Chapter 6: First Supper
The apartment door swung inward with a sigh, revealing the profound stillness within. Robert hovered on the threshold, as if entering a museum dedicated to a life that had been interrupted mid-sentence. The air was cool, stale, and carried the faint, clean scent of a place wiped down but not lived in.
“Home sweet home,” he said, the words flat in the quiet.
Kris stepped in behind him, her presence immediately altering the space. She didn’t comment on the perfect order, the vacuum lines on the carpet, the couch cushions plumped and untouched. She followed him down the short hall, past the closed bedroom door, and into the kitchen.
It was a chef’s kitchen, once. Now it was a display. Copper pans hung unused, gleaming dully. The block of knives sat like a monument, every handle perfectly aligned. The clock above the stove ticked, a solitary, hollow sound.
Robert stood in the center of it, paralyzed. The trip from the courthouse was a blur of grey sidewalks and silent cab rides. Ethan Bryce, in ill-fitting khakis and handcuffs, had pleaded not guilty. His lawyer’s voice was a nasal drone. Robert had felt nothing but a deep, cold numbness, his hand gripping the wooden bench until his knuckles ached. Kris, seated beside him, had nudged his foot with her own once, a silent I’m here. It was the only thing that felt real.
Now, in his own kitchen, the reality was suffocating.
“So,” Kris said, breaking the spell. She walked to the fridge and opened it. The light illuminated three takeout containers, a half-empty jar of pickles, and a six-pack of beer. “You weren’t kidding about the cooking hiatus.”
“I haven’t turned the stove on since…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely.
“Okay.” She closed the fridge and turned, leaning against the counter. Her coat was off, draped over a stool. “You have an onion?”
The question was so mundane it was jarring. Robert stared at her. “What?”
“An onion. You told me to remind you. To chop one.”
He blinked. The plan. The stupid, simple plan. “Probably. In the pantry.”
“Find it.” Her tone wasn’t gentle; it was instructional. The same voice she used when telling him to straighten his leg during a stretch. It was easier to obey.
He opened the pantry door. There, in a wire basket, were two sad-looking yellow onions, their papery skins flaking. He pulled one out, holding it like an artifact. He set it on the cutting board, the sound a soft thump in the quiet.
Kris filled a kettle at the sink. The sound of running water was shockingly loud. She put it on the stove, clicked a burner to life—the blue flame whooshed into existence, the first living thing in the room—and then began opening drawers until she found a chef’s knife. She placed it beside the onion.
“Your stage,” she said.
Robert picked up the knife. It felt foreign in his hand, both too heavy and too light. His fingers, once capable of julienning a carrot into perfect matchsticks in seconds, felt thick and clumsy. He positioned the onion, made a hesitant cut. The flesh was firm. He sawed through it awkwardly. The halves were uneven.
“It’s an onion, Robert, not a diamond,” Kris said from behind him. She was rummaging in the fridge again. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
He began to slice, the motion creaky. His eyes stung almost immediately. He wasn’t crying; it was just the onion. But the burn was a feeling, a sharp, present sensation in a body that had gone numb. He focused on it. Chop. Chop. Chop. The pieces were ragged, irregular.
“I thought you were a professional,” she teased lightly, pulling out a head of garlic and a knob of ginger wrapped in wax paper.
“I am. Was.” He kept chopping. “My knife skills are apparently in a full-body cast.”
“We’ll work on it.” She placed a small skillet on another burner. “I’m burning the garlic, like I promised. You focus on your onion.”
He heard the sizzle of oil, then the sharp, fragrant pop of garlic cloves hitting the heat. A moment later, the scent began to change, deepening, edging towards acrid. It was the smell of something neglected, something left too long. It filled the sterile kitchen with a life that was imperfect, even slightly failed. It was real.
Robert finished the onion, pushing the pile to one side. He looked at the sad, weeping mound. “Now what?”
“Now, we see what else you’ve got.” Kris was fanning the skillet, a grin on her face as the smoke curled up. “Ah, perfect. Truly ruined.” She dumped the blackened garlic bits into the trash and wiped the pan clean. “Your turn. You’re driving.”
