Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
A nother shit day at work. Another morning of rejected dishes, of customer complaints, of Cyrus’s know-it-all smirk. Archer hadn’t been this bad at his job since he was a line cook in college, getting constantly screamed at for his uneven vegetable cutting.
And it sucked.
Archer had lost his sanctuary. He’d lost the one place he felt totally in control. And now he was in control of nothing. He stood on his own stoop, staring at his front door, and raked his hands through his hair, working up the courage to go inside. If any of the neighbors witnessed this daily ritual, they probably thought he was insane.
He opened the door and was greeted with … nothing. No sullen child on the couch, no TV blaring a baking competition, no new nanny parading around without pants.
Archer sucked in a sharp breath at the memory. The memory he’d been doing a pretty good job of repressing since it happened three days ago. Iris in nothing but a T-shirt, her hair tousled from sleep, her eyes bright as she rambled on about murder podcasts. They were only a few nights into this situation, and between his need to perfect his pancake recipe and his half-naked nanny, he’d slept for maybe two hours each.
He dropped his bag by the door and peeled off his chef’s coat. It was absurd that he still wore the damn thing. No one that ate at a diner gave a shit that the guy flipping their pancakes went to four years of culinary school, apprenticed under some of the best chefs in Europe, and ran his own kitchen for the last several years. People came to a diner for consistency, for comfort. For the same damn food they’d been eating for the past twenty years. And it was for that reason that Archer’s new recipes were going up in flames.
Giggling from down the hallway momentarily distracted him from his depressing thoughts. He found Iris and Olive in Olive’s bedroom sitting cross-legged on the floor. A circle of stuffed animals sat with them.
‘Pinkies up!’ Iris said in the worst British accent he’d ever heard. She held a tiny teacup with her pinky stuck out. Olive did the same, a big smile on her face.
‘Why do we have to put our pinkies up?’ she asked, still not noticing Archer standing in the doorway.
Iris shrugged in that way that she did, like life was a game she was playing. ‘It’s fancier that way,’ she said. ‘It’s the same reason we’re wearing these lovely hats.’ She tipped back the hat she was wearing, something made of straw that had been covered in big tissue paper flowers, and caught Archer’s eye.
‘Oh look, Olive!’ she said, her voice overly bright. ‘Your dad’s home! We should invite him to our tea party.’
As usual when he entered the room, he felt the joy flee Olive’s body. Smile gone. Laughter gone. Ability to speak, gone.
‘Uh, that’s all right. I don’t want to interrupt your fun,’ he said.
Iris unfolded herself from her seat and came to where he stood, grabbing him by the hand. ‘Oh no, I insist. You simply must join us. The tea is top notch.’ She slipped back into that terrible accent, but it seemed to be working. Olive was having a hard time keeping the smile from creeping back onto her lips.
Iris dragged him down to the floor and before he could really register what was happening, he was seated beside a rainbow striped narwhal and a bear with one eye. Olive peered at him from under her hat.
‘Well, thank you for the invite,’ he said, offering Olive a tentative smile. She didn’t return it, but she didn’t look away. ‘I could really go for a cup of tea.’
Iris grinned at him as she poured him an imaginary cup. ‘There you are, dear,’ she said. ‘Olive here was just telling me about her day. Do go on, Olive.’
And maybe Iris was a genius or maybe she was a crazy person, but between her insane accent and the fake tea and the stuffed guests and the homemade hats, Olive was loosened up enough to actually speak in his presence. He wanted to cry into his imaginary tea.
‘We have assigned seats in the cafeteria now because we were being too loud,’ she said. ‘But it’s not fair because I’m not loud.’
‘Of course you’re not loud,’ Archer burst out, irrationally angry about this injustice. ‘What kind of school is this? Why would they punish you if you didn’t do anything wrong? I should go down there.’
Iris was looking at him with a strange sort of smile on her face as though maybe she thought he was being crazy but also maybe as if she was proud of him or something.
‘Settle down, Papa Bear,’ she said, patting his knee. ‘Let’s not storm the elementary school quite yet.’
‘Well, it’s not fair,’ he grumbled and a small smile curved Olive’s mouth.
Iris laughed. ‘Lots of things aren’t fair. You may have noticed.’
Like a girl losing her mother at five years old and being forced to live with the father she’d never met? Yeah, he’d noticed, but neither of them said it out loud.
Iris turned back to Olive. ‘Look kid, sometimes crappy…’ She paused and leaned toward Archer. ‘Can I say crappy?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know.’ He hadn’t exactly had time to formulate his parental stance on cursing.
Iris shrugged. ‘Sometimes crappy things happen to you even if you’ve done nothing wrong.’
Olive looked at him pointedly, like he was the crappy thing, and he just nodded because he kinda was.
‘But,’ Iris went on, lifting her tea cup, ‘we just have to keep going and find the good things. Like tea parties with friends. Isn’t that right Mr. Higgenbottom,’ she said, patting the bespectacled frog sitting next to her.
Olive giggled. ‘That’s not his name.’
‘Of course it is. He told me.’
More giggles. ‘No! His name is Hoppy.’
Iris frowned. ‘Hoppy? That is an objectively terrible name for a frog!’
‘I think it’s a good name,’ Archer chimed in, and Iris sent him a bemused smile.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Sure. He hops, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah!’ Olive chimed in. ‘He’s a frog. He hops.’ And maybe she wasn’t talking directly to him and maybe this wasn’t quite the bonding moment he was making it out to be, but she was talking with him, near him, and goddamn if that wasn’t something.
‘Okay, okay.’ Iris held her hands up in surrender. ‘You guys win. But then what are we going to call this guy?’ She pointed to the blue bunny. ‘Also Hoppy?’
Olive’s brow furrowed in thought and Archer had to bite down on a smile.
‘How about Mr. Blue?’ he suggested, and Olive’s face lit up. In his direction!
‘Yeah. Mr. Blue.’
Iris rolled her eyes, but she was also having trouble keeping the smile off her face. ‘You guys are the worst at this.’
Olive was on her feet now, too excited to sit anymore. ‘No, we’re the best at it.’
We , as though they were a team.
Iris stuck out her tongue and Olive returned the gesture. ‘Well, this little lady here is obviously Prunella,’ Iris said, holding up a pig wearing an apron.
Olive squealed in delight. ‘No! Not Prunella.’
‘Maybe Pinky?’ Archer suggested.
‘I think her name is…’ Olive tapped a finger on her nose as she thought. ‘I think her name is Polly! Polly Pig.’
‘Good one,’ Archer said, and his daughter beamed. Beamed at him.
And Iris looked smug as hell that her little tea party had worked. Between the accent and the hat, Archer was wondering if maybe she was a bit more Mary Poppins than he’d originally thought.
But then he remembered her ass under that T-shirt and he thought maybe not.