.” I look around.

Bastien’s kitchen is a disaster. It’s chaotic in that way that says I unpacked only what I absolutely needed and shoved everything else into cabinets at random. I open a drawer looking for a spatula and find a nest of twist ties, a wine opener, and what I’m pretty sure is a meat thermometer still in its packaging. I wish he had at least left the equipment out on the counter where I could take inventory, rather than shoving everything back into whatever random drawer and cabinet he had kept them in before.

“So you moved in August, and now it’s October. And are you sure this is the best knife you have?” I hold up a paring knife.

“It does the job.”

“No, baby boy. It has never done the job. This poor thing has no idea what its job is.”

“I do have better knives, but I don’t know where they are. Also, I don’t really cook cook. I mean, I make really simple things. Scrambled eggs and soup when I’m sick. Chicken browned in butter.”

“What’s your biggest mixing bowl?” I ask.

He opens a cabinet and closes it. He opens another. Pulls out a bowl that would generously hold four servings of cereal. “This?”

“That’s adorable. No.”

We spend the next ten minutes excavating his kitchen. I find the good bowl in a box labeled WASHROOM in Sharpie. The bowl, and several of the attachments, for the stand mixer is in the coat closet. The stand mixer itself he unearths in the guest bedroom. His knives—and they’re good knives, the kind someone’s mother gives as a graduation gift—are still wrapped in their original protective sleeves. I resist the urge to give him a side-eye.

“I was definitely going to make my mom’s poutine,” he says.

“Which is what?”

“Like French fries, but with cheese curds and gravy and…things.”

I consider this. “Are we sure about this?”

He gives me a look that says that this is one of the few things he’s really thought through and I sigh. “We’ll talk about it later. Let me get started on chopping the onions.”

“For tomorrow’s meal?”

“No. For today’s. Aren’t you hungry?” I chop methodically.

He hangs back and leans against the archway that opens onto the dining area.

“You’re really good.”

“I worked in a kitchen all through high school.” I dice the onion with mathematical efficiency. “So you can thank the Peterboro Country Club for it.” I get the cubed onions into a bowl. “We’re doing a chicken stew, and you’re going to love it.”

He’s silent. “I really wanted to thank you,” he begins.

I look over my shoulder. He’s leaning against the wall, supporting himself by putting his hands behind his back. I can just picture him gripping the corners of that wall for all he’s worth.