6. Ellie
— ? —
Ellie
I come home from work at five to find Daphne telling our chef what he’s allowed to cook.
“Nothing fried. Nothing with a crust. He’ll thank me for it.” She’s standing at the counter in silk pajamas, a green juice in her hand, and on the counter where Aunt June’s recipe box has sat since the day I moved in, there’s a juicer the size of a small car.
The recipe box is gone.
No, not gone. I can see it now, shoved into the drawer with the takeout menus, the corner sticking out, the lid askew. Shoved in sideways, in with the takeout menus.
Jenna is at the sink with her back to me, and I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way she’s scrubbing the same dish over and over, the way she won’t turn around.
She won’t meet my eyes. She’s been like this for weeks now, nervous and jumpy, and I don’t know why and I don’t have the energy to find out.
“What the fuck is this?” I say.
Daphne turns around with that smile, the one she used to use in high school when she was about to be cruel.
The one she used in the hallway. The one she used when she “accidentally” spilled her drink on my dress at junior prom and then offered me a napkin in front of everybody.
The one she’s been using on me since we were fifteen.
“Oh! Ellie. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“That’s my aunt’s recipe box.”
“Is it?” She blinks at me, all innocence, her green eyes wide and empty. “I had no idea. It was just sitting there taking up space, so I moved it.”
“It wasn’t taking up space. It was exactly where I put it.”
I walk to the drawer and take out the recipe box and put it back on the counter where it belongs.
The lid is crooked and I straighten it. One of the cards has slipped out and I tuck it back in.
It’s the recipe for Sunday cookies, Aunt June’s handwriting faded but still readable, the card stained with butter and sugar from a hundred batches.
It’s the only thing of Aunt June’s I have left.
The only thing in this whole house that was mine before Jacob was.
The cards are yellowed and soft at the edges and they smell like her kitchen, like rosemary and lemon and home.
I can see her handwriting on every one, the careful cursive she learned in school, the notes she added over the years: “add more butter” and “Ellie’s favorite” and “double for church.”
“Don’t touch my things,” I say.
“I didn’t know it was yours.” Daphne puts her hand on her chest, her voice dripping with fake concern. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so stressed with Daddy, my memory’s just gone. You understand.”
“I don’t understand. I understand that you moved my dead aunt’s recipes into a drawer so you could put your juicer on my counter, and I understand that you knew exactly what you were doing when you did it.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Daphne sips her green juice, unbothered. “It’s just a box of old recipes. It’s not like she’s going to use them.”
I stare at her. I stare at her perfect hair and her silk pajamas and her green juice and her smile, and I think about how easy it would be to slap that smile off her face.
I think about how satisfying it would be to grab that juicer and throw it through the window.
I think about how much I hate her, how much I’ve always hated her, since high school when she made my life miserable and now when she’s doing it again.
“Get out of my kitchen,” I say.
“Your kitchen?” She laughs, bright and sharp. “Last I checked, this is Jacob’s house. You’re just living in it.”
“Get. Out.”
“I don’t think I will.” She sips her juice again, her eyes on mine, daring me. “I think I’ll stay right here. And I think you need to calm down, Ellie. You’re acting crazy. It’s just a juicer.”
The back door opens and Jacob walks in from the pens, dirty from work, sweat at the collar of his shirt, his jeans dusty and his boots caked with mud.
He looks tired, and he stops in the doorway and takes in the scene: me standing at the counter with the recipe box back in its place, Daphne leaning against the island with her juice, Jenna scrubbing the same dish she’s been scrubbing for five minutes.
He’s beautiful. He’s always beautiful, even covered in dust and sweat, especially covered in dust and sweat.
His shirt is sticking to his back and his forearms are flexed where he’s bracing himself in the doorway and I can see the muscles in his shoulders and I think about what I’d do to him in this kitchen if Daphne weren’t standing in it.
I think about pushing him against the counter and dropping to my knees and taking his cock in my mouth.
I think about him lifting me onto the island and fucking me until I can’t remember my own name.
But Daphne is standing in it, and she’s got her juicer on my counter and my aunt’s recipes shoved in a drawer, and all the wanting drains out of me.
“What’s going on?” Jacob asks.
“She moved Aunt June’s recipe box,” I say. “To put her juicer there.”
“It was an accident,” Daphne says, her voice sweet and wounded. “I didn’t know it was hers. I already apologized.”
“She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Jacob looks at the counter. At the recipe box. At the juicer. At Daphne. At me.
“It’s a juicer, Ellie,” he says. “She’s a guest.”
I stare at him.
