"What a lovely dinner," Anna commented. A large smile crossed her face, that very same smile that had first captured his attention all those years before. Though she had aged over the years, gaining a few wrinkles where there had not been before (though, Edwin had to admit, he had them as well), she still looked so much like the woman in Budapest. "Let's just hope that this food tastes as good as it looks!"
Edwin chuckled. "I decided to try out a few news recipes. Some of the food I had to pick up to make it I had never heard of, let alone tasted, before. But isn't that something we promised to do earlier this year, to try new things?"
Anna nodded. "Though I didn't think that it would involve..." She sat down and picked up her fork, which held a cut piece of purple fruit at the end. "Oh, what do you call it? Grapefruit?"
Edwin shook his head. "No, that's something else, something that I'm not even willing to try. No, this is eggplant."
Anna wrinkled her nose. "This looks nothing likes eggs."
"I know." Edwin began to cut at his food. He had mixed the eggplant with some other vegetables and cheese, doing exactly as the recipe had instructed.
Anna focused her eyes, a piercing coffee brown color (the very same shade as her hair) that held anyone she looked at, on the food.
"There's a first time for everything," he said, holding the fork close to his lips.
"You could say that," she replied. Quickly, she brought the forks to her lips. At first, she chewed slowly, tentatively, as if the food would come flying out of her mouth at any moment. But she was a far more sophisticated woman than that and managed to chew until the end. After she had swallowed, she gazed back down to her food.
"So," Edwin said, "do you like it?"
Despite himself, he had yet to actually try the food. It hung on his fork, hovering close towards his mouth and yet never quite reaching it.
Rather than replying, she simply took another forkful of egg plant sand stuffed it in her mouth.
Edwin finally brought the forkful of fruit to his mouth.
It wasn't the worst food that he had ever tasted, but it wasn't something that he was about to start eating regularly either.
"I," Anna began once she had stopped chewing. Her eyes widened. "I believe that I rather like it."
Edwin smiled. "Eat all that you like, dear. There's more where that came from."
The two ate in silence for a few moments, the longer that Jarvis ate, the faster he chewed. The rutabaga had to be his favorite part of the dish. No matter how odd the ingredients had seemed when he first had started cooking, they now blended together well. Not the best but not the worst - a middle ground that he could get used to.
"So how was your day?"
Edwin froze in the middle of his chewing. For a moment, he was quite thankful for the food in his mouth.
Usually, he had something to say prepared, something that didn't hide the truth, but didn't tell all of it either. Those were on his good days, when he could let information, no matter how little, be told.
Today was certainly not one of those days.
Talking to Peggy was one thing. She had lived through it, after all, going out with him every night and searching for ways to clear Howard's name. Yet at the same time, she had not seen the things that Anna had, nor heard what she had. Though the war was long over, she still received news about her family, and most of it were things no one, Anna especially, wanted to hear.
With all that she faced, she deserved to hear something better.
Something good.
"Well," he began, "I had to wonder around an American grocery looking for eggplant. It took me around fifteen minutes to find it, and only after asking a clerk for help."
It was true, of course. Certainly not the most eventful part of his day, but true.
Anna snorted. "Did you look in the eggs aisle?"
"Oh no," he replied. "Though, with all the time I spent walking around the fruit and vegetable section without much luck, I nearly did."
Anna's snort turned into a laugh that filled the entire room.
Edwin smiled.
It wasn't the whole truth, but it was certainly enough.