Page 60 of Never Alone
"Good." Cole let go of Noah's hands. "Now we let it rest a minute before we do the next one."
Noah looked up to ask his next question and saw me.
"Mom!"
He came around the table fast and wrapped his arms around my middle. He smelled like glue and the slight chemical sweetness of the stickers from the decal sheet.
"Hey, bud."
"Cole's helping me build a Spitfire."
"I see that."
Cole was already standing. He had a dish towel slung over his shoulder.
"Hey." He said it the way he always said it. Same flat, even tone. "How was your day?"
"Mrs. Thompson sent me home."
His eyes stayed on me a second longer than they would have a week ago.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay. Just—a long morning."
"I made dinner. It's been keeping warm in the oven."
"You didn't have to."
"You weren't here. The two of us got hungry."
The two of us. Cole said it without any weight on it, the way a person said a thing because it was the most natural way to say it. The two of us were Cole and Noah. The two of us were a unit that had eaten lunch together while I'd been at the bakery counting boxes I hadn't actually counted. The two of us were a thing that hadn't existed eight months ago and now did.
I took my coat the rest of the way off and hung it on the back of the chair instead of the hook by the door.
"I'm going to go wash up."
Cole had made a roast chicken. He'd cooked the vegetables in the same pan—carrots and small potatoes browned in the bottom. There was bread on the cutting board. He'd warmed it in the oven. Noah had set the table with three places, the way Cole had taught him to set the table—fork on the left, knife on the right, glass to the upper right.
I sat down. Cole brought over the pan and started serving.
"This looks good," I said.
"It's chicken."
"It's a chicken better than a chicken should be."
He gave me half a smile. The kind I'd watched him give Davis the one time I had been at the firehouse. Quick, then gone.
Noah piled a leg and a thigh onto his plate without being asked. He had gotten over asking permission for second helpings about a month ago, which had felt like its own small graduation. I'd watched him learn that food could just be food at this table—that asking for more was not going to get him alecture about appetite, that taking what he needed was not going to get him a lesson about gratitude.
Cole sat and passed the bread to me. I took a piece and passed it to Noah.
We ate for a few minutes without talking. The radio was off. The window over the sink showed the sky going copper.
"I picked Noah up from school," Cole said.
"I figured."
