Chapter Eight – Preparations

The door opened and light entered the room. It encompassed everything in it and left nothing hidden.

Jarod, however, remained asleep.

Presently, he was shaken awake. But then again, it was much earlier that he was currently used to so he ignored the unrelenting agitation.

Finally, the person shaking him awake spoke. "Get up, Jarod. You've got a lot to do today."

Jarod propped one of his arms up and opened his eyes, and for a second, Miss Parker could see the hurt and pain before he replaced them with a guarded look. Slightly bent out of shame, he asked, "What do you want me to do now?"

Miss Parker was undeterred. Jarod's reluctance to do anything against his will was understandable. "It's Thanksgiving Jarod, and I've invited someone over for dinner."

"Oh," Jarod murmured as he accepted the reason. After a second, he said it again, this time with a smile on his face. "Oh! I get it. You invited – "

"You weren't supposed to guess!" Miss Parker interjected. "His visit was supposed to be a surprise."

Jarod gave her a sly look. "Technically, I didn't guess."                        

Miss Parker gave a resigned sigh. "Fine. Just go and clean up and meet me in the kitchen." She stalked out of the room.

Jarod stood up, someone perplexed by the second half of her directions. Then he noticed his hands were uncuffed and his feet weren't chained to the wall. They were, however, still cuffed to each other. Miss Parker didn't trust him fully yet. It was just as well. If roles were switched, he'd probably do the same thing. Meh, he thought as he shrugged his shoulders and went to do what she asked.

In the kitchen, Jarod saw Miss Parker taking various things out of her refrigerator: carrots, spinach, potatoes, leeks, and apples, to mention a few. There was a ten- to twelve-pound turkey sitting in some water in the sink, and he was watching it thaw and Miss Parker threw a book at him. He caught it and read the title. "Make the Holidays Tasty by Yourself?"

"Yeah," she said, her face hidden by a bag of cranberries. "We're gong to be doing the highlighted ones."

He opened the book and scanned the table of contents. "Biscuits ... almond apple stuffing ... pumpkin pie ..."

"The oven's going to on all day," Miss Parker complained. "And I'm going to be stuck in a hot kitchen with you."

"At least it'll smell nice," Jarod said with cheerful optimism as he looked up each of the recipes. "What are we going to start with?"

"Do the soup."

"Alright," he said as he flipped ahead to a page. He read it twice and closed the book. He gathered the potatoes, leeks, carrots, spinach, and water. After cutting the first three into chunks, he dumped the aforementioned into a large saucepan and made a sandwich while he waited for the contents to boil. Miss Parker watched him.

"Do you always do things that way?"

Jarod was confused. "Do things how?"

"Like you know exactly what you're doing."

Still perplexed, he answered, "I guess."

Miss Parker asked him yet another question. "Is this the first time you've done this?"

"Yeah ..."

"You don't feel any anxiety? You don't wonder if you'll mess up?"

"It's just soup," Jarod said, wondering about Miss Parker's current mentality.

She pressed on. "But supposing you decided to be a neurosurgeon. You'd just do some research and you'd start working on brain hemorrhages and aneurysms the next day?"

Jarod finally understood. "Oh, this is what you wanted to know?" He looked at Miss Parker as he cut his sandwiches in half, diagonally down the middle. "Your Centre stole me and gave me an unusual gift: the power to become anyone, anything. Sydney trained me well. He taught me everything I needed to survive out there." Jarod looked out the window and wished that he could be in the sunlight. "Out there, I am whatever I want to be ... except myself. I don't know who I am." He paused for a moment, and Miss Parker gave him an apprehensive glance. Jarod picked up both slices of the sandwich and gave one of them to her. "I guess, today, I'm a chef."

Miss Parker watched Jarod pour a puréed mixture for a blender into a stockpot. It smelled very good to her, and she itched to taste it, her sandwich long gone. She glanced at Jarod, who was peeling and coring for large green apples. When she was sure he wasn't looking, she crept forward with a spoon. He turned around and rapped the fingers of her transgressing hand with a wooden spoon. "Unh unh unh," he reprimanded.