He stared at the empty pan. “I don’t have a destination.”
“Sure you do.” She opened the fridge again, pulled out the takeout containers. One held leftover white rice. Another had some frozen peas she’d found. “Fried rice. It’s forgiving. It’s basically a scrap-heap meal.”
He moved slowly, each step a deliberate act of reconstruction. He heated oil. He added his ragged onions, watched them soften and turn translucent. The familiar, sweet aroma rose, cutting through the last traces of burned garlic. He added the peas, the cold rice, breaking up the clumps with the back of his spoon. He found soy sauce in the cupboard. A splash. Then another.
He wasn’t thinking about recipes. He was thinking about the motion. The sound. The steady shush-shush of food moving in the pan. His body remembered this rhythm, even if his mind was far away, in a courtroom, in the passenger seat of a shattered car.
Kris set two plates on the counter. She didn’t set the table. They stood there, at the kitchen island, under the bright overhead light.
He divided the food, a simple yellow mound on each white plate. He handed her a fork.
They ate standing up.
The first bite was scalding hot. It was salty, a bit bland, the peas still slightly frozen in the center. It was, objectively, not very good.
It was the first meal he’d cooked in months.
He chewed, and swallowed, and took another bite. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the clink of forks on plates and the relentless tick of the clock.
“So,” Kris said finally, swirling a forkful of rice. “That was something.”
“Which part? The arraignment or the culinary crime scene?”
“Both.” She took another bite. “The guy looked… small. Didn’t he?”
Robert stopped chewing. He put his fork down. He saw Ethan Bryce again, the cuffs, the slumped shoulders, the way he wouldn’t look at the gallery. Not a monster. A pale, frightened man. “Yeah. He did.”
“Doesn’t change anything,” she said quickly, as if reading his thought. “Small men can still make holes in the world.”
“I know.” He picked up his fork again. “It just makes the hate feel… slippery. Hard to hold onto.”
“Maybe you don’t need to hold onto it. Maybe you just need to acknowledge it’s there, and then put it down when it gets too heavy.” She finished her food, pushed the plate away. “This needs more soy sauce. And maybe some therapy.”
A sudden, wet laugh escaped Robert. It sounded strange in the quiet kitchen. “You’re not wrong.”
She smiled, a real one that reached her eyes. “I’m rarely wrong about food. Or therapy.” She picked up both plates and took them to the sink. She ran the water, the steam rising.
He watched her, this woman washing his dishes in his dead wife’s kitchen. The normalcy of it was as brutal as it was kind.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice rough. “For today. For coming. For… this.”
She didn’t turn around, just kept scrubbing the skillet. “You chopped the onion. You cooked the rice. You showed up. You did the things, Robert. I was just… the audience.”
He walked to the sink, picked up a towel. He took the clean skillet from her hands and began to dry it. He polished the copper bottom until it shone.
They worked in a new silence, not the empty silence of the apartment, but a companionable one. The clock ticked. The faucet dripped. The world outside the kitchen window grew dark.
When the last dish was put away, the kitchen was still a museum. But it was a museum they had briefly occupied, leaving smudges on the stainless steel, a discarded tea bag in the sink, the lingering, complex scent of burned garlic and fried onions layered over the bleach.
Kris shrugged on her coat. “Friday,” she said. “Lunch. Awful coffee. I’m holding you to it.”
“I’ll be there.”
She let herself out. The door clicked shut softly.
Robert stood in the center of the kitchen again. The stillness returned, but it was different now. It wasn’t a vacuum. It held the echo of a laugh, the ghost of a sizzle, the memory of a shared, imperfect meal. He walked to the block of knives, pulled out the chef’s knife he’d used. He washed it slowly, dried it meticulously, and slid it back into its slot.
It was just a knife again. Not a monument. A tool.
He turned off the overhead light, leaving the room in the dim glow of the under-cabinet LEDs. He didn’t look back as he walked down the hall. The clock kept ticking, but the sound no longer felt hollow. It was just measuring time, one second after another, moving forward into a dark and unknown night that, for the first time, felt slightly, minimally, bearable.
