3. Abbot
ABBOT
As Chris talks, Abbot opens another tab, scrolling through recipes he could make with Peggy. A chocolate griesskopfli? Peggy will like that more than a traditional one, and licking the bowl will give her something to indulge in while waiting for the recipe to set in the refrigerator.
Can children eat raw batter? he searches like he always does ahead of baking with her.
He finds yet again that the advice swings between Better enjoy a trip to the ER if you let a kid eat raw eggs and uncooked flour and What is with the world these days?
Why do we worry about everything? Let kids live a little.
Ned can settle this. Abbot’s in the lucky position of simply providing Peggy with the sugar and accompanying fun, and he can leave any actual oversight to Ned.
Like when they made both a lopsided apple strudel and an apricot cake in one weekend, and Ned had negotiated exactly how much of it Peggy could consume before dinner.
Quite a bit, it turned out, to the detriment of her plate of untouched food.
What else had she wanted to bake from the recipe book Abbot got for her birthday?
I can read the German, she still insists, drawing her finger down the list of ingredients as she sounds out the English version provided.
She’s vetoed Aargauer rüeblitorte, arguing it’s just a carrot cake and baking is no time for vegetables.
The vermicelles, perhaps? They could try those this weekend with the chestnut paste he brought from Geneva, though he’s not sure she’d like the flavor.
Better to make something else at the same time if they go that route.
Cremeschnitte or perhaps spitzbuebe. She likes those little sugar-covered jam cookies, and he’d looked forward to making them with her over the holidays, back when he’d thought she and Ned would make the trip to Geneva.
They will this summer. It’ll be a better time for a visit, what with the brevity of her holiday break and her scheduled days with Jen.
She and Ned will have long enough to really explore Switzerland, and they can work through a long list of bakeries while they’re there.
Liesl will hopefully be past the mood she’d clung to this past month, alternatively bubbly and joyful, then morose and sour.
Thirteen, he had thought more than once, wondering at the change.
An email alert flashes at the top right of Abbot’s screen and he clicks it. I want some, Lee has written in the subject line.
“The cookies,” she whispers when he glances at her.
“We’ll meet monthly between now and May,” Chris says at the front of the room. “And I’ll be checking in with each of you, of course. Book club accountability, for all of us. Gotta get those pages read!”
Lee holds out her hand beneath the table, wiggling her fingers.
“Who’s excited?” Chris asks, clearly thrilled with himself.
“Is that it?” Aliyah asks. “Can we go?”
“Just sit tight, folks; we’re waiting on—oh, here we are! Come on in!” Chris waves someone in.
Abbot turns, then sits up in his chair. “Steve?”
“Hey.” Steve claps Abbot’s shoulder before he can get halfway to standing. “How was the big trip? You just get back?”
“Yesterday. What are you doing here?” Steve ought to be down in Boston. Steve with his curly hair and bright smile, who Abbot knows from his student days. Steve who now works down the hall from Ned.
“Sorry I’m late,” Steve says to Chris. “Traffic was wicked bad.”
“Come in, come in,” Chris says. “Everyone, this is Dr. Steven Potts, an associate professor of sociology down at Adams.”
“So great to meet you all,” Steve says. “I know it’s getting late, so thank you, really, for having me.”
“Adams?” Lee asks. “Did you bring Ned with you? How is he?”
“Ah, your ace graduate we snagged? Sadly, I did not. Ned’s good. But you probably hear plenty about him from this guy.” Steve hooks his thumb toward Abbot.
“Yeah, he’s famously so forthcoming about his life,” Lee says, and Steve laughs.
Ned’s good. How good? Did Steve see him today?
He must have. What was he wearing? Abbot has the sudden urge to ask.
How many cups of coffee did he manage to drink, what did he have for lunch, and is his printer working yet?
All the little details of Ned’s day that Abbot so terribly misses, the tiny minutiae he wishes he could absorb in person.
“Okay, fair point. And listen, I’m sure you’d all rather be heading home, but in exchange for keeping you at the office so late today, I am happy to offer you stories about the inestimable Dr. Henry Abbot. You all know we did our PhDs together?”
“We’re listening,” Lee says.
“Chris.” Aliyah points to her watch.
“Just one,” Lee says to her. “C’mon, this is our only chance. You two really know each other?”
“Really do,” Steve says. “Like, for instance, I know about the time Henry’s guidance committee had an emergency meeting over his qualifying exams not being difficult enough.”
“I’m sure they’re not interested,” Abbot says.
“We absolutely are.” Lee makes a beckoning motion. “And we need more than that.”
