Chapter 3 - The Cold Kitchen
The smell hit me before my alarm went off: smoked bacon, brown sugar, and Karen’s expensive hazelnut coffee beans being pulverized by the electric grinder she’d insisted on keeping on the counter instead of Dad’s toaster.
In our house, big breakfasts were not gifts. They were tactical maneuvers.
Whenever Karen felt a shift in the domestic balance—whenever Dad seemed a little too quiet after a credit card statement arrived, or whenever one of her suggestions regarding my schedule met with even a momentary hesitation from him—she cooked. She made buttermilk pancakes from scratch. She poached eggs in little silicone cups. She set out the cloth napkins that had come from her previous marriage's china set, the ones with the little scalloped borders that Dad wasn't allowed to wipe barbecue sauce with.
I walked into the kitchen at seven-thirty.
Karen was standing at the five-burner gas range wearing an apron that said *TEXAS ROOTS, SUNSHINE SOUL.* Her blonde hair was already pulled back into a neat, bouncy ponytail, her makeup fully applied down to the nude lip gloss that smelled faintly of vanilla extract.
Ava was sitting at the island counter, hunched over an iPad with her chin resting in her palm. She was wearing her pink fleece pajama pants and my old oversized middle school spirit hoodie—the one Dad had bought me when I was in fifth grade that had my initials, *L.W.*, stitched in navy blue thread near the hem of the pocket.
Neither of them looked up when my socks padded across the linoleum.
"Good morning, Lily-bug," Karen said, not turning around from her skillet. She called me *Lily-bug* only when Dad was within earshot.
Sure enough, Dad was sitting at the far end of the dining table, his laptop open, reading the local Sunday paper online. He had his reading glasses perched low on his nose and his blue ceramic coffee mug resting on a cork coaster.
"Morning," I said to the floor.
"There's fruit salad in the glass bowl," Karen said, her spatula clicking rhythmically against the nonstick surface of the pan. "Cantaloupe and blueberries. Ava already had hers. Make sure you leave some for your father."
I opened the refrigerator. The glass bowl sat on the top shelf. It was ninety percent pale, unripened honeydew melon—the cheap filler—with three lonely, bruised blueberries floating in the pool of sugary water at the bottom. The fresh strawberries and blackberries that Dad had bought on Friday were nowhere to be seen.
I shut the fridge without taking the bowl.
Instead, I reached into the pantry, pulled out a box of generic toasted oats, and poured them into a plastic cereal bowl.
"Lily," Karen said, turning around with the skillet held level. Her smile was bright, wide, and entirely bloodless. "I made scrambled eggs with sharp cheddar. You love sharp cheddar."
"I'm fine with cereal," I said.
Dad lowered his reading glasses over the bridge of his nose. "Lily. Your stepmother went to the trouble of cooking a hot breakfast for the family. Don't be rude."
"I'm not being rude, Dad. I'm just eating cereal."
"It's fine, Tom," Karen said quickly, her voice dropping into that sweet, long-suffering tone that made Dad’s shoulders immediately drop an inch toward his ears. "She's probably still tired from last night. It was a big night. Ava, honey, sit up straight. You're going to get syrup on Lily's old sweater."
Ava didn't move. Her eyes stayed locked on her tablet screen, where some fifteen-year-old girl in California was unboxing six hundred dollars worth of lip oils.
"It's not her sweater anymore," Ava mumbled, her voice muffled by her sleeve. "Mom said she outgrew it."
"I didn't outgrow it," I said, setting my cereal bowl down on the island counter with a sharp *clack*. "It was in my closet. On the top shelf."
Karen set the skillet onto a cold burner with slightly more force than necessary.
"Lily," she said, her voice dropping the honey coating. "We talked about this when we reorganized the hall closets last weekend. Anything that didn't fit on your main hanging rod was being cycled through for Ava to look at before we donated it to the church drop-off. You hadn't worn that hoodie since March."
"Because it was summer, Karen. It’s eighty-five degrees in Austin until October."
"Don't use that tone with your mother," Dad barked from the dining table.
The silence that followed was sharp enough to slice bread.
Dad froze. He realized what he’d said the second the syllable cleared his lips. His eyes darted to me, then to Karen, then down at his laptop screen.
Karen didn't look displeased. A tiny, imperceptible twitch at the corner of her mouth smoothed out into an expression of dignified restraint. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and stepped closer to the island counter, leaning both palms against the quartz edge.
"I think," Karen said softly, "that there is still some lingering resentment about yesterday."
"You think?" I said.
"Lily!" Dad’s voice cracked this time. He closed his laptop with a loud thud that made the salt shakers vibrate. "That is enough. Go to your room."
"No," I said.
The word hung in the kitchen like thick smoke from a grease fire.
Ava finally looked up from her screen. Her eyes were wide, darting between me and her mother. In the two years they had lived with us, I had never once said the word *no* to my father while standing upright in the kitchen. I had cried in my bedroom. I had slammed my closet door. I had walked around the block until my sneakers were dusty with cedar pollen.
But I had never said *no* while looking directly into his face.
Dad stood up. He wasn't a tall man—maybe five-ten on a good day—but he had broad shoulders from fifteen years of commercial plumbing work before he moved into sales. When he was angry, his chest expanded and his voice dropped into an ugly, gravelly baritone that made the floorboards feel unstable.
"Excuse me?" he said.
"I asked why Ava couldn't wear the cat costume she already had," I said, my voice shaking despite every muscle in my neck locking down to keep it steady. "You said she had a hard week. What happened to her this week, Dad? Did her dog die? Did she fail a class? Did someone steal sixty-five dollars from her bedroom drawer?"
"Lily, stop," Ava whispered. She actually looked uncomfortable now, her fingers picking at the blue *L.W.* stitching on the fleece sleeve.
"No, Ava, let her speak," Karen said, her arms folded across her chest now, her head tilted at an angle that looked like pity. "Let’s hear what your sister really thinks about us."
"You're not my sister," I said, looking straight at Ava. "And you're not my mother." I looked at Karen. "And Dad forgot how to count to sixty-five the second you moved your furniture into Mom's dining room."
Dad crossed the kitchen in three strides.
He didn't grab me. He didn't raise a hand. He had never hit me in my life, and even now, in the red-faced fury of being challenged in front of his new wife, he didn't cross that line.
Instead, he grabbed my bowl of cereal.
He didn't say a word. He turned on his heel, walked over to the stainless steel sink, and dumped the dry oats and milk down the disposal unit. He hit the switch with his knuckle.
The machine roared, chewing through the oats with a wet, gurgling grind that filled the kitchen for five endless seconds.
Then he flipped it off.
"Get out of my sight," Dad whispered. He wasn't looking at my face. He was looking at the cabinet doors above my head. "You are grounded for two weeks. No phone. No computer. No leaving this house except for school. And when we go to the Salt Lick today, you are staying right here in your room with a book."
"Fine," I said.
"And take those damn twenties off your door before I tear them down myself."
May you like
I didn't answer him. I turned around, walked out of the kitchen, and climbed the stairs one step at a time, making sure my heels hit the exact center of each tread so the wood would creak all the way to the top.
---
