Chapter 24: Toast

Nathan burned the first slice of toast.

He stood at the counter in his jeans and nothing else, scraping the black off with a butter knife, and looked at me over his shoulder, guilty.

"That's not how she likes it," I said.

"I know how she likes it."

"Golden. Not brown. Butter first, then jam, and cut corner to corner."

"You wrote the manual, apparently."

"It's on a sticky note inside the cabinet."

He opened the cabinet.

The sticky note was there, in my mother's all-caps handwriting: GOLDEN. CORNER TO CORNER. DO NOT ASK ME HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT.

He laughed so hard he had to put the knife down.

I sat at the table in his flannel shirt with my feet on the chair rung and watched him make the second slice right.

The rain had stopped.

Morning light came through the kitchen window and lay in a long yellow bar across the floor.

The front door opened at eight.

Mom came in without her cane, carrying a paper bag of tomatoes from the church bus woman's garden.

She stopped in the doorway and took in the room.

She looked at Nathan's bare back.

She looked at my borrowed shirt.

She looked at the toast.

"You're burning something," she said.

"It's handled, Mrs. Larkin," Nathan said, and went red to the ears.

"Don't Mrs. Larkin me. You're making my toast in my kitchen." She set the bag on the counter. "Is it golden?"

"It's golden."

"Corner to corner?"

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