“Somebody should stay with Dad,” Cath said.
“Go, Cath,” their dad said after a few days of this. “I’m not going to lose control sitting here watching Iron Chef.”
Sometimes Cath went.
Sometimes she stayed home and waited up for Wren.
Sometimes Wren didn’t come home at all.
“I don’t want you to see me shit-faced,” Wren explained when she rolled in one morning. “You make me uncomfortable.”
“Oh, I make you uncomfortable,” Cath said. “That’s priceless.”
Their dad went back to work after a week. The next week he started jogging before work, and that’s how Cath knew he was off his meds. Exercise was his most effective self-medication—it’s what he always did when he was trying to take control.
She started coming downstairs every morning when she heard the coffeemaker beeping. To check on him, to see him off. “It’s way too cold to jog outside,” she tried to argue one morning.
Her dad handed her his coffee—decaf—while he laced up his shoes. “It feels good. Come with me.”
He could tell she was trying to look in his eyes, to take his mental temperature, so he took her chin and let her. “I’m fine,” he said gently. “Back on the horse, Cath.”
“What’s the horse?” she sighed, watching him pull on a South High hoodie. “Jogging? Working too much?”
“Living,” he said, a little too loud. “Life is the horse.”
Cath would make him breakfast while he ran—and after he ate and left for work, she’d fall back to sleep on the couch. After a few days of this, it already felt like a routine. Routines were good for her dad, but he needed help sticking to them.
Cath would usually wake up again when Wren came downstairs or came home.
This morning, Wren walked into the house and immediately headed into the kitchen. She came back into the living room with a cold cup of coffee, licking a fork. “Did you make omelettes?”
Cath rubbed her eyes and nodded. “We had leftovers from Los Portales, so I threw them in.” She sat up. “That’s decaf.”
“He’s drinking decaf? That’s good, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Make me an omelette, Cath. You know I suck at it.”
“What will you give me?” Cath asked.
Wren laughed. It’s what they used to say to each other. What will you give me? “What do you want?” Wren asked. “Do you have any chapters you need betaed?”
It was Cath’s turn to say something clever, but she didn’t know what to say. Because she knew that Wren didn’t mean it, about betaing her fic, and because it was pathetic how much Cath wished that she did. What if they spent the rest of Christmas break like that? Crowded around a laptop, writing the beginning of the end of Carry On, Simon together.
“Nah,” Cath said finally. “I’ve got a doctoral student in Rhode Island editing all my stuff. She’s a machine.” Cath stood up and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make you an omelette; I think we’ve got some canned chili.”
Wren followed. She jumped up onto the counter next to the stove and watched Cath get the milk and eggs from the refrigerator. Cath could crack them one-handed.
Eggs were her thing. Breakfasts, really. She’d learned to make omelettes in junior high, watching YouTube videos. She could do poached eggs, too, and sunny side up. And scrambled, obviously.
Wren was better at dinners. She’d gone through a phase in junior high when everything she made started with French onion soup mix. Meat loaf. Beef Stroganoff. Onion burgers. “All we need is soup mix,” she’d announced. “We can throw all these other spices away.”
“You girls don’t have to cook,” their dad would say.
But it was either cook or hope that he remembered to pick up Happy Meals on the way home from work. (There was still a toy box upstairs packed with hundreds of plastic Happy Meal toys.) Besides, if Cath made breakfast and Wren made dinner, that was at least two meals their dad wouldn’t eat at a gas station.
“QuikTrip isn’t a gas station,” he’d say. “It’s an everything-you-really-need station. And their bathrooms are immaculate.”
Wren leaned over the pan and watched the eggs start to bubble. Cath pushed her back, away from the fire.
“This is the part I always mess up,” Wren said. “Either I burn it on the outside or it’s still raw in the middle.”
“You’re too impatient,” Cath said.
“No, I’m too hungry.” Wren picked up the can opener and spun it around her finger. “Do you think we should call Grandma?”
“Well, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” Cath said, “so we should probably call Grandma.”
“You know what I mean.…”
“He seems like he’s doing okay.”