FUTURE RISK

by MEGAN MATTHEWS

  Bennett stabs at the lump of vegetables with a plastic green spatula, splashing the oil all over the sides of the stove. “What are you doing?” I’ve watched him murder the poor broccoli long enough.

  “Making veggies,” he says, lifting the spatula in the air like there’s nothing wrong with his method. The movement splatters small drops of oil on the front of his refrigerator, and I cringe, leaning back to get away from the damage.

  Sliding off the stool I walk around the counter. “By hitting them? Are you trying to beat them into cooking? Move over.”

  He pulls his hand back when I reach for the spatula. “What?”

  “I’ll cook. You talk.” It will save the veggies a torture session and give me something to do to keep myself calm.

  “Anyway,” Bennett sits on the other side of the counter on the same stool I left. “Gina was a great mom and I did my best to be a good dad. We’d make videos, Skype chat, send letters, and I spent every second with him when I was home.”

  His story sounds perfect. Like two people working together to raise their son, but the heavy tone Bennett tells it with hints at a not-so-pleasant ending.

  “So what happened?” It could be Liam is here for the summer, but there’s something off. It doesn’t feel like that’s the case. With my eyes cast down to the pan, I secretively slide as much of the oil as possible to one side and use the rest of the pan to finish cooking the vegetables.

  When Bennett doesn’t start talking again, I give him a pointed look until he takes a deep breath and resumes.

  “On my last leave in the states, I stopped by to pick up Liam and found her curled in a ball on her bathroom floor.” He stops, taps the counter twice and with another deep breath continues, “I was horrible to her. Accused her of being on drugs and finally after a lot of yelling she admitted,” he rubs his hand against his forehead creating red lines from the hardness, “she had cancer.”

  “Oh no.” I wish there was something better I could say, but nothing articulate comes to mind. The oil hisses and pops as I spread the veggies around, tossing them with the spatula.

  “The doctors caught it too late. Gina went through a round of chemo but it wasn’t enough. She died a few months later.”

  “Bennett, I’m so sorry.” With the vegetable done, I remove the pan from the heat and turn off the stove while keeping my eyes on his.

  He shrugs — getting a handle on his emotions quickly — and stands from the stool to retrieve three plates from the cupboard. “I couldn’t get out of the military right away so Liam stayed with my mother in Florida. Gina had no family who wanted to be involved. Ridge offered me a job in his nice quiet family-oriented community and I jumped on a chance to move us here.”

  “And you don’t tell anyone about Liam?”

  Bennett laughs. “No. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure how you felt about kids.”

  I laugh under my breath. “Yeah, you’re totally wrong on that one.” Using the spatula, I drop a few vegetables on everyone’s plate making sure to leave one with significantly less.

  A buzzer sounds and I step back to let Bennett turn it off and retrieve his casserole from the oven. He adds a large slice to everyone’s plate. From the look of the noodles in red sauce, I’d say lasagna.

  “Liam!” Bennett yells from the kitchen. “Dinner time.”

  Bennett carries Liam’s plate to a dining room set off the kitchen. Plain white walls with a short Berber carpet match the basic wooden table sitting in the middle with four chairs surrounding it.

  Liam doesn’t spare me a second glance as he takes a seat next to his dad, and I’m almost disappointed he doesn’t seem to care at all about the new girl eating dinner with them. Is this something Bennett does often?

  The feeling lasts less than a minute before he wrinkles up his nose at a piece of broccoli perched beside a lasagna noodle and looks to his dad asking, “Who’s the girl?”

  Bennett’s eyes widen. “Liam, that’s not something we say.”

  “What? You didn’t introduce me,” he counters.

  I turn up a shoulder and smile. The kid has a point. “My name is Anessa. And I’m a friend of your daddy’s.”

  “Okay.” He states it like it is no big deal and goes back to licking the sauce off his fork.

