The nurse glanced at the monitor, then touched my shoulder on her way out. “I’ll let you two have a minute.”
Once we were alone, I picked up the damp cloth from the nightstand and pressed it to his forehead, needing my hands to do something.
“You know,” I said, forcing lightness into my voice, “those pancakes were never actually that good. Burnt at every point, every single time.”
A breath slipped out of him. It might have been a laugh.
“You still ate every one,” he rasped.
“Only because I was terrified you’d make me eat oatmeal if I complained.”
That was Frank. He’d married my mother when I was four, and for a long time I gave him nothing to work with. Not “Frank.” Not “Dad.” Not one word. When he asked if I wanted toast, I just pointed at the loaf. When he tried to read me a bedtime story, I disappeared under the blanket. My real father had vanished before I was old enough to miss him, and some instinct in me already knew not to trust a man who showed up with a suitcase.
Frank never forced it. He noticed I liked strawberry jam spread edge to edge. He sat outside my door during thunderstorms because I wouldn’t let him past it. And every Sunday, without fail, he pressed apple-cinnamon batter into little stars with a scratched-up metal cutter.
Three months into their marriage, I wandered into the kitchen one morning and called him Dad before I’d even decided to. He dropped the spatula. Neither of us said a word about it — he just slid the least-burnt pancake onto my plate, like that settled something.
