7. Nova
7
NOVA
“ W ho are you?” a little voice from somewhere behind me asked.
I was busy rummaging through the lower cupboards. The variety of pots and pans and baking dishes available to me was mind-blowing. I hadn’t seen this wide variety of cookware outside of a shop, ever.
I stood up and turned around
A little girl with curly hair, carrying a bedraggled stuffed animal, peered up at me with the biggest eyes I had ever seen.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“That’s not polite. You should never answer a question with a question. I asked first,” she said in very crisp, precise tones.
“I’m Nova,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Nova. Do you work for my daddy?” she asked.
“That depends, who’s your Daddy?”
“Well, Daddy is my daddy, silly,” she announced with all the obviousness of a small child.
“I work for Mr. Bryan,” I said. I forced a smile, but I wasn’t feeling it. My stomach clenched. He said he wasn’t married, but he hadn’t said anything about having children.
He could be divorced.
“Yes, that’s my daddy. Do you work for my daddy?”
“I do. And I think that means I also work for you,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Amelia, and this is Humphrey.” She held up a stuffed cat toy that had seen better days.
“Pleased to meet you, Amelia and Humphrey.” One thing I knew about working with small children is if they introduced you to their special stuffed animal, you treated that stuffed animal as if it were real, because for that child, it was. If it was important to them, it was important to me. I liked kids. It’s why I became a teacher. Even if they were sticky and smelled funny occasionally.
“What are you doing?” Amelia asked.
“I am learning the kitchen,” I answered.
She giggled. “You’re silly. It’s a kitchen. You don’t have to learn it.”
“I do if I’ve never been in it before.” I stood up and pointed to a row of cabinets. “Now I could ask you which one has the glasses in it, and you’d be able to point and show me.”
She nodded.
“But if you were to ask me which one has glasses, right now, I’d have to guess because I haven’t looked at that row of cabinets yet. I’ve only looked at this side. And these cupboards have spices and big, fancy serving plates.”
Her eyes went wide, and her little mouth made a circle.
“I’m learning to find where the glasses and the spoons are and which cabinet has the pots and the pans and the things I’m going to need.”
“What are you going to need?” she asked.
“Everything.” I laughed. “I’m going to cook for you.”
“I can make popcorn,” Amelia said.
“You can? That’s fantastic.”
“You talk like Mrs. Brennan.”
“Who’s Mrs. Brennan?” I asked.
“She’s my teacher,” Amelia told me.
“You’re old enough to be in school, then,” I said.
That explained her precise use of language.
“Where do you go to school?”
She couldn’t be above the second grade. She was so small.
“I go to Leeds Academy.”
Leeds. Hmm, the ‘competition’. At least everyone at Wentworth spoke about Leeds as if they were some kind of evil empire or sports rivals. Neither place had sports teams since they were elementary schools. Leeds teachers were probably given proper Christmas bonuses.
I wasn’t convinced that Wentworth was as pleasant a place as everybody there seemed to think it was, especially the headmaster. As far as I was concerned, based on my experience with Wentworth Academy, everyone at Wentworth was delusional.
“What happens after you learn the kitchen? Will there be a quiz?”
“Not exactly. After I get an idea where everything is, then I’m going to make a shopping list, then I’m going to figure out what I’m making for lunch and dinner. And then I’m going to make a shopping list and go shopping.”
I looked at the kid. What was I going to do with her when I went shopping? I guess I’d make sure her father knew she was around before I left.
“We have all kinds of food in the refrigerator.” She opened the door to the expansive refrigerator.
It was the kind that I had only ever seen in magazines of very elaborate, expensive houses. So, it made perfect sense that it was the kind of refrigerator Bryan had in his kitchen. I had become enamored of it the evening before.
It wasn’t particularly deep, which meant that food wouldn’t get lost in the back, but it was wide, easily two to three times as wide as a standard refrigerator. It was lovely how I could see everything that was available. Which to be honest, wasn’t very much. It was as if his regular cook knew that if she left too much fresh food, it would go to waste.
There were two casserole dishes that I noticed with handwritten notes taped to them. A quick glance let me know that those were cooking instructions. She hadn’t left him completely bereft of meals. They were pretty sizable casserole dishes, so maybe two dinners each. Still, that wasn’t even a week’s worth of food.
“What’s your favorite thing to eat, Amelia?” I asked, figuring it would be good to get information right from the source.