  “Why don’t you tell us about your day.” Bennett leans over and cuts Liam’s lasagna into a few small pieces. It’s such a simple gesture, but an adorable one. Watching Bennett look after his child brings a smile to my tired features, and some of the frustrations from the day drain away.

  “Miss D. and I colored and then we went to the park by the big school.”

  “Did she push you on the swings?” Bennett asks.

  “Yes, but she doesn’t go high enough,” Liam complains licking his fork again, this time getting a small chunk of noodle in his mouth. “She said you have to watch Hercules with me tonight because she can’t watch it again.”

  Bennett laughs. “Is that what she said?”

  “Yeah, she said…Hercules was a pushover.”

  I shove a bite of lasagna into my mouth so I don’t laugh as I watch these two-exchange conversation back and forth.

  “If you eat half of your veggies we’ll watch Hercules, little man.”

  Liam scrunches up his nose, eyeing the two pieces of broccoli and three carrot slices hesitantly. He must really want to watch Hercules because after a few seconds he stabs the carrots with his fork and hurriedly shoves them into his mouth. He chews slowly, looking like he’s ready to lose his dinner on the table at any second, but eventually swallows the offending food.

  “I don’t want to waste my food from China,” he says before taking another bite.

  My face scrunches up, one eye more closed than the other. It must be enough to alert Bennett to my unspoken “What?” question.

  “Kids are hungry in China.” Bennett shrugs, smiling. “I don’t know. It worked on me when my mom used it.”

  **

  Hercules floats off into the clouds to meet his parents and the credits roll across the screen. Slipping an arm behind his son, Bennett leans down and picks the sleeping Liam up before walking him upstairs. With nothing else to do, I turn off the TV and stand aimlessly in the living room. Now comes the super awkward time of night… figuring out where I sleep.

  Getting lost in a children’s movie I haven’t seen since my youth was a nice escape. I almost beat Liam to be the first to sleep, my head falling to the side every few scenes. Thoughts from the day fall back into my head as I replay the afternoon. So much blood. To keep my mind occupied, I gather up the spilled crayons from the coffee table and shove them back in the box. Next I line up all the paper into a nice little pile, taking a second to scan each drawing.

  The pages are filled with images of trees and fish. One I’m pretty sure is a zombie walking a dog downtown Main Street. Typical five-year-old drawings, I assume.

  When I finish I’m left tapping my foot against the carpet until I decide to find the boys upstairs. At the top of the staircase Bennett and Liam are nowhere to be seen, but light filters into the hallway from the room on the left side guiding me in that direction.

  Liam is sound asleep in a red Lightning McQueen race car bed. Bennett leans down tucking the covers around him before he places a quick kiss to his forehead with a whispered goodnight. My heart drips to the floor in a soggy puddle. Watching from the doorway soon makes me feel like I’m intruding on their special moment, but I’m also not willing to leave and miss it. It’s more heartwarming than any shirtless firefighter holding a kitten.

  Bennett turns off Liam’s light and walks past me, stopping for a moment in the hallway and promising he’ll be right back. He returns less than a minute later holding a huge T-shirt with Worlds Best Dad written across the front.

  “For you to sleep in. I’ll grab some items from your closet tomorrow.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I hadn’t given any thought to what I would sleep in—only where. In fact, until this moment
I’d forgotten about wearing the light blue scrubs I’d put on in the hospital bathroom. I’m glad someone is looking out for me.

  He walks farther down the hall and leans into a room, flipping on a switch. “This is the bathroom. I don’t keep extra toothbrushes. I’m sorry.” Taking a few steps back, he turns on another light and another in a new room down the hall. “This is the guest bedroom. You should have everything you need, and if anything happens, I’m right across the hall.”

  “Bathroom, guestroom, right. Got it.” We stop together, our first quiet moments of the entire day. Our eyes meet and there’s so many words I want to say, but the weariness of the afternoon sets in. When I open my mouth the only words to come out are, “Thanks, Bennett.”

  He stalls for a second too, like he wants to say more. But with a shake of his head he runs his hand over my cheek. His fingertips are tender when he strokes. “See you in the morning, Nessa.”

