I lowered my eyes and touched my palms together.
“For what I am about to eat, may the Lord make me truly grateful.” If my cooking skills couldn’t create something edible, maybe God could change it into something that was. That’s what I really meant by that prayer.
With a steeling breath, I took my fork, stabbed a bite of meatloaf, a caramelized carrot (from round two), and lifted them to my mouth.
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
I spit the mostly raw meat into my napkin, and took a big drink of water to swish out the acrid residue from the burnt—not caramelized like I’d told myself—carrots.
Even God couldn’t make my cooking taste good.
I dumped it in the trash and called for delivery from the pizza shop. They knew me by my voice—and exactly what I’d order. It was there in twenty minutes. And I was a few dollars poorer.
I really should learn this cooking thing. It’d be good for my wallet, as well as my psyche, not to mention my overall health.
Sigh. I might need Jeremy Hotston to teach me.
Again?
No! I wasn’t going to reach out to him. I probably didn’t even have his number, and I wouldn’t contact him if I did. Not an option. Instead, I looked through the photos from the trash bin on my phone. Maybe there were cooking hints in them I could decipher, since YouTube had obviously failed me.
I flipped through them again, this time less horrified, so I could take them in a little better—since I was resigned to the fact I’d lived a life of sheer stupidity for two months’ time. Whatever. Everyone makes mistakes. Few people had as solid an excuse as I did for their lapses in judgment. I had an Episode Between.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Hey, what was that series of dark photos? I adjusted the settings on my phone to examine them better. Huh, there was the river—and some chairs and poles, and just a second. Had Jeremy taken me fishing?
I love fishing! I hadn’t been fishing in years, not since my cousin Veronica and I went every night for a summer when we were kids. Wow. I rubbed my forehead. The sight of the river in the pictures, though obscured by lack of lighting, spread calmness inside me. I could almost hear its slow current, feel the soft breeze coming off the cool water, smell the grasses.
Jeremy Hotston had taken me fishing.
And he’d taught me to cook.
And he’d noticed I’d missed the late-summer flowers.
Maybe I can see why I might have liked him.
I shut off the photo app and went outside. The mailbox beckoned. I went to it and found more mail than anyone should ever receive.
The rest of that night was spent under the weight of sorting mail—and not nearly enough of it was stuff I could automatically junk, like fliers or credit card offers. Way too much of it was medical. And there seemed to be far more business-related mail than usual, and in official-looking envelopes, too.
I tore the largest one open. Out fell a stack of papers so thick and terrifying I let it drop like it was on fire.
Paperwork and I did not coexist well. But something told me I should buckle down and examine it. Party of the first part, me, party of the second part, Tennille Underwood-Lexington. Constant Energy Gymnastics, its address, hereafter referred to as The Property, blah, blah, blah.
My eyes lurched to a halt. I went back and reread the blah, blah, blah.
Party of the First Part does hereby quitclaim The Property to Party of the Second Part.
At the bottom, there was a line filled in with my signature, as well as the date.
Tennille’s was already on the other line, and dated three weeks ago, alongside a witness’s signature that I couldn’t read.
Just a cotton-picking minute! I was no contracts expert, but to me, this looked like a deal where I had supposedly signed away full ownership of my business to Tennille, my business partner.
It made no sense!
Unless it was something I’d discussed with Tennille during my fugue state—and had been talked into by someone nefarious, like Jeremy Hotston!