Chapter 15 - The Ruined RoastWe left the theater together. David managed to rig the side door locked. As we drove back to the apartment, the silence in the car wasn't tense; it was exhausted and strangely clean.
The next day was Sunday. The groceries I had bought on Tuesday were still sitting in the hotel refrigerator, which we swung by to collect before checking out completely. The beef roast had survived, barely. The vegetables, however, were a tragic sight. The green beans were limp and sad, and several carrots had developed dark, mushy spots.
I moved to sweep them all into the trash can in our apartment kitchen, but Noah caught my wrist.
“We can cut around the bad parts,” he said with a small smile.
And so, we cooked. For the first time in five years, the three of us occupied the kitchen without an agenda of perfection. The kitchen became a chaotic mess within minutes. David accidentally upended a bag of flour while trying to thicken the gravy, coating the counters in white dust. Noah dropped a peeled potato and watched it roll tragically beneath the refrigerator. I overcooked the onions because a song Rebecca used to sing loudly in her car came on the radio, and I stopped to listen.
Nobody rushed to clean up the flour. Nobody apologized for the burnt onions.
When we finally sat down at the table at six-thirty, the meal was objectively terrible. The roast was dry, the potatoes were overly salted, and the carrots were misshapen. It was the best meal I had tasted in my entire life.
Before we began eating, David walked into the living room, retrieved the framed photograph of Rebecca, and placed it on the empty fourth chair at our table.
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“I do not want us to pretend she is sitting here,” David said, his voice thick but steady. “But I also do not want us to behave as though mentioning her name will destroy the evening.”
We ate. And for the first time, we told stories. David recalled the time Rebecca got trapped in a revolving door because she stubbornly refused to put down her shopping bags. Noah talked about her teaching him to whistle so loudly they were kicked out of a museum. I talked about her cutting my hair in our mother's kitchen. We laughed until our sides ached. And then, we cried without apologizing.
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