  I watch his strong back walk into his room before turning, bypassing the bathroom and heading straight for the bed in the guest room. Without a toothbrush there isn’t much for me to do with my nighttime routine and I’m way past caring. I quickly change and throw the scrub pants and everything else in the chair in the corner of the room. Bennett’s shirt is super soft and hangs to my knees, so I’m perfectly covered.

  Under the comforter I relax into the pillow and expect to be sleeping in a matter of moments.

  But it doesn’t happen.

  Laying in the dark in Bennett’s spare room, all the memories from today come crashing into my thoughts. The shattering of my broken window, the blood pooling out of Mad Dog’s chest, and somewhere mixed up in all those emotions is the news Bennett is a dad. Scenes of him scraping off the leftover food from Liam’s plate into the trash or grabbing him a blanket to watch the movie pepper my mind. The day doesn’t fit together. Blood and bullets don’t match with everything else.

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Someone died today. Someone I’ve never met before, but who was simply in my bakery for whatever reason. Probably not a good reason, but he didn’t deserve to die.

  The tears catch up to me fast before I have time to do anything about them. I gasp and sniffle, quickly burying my head in the pillow so not to wake up Bennett or Liam. For a few minutes I let myself go, the pillow case dampening with each tear shed. I clutch the material to my face muffling the sounds, but a few small sniffles make it through.

  The bed dips and two strong arms wrap around my chest. “Shhh,” Bennett whispers into the back of my head, his breath lost in my hair.

  I roll over, fisting the material of his shirt and bringing my head his chest. “I’m sorry.” The words are muffled between half sobs.

  “I’ve got you, babe. You kept it together, but you can let it out now. I won’t go anywhere.”

  No more words escape as I cry into Bennett’s shirt, his body wrapped around mine helping to relieve my stress.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sunlight pours from the open window on the other side of the room. It heats my face and forces me to open one eye before I’m ready. Right away I notice the bed is empty. Bennett made his exit sometime in the middle the night or early this morning. I don’t know. And even though I’m happier this way — who wants to wake up next to the guy you spent all night crying on? — I use the entire walk to the bathroom feeling disappointed. My feet drag on the carpet.

  The upstairs is quiet but there’s a continuous banging of pans and loud muffled noises coming from downstairs while I brush my teeth with a finger and splash water on my face. I finish taking care of business, flush the toilet, and wash my hands, drying them by flapping them around in the air as I walk out of the bathroom since I couldn’t find a hand towel.

  On the first floor the sounds increase in the area of the kitchen, and since they’re too loud to ignore, I hesitantly make my way there. Bennett could be torturing eggs this morning. It’s my responsibility to step in and give them an honorable death. After watching him last night, there’s no telling what I’ll find in his kitchen today. Especially unsupervised.

  Yet in the living room there isn’t a small child watching cartoons and it’s not Bennett I find in the kitchen. Instead Dolores stands in front of the fridge, the door open and her head tucked inside.

  She tosses a container of cottage cheese on the counter and closes the door. “That’s a nice shirt you have on,” she says, not sparing me more than a passing glance.

  Huh? The lower my eyes get the more my cheeks turn red with embarrassment. I’m most definitely standing in Bennett’s kitchen wearing only the long T-shirt he gave me last night and my underwear. Thankfully, the shirt falls low enough it’s not like she can see anything. But had I known it wasn’t Bennett in here I would have taken the time to change back into the scrub pants. Maybe.

  Walking around in a shirt felt like a better idea than putting on those dirty scrubs again. What I really need is a shower.

  “This is not what it looks like.”

  She tilts her head, squinting at me from behind an oversized pair of glasses. “I’m hearing that a lot lately.”

  I take two steps toward the kitchen counter with my hands held out. “My bakery window was shot yesterday, and someone died, and I didn’t want to put on scrubs, and Bennett said I couldn’t go home, and I swear we didn’t sleep together.”

  Dolores doesn’t say anything. She just stares at me for a few seconds.

