Chapter 14
I cleared my throat as I slid the aluminum casserole pan across the half-circle counter, and her eyes got bigger.
“What is that?” Regina asked me.
“It’s baked creste rigate with meatballs and wild mushrooms,” I answered. “I didn’t pick the mushrooms.”
“Are they meringue?” She knew about the b?che de Noel that we had made, so it was a valid question. Meringue and meatballs wouldn’t have been a pleasant combination.
“No, they’re real.” I watched as she lifted a corner of the foil that covered the dish and inhaled.
I knew how good it smelled, because I’d been getting hungrier and hungrier as I drove over here from Granger’s restaurant where I’d made it.
“This is an apology meal, since my apology texts, emails, and calls haven’t worked. I’m sorry, Regina.”
She understood what I meant. “You should tell that to someone else. Dr. Winter,” she supplied, but I had also understood.
“I have. A lot,” I said, remembering the note I’d written. I’d said it, too, many times. I took out my phone and texted it again so he could read it while he was at the hospital. “I’m on a whole apology tour today.”
“Who else do you have to say it to?” she wondered, but then shook her head. “It’s none of my business.”
“It could be, if we were friends again. I promise that I won’t ever hurt Theo’s feelings.
No, I promise that I’ll try my hardest and if I do it, you can hate me forever.
Look, that’s on my list.” Now I held up the phone and her eyes narrowed as she squinted at screen. Like me, she needed her glasses.
“What is that?” she wondered as she put them on, and then she shook her head. “It’s not English.”
“It’s code. The title says ‘Grace Fixes.’”
“What are you trying to fix?” she asked, and I read one of the problems aloud to her. “You can’t whistle. You can’t? So what?”
“That one is from Nicola. She was trying to be nice by saying something that didn’t matter very much, although it would be a good thing if I could do it. Like, if I wanted to call the dogs.”
“What dogs? Did you get a lot of pets?”
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m working on all of this,” I explained, and scrolled to show her the many, many other things besides whistling.
“I’m working to be a better person.” And this was just the one I’d written out.
I had more in my head that I kept there by reciting them, like prayers at Mass.
“That says, ‘Don’t walk on frozen lakes,’” I translated, pointing. It had come from Addie.
“It’s good advice,” Regina admitted. “What’s this one?”
“‘Don’t be a sneaky bitch.’ My former friend Steff suggested that when I sent out my survey asking what’s wrong with me, and he’s very bitter but he’s correct that it’s bad to be sneaky and a bitch.”
She scrolled down. “There are so many things here. Are you trying to be flawless?”
“No, I want to be a person who’s caring, responsible, and doesn’t chew gum too loud.
That’s on there from my sister Brenna, because apparently I make a lot of excess noise.
I’m working on all of it and gradually, I’ll be good.
” I needed to be good for everyone, including my newest nephew who might have been the cutest baby ever born.
I wasn’t going to tell any of my other siblings that, which was not sneakiness but the fact that I didn’t have a death wish.
“I can understand wanting to improve. That’s why we’re sticking to my New Year’s resolution to go to the gym,” she said, and unconsciously flexed her arm muscles.
It had only been a few months of workouts, abut Theo had mentioned that he was already back to looking like he had in high school when he’d done all the chores on his parents’ farm.
I hadn’t seen that transformation for myself, unfortunately.
“I can understand wanting to improve,” she repeated, “but this is too much. This is crazy.”
I was shocked by that response, which was what I told her. “You’re the last person I would expect to say that. You, of all people, know that I need to improve.”
Regina looked at me and sighed. “Come sit with me and I’ll call Pinar. Let’s have lunch.”
As I walked around the side of her curved desk, she confirmed that I didn’t need to be at work somewhere, and I explained that the garage was closed because most of the employees had gone to a car show as a team. Then she did call for Pinar, who came bustling out with a great story.
“The sexy ophthalmologists in the building across the way got engaged!” she said excitedly. “I saw her ring today when she was pressed up against the window.”
“You have amazing vision,” I complimented. “Even with my new glasses, I couldn’t see a ring from that far.”