She rubbed her right hand tenderly. "What did you have to do that for?"

"Not until dinner," he explained as he resumed with the chopping of the apples. "It'll taste better if you have it for the first time tonight."

Miss Parker was amused with the change of roles. Now he was telling her what to do. Enjoying herself, she went along with it. "Well, what am I supposed to do?" she asked, injecting a bit of a pout into her voice.

"How about the cranberry sauce?" she suggested, preoccupied. Jarod was, however, not to preoccupied to notice the reversal of roles as well.

It was nearing noon, and the aroma that drifted from the pumpkin pie in the oven and the biscuits cooling on the counter was driving Miss Parker up the wall. In addition, she felt useless in her own house; Jarod was sautéing apples, almonds, onions, and celery in butter while making a light salad that would satiate but not stuff. In short, it was an appetizer. Jarod had promised that she would be able to eat as much of the salad that she wanted, but she still tried to snatch a spoonful of applesauce or a muffin. On each of the occasions, he'd stopped her, catching her wrist and holding it firmly while he made her relinquish the spoon or baked good.

On time, she'd jokingly remarked, "You'd be nice to have around the house."

He didn't stop measuring the flour while he responded with, "That's what The Centre thought, too."

Needless to say, that had wiped the smile off her face.

In an attempt to stop Miss Parker from stealing food from behind his back – the salad had done nothing to fill her – Jarod had given her the task of sautéing the almond apple stuffing while he prepared the turkey. Parker of Miss Parker's willingness to accept the task, however, was due to her inability to watch Jarod remove the neck and giblets. She had stuck a finger down her throat and feigned gagging. Jarod hadn't recognized the gesture, but when he figured it out, he smiled and told her to work on the stuffing. So here she was, getting hot and becoming bored as she watched the stuffing and butter mix. Finally, she asked, "Aren't you done yet?"

Jarod looked up from the turkey, which he was dabbing at with a paper towel. Seeing Miss Parker's slightly annoyed expression, he grinned. "Impatient, Miss Parker? Are you growing warm by the stove?"

She gave him a sardonic smile. "No, I've been taught to think standing near an active stove is the best way to stay cool."

He finished dabbing at the turkey and peered inside of its cavity. "Yeah, I think I'm finished."

With a set of oven mitts, Miss Parker carried the stuffing over to the counter, where Jarod was working with the deceased fowl. He tossed the soiled paper towels into a nearby trash can and rinsed his hands. Then he paused, as if recalling a bit of text. Satisfied with his memory, he very decisively began loosely stuffing the bird. She watched Jarod's methodical filling of the bird, and, somewhat disgusted by the scene she was watching she remarked, "Ew."

Jarod looked up with a somewhat exasperated demeanor. "Really mature, Miss Parker. Haven't you seen anyone do this before?"

Miss Parker remembered a Thanksgiving many years before. When she was little, her mother had stuffed their turkey, preferring to take part in a traditional custom rather than take the easy way out. Mr. Parker – her uncle, she remembered – often suggested going to a restaurant. Shaking her head to clear it, she found Jarod staring at her, expecting an answer. "Of course I have," she said. "But you've never done this before. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Of course I do," he said, and recited and annotated set of directions. "Thaw, empty, rinse, dry, stuff, and roast."

"I feel very confident of your abilities to stuff a turkey," she said, although anyone could tell there thee was sarcasm leaking out of every letter.

Jarod stepped aside and gestured at the bird. "Well, since you know how it's done, why don't you do it yourself?"

Miss Parker rolled up her sleeves and rinsed her hands. "Fine," she said, never one to back down from a challenge. She savagely picked up some dressing and shoved it into the fowl. "I'll stuff your turkey," she murmured sotto voce.

He smiled complacently as he found a chair to relax in and ignored any and all possible innuendos, preferring to enjoy his first real break since he had arrived.