The Journey Home by Michael Baron

you’re confusing the hell out of me, right?”
    â€œI saw my wife while we were in the store, but my wife wasn’t in the store. A woman there had some of her features, and the rest just filled in.” He closed his eyes and allowed the face to take over his vision. “I can see her again. I can finally see her again.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you can see her holding a piece of mail with her address on it, huh?”
    Joseph opened his eyes. “No such luck. But this is good. She’s with me now, more than she was before. We need to get on the road again.”
    â€œOkay, which way.”
    Joseph followed the planes of his wife’s face, hoping for a clue. “I have no idea. I’ve seen her, though, Will. As beautiful as I knew she would be. She’s out there. Let’s go find her.”

FOURTEEN
    Her Talented Assistant
    . . . The baby was playing with the peas on his high chair tray. Antoinette smiled, noting that she was fairly sure that not a single pea had made it into his mouth. Batting them around the tray and onto the floor seemed so much more interesting to the little boy. When he got older, she’d let him know that it was inappropriate to play with his food and that eating it was actually much more fun. Not now, though; he seemed to be having too much fun.
    Antoinette kneaded butter and flour together to make the beurre manié for the chicken stew she’d been simmering. “This will help flavor and thicken the sauce,” she said to the boy, who she noticed had managed to mash some of the peas on the tray. He was now examining the pulp on his right palm with extraordinary interest. “I use different thickening techniques,” she said with a grin she could not have suppressed under any circumstances. “Sometimes I’ll use cornstarch, sometimes arrowroot. It all depends on the recipe. This approach is the most elegant, though.”
    With a few rapid shakes of his hands, her baby
boy had managed to fling the crushed peas back onto the tray. Now he was using his index finger to create lines with them.
    â€œAre you telling me that you’d like to make pureed peas with me? I was planning to sauté them with onions, but a puree could be nice, also.” She knelt down next to the high chair so their heads were at the same level. “What do you think? Should we mash them with some cream and cinnamon?”
    The baby cackled and ran his fingers through the green mass he’d created. He then reached his hand toward Antoinette’s mouth. She let him feed her some of the pea mash, which he seemed to enjoy doing.
    â€œUmm, delicious!” She pretended to consider the taste carefully. “We might want to add a little more salt, don’t you think?”
    He waved his arms wildly again, which Antoinette interpreted as “And maybe a little white pepper.”
    â€œVery good point! Proper seasoning is an art and you already understand it. I knew that my baby was a genius.”
    She stood up to finish the meal. Both sides of the family – eighteen people in all – were coming over today to celebrate her sister Rachel’s birthday. That meant multiple entrees, four different side dishes, an elaborate salad, and the chocolate cake with raspberry filling her sister had specially requested. Antoinette had been cooking since seven this morning. She knew she would be exhausted tonight and hoped that Don would offer up one of his luxurious foot
massages, but right now she was working with the energy that she always felt whenever she was preparing a big dinner party. Her son had been with her for most of the work, sometimes in his high chair, sometimes crawling around on the floor, often in her arms. Throughout it all, she’d described everything she was doing to him, looking forward to the day when he would become her talented assistant in the kitchen.
    Having a baby had turned out to be so much harder than she and