Chapter Twelve – Spencer
She doesn’t want us to leave, Spencer’s bear said, stating the obvious.
No, she doesn’t, Spencer replied, his heart thumping erratically as he followed Meryl into the kitchen.
She asked us to stay for dinner, his bear hummed with satisfaction.
In the kitchen, the camping stove sat on the island, the only reliable cooking surface until they dealt with the ancient range or got the electrics checked.
He had to admire Meryl for coping in the house without electricity. He’d done what he could, bringing up fresh ice packs for the cooler to help keep her food from spoiling.
“It’s not much to work with,” Meryl said, opening the cooler and peering inside with that little furrow between her brows he had come to recognize.
“I’ve got eggs, some cheese, a red pepper that’s still good.
..” She shifted things around, frowning.
“And pasta. I could do a sort of improvised pasta thing?”
“Sounds perfect,” Spencer said, meaning it.
His bear gave him a look.
Help her. Make yourself useful.
“What can I do?” he asked, rolling up his sleeves.
Meryl glanced around the kitchen. “Could you clear some space over there? Maybe wipe down that bit of counter?”
Spencer found a clean cloth and started moving tools and supplies carefully to one side. While he worked, he watched her from the corner of his eye. She moved with brisk efficiency, gathering ingredients, finding a pot for the water, and checking the propane on the camping stove.
She’s adapted well, his bear said with pride.
She has, Spencer agreed. She’s taken so much in her stride.
“I hope you don’t mind eating on your lap,” she said, as if it mattered. He’d eat standing on his head as long as it was with her.
His bear perked up. A table. That’s what you need. A table and candles. Make it feel like a romantic dinner for two.
Spencer looked around the kitchen, then through to the sitting room where they had just finished working. “Give me ten minutes,” he said.
Meryl turned, pasta box in hand. “To do what?”
“Keep cooking. I’ll be right back.”
He went through to the sitting room and uncovered the old drop-leaf table he’d moved to one side the first day he was here. It was still covered in a dust sheet, which was now covered in paint tins.
After removing all the tins, he pulled off the sheet to reveal a table that had certainly seen better days.
It was small, scarred, and a little wobbly on one leg, but it was sound enough.
He tightened what he could, wedged the weak side with a folded scrap of wood from the pile by the wall, carried it into the kitchen, and wiped it down.
Then he fetched two of the sturdier chairs and set them by it.
They didn’t match, but it didn’t matter.
Meryl paused in the middle of chopping the pepper and stared at him. “This is going to feel like my first proper meal in the cottage. With my first proper guest.”
“I am honored,” he said with a mock bow.
While she went back to preparing the food, he found two clean plates in the cupboard, along with mismatched forks, and set them out. Then he grabbed a pair of pillar candles Meryl had been using to light the sitting room.
“What are you doing now?” Meryl asked as he came in.
Spencer held up the candles. “The light in here isn’t great.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Candles.”
“Practical candles,” he said. “So we can see the food.”
That got a laugh out of her.
He set the candles in two empty mason jars he found at the back of a cupboard and lit them. The difference was immediate. The kitchen did not become elegant, exactly, but it no longer looked like a half-abandoned work zone. It looked like a place where two people might sit down for dinner.
Dinner date, his bear corrected.
It does feel like a date, Spencer admitted.
Meryl looked around, then back at him. “That is... nice.”
Spencer shrugged because he didn’t trust himself to speak.
She likes it, his bear said happily, wishing he was invited to dinner too.
“This is not exactly sophisticated,” Meryl said as she stirred the pasta and cheese together with the pepper and garlic she had found at the bottom of the cooler.
“I’m not expecting sophisticated.”
“You say that now.”
“I’m a simple man.”
His bear disagreed strongly.
Meryl glanced over her shoulder. “No, I think what you are is optimistic.”
“That too.” He looked around. “Anything I can help with?”
She smiled to herself and handed him the bread knife. “Cut the bread up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her head came up at once. “I am not old enough to be ma’am.”
“Noted.”
That earned him another quiet laugh, and for a moment the whole thing felt absurdly easy.
As if today they had truly turned a corner in their relationship and were finally moving in the right direction.
What a difference a day makes, his bear said.
Don’t remind me, Spencer replied. He didn’t want anything spoiling this day.
