More Than Everything (Family 3)

He was right. The kitchen was a disaster. It hadn’t even looked that bad the time Charlie and the kids had made a papier-mâché solar system.

“Okay.” I found the cutting board, knife, and onion. “This says it’s supposed to be diced. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Adan shrugged as he hit the egg on the side of the pot. “Maybe it’s supposed to be shaped like dice.”

“Right. That makes sense.” I started chopping.

“Shit!” Adan yelled.

I jerked my head to look at him. “What?”

“Some of the eggshell fell in here.”

“Oh. Just scoop it out.”

“Okay.”

I finished cutting the onion and brought it over to him. “Does this look okay? It wasn’t easy to get all the little cubes to stay together. Especially with the outside of the onion being so flaky.”

He looked appraisingly at the cutting board I was holding. “I think so. Drop it in here.”

I scraped the onion into the pot, and Adan stirred everything together.

“Now what?” he asked.

“We’re supposed to pour it into a loaf pan.”

“What’s a loaf pan?”

“I don’t know.” I dragged my hand through my hair in frustration. “Doesn’t matter. Just find a pan and we’ll put it in there.”

He darted his gaze around the kitchen. “Why can’t we just cook it in this? It’s metal. It can go in the oven.”

I thought about it for a second and nodded. “Yeah, okay, fine. I’ll open the door, you slide it in.”

“Oh, I like sliding it in,” he said, but it was halfhearted at best. We were both so damn tired.

He put the pot in the oven and I closed the door.

“Done.” I let out a relieved breath. “How much time is it supposed to cook?”

Adan got the recipe from the counter. “Thirty minutes.”

I looked at the clock. “We don’t have thirty minutes.”

“Just turn up the temperature,” he suggested.

“Okay.” I turned the dial up. “Now we need to make the salad.”

The salad came in a bag. It still took us ten minutes to put it together.

“Charlie’s going to be here any second and we haven’t cleaned up,” Adan pointed out as he looked around the disaster that was once our immaculate kitchen.

I chewed my lip. “How about I turn on the alarm so we hear it beep when he comes in and one of us will run out there and distract him while the other finishes up in here?”

“Good plan,” Adan said as he started washing dishes. “Will you find the spray cleaner thing first so I can wipe down the counters?”

I eventually located some Windex in the laundry room. After bringing it to Adan, I hustled over to the alarm panel, which was by the door leading to the garage. I turned it on and had started jogging back to the kitchen when the alarm went off.

“Scott! What the hell?” Adan yelled.

“I’ll turn it off! I’ll turn it off!” I ran back to the alarm panel, pressed the code, and ended the piercingly loud siren sound. “Sorry,” I said as I ran back to the kitchen. “I must have hit a wrong butt—” The air looked cloudy. “Adan?”

“What?” He didn’t look up from the dishes.

“I think something’s burning.”

He sniffed. “Shit.”

We’d both turned to look at the oven when the home phone rang.

“I’ll get the phone,” he said. “You get the meatloaf.”

I pulled the oven door open and was hit with a wave of heat and smoke. Thankfully, I remembered to don the oven mitts before reaching for the pot.

“What’s our password for the alarm company?” Adan asked frantically.

I looked up to see him holding the phone to his ear. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because you hit the emergency help button or something, and they’re going to send the cops if I don’t give them the password.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah.”

“I, uh, think I put the code in my phone.” I stood up and left the oven door open as I searched around the kitchen for my cellphone.

Adan tried to get the person from the alarm company to give us more time.

“Do you know where I put my phone?” I asked him.

“How am I supposed to know where you put your phone?” he asked impatiently.

“There it is,” I said when I spotted it on the kitchen table. I ran to get it and ran smack into the oven door. “Fuck!” I hopped on one foot and grasped my injured shin with my oven-mitt-covered hand. “Goddamnit!” I limped over to the table, got my phone, and ran back over to him.

“Scott! I need the alarm password.”

“It’s hydrangea,” Charlie said.

Adan and I both spun around to see Charlie, Bobby, and Stephi standing at the edge of the kitchen.

“Uh, hi,” I said. “Welcome home.”

Adan finished talking to the alarm company and then said, “We made you dinner. Happy anniversary.”

WE ENDED up going out to dinner, and when we came home, Charlie got the kids ready for bed while Adan and I cleaned up the kitchen.