Page 37 of The New Place

“We’re doing fish tacos.” Dan pops a triangle of chocolate into his mouth. “Though I’m having an appetizer.”

“Let me help cook.” Abbot hangs his coat on the overstuffed rack. He’s missed evenings like this so much, the delight of time spent with Ned’s family, such a contrast to his empty house.

He can come over more often if he moves. Make a regular habit of it, rather than waiting weeks between visits as he and Ned alternate between Boston and Portland. It will be so much simpler to live closer, to fold himself deeper into the rhythm of life here.

And to do so without worry. Because that’s what Cheryl and Dan really give him, the alleviation of his chronic concern about whether he's truly welcome and not intruding, his fear that they're too polite to tell him he isn't wanted. Come in, they say of their family and their home, and they mean it.

“I have to show you what I learned,” Dan says, leading him to the counter.

“Don’t let him cut himself,” Cheryl says.

“I saw it on a cooking show.” Dan slices an avocado in two. He scoops out both halves carefully, setting them on the cutting board. “How was your trip?”

Too long. Excruciating. Better only that it’s over. “It was nice to spend so much time with Liesl,” he says, which is the one positive he clung to over those slow weeks. Not that she was especially thrilled the entire time, looking at him sourly as often as she laughed.

“Ned says she’s visiting soon?”

“The middle of February. Her school has a short break, so she’s flying over.”

“All by herself? They grow up so fast, don’t they?”

“It’s a direct flight from Geneva to Boston.”

“Oh, that’s easier then. Need us to pick her up?”

How easily Dan offers this, extending himself for Abbot and his family without a second thought. Warmth fills Abbot, this simple pleasure of spending time in this house, with these people.

“I’m planning to drive down, but thank you,” he says, and then before he knows he’s going to, he adds, “I’m thinking of moving closer.”

“You are? That’s amazing. You found a job?”

“Hopefully,” Abbot says. “It’d be nice to finish at Callahan this spring, and be down here for the fall semester.”

“We’d miss Ned,” Dan says as he cuts the avocado in thin slices. “But couldn’t be happier. Now watch this.”

“Miss Ned?” Abbot asks.

Dan’s mouth is pursed in concentration as he spreads the slices into a line, then starts spiraling the line of them in on themselves. “It turns out like a flower,” Dan says. “Well, it looked better online. Let me try again.”

“It looks lovely,” Abbot says. Not much like a flower, but perhaps if he squints a bit.

Peggy comes back into the kitchen, shoving between them with the tube of chestnut paste in her hands. “We should try this now.”

“I think your father wanted you to have dinner first,” Abbot says.

She turns her face up to him, her mouth ringed with chocolate. “No.”

“Ned?” Abbot calls to him where he’s clicking through TV channels in the other room.

“He said that because you were gone so long, tonight is special,” Peggy says. “So we can have dessert now.”

“Did he really say that?”

“He did,” Peggy says, staring up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” Dan says, holding up his hands when Abbot turns to him. “I’m just in charge of the avocados.”

“Ned,” Abbot calls again, and Ned finally leaves the TV on a basketball game and comes over.