“I like cookies. Do you make cookies? Emma makes cookies.”
The kid liked freshly made cookies. Easy enough.
“What kind?”
“Every kind,” she said.
“Don’t you have a favorite? Oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, or snickerdoodles?”
“Snickerdoodles!” A big smile crossed her face.
I'd already planned on making cookies, seeing as it was Christmas, the season for all kinds of cookies.
I made a mental note to make sure I had more than enough ingredients for lots of snickerdoodles.
“What else do you like?”
“Popcorn!” She jumped with enthusiasm.
“You said you knew how to make popcorn. I take it, there’s packs of microwavable popcorn in the pantry?”
“Oh, yes.” Amelia skipped past the row of cabinets I was making my way through and opened a tall cabinet door. Only it wasn’t a cabinet door. It was an actual door, and behind it was the narrow entry into another small room that Amelia disappeared into like Alice down a rabbit hole.
“Where did you go?” I asked as I followed her.
“In here,” she called out.
She had led me into the pantry. It was a veritable grocery store’s worth of food supplies. I probably wasn’t going to have to go shopping for anything much more than fresh vegetables and meat.
Unless, of course, there was an industrial-sized freezer hiding around here somewhere with half a butchered cow in it. Then again, if it were just Bryan and Amelia, half a cow would be a completely unreasonable expectation.
There was an entire row of cereal boxes. There were rows of chips and other snack food, bins with potatoes, and canned Mason jars with everything from stewed tomatoes to jams. And lots of pickles.
Cases of bottled water and soft drinks were stacked on the floor. And up high, there were glass jars full of candy.
My mental shopping list was changing by the second. I wasn’t going to need to buy nearly as much of anything, if anything at all. This was terrific.
“That’s my favorite cereal.” Amelia pointed to the row of cereal.
“Which one?”
“All of them. I like cereal.” She giggled and danced around.
“What do you like to eat at dinner?”
“Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets.” She started listing things off.
Nothing sounded like the caliber of meals I expected to be making for her father. He had mentioned that there would be family at Christmas. Had he meant Amelia? Were there more children?
When speaking with younger children, there were no subtle hints and clues you could drop. You just had to come out and ask them the question and get the information you needed.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.” She was gathering a collection of microwave popcorn bags in her arms.
“How often do you stay with your dad?” I had to remove the extra bags and let her hold onto just one package.
“Huh?” She looked confused.
“Do you live with your dad? Or do you live with your mom and come to visit?”
“I don’t have a mom. Sometimes,, I stay with Grandmother. She dropped me off this morning. This is where I live. Let me show you my room.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the pantry with a surprising amount of strength packed into such a tiny little body.
She dragged me through doors and up stairs. There was a wide, carpeted hall. The carpets were full-sized, not narrow runners. They were lush and deep red and looked very expensive.
“This is my room.” She pushed into a fantasy land of princess dreams. Everything was pink and fluffy and sparkly, and I would have loved to have a bedroom like that when I was six.
“Wow,” I said. I wasn’t joking or being sarcastic. This was an absolute dreamland. “This is a fantastic room.”
“I love my room. We can have a tea party here.” She dragged me to the far corner, where a little round table with tiny little matching chairs was all set up. A couple of dolls were already sitting lopsided at the table as if they were guests patiently waiting for their host to arrive.
I don’t know how much time we spent as she introduced me to each and every one of her stuffed animals. I finally had to stop her.
“As much as I adore meeting all of your friends, I really do have to get back to work. I’m cooking for you while your cook is on vacation,” I reminded her.
“You’re here to cook. But Daddy didn’t get anybody to play with me yet.”
Play with her yet? I hadn’t known about her until she introduced herself. She was not part of the job description. But I wasn’t about to leave her on her own.
“Why don’t we go back down to the kitchen and you can keep me company while I figure out what to make for dinner?”
The route she took me back to the kitchen was different. I noticed there were no holiday decorations of any kind.
“Would you like to help me decorate the kitchen a little bit?” I asked.
“Oh, can we do arts and crafts?” Amelia asked. Her face lit up with excitement.
“Do you have any craft supplies anywhere?” Of course, they had craft supplies. There was a cabinet with crayons, glue, scissors, construction paper, and even coloring books.
“This is perfect.” I pulled out a stack of construction paper and scissors and glue. “Have you ever made a paper snowflake, Amelia?”