She tried to claim that it was the size of the diamond that caught her eye, but then I heard the truth. “She got binoculars,” Regina told me, and pursed her lips so that both of us were aware of her disapproval.
“She could use them to watch the birds around the fake lake. More will be returning now that it’s spring,” I said, deflecting.
“No, I won’t be able to do that.” Pinar took a breath and looked like she was going to cry. “I’m moving to North Carolina after Denton and I get married. He got a great job down there and it’s such an opportunity for us. I was going to tell you, but it’s hard to talk about.”
Regina grabbed a tissue. “It’s a great opportunity,” she repeated woodenly. “And everyone is leaving me.”
After we stopped crying, we finished off the dish of creste rigate and talked a lot about Pinar’s future plans.
I was going to miss her tons and that felt terrible, but I had also started to feel better about repairing things with Regina.
Theo had been telling me to come and talk to her, but really, I’d been afraid.
And that was another item on the list: face things rather than taking off and hiding.
I had come up with that one myself, and it was inspired by how I’d run away from him in the middle of the night.
I was relieved and glad that I seemed to be conquering one more problem, although I was backsliding on another.
My current landlord, Harry Bailly, had reported that I was kicking hard enough at night that I’d made a picture fall off the wall in his living room.
I wasn’t quite sure how to work on that one, though, because I couldn’t stop myself from dreaming, and the dreams weren’t good.
Anyway, I had to move onto my second stop for the day, but there was one more thing to do here. I said goodbye to the ladies in the medical office and walked down to the fake lake.
“Watch out,” a voice called to me. “The geese have returned.”
I looked up, smiling. Theo had said he would meet me, but he had also backslid more on his fake New Year’s resolution to reduce his workload.
He just couldn’t, he’d confessed. He couldn’t see the notifications on his phone and know that people were waiting to hear from him, patients and their loved ones who were at the lowest moments of their lives.
He couldn’t delay in reading all the research, because he wanted to be the best possible doctor.
He couldn’t stop doing any of the things that ate into the time that he needed to live a life outside of his job, in other words.
“Did you have lunch?” I greeted him in return.
“I did. I ate the delicious sandwich and the container of stuff that you put into my car. How did you get into my car?”
The container of stuff had been roasted vegetables, very healthy.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. If we walk this way, we can avoid where I think there might be baby geese or eggs, and therefore the parents might not bite us.
” He was in favor of avoiding that, because he knew that their beaks looked small but were actually very powerful.
“And I don’t want to fight them, because how awful would it be if I hurt a goose by mistake? ” I added.
“You were trying to be their friend when they bit you,” he remembered. “But your sisters say that in a fight—”
“But I’m not going to physically fight anyone again, unless they come after you. Or my family,” I added, “or Regina, or Pinar. I’m going to miss her a lot when she moves.”
“Regina is very, very upset.” He sighed. “I am, too. It’s not just replacing an amazing employee, but losing a friend.”
“I’ll help you make more friends,” I suggested as we sat on one of the benches, and he put his arm around my shoulders.
“You do know a lot of people.”
“But one of the items—” I stopped myself, because he didn’t like to hear about the lists.
“One thing I’ve been working on is trying to figure out who is actually a friend, and who isn’t.
Like, I would say that Fernand and I are not going to be close anymore, not after how he just acted about Quintus Hortensius’s new aquarium set-up. It was a total betrayal.”
“I’m a friend,” Theo said, and I nodded.
I had accepted that our friendship had limits, which was something else that was on my list, the mental one where I kept all the most personal stuff.
I didn’t need to sleep with him or anyone else, because I could place boundaries around all my relationships.
I put my head on his shoulder and he rested his on mine. “It was a hard morning.”
I knew it meant he had lost someone. “I’m sorry.”
“There was nothing—”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I already know that you did everything that you could,” I said, and he nodded.
“I wish there could have been more, though.” He was quiet until he added something that I wasn’t expecting. “Avoid non-sequiturs” was on my non-mental list via Sophie, who’d complained that talking to me was sometimes like playing twenty questions. She preferred euchre.
Anyway, it was definitely a non-sequitur when he asked, “Do you like horses?”
“Yes, although we never had any at the animal shelter. We just weren’t equipped for them or for elephants, either. Why?”