“I’m not going anywhere without her,” he says. Then with a kiss of his own, this one on my lips. He says. “Or without you.”
Then he places his hand over mine and we turn the handle together.
“Lizzie,” I call out tentatively. In this moment, I feel like I’m watching myself from outside my body. What’s about to happen is either going to be a touching miracle I’ll hate myself forever for not catching on video. Or it’s going to be the kind of car crash that causes major backups and leaves the sort of damage that isn’t healed with any number of pancakes.
“Mom, can you come here? The internet’s being weird again.”
“Can you come here first? I have someone I want you to meet.”
“But my show is—”
“Lizzie.” I grit out her name between my teeth, like a dragon toeing the line of breathing fire. It’s a trick all mothers have used before when they try—and fail—to hide their frustration. “Please come here. We have a guest.”
When Lizzie appears from around the corner, Cory steps back. I don’t know if he’s scared in the moment or just overwhelmed, but in the next heartbeat, he takes two steps forward, squats down so he’s on one knee and extends his hand.
“Hi.”
She looks to me for confirmation. We’ve gone through drills about what to do when meeting strangers, and I’m proud to see she’s being extra cautious.
“It’s okay,” I say, and she returns Cory’s handshake.
“Hi,” she says and she drops her hand back to her side. “Now can you fix the internet?”
“Lizzie, this is an old friend of mom’s,” I say, speaking about myself in the third person. “We went to school together.”
She squints at Cory with comically furrowed eyebrows. “You don’t look as old as mom.”
“Good genes, I guess,” Cory says.
Lizzie looks from the strange man to me. “Mom. The TV?”
“Actually, Lizzie. You should know who this really is. He’s—”
“—a friend of your mom’s who makes movies. Which means I’m super good at fixing TVs.”
“Really? You make movies?”
“Yep,” Cory says in that lighthearted way he did back when we were just kids. And while I’m happy to see the two of them smiling, I can’t help biting my lips and letting out a puff of air from my nose. Why did Cory just do that? Is he having second thoughts?
Before I can ask him, Lizzie has him by the hand and is pulling him into the living room. “It’s not the TV. It’s the internet. Our internet sucks.”
“Lizzie,” I call out automatically. “Language.”
“It stinks,” she corrects herself.
“You know,” Cory says from the other room, “lots of movies are on the internet now, so I’m pretty good at fixing that too.”
Just like that, I’m left in the kitchen by myself. Cory has met Lizzie, but Lizzie hasn't met her dad. Not that she knows, at least. And while I’m desperate to know why Cory changed his tactic at the last minute, I’m not about to pull him away and have a whispered conversation. Lizzie might only be ten, but she’s smart. She’d figure out something was wrong, and she wouldn’t leave me alone about it until we were screaming at each other.
So, left with no other choice, I mix up pancake batter, heat up two pans, and over th
e course of the next half hour, I cook up a feast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and Cory’s bagels. The coffees and hot cocoa are not forgotten. Between setting the table for three, dragging a spare chair from the desk in Lizzie’s room, and finishing up the bacon, I finish the Americano. After warming up Cory’s coffee and Lizzie’s hot cocoa in the microwave, I call them in to eat.
“Why’s my desk chair here?”
“Because we only have two dining room chairs.”
“You can use the big chair if you want, Mr. Cory.”