Page 68 of Hushed

“I’m asking now,” I say.

He smiles at the cutting board. “Then pull up a chair and watch. You might learn something.”

I don’t pull up a chair. Instead, I stand beside him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his skin. He smells like sleep and butter.

“First thing,” he says, “is the tourtière filling. Your mom’s recipe?”

“I emailed her last night. She sent it with approximately seven hundred words of instructions and warnings.”

He’d asked me at about eleven what I actually wanted to feed them, and I’d said something about a beef thing in a magazine, and he’d waited. So I said tourtière. And then I said cretons and fèves au lard, and then I stopped, because I could hear my own voice doing it.

“Okay,” he’d said. “Then that’s what we’re making.”

“Good. That means it matters to her. I had to use Google Translate for most of this.” He sets down the knife and looks at the printed email I’d left on the counter. “Okay. Cinnamon, clove, allspice. Ground pork and veal? Seriously? I wanted to make sure I translated that right.” He points at the translation he’s sketched onto the email.

“That’s what she said.”

He shakes his head. “Then that’s what we do.”

He starts browning the meat, and the kitchen fills with the sizzle and smell of it. I watch his hands—the way he breaks up the meat with a wooden spoon, the way he tilts the pan to distribute the heat evenly. Everything he does looks effortless.

“You can help, you know,” he says. “You’re not a spectator in your own kitchen.”

“I don’t know what to do.” My cheeks flame from embarrassment. “I normally just cook simple things so I don’t starve.”

“Then I’ll teach you.” He steps back and gestures to the cutting board, where another onion waits. “Dice that.”

“Cool. I can do that.”

Apparently, I could not. Not to his liking. After the first few strokes, he moves behind me and positions the knife in my hand. His chest is warm against my back. His hand guides mine through the first cut, then the next. The onion falls into uneven pieces.

“They’re not uniform,” I say. “I think you’re doing this just so you can have the excuse to get close to me.”

“You bet I did. Keep going.”

I keep going. My eyes start to water. Levi reaches past me for the meat, adding my sad onions to the pan without comment. The sizzle changes pitch.

“Now the spices,” he says. He hands me the cinnamon. “This is your family’s recipe, you have to do the honors. Also, I don’t think I can bring myself to add cinnamon to a perfectly innocent piece of meat.”

“How much did she say?”

“She didn’t. So just…to taste.”

The smell hits me like a physical thing. It’s not just spices. It’s my grand-mère’s kitchen in Trois-Rivières, the winter I was seven. It’s my mother crimping the crust, because she was determined to do it just the same as grand-mère. It’s my father coming in from the cold, stamping snow off his boots, saying ça sent bon before he’d even taken off his coat.

I smile.

“Did you eat this a lot at home?”

“Sometimes. I never thought of it as special, but now…” I shrug. “You always know who you are most when you’re not there to be part of it.”

Levi turns me to face him. His blue eyes are serious. “Believe me, I get that.”

“Now,” he says, stepping back. “Tell me about the pastry. Your mom have opinions about lard versus butter?”

I laugh, and it comes out wet. “She has opinions about everything. Didn’t yours?”

His face grows strained. “Momma preferred margarine.”