Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Most evenings, Noelle was so tired after she got home from work, she could hardly wrestle up the energy to nuke a microwave dinner. Tonight, however, she felt different for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Rather than spending a lonely Saturday night in the small apartment she lived in above her parents’ garage, she decided to actually enter the house and borrow her mother’s oven. It wasn’t as if Doris was likely to be using it. Noelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cook anything, but she had a feeling it had probably been last July, for her stepdad’s birthday. Cliff loved a good pork tenderloin, and even though Doris made a fuss anytime anyone asked her to cook anything, she had made it for him. Despite her protesting, her mother was a good cook, when she could be bothered with turning on the oven.

Noelle double-checked the timer she’d set on the stove and turned around to straighten the island, not that it needed straightening. Doris’s house was always immaculately clean and tidy. That was one area her mother excelled in. Since she’d lost a step or two, now that she was in her fifties, she’d hired a woman to come in and clean once a week, to get the spots she’d missed or do the jobs she didn’t particularly like, such as the windows or the baseboards, but compared to the average human’s house, the Snow residence was impeccable.

Rather than cleaning something that didn’t need cleaning, Noelle took a few steps over to the counter and picked up a photograph of her mother and Cliff walking hand in hand through the park downtown. It had been taken last fall, and the leaves were vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow. They were looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. She wasn’t sure who had taken the photograph, maybe a professional, or maybe a family friend, but whomever had captured this moment had done a great job.

Cliff had done a great job, too. It hadn’t been easy, stepping in to raise a six-year-old who insisted on fighting him at every turn. When Noelle’s dad had walked out when she was four, she’d been devastated. She couldn’t understand why he would just… leave like that. Just walk away. She’d assumed it had been something she had done, or hadn’t done. That he had left because of her. No matter how many times her mother tried to assure her that she had done nothing wrong, Noelle didn’t believe her because none of it made any sense in her mind when she was little more than a baby. Now, as an adult who was so thankful for the man her mother had met a year later, who’d married a single mother and adopted her troublesome daughter, Noelle still couldn’t understand what had made Paul Burke walk out the door and never look back, but she could understand what it meant to be loved by a man who’d never walk away. That’s what she’d found in her stepdad.

That didn’t mean they always saw eye to eye or that her mother and Cliff always got along either. But that was okay. Part of being a family meant making sacrifices. He was disappointed when Noelle had changed her major halfway through college, when she’d moved back home, when she’d taken the low paying job at the animal shelter, when she’d broken up with her last boyfriend because he made a funny sound when he chewed meat. She had been disappointed that Cliff’s allergy to dogs had kept her from fulfilling one of her dreams. It was what it was, and she knew, when it all came down to it, she was blessed to have the parents she did.

The scent of pumpkin pie permeated the kitchen. Noelle checked the time again. In just ten minutes, she could take it out. What had inspired her to make this particular dish, she couldn’t say, but she had come home in the mood for grilled cheese and pie. The sandwich had been devoured, the pan washed and put away. Then, she’d used the ingredients her mother had bought to make her pie to take to Aunt Jody’s for Thanksgiving, ingredients that hadn’t been used because Doris had decided to buy an apple pie at the last moment, to make her mother’s kitchen smell like a diner in heaven.

A few moments before the oven chimed, the back door opened, and her mother came in, arms ladened with shopping bags. Noelle couldn’t help but smile. Something else Cliff had brought to their family was financial stability. He worked at the bank downtown and had a good paying job. While Doris had been a librarian when Noelle was younger, she’d quit working once they were married to take better care of Noelle. Cliff had taken excellent financial care of his girls so that, even now that he was only a few years from retirement, Doris could spend her Saturdays getting her hair done and shopping at the stores downtown.

Setting her bags down, Doris removed her hat and coat. “Oh, what are you making?” she asked. “That smells divine!”

“Thanks.” Noelle shrugged, flipping the dish towel she’d been toying with over her shoulder. “I was in the mood for… pie.”

“I thought that’s what I was smelling!” Doris paused to inhale deeply. She was still a beautiful woman, Noelle thought, especially with the last rays of sun fading behind her. Her hair was turning white already, and sometimes she looked a little older than her fifty-five years, thanks to all she’d been through, but she was lovely. And she knew it.

“Your hair looks nice,” Noelle said as her mother came out of her stance and approached the island.

Running her fingers through her hair, Doris smiled, her perfectly painted red nails a sharp contrast to the white-blonde. “Thank you, dear, but we both know it looks exactly the same as it did when I left here this morning.” She winked at her daughter, and Noelle laughed.

“It does look slightly shorter,” Noelle protested.

“I think Maurine took off a quarter of an inch.” Doris winked at her. They both knew her weekly trips to the salon were more about girl talk than improving her appearance. “How is Pooch?”

Noelle’s countenance changed. She felt a wave of anxiety wash over her, as if her mother had asked about an exam she’d taken at school--and failed. “He’s okay, I think,” Noelle said. There were only two minutes left on the oven. She’d have to take the pie out soon. She wished the chiming had interrupted her ability to have this conversation, but she knew her mother would be compelled to ask about the dog--and the man who had brought the dog in--because that’s what her mom did. “We put him on hold, posted some pics of him on social media. Hopefully, his owners will show up soon. He’s a cute dog.”

“He’s adorable,” Doris agreed, taking a seat on a barstool across from where Noelle was standing. “He came right to me. Silly thing. Did… you meet Mr. Rogers?”

Noelle remembered how rude she’d been to the gentleman who’d just been doing his civic duty in bringing in the little dog. “I did.”

“And?”

“And what?” The oven beeped, giving Noelle the chance to turn her back on her mother long enough to slip on some holiday themed oven mitts and pull the pie out. The warmth from the oven radiated against her face, and the scent of spice and pumpkin filled her lungs as Noelle put the cookie sheet containing the pie on top of the oven just long enough to bump the door closed. She flipped some switches to turn off the timer and the oven and then moved the pie over to a waiting cooling rack. When she turned back around, her mother had an expectant look on her face.