“This isn’t like you,” he says. “You’re not petty.”
The word hits me in the chest.
“Thank you, Jacob,” Daphne says sweetly, and she smiles at me, triumphant, and takes her juice and walks out of the kitchen toward the west wing, her hips swaying, her silk pajamas whispering against her skin.
The kitchen is silent except for the clock ticking on the wall and the hum of the refrigerator. Jenna has stopped pretending to wash dishes and is standing frozen at the sink, her eyes on the floor. I can hear Daphne’s footsteps fading down the hall.
“You just called me petty,” I say. “In front of her.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did. You said it right in front of her, where she could hear it, where she could smile about it.” I’m shaking now, my hands trembling at my sides, my voice shaking too.
“I told you she was doing this on purpose. I told you she hates me. And you stood there and called me petty. In front of her. Where she could watch.”
“I can’t prove she’s doing anything on purpose,” Jacob says. “Neither can you.”
“I’m not asking you to prove it.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there in the doorway, waiting for me to finish.
He’s still got mud on his boots. He hasn’t even come all the way into the kitchen.
He’s standing in the door the way he stands in a door when he’s about to go back out it, and I know that stance.
I’ve watched it walk away from me for four Fridays.
“I’m asking you to believe me, Jacob. I’m asking you to look at me and listen to what I’m telling you and believe me. Not because I can prove it. Because I’m your wife. Because I’m standing here telling you she’s doing this on purpose and I need you to believe me.”
He still doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, looking tired, and I can see him wanting to be anywhere else.
And his silence is worse than any argument.
If he argued, I could argue back. I’m good at that.
I could tell him every single thing she’s done since the day she got here and I could make him hear it.
But you can’t argue with a man who won’t open his mouth, and he knows it, and that’s why he doesn’t.
“It’s been a month,” I say. “That was the deal. A month, you said. A month at most. And she’s still here, Jacob. She’s still in our house, still in our lives, still standing in our kitchen giving our chef orders and moving my aunt’s recipes into a drawer and looking at me like I’m the intruder.”
“Jackson’s not better. She’s got nowhere to go.”
“She’s got her father’s house. She’s got friends. She’s got options, Jacob. She’s choosing to stay here because she wants to stay here, and you’re letting her because you won’t tell her no.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Then tell me what’s fair, Jacob. Tell me what’s fair about her in my kitchen and me at work.”
He doesn’t tell me.
He walks to the counter and picks up the recipe box and sets it square on the edge, adjusting it until it’s perfectly aligned with the tile. He squares it and steps back, and that’s his fix.
I watch him do it and my chest goes tight.
“My birthday is Saturday,” I say. “The whole town is coming to Sue’s at six. I need you there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I’m not asking, Jacob. I’ve been asking for a month. I’ve been asking for Fridays and dinners and five minutes of your time and you’ve been giving it to her instead. So I’m not asking anymore. I’m telling you. Six o’clock. Sue’s. Be there.”
“I said I’ll be there.”
“You said you’d be there for four Fridays too.”
He flinches. Good.
“Six o’clock,” I say. “Don’t be late.”
I walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs and I don’t look back. I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to see the guilt or the confusion or whatever excuse he’s making for himself. I don’t want to see any of it.
In our bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed and hold Aunt June’s recipe box in my lap and I run my fingers over the yellowed cards.
Sunday cookies with lemon glaze. Rosemary chicken.
Potatoes au gratin. Pecan pie. Every recipe has her handwriting on it, faded but still readable, and I can hear her voice in my head, telling me to add more butter, telling me to stir gently, telling me that the secret to good food is love.
She’d say that with flour on her hands and her glasses pushed up in her hair, and she’d say it every single time, and I’d roll my eyes every single time, and I’d give anything to hear her say it once more.
I don’t cry. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
I can hear him downstairs. The water running. A cabinet door. He’s cleaning up the kitchen, which he never does, and I know what that is. That’s him fixing what he can.
But I stay there a long while, reading the cards, remembering her hands showing me how to roll dough, remembering Sunday mornings in her kitchen with flour on my nose, remembering the last time I made her cookies and brought them to her hospital room and she couldn’t eat them but she smiled anyway.
***
That night, he reaches for my hip in bed.
I move his hand and turn to the wall.
I hear him shift in the dark, hear the bedsprings creak as he settles on his back, hear him sigh. He doesn’t say my name. He doesn’t say anything. He just lies there on his side of the bed with his hand back where I put it. I don’t turn around. I don’t speak. I just lie there and stare at the wall.
I listen to him not sleep for a long time before I do.