It was just measuring time, one second after another, moving forward into a dark and unknown night that, for the first time, felt slightly, minimally, bearable.
The bedroom door was still a barrier he hadn’t crossed. He stood before it, his hand on the cool brass knob. He hadn’t slept in there since the accident, choosing the unforgiving leather of the living room couch instead. The smell of their life was still in there, trapped. Her perfume on a scarf, the laundry detergent she preferred, the ghost of her skin. He turned the knob.
The air was different. Thicker. He didn’t turn on the light. Streetlamp glow filtered through the blinds, painting faint stripes across the untouched bed. Her side. His side. The whole geometry of absence. He toed off his shoes, didn’t bother changing, and lay on top of the duvet on his side, staring at the empty space beside him.
Sleep didn’t come. It crept. It was a slow, dark tide that pulled him under into a place where sound distorted first.
He heard the wind chime. Not the soft hum from the hospital roof, but a clear, crystalline ting that seemed to come from the window. Then he smelled burnt garlic and onions, which twisted strangely into the scent of her shampoo—apples and cinnamon. The room wasn’t dark anymore. It was filled with a gentle, golden light, source-less, like liquid afternoon.
Joanne was sitting on the edge of the bed, right where her indent should have been. She was wearing the worn blue sweater she’d always steal from him, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked real. Not a ghostly outline, but solid. He could see the faint lines around her eyes from a lifetime of smiling.
“You cooked,” she said. Her voice was exactly as he remembered. A low, warm hum. It didn’t echo. It just was.
He couldn’t speak. His throat closed. He just nodded, a stupid, childlike gesture.
“I know. I smelled it.” She smiled, a small, private thing. “It was a little bland. Needed more ginger.”
A wet laugh burst from him, choking into a sob. “You’re a critic from beyond the grave?”
“I’m always a critic.” She unfolded her legs, leaning forward. The light danced in her hair. “You stood at the stove, Robert. You picked up the knife. That’s the part that matters.”
The dream-fabric around them wavered. He felt the crushing weight of all the words he’d stored up, the apologies rotting in his chest. “Jo, I’m so sorry. I should have—”
“Stop.” She didn’t say it harshly. It was firm, final. A period. “That road is closed. You have to stop looking in the rearview mirror. It’s just a flat, empty stretch of nothing. It’s stealing from you.”
“It’s stealing you.”
“No.” She reached out. Her hand hovered just above his chest, over his heart. He felt a warmth, not a touch. “I’m right here. You carried me out of that car. You’re still carrying me. But you don’t have to carry the wreckage, too. You can put that down.”
Tears streamed down his temples, hot into his hairline. “It’s so hard.”
“I know, my love. I know it is.” Her image softened at the edges, the golden light beginning to brighten. “But you’re doing it. You chopped the onion. You let someone see the burnt garlic. You’re walking forward. However slowly. However badly. Keep walking.”
“I miss you.” The words were torn from him, primal and raw.
“I miss you, too. That’s the contract.” She began to fade, the light absorbing her form, starting with her feet, moving up. “But don’t you dare let that man steal another second. Not another meal. Not another breath. You live, Robert. You live, and you cook, and you burn things, and you keep walking. For me. For you.”
“Joanne—”
“I’m so proud of you.” Her voice was an echo now, blending with the distant, persistent ting of the wind chime. “Just keep moving forward.”
She was gone. The light condensed into a single, blazing point, then winked out.
Robert gasped, jerking awake.
He was on his back in the dark bedroom, the streetlamp stripes across the ceiling. His face was wet. His chest ached, but it was a clean ache, like a bone finally set after being broken and misaligned. The scent of apples and cinnamon was gone. The room smelled of dust and silence.
He lay there for a long time, breathing. The clock in the kitchen ticked. Forward. Forward. Forward.
Just before dawn, he rolled onto his side, facing her empty space. He didn’t see emptiness now. He saw the shape her body had left in their life, a silhouette he would have to learn to fill with something new.
“Okay,” he whispered into the darkness, his voice rough but clear. “Okay, Jo.”
He closed his eyes. This time, sleep came quickly, and it was dreamless, and deep.