Chapter 15 The Morning That Changes Everything
JAKE POV
Friday night, Lily announces dinner.
She stands up on her chair, which she is not supposed to do, puts both hands flat on the table, and says with the energy of someone declaring a national holiday: "Tomorrow is Pancake Saturday. This is the law now."
Jake looks up from his plate. "Laws need more than one vote."
"I voted," Lily says.
"You're six."
"I also voted for Penny." Lily points across the table. "She votes yes."
Penny looks up. Her expression says she is just now learning she has voted for something. "I was not consulted about this vote."
"Do you like pancakes?" Lily asks.
A pause. "Yes, but"
"She votes yes," Lily tells Jake.
Jake looks at Penny. Penny looks at Jake. Neither of them has anything. Lily sits back down on her chair and picks up her fork with the satisfied expression of someone who has won a court case.
Jake points at her. "You can't vote for other people."
"I already did," Lily says. "The law is passed."
After dinner, Jake is washing up when he hears Lily's small knock on the guest room door. He hears the door open. He hears Lily say, very formally, "Do you like pancakes?" He hears Penny say, "Yes, Lily." He hears Lily's footsteps come back down the hall.
She appears in the kitchen doorway. "She confirmed it."
Jake turns back to the sink.
He is smiling. He makes sure she doesn't see it.
Saturday morning, Jake wakes up and smells nothing, which means nobody has started breakfast yet, which means he is somehow the first one awake.
He goes downstairs.
He has exactly four minutes of quiet before Lily appears in her dinosaur pajamas and announces that Pancake Saturday has officially begun.
Penny comes out of her room three minutes after that. Her hair is down. Jake has noticed this before; she keeps it hidden at school, always up, always under the hoodie, but here in the house on slow mornings, it comes out, and it's long and curly, and she touches it self-consciously when she catches him looking, which means he needs to stop looking.
He looks at the cabinet instead.
"Recipe?" he says.
Penny picks up her phone. "I have one."
"I know how to make pancakes," he says.
"You've never made them."
"I've seen it done."
"That's not the same thing." She reads from her phone. "Two cups of flour. Two eggs. One and a half cups of milk."
"I knew that."
"You were about to pour in way more milk."
He puts the milk down.
Lily drags her stool to the counter and stands on it, and says she is the official stirrer. Jake gives her the bowl. He measures the flour. Penny reads the next step. They fall into it without discussing who does what, the same way the dish situation worked itself out naturally, without a plan, like the kitchen just decided.
Jake gets the pan hot. He ladles the first one in.
It burns.
Not badly. Just the edges. Just enough that Lily, who is watching with the focus of a scientist, says, "That one's a little brown."
"It's perfect," Jake says.
Penny says nothing. She picks up the batter bowl. She adds a small splash of milk while he's not looking, stirs it twice, and sets it back down.
He flips the next one.
Also, a little brown.
He looks at the bowl. He looks at Penny. She is reading her phone with extreme innocence.
"Did you change the battery?" he says.
"I'm just reading the recipe," she says.
"Penny."
"The recipe says one and a half cups of milk."
"You added more."
"The recipe," she says again, very calmly, "says one and a half cups."
He stares at her for a second. Then he picks up the bowl. He pours in a little more milk himself. He stirs it. He ladles the next one onto the pan.
It comes out perfect. Golden edge to edge, even all the way across.
Lily screams.
Not a scared scream. A victory scream. Full volume, both hands in the air, the kind of sound that probably woke up the neighbors.
"HE DID IT," Lily shouts. "JAKE DID THE PERFECT ONE."
Jake looks up.
Penny is trying very hard not to smile.
He is trying very hard not to smile.
Neither of them succeeds.
They eat at the table, all three of them, with the syrup and the butter and Lily, who insists on arranging her pancake stack by size before she will touch them. Jake eats two. Penny eats one and a half. Lily eats one enormous one with syrup in quantities that will definitely create a problem later.
It is ten in the morning, and the kitchen is warm, and the light is coming through the window at that Saturday angle that makes everything look slower than it actually is.
Jake thinks: his mom would have liked this.
He thinks it and then puts it somewhere safe because if he follows that thought too far, he will ruin the morning, and the morning doesn't deserve to be ruined.
He watches Penny cut Lily's second pancake into pieces. He watches Lily tell a story with her hands while her mouth is full, and Penny does the thing where she listens like Lily is the most important person in the world. He thinks about what Marcus said yesterday at practice.
She's good for you, man. You've been a person again since September.
Jake didn't answer that. He picked up his bag, went to his truck, drove home, and thought about it the whole way.
He is still thinking about it.
After breakfast, Lily disappears to her room, and Jake starts cleaning up, and Penny dries, and it is becoming a thing, the two of them at the sink, and Jake is aware of it in a way he was not aware of it three weeks ago.
He washes the bowl.
He hands it to her.
Their fingers touch for just a second, same as always, same as every night.
She dries the bowl.
He washes the pan.
He says, without planning to: "Thank you for fixing the batter."
She takes the pan. "I didn't fix anything."
"Penny."
"You flipped a perfect one."
"After you fixed it."
She puts the pan on the rack. She dries her hands on the dish towel. She turns to face him, and she says, very seriously, "You did the flip. The flip is the hard part."
He looks at her.
She is so close to smiling that it is almost painful to watch her hold it back.
He says, "You are the most stubborn person I have ever met."
She says, "Thank you."
He laughs.
Real. Full. The kind that takes over his whole face before he can stop it.
Penny smiles at that, a real one, just for a second, before she puts it away.
His phone buzzes on the counter.
He picks it up.
Text from Marcus: yo. You need to see this. now.
Jake's smile disappears.
He looks at the message. He looks at Penny, who has gone back to folding the dish towel like she didn't notice his face change. He looks at the message again.
He types back: send it.
What Marcus sends him stops the air in his chest completely.
It is a screenshot from Brianna's private story. Posted this morning. While they were making pancakes. While Lily was screaming about the perfect flip.
It is a photo of the outside of his house.
Taken from the street. Through the kitchen window.
You can see all three of them inside.
And the caption reads: cute little family. wonder how long before he realizes what she actually is.
Jake puts his phone face down on the counter very carefully.
He turns to Penny.
She is still folding the dish towel. She hasn't seen it. She doesn't know.
And he stands there in the kitchen they just shared on a Saturday morning that felt like something good, and he makes a decision.
Not today.
He is not letting Brianna touch today.
He picks up his phone. He screenshots it. He puts it in a folder he has been quietly building since Tuesday.
"Hey," he says.
Penny looks up.
He says, "Lily's going to want to make the dinosaur costume next week. She mentioned it four times yesterday."
Penny's expression shifts back to normal. Safe. Present. "She mentioned it to me six times."
"We should probably get cardboard."
"Probably."
"Saturday?"
She looks at him for a moment. Something quiet moves through her eyes.
"Saturday," she says.
Jake nods.
He turns back to the sink.
And he tells himself he is going to fix this before it gets bigger.
He is already too late.