  “Okay, I mean we did sleep together, but only sleep because I was crying. Mad Dog died…” When she doesn’t say anything I keep going “and the scrubs.”

  “There, there.” She walks around the other side of the kitchen and pats me on the back, steering me to one of the stools. “I heard you had an eventful day.”

  “Ugh. Pearl called?” I question resting my head in my hands.

  She laughs. “Yes, but the paper picked it up, too.” From the other side of the fridge she pulls out a thin folded over newspaper and slaps it down on the counter.

  I release a strangled “ugh” sound. Right there, on the very front page, in big bold type face is the headline, Bakery Shooting. One Dead.

  “Don’t fret. These things happen to everyone.”

  They happen to everyone? Maybe in Pelican Bay, but not where I’m from.

  “The boys are fishing down at the pier. It’s one of their rituals Bennett tries to never miss. Let me make you an egg. One of the guys Bennett works with dropped off your clothes earlier this morning. I put the bag in the downstairs bathroom.” She points to the closed door between the kitchen and dining room hallway.

  It’s uncharacteristic to let someone cook for me, but the thought of clean clothes is enough to get me to agree to anything. I scramble into the bathroom and find a small black gym bag sitting on the counter by the sink. There’s no time for me to worry who went through my apartment and packed for me, but it doesn’t take long to figure it out. When I pull back the zipper a note flops out.

  Scribbled out on one of the promotional postcards I had made up for the bakery is a note. In thick black pen it says, “I hope I grabbed everything you’ll need for your stay with Bennett. Good luck, Tabitha.”

  I dig around in the bag looking for a long pair of jeans and a T-shirt but the top layer of clothes is unacceptable. I don’t even know how Tabitha found the cute little pink teddy. I keep it hidden in the very back of my underwear drawer just in case one day I need it. The next item I pull out is a black lacy number I know she didn’t find in my apartment because I don’t own anything like this. It’s totally see-through and I spend way too long looking at it from every angle before I crumple it into a ball and shove it in the bottom of the bag. I’m not sure if it’s a shirt or lingerie. But I am sure I won’t be wearing it.

  Tabitha is definitely going to pay for this.

  At the very bottom of the bag I find a pair of stone washed jean shorts and a white tank top, the words “I bake pretty things” written in glitter across the chest. It’s the best I c
an do unless I want to wear the vanity shirt I received as a going away gift from the diner that says “eat me” on the chest with a picture of a cupcake below it. Half the clothes in the bag aren’t even mine. I would never attempt to wear a size two pair of ripped jeans. I didn’t even know they made clothes in a size so small. It has to have come from Katy’s wardrobe.

  No one who works at a bakery is wearing a size two.

  I repack the best I can and spend a few minutes finger combing my hair before I chance a look in the mirror. It’s a shock, but I don’t look half bad. Better than I expected.

  “Okay, Nessa. It’s time to get out there and get it together.” I repeat the saying two more times before it kicks in. I can do this. Some shit happened yesterday, but when I walk out this bathroom door it is a new day… in new interesting clothes, and I’m going to make the best of it I can. Today is not the day I sit around and cry. That’s done now. Today is the day I work on rebuilding.

  It all sounds pretty in my head. I hope I’m up to it.

  Ten minutes or more have passed since I entered the bathroom, but when I walk out Dolores is piling a heap of eggs on a plain white square plate. I sit back on the same stool Bennett and I used last night and tinker with the fork she hands me.

  “Do they catch many fish at the pier?” I ask taking my first bite of scrambled egg and moaning. I’m a picky eater, but these are some of the best I’ve ever tasted. They’re light and fluffy, seasoned with the perfect amount of salt and a dash of pepper.

  Dolores laughs. “I think they caught one…once. But the tradition started when Liam and Bennett first moved here. Bonding experience for them both, I’m sure.”

  “He’s a good dad.”

  “He is. I started helping them out right after Liam moved in. The man has struggled at times, but he’s learning.”