I thought she should make chocolate chip. That’s my favorite. But she says these are better for us.”
“I like chocolate chip, too,” Gabe admitted. “I wouldn’t turn them down. But these are great.” He took a bite and closed his eyes to better savor the burst of flavor. “Really great,” he mumbled a minute later.
He gobbled two before he remembered he shouldn’t waste the time eating when he was supposed to be—teaching, he guessed. He turned his mind back to his woodworking class and said, “I want you to do some measuring, and then you can experiment with the saw.”
Having seen how clumsy Mark was, Gabe did a lot of talking about safety precautions but was still a little unnerved when they got to the stage of practicing first with a handsaw, then a jigsaw and finally a circular saw. Interestingly, he found that the boy was both careful and precise. His focus was as intense as Gabe’s was when he worked. Gabe began to relax. They talked about the options for corner joints and decided that for Mark’s first effort, they’d go for a rabbet joint, good-looking and relatively simple.
He did some marking, chose clamps for his scrap lumber and practiced cuts with various saws. They talked about woods, and Gabe explained what his next stage was for the three separate cabinetry jobs he had going. Mark eventually decided to use cherry for his box; he liked the rich color of a darker stain better than the look of light woods. Truthfully, Gabe did, too, although he especially liked being able to use contrast.
It felt companionable putting sandwiches together with the kid again, with the bonus today that they both ate a couple more cookies. Gabe carefully put the top back on the container. Ciara had sent a couple dozen. That would keep him in cookies for...well, that depended on how greedy he allowed himself to be, didn’t it?
He evaded the boy’s hints that he’d like to learn to ride, too—half the day was already shot—but he did allow Mark to feed a couple of carrots to the horses again before he sent him home.
Gabe pretended he was just giving himself a minute to decompress when he stood outside watching the boy pedal home, but he knew better. He felt some sense of responsibility. The road didn’t have much of a shoulder. It wasn’t ideal for bike riding.
He was disconcerted to find he was smiling when he walked back into his workshop.
* * *
“THAT DOESN’T SMELL very good.”
Ciara turned to see that Mark had appeared in the kitchen.
“Shut the door,” she said hastily—too late.
Watson burst into the kitchen, leaping to put his paws on her chest, his wet tongue catching her chin before she could take evasive maneuvers. She had to fend him off with an elbow. “Mark!”
Eventually, he propelled the reluctant dog out of the kitchen and latched the swinging door. Ciara hoped the young dog would learn enough manners soon so that they didn’t have to exile him from any room where they were cooking or eating, but for now, she was grateful for the door. In their previous house, she wouldn’t have had any way to keep Watson from putting his paws on the dinner table and snatching food off Mark’s plate.
Above the whine that penetrated the closed door, she said, “This is a new recipe. There’s nothing in it you shouldn’t like.” She carried the casserole dish to the table and set it on a hot pad. “Try it.”
“I don’t like it when foods are all mixed together,” he said disconsolately.
“You like raisin-oatmeal cookies. Flour, sugar, oatmeal, raisins and several other ingredients, all mixed together.”
“That’s different.” He sighed loudly and plopped down in his place.
“You like spaghetti,” she pointed out.
“It’s not new!” he burst out.
Ciara only laughed. “Try this casserole. It may surprise you.”
She poured them both milk, dished up the peas she’d chosen because they were a favorite of his and sat down herself. She watched as he used the serving spoon to transfer a minuscule amount of the cheesy hamburger bake onto his plate, but said nothing.
He stared down at his plate. “Dad said he’d call tonight. Do you think he already did and we didn’t hear it?”
Familiar tension felt like wires strung through her body being pulled tight. “I think I’d have heard the phone, but you can check voice mail. After dinner,” she added, reading his mind even before he started to jump to his feet.
“But Mom—”
She took a bite to give herself a minute. “It’s only six-thirty. If he said this evening, it’ll probably be later anyway.”
Mark hunched his shoulders and stabbed at his peas. Several went skittering off his plate. “He’ll forget. He always forgets.”
He was right. Jeff did always forget. She wished he wouldn’t make promises at all, however casual. He knew how literal Mark was. In his world view, if you said you were going to do something, you did it.
“Your dad is pretty busy these days,” she said gently. New wife, new baby, promotion at work. Out with the old.
No, not fair—the new family and promotion at work had absolutely nothing to do with his disengagement from his first son. That happened as soon as he began to suspect Mark wasn’t a chip off the old block. The son he had once described as a “retard” was her fault, he had declared. Jeff was unimpressed with the reality that Mark scored at 95 percent or above on most standardized tests given in school.
“You know what I mean,” he’d growled.
Yes, she did. He meant Mark wasn’t a swaggering, sports-crazy, rough-and-tough boy’s boy. Instead, he was thoughtful, given to intense interests— none of which his father shared—and, at least so far, spectacularly unathletic. Ciara could not understand how any of that made Mark unlovable to a parent.
“How’d things go with Mr. Tennert today?” she asked in an attempt to divert him.
It worked. His face brightened. “He said to call him Gabe, you know.”
“Right.” She was trying to stick to Mr. Tennert, who sounded like a neighbor, versus Gabe, who was a sexy guy she found herself thinking about way more often than was healthy.
“It was good.” He chattered on, explaining how today they’d worked on finding the missing angles in triangles and quadrilaterals.
At one point she leveled a look at his plate, and he took a tiny bite then a larger one before he continued his enthusiastic recitation about complementary, supplementary, vertical and adjacent angles. Ciara pinned an interested smile on her face and tuned him out.
“He remembers everything about geometry,” Mark concluded with satisfaction. “That’s good, because I think it’s cool.”
Panic briefly raised its head. What if Gabe Tennert lost interest in helping Mark with his math?
I can research anything, she reminded herself. I am perfectly capable of staying ahead of a seventh grader.
