He nodded. “I was a glutton.” I am a glutton. He noticed then that he’d eaten not only his airline meal, but his Andrea-packed lunch and half of hers as well. He felt his face heat and he turned away, berating himself, Glutton, glutton, glutton!
Sensing his dismay, she patted his hand. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay to overindulge once in a while. Besides, we’ll be getting plenty of exercise on the ranch.”
That’s what he was afraid of.
The attendant took away their meal debris, then asked Cnut, “Can I do anything else for you, Mr. Jackson?” The message was clear, an invitation, and did not include Mrs. Jackson, at his side. He and Andrea were pretending to be Curt and Andrea Jackson, and they had valid paperwork to document their identities, thanks to Michael’s angelic network. They were on the way to a dude ranch in Montana for a vacation.
“No, thank you.”
When she left, Andrea raised her brows at him, “That was a bit brazen. Does it happen to you a lot?”
He shrugged. “She probably thought you were my sister.”
“Yeah, right. Must get tiresome.”
She was teasing, or so he surmised. Despite centuries of having lost his repulsive fat, he still thought of himself as unattractive. He was, inside. “Very,” he agreed with what he hoped was a tone of sarcasm . . . and finality. Enough on that subject. “How did you get interested in cooking?”
“Necessity. At first. I was an only child the first ten years of my life. My mother kept having miscarriages every other year until she had Celie. Then, after Celie’s birth, she got cancer. For three years, between chemo and radiation, remission and reoccurrence, and finally death, I became the chief caregiver for both my mother and the baby. My dad was a basket case, burying himself in work. Oh, we had help . . . a housekeeper/nurse/cook, but somehow I became the anchor of the family. I was the one who took care of the baby, Celie cried for everyone but me. Feeding her, changing her diapers, rocking her. In the beginning my mother helped, especially during the remission periods, but she just got weaker and weaker. And she begged me, before she died, to always take care of Celie. What else could I do?” She shrugged. “Even when my school and my childhood, such as it was, suffered. I never did catch up academically. Barely graduated from high school.”
He could see now why she felt such a responsibility for her sister. It was like a blood oath to her dead mother.
“Then, after Mom died when I was fourteen and Celie only four, my dad met Darla, a yoga instructor half his age, and bam, he got married again. Less than a year after he buried Mom. Not that I blame him. Mom was sick for so long, and he was lonely, and . . .” She shrugged again.
And he was a horndog, Cnut concluded, as most men are when without sexual release. Try being a celibate vangel! For centuries! “Things were better for you then? Once you got a new mother?”
“Hah! You haven’t met Darla.” She rolled her eyes. “To give her credit, Darla tried, but Celie and I had been on our own too long by then, and we would have resisted any new woman in the house. We made her life miserable, and she wasn’t the maternal type to begin with.”
“So, you continued being the ‘little mother’?”
She nodded. “To this day.”
“That doesn’t explain the cooking interest.”
“Oh, right. Anyhow, my mother was a really good cook, and a gardener, too. She had the neatest little vegetable and herb garden out back. A raised bed that Daddy built especially for her. Darla had it plowed and paved over with flagstones for an extended patio when she moved in.
“While my mother was healthy, she grew the best heirloom tomatoes, and string beans, and beets, and a variety of lettuces, and incredible white icicle radishes. Nothing in the world will ever rival her fresh tomato sandwiches. We even ate radish sandwiches with only salt and pepper on buttered white bread. Yum!” She sighed. “The smell of basil and rosemary and dill always remind me of her. Someday I’d like to have a house where I can have my own garden.” She sighed again, deeply, then continued. “Mom always seemed to have an apron on, and she was always teaching me things in the kitchen. Simple cooking but wonderful dishes, using fresh ingredients, with high-quality utensils. My memories of her will always be associated with the kitchen, not with the sickroom which became her prison later on. When I have that little house I mentioned, the kitchen is going to be fabulous, the heart of the home. Nothing fancy . . . no stainless steel, institutional look. More soft colors, butcher block, farm-like.” She glanced at him and seemed to realize how much she’d revealed with her ramble. “Sorry, but you did ask.”