Chapter 35
35
POLLY
For dinner, I’m making Hank his favorite: country-fried steak.
Show me a man who doesn’t like fried steak, and I’ll show you a man who doesn’t know what he’s missing. I use my mother’s recipe, which was passed down from her mother. Mom convinced me to make it the first time I had Hank over for dinner, back when we were still dating. From what you’ve told me about Hank, he sounds like a man who would appreciate a good country-fried steak. She was right. I think Hank fell in love with me the day he tried my fried steak.
She was right about Hank too. The first time she met him, she told me that he was the one I would marry. I had already been thinking as much, but I trusted her opinion more than my own. Since she’s died, I’ve been feeling a little lost. How do you know what’s right or wrong without your mother telling you so?
But when I’m at my lowest, I still search for comfort in her final words to me.
Someday, your family will be complete.
And now I’m going to make it true.
I coat the steaks in eggs, then dredge them in a mixture of flour, saltines, and lots of seasoning. Then I fry them in the skillet until the coating is brown and crispy. I’ve made country-fried steak so many times, I could make it in my sleep.
To entertain myself, I turn on the little television we keep in the kitchen. The screen is about the size of my hand, and we don’t use it too often, but I’m curious about any updates about Tegan’s disappearance, so I tune in to the local news. There’s a brief mention about her, and I can’t help but note there’s no mention of a husband. It doesn’t surprise me to get confirmation that she was lying.
As the steak sizzles in the frying pan, I mash some potatoes in a bowl. I pour in lots of butter and cream and salt. The mashed potatoes are just getting to the right consistency when the front door slams—Hank is home.
There’s a moment of silence while he takes off his boots; then his heavy footsteps echo through the hall until he stops at the doorway to the kitchen. I smile up at him from the stove. “I’m making your favorite,” I say. “Can you smell it?”
Hank stares at me. “Is she still here?”
“Of course she is. I told you she’d be staying a few days. She’s fine with it.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just turns around and leaves the kitchen, his footsteps straining the wood on the stairs. A few minutes later, the shower turns on.
Clearly, Hank still isn’t happy about Tegan staying with us. Fine. He’ll get used to the idea. It’s a means to an end.
The steak is sufficiently brown, so I pull it off the stove. Hank will be a few more minutes in the shower, so I make a plate for Tegan. I’ve been down to the basement once since lunch to help her with the bedpan, and I assured her that the ambulance is on its way. That seemed to placate her, but it won’t work for long. So I grind up a tablet of Benadryl and mix it into her mashed potatoes. That will keep her quiet tonight.
I also slice her steak into pieces for her. No good will come out of giving that girl a knife.
When I open the door to the basement, Tegan is quiet. I know she is still down there, because where else could she have gone? But it makes me uneasy when she’s so silent.
“I brought you some dinner!” I announce.
Her eyes look almost hollow as she stares at me. She doesn’t look good. Even if she didn’t have a broken ankle, she’d struggle to leave the bed. “Where is the ambulance? Why isn’t it here yet?”
I lift a shoulder. “Who knows? This isn’t a big city like you’re used to. People move at a slower pace here. It can take a while for things to happen.”
“It’s been hours .”
I deposit the plate on the tray in front of her. She barely looks at it. She’s angry with me. “Maybe they went to the wrong address?” I suggest.
She stares up at me, her eyes bloodshot. “Did you actually even call for an ambulance?”
She’s young, but she’s not an idiot.
“Of course I did.”
“Because I feel like if you had called,” she says, “then the ambulance would definitely be here by now. I don’t think we would still be waiting.”
“Like I said, maybe they got the wrong address.”
“Well, maybe you should call again.”
I nod slowly. “I could do that. But first, let’s have some dinner.”
I look down at the mashed potatoes heaped on her plate. If she finishes that, she won’t be thinking about leaving anymore. But Tegan doesn’t seem interested in the mashed potatoes. She just keeps staring up at me with her red-rimmed eyes.
“I don’t think you called for an ambulance at all,” she says.
“Don’t be silly.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
I place my hands on my hips. “Even if I didn’t, it was for your own good. Do you think you would be better off under a surgeon’s knife than here?”
“It’s not your decision! It’s my decision!”
I push her plate slightly closer to her on the tray table. “Maybe you should make better decisions then.”
What happens next happens so quickly that if I had blinked, I would have missed the whole thing. She picks up her fork off the plate I brought her, and for a moment, I’m relieved. She’s going to drop it and eat her dinner. But that’s not what she does at all. She raises the fork over her head, and before I can process what’s happening, she has plunged the prongs deep into the flesh of my hand.