The Summer Kitchen Read Online Free PDF Page B

that led to that day, we couldn’t. I couldn’t go back and force Poppy to give up the house he’d built and move out of the neighborhood. Rob couldn’t go back and find the time to put Poppy’s social security check on auto deposit. Christopher couldn’t go back and visit Poppy more often, and Jake couldn’t drive over to Poppy’s house from SMU to watch Sports Center on TV. Normally on Friday, Jake and Poppy would have gone to the bank and the store together, and Poppy wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, alone, while Jake partied with his friends at the fraternity house.
    What do you say to a child when a seemingly harmless decision has terrible consequences? What does he say to himself? I wished I knew. I wished I could return to the days after Poppy’s death and handle the situation more skillfully, become a rock on which the whole family could stand, rather than a confused, helpless bystander struggling to absorb the sudden impact, trying to answer the endless questions of the police detectives and news reporters, trying to will Poppy back to consciousness in the hospital, trying to decide who to blame.
    In a way, I could understand why Jake had run away to search for birth parents he’d never known. Somewhere in Guatemala he was looking for a family that didn’t have so much pain in it. At the same time I was angry with him for leaving and adding to our burden.
    As the garage door closed, the utility lights came on, providing an electronic welcome home. I entered the house, flipped the light switch in the hallway, walked past the family pictures of basketball and soccer teams, marching band competitions, vacations to Disney World, cruises to Mexico, and ski holidays where the four of us stood bundled in colorful coats, smiling for the camera, the perfect family sharing the perfect getaway. The parents in those pictures had convinced themselves that if they packed all the right suitcases, made all the right reservations, life would progress like a carefully planned holiday, reaching the milestones at all the right times, always safe and under control. The car would never drift off the pavement, or hit an unexpected hazard, or spin into dangerous territory. Now, everything was so far off course I couldn’t even imagine what we’d been thinking.
    Glare blotted out the last of the photos as I turned on the kitchen lights and the TV in the media room, so that if Holly looked out she’d know I was home. Across the street, her place was lit up like a Vegas casino, every square inch of the six-bedroom brick house filled with the activities of a gaggle of semi-adult children who had never fully left the nest, and Holly’s last two officially “at home” kids, sixteen-year-old twins, Jessica and Jacey. Holly liked to joke that at the rate she was going, the nest would never be empty. Be careful what you wish for, I thought, but I never said it because of the awkward moment that would follow.
    I checked the answering machine for messages. I’d made my weekly call to the Dallas Police Department that morning to check on Poppy’s case. As usual, there was no return call. After only six months, it didn’t seem that they should be letting the case go cold, but I knew they were—not because they didn’t care, but because their resources were tied up with investigations that looked more promising. It’s hard to solve a crime when the only witness is a woman passing by in her car at forty miles an hour, a hundred feet away. Two males in hooded sweatshirts. She thought they were young—maybe teenagers. One of them had struggled with Poppy, and he fell. . . .
    I stopped before the scene could play out in my mind again. Bobo scratched at the patio door, pressed his nose to the glass, and wagged his tail as I walked into the media room. He whined softly, tipping his head to one side, nudged his Frisbee, then gave me a pleading look through the half-black, half-white face that had inspired Jake to