They carried their plates to the table when everything was ready. Pasta, bread, and a little extra cheese shaved over the top. Nothing fancy. Nothing impressive. And yet Spencer could not remember the last time a meal had smelled so good.
“To thrown-together meals,” Meryl said, raising her water glass.
“And practical candles,” Spencer added.
She touched her glass lightly to his. “The most practical.”
The food was simple, but it was warm and filling and better than it had any right to be. Maybe because it had been thrown together. Maybe because she had made it. Or simply because of the company.
For a few minutes they ate in companionable silence.
Then Meryl said, “So how did you get into carpentry?”
Spencer shrugged. “It started off as a hobby, really. All of my brothers were good with food, either cooking it or growing it. But not me. I never had a knack for it. But I had an eye for a good piece of wood and what I could transform it into.”
“Brothers plural?” she asked, winding pasta around her fork. “How many?”
“Five.”
Her eyes widened. “Six Thornberg boys? Your poor mother.”
Spencer laughed. “She managed us just fine. Mostly because she’s tougher than all of us put together.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime,” Meryl said, and then looked faintly startled by her own words.
His bear sat up at once.
“She’d like you,” Spencer said, because that was true.
Meryl looked down at her plate for a moment before taking another bite.
The conversation moved more easily after that.
Not into anything too deep, but beyond hinges and latches and what still needed stripping.
He told her a little about his brothers.
She told him more about growing up with a mother who moved them constantly, staying nowhere long enough to settle in properly.
“That must have been tough,” he said.
Meryl gave a short, dry laugh. “My mom saw it as a useful skill. And I guess growing up I didn’t know any different, so I didn’t know any other way.”
Spencer smiled, but did not interrupt. He wanted to learn everything there was to know about her.
“My mother hated being tied down,” she went on. “New place, new start. That was always the idea.” She looked around the half-finished kitchen. “Hilda was the opposite. She stayed long enough to make things matter.”
“And which are you?” he asked before he had quite decided to.
Meryl looked at him for a long moment, the candlelight picking out the thoughtful line of her face.
“I’m still working that out,” she said.
His bear shifted, alert and hopeful.
After dinner, Spencer helped with the washing up. That, somehow, felt even more intimate than dinner had. Standing shoulder to shoulder at the sink, passing plates, drying cutlery on an old tea towel, moving around each other as if they had done it before.
This is how it should be, his bear said.
It should, Spencer agreed.
When the dishes were done, they took tea, and the candles into the sitting room. Spencer sat at one end of the old sofa they had uncovered, while Meryl curled up at the other, her feet tucked beneath her.
“Thank you for the table,” she said after a while. “And for staying.”
“Thank you for asking me to.” He took a sip of his tea.
They talked a little longer about small things — where the salvage-yard hooks should go, whether the rose by the gate would bloom well after being cut back, what still needed doing in the kitchen. But there was something else there now, and they both knew it.
Eventually, Spencer knew he had to leave, though every part of him wanted to stay.
He set his empty mug down and stood. “I should probably head out. My boss is a real stickler for an early start.”
“Is that so?” Meryl chuckled and rose too.
She walked him to the door, and Spencer was aware of every step that brought them closer to parting.
Now, his bear said.
At the threshold, Spencer turned to face her. The moonlight cast a soft glow over her face, catching in her hair.
“Thank you again for dinner,” he said, his voice lower than he intended.
Meryl looked up at him. Something in her expression changed. “It was just pasta.”
“It wasn’t just pasta,” Spencer whispered.
She held his gaze for a long heartbeat.
Then she took a small step toward him.
Spencer moved slowly, giving her every chance to pull back if she wanted to. He lifted his hand to her cheek, his thumb brushing her skin. When she leaned into his touch, the last of his restraint went with it.
He bent his head and kissed her.
It was gentle at first, a question rather than a claim. But when her hands came up to rest against his chest, fingers curling slightly into his shirt, the kiss deepened. Spencer felt it all the way through him, the quiet certainty that nothing about this could be called practical anymore.
When they finally drew apart, Meryl’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright in the dim light. He kept his hand against her face a moment longer because he could not quite make himself let go.
But leave he must.
He reluctantly stepped back. If he did not leave now, he knew very well he might not find the strength to leave at all.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked.
Meryl nodded, her fingers brushing her lips. “Tomorrow.”
As Spencer walked to his truck, the night air cool against his skin, he was grinning from ear to ear. And he didn’t think he would ever stop.