“The time he pointed out an error in our stats professor’s slides?” Steve asks.
There had been an error. A glaring one the man should have caught, and he certainly shouldn’t have had such an issue with Abbot’s help correcting it.
“That’s a start,” Lee says.
“I have plenty to tell you about this guy back in the day,” Steve says.
“No thank you,” Abbot says quickly.
“Give us something juicy,” Lee says.
Steve’s having fun with this, clearly. Lee is too, and even Aliyah has sat back in her seat.
“What about his first semester as a TA?” Steve starts.
Abbot’s stomach tightens. Not that semester. Steve wouldn’t, surely he won’t—
“Okay, okay, enough torturing him,” a voice says, and hands land on Abbot’s shoulders.
Ned’s voice. And Ned’s hands. Nobody else touches Abbot with such warm familiarity. And it’s Ned’s black plastic digital watch on his wrist, the neat trim of his fingernails, the rough red of his knuckles from the cold air outside.
Abbot blinks. Ned’s hands are still there, squeezing his shoulders lightly. Surely Abbot is imagining this. Has conjured it from a month of longing, and now the discomfort of the conversation happening around him.
“Hi.” Ned leans over Abbot, smiling at him upside down.
Ned’s here? Impossible. And yet his hair hangs down over his forehead, his hands lay on Abbot’s shoulders, and there’s the very fact of him standing behind Abbot’s chair.
He’s here, in this room, and Abbot is absolutely frozen.
What is he supposed to do? Hug him? Kiss him, like he very much wants to?
Jump up and shove the chair out from in between them and burrow as close as he possibly can?
Here, in this room full of his coworkers?
Ned fixes the problem with a grin at Lee and a playful push at her chair. “Shove over.”
“Hi to you too,” she grumbles through a smile, slipping from her seat to the empty chair on her other side.
Ned helps her slide her laptop down the table and takes her place, easily inviting himself to join the meeting, here in a department he no longer works for.
Abbot doesn’t care. Ned is next to him. Why, he doesn’t know, but beneath the table their fingers tangle together in a hard squeeze, and Ned’s knee rests against Abbot’s, and oh, how Abbot has missed him.
“So what is this? Steve, you’re here too, apparently,” Ned says as he strokes his thumb over Abbot’s. “Is this Adams University night at Callahan? I don’t have my laptop with me, so you gonna carry this talk for us?”
“What are you possibly doing here?” Steve asks.
“I had a question about some statistics,” Ned says.
A laugh ripples around the room. Abbot fights to keep his face from heating at the looks angled his way, and battles too the surge of pleasure that rises on Ned’s words.
Ned came to see him. Two days earlier than their plan to reunite this weekend, and for as many years as Abbot has tried to keep everyone in this room at a careful, safe distance, he finds he doesn’t much mind if they’re all fully aware of how thrilled he is to see Ned.
“Steve, did you come up for help too?” Ned asks. “We could have carpooled.”
This gets another laugh, even as Steve sighs and shakes his head. “C’mon, man, I’m trying to make a good impression.”
“Oh, well, in that case. Folks, this is Steve Potts, the star pitcher of our departmental baseball team down at Adams,” Ned says. “He also taught an entire lecture dressed in an inflatable unicorn costume on Halloween.”
Steve tips his head back. “Why?” he asks the ceiling.
“Exactly,” Ned agrees. “Why are you here?”
Instead of continuing their back and forth, Steve casts a look at Chris.
“Henry will tell Ned anyway,” Chris says, and Steve gives a short, sharp nod. “Folks, Dr. Potts is here to meet you all because we’re interviewing him for a position in the department.”
Abbot looks at Ned, who is also clearly surprised. Steve is leaving Adams? For Callahan?
Aliyah taps her nails against the table. “Chris, we aren’t hiring.”
Chris just smiles. “Dr. Potts’s wife is taking a position in our biochemistry department.”
“STEM,” Lee mutters as a grumble of understanding goes around the room.
Their department has no opening. Steve is here because his wife is negotiating a spousal hire, hinging her acceptance of her position on the university making room for him as well.
Steve smiles apologetically. “So yes, I’m here trying to wedge my way into your department. Ned, this was really not how I intended anyone at Adams to find out.”
“You can’t leave,” Ned says. “What about our baseball team?”
“Yes, important considerations first,” Steve says.
“We have big games this spring.”
“Folks, if you want to know how Ned is doing down at Adams, please understand that this departmental baseball team is literally everything to him.”
“Don’t give Chris ideas,” Lee mutters.
Abbot stares at Steve, ignoring their chatter. He’s leaving Adams, which means his position is opening up, and—