Alex walked along the sidewalk toward the Lucan family home, absently spinning the ring on her thumb as a small smile played across her face.
The house was two stories with a gabled roof and a wide front porch stretching on either side of a decorative wooden front door. She passed a beat-up basketball hoop as she made her way up the driveway and caught a glimpse of firewood stacked along the side of the garage. The front walk was lined with flowers of all colors that bobbed gently in the breeze as she walked by.
Alex knocked on the door, her smile growing wider when she heard a dog barking on the other side. The door opened a few seconds later to reveal Ryan struggling to hold back a very excited golden retriever.
"Hi," Ryan said, his voice strained as the dog tried to lunge forward. "This is Robin. She's very friendly, I promise. Just excited."
Alex quickly stepped inside and shut the door behind her, kneeling down at the same moment Ryan let go of the dog. Robin immediately ran into Alex, almost knocking her over as she jumped up to lick her face.
"Hi, sweetheart," Alex said, laughing when Robin dislodged her glasses. "It's nice to meet you, too."
Robin broke away to spin in a circle a few times before she dove in front of Alex with her belly exposed.
"Okay, I can take a hint." Alex leaned forward to rub Robin's belly with both hands. She looked up as Ryan knelt down across from her. "She's even cuter than the pictures you sent!"
"I'm glad she likes you," Ryan said, grinning when Robin jumped up to lick Alex's face again. "I only picked her up yesterday morning, but it's already been really nice having her around. The house gets kinda lonely with just me here."
"I'm glad you have an animal buddy now, too. One question though. Did you name her after the bird or the superhero?" Alex laughed when Ryan shook his head. "It's okay, you don't actually have to answer that. I know it's the bird. Also, I still think it's funny that you adopted a golden retriever."
Ryan gave her a confused look. "Why is that funny?"
"'Cause you're like…" Alex stopped petting Robin for a second to gesture at him. "The human version of a golden retriever."
Ryan gave her a blank stare. "I'm…what?"
Alex waved a hand at him before going back to petting Robin. "Never mind. But I mean it as a compliment, I promise." She smiled at him again before her eyes started to wander around the house, taking in the dark leather furniture and built-in shelves covered in picture frames and wooden animal carvings in the living room connected to the entryway. "When I told Steph you invited me over, she said you lived in a hut in the woods. I figured there was at least a fifty percent chance she was telling the truth, but this house is really nice."
Ryan raised an eyebrow at her. "You actually thought I lived in a weird little hut in the woods? Like a serial killer?"
"I was thinking more 'cozy cottage.'" Alex laughed and shook her head. "But seriously, this house is beautiful. Much nicer than a sketchy murder shed in the middle of nowhere."
"Thanks." Ryan paused to look into the living room, his face becoming more thoughtful. "My parents put a lot of work into it over the years."
"I can tell. It feels really homey." Alex gave Robin one final pat before she stood up. She slipped off her shoes next to the door before turning back to Ryan. "You said you wanted to cook something today, right? So, what are we making?"
"Chicken pot pie. C'mon, I've got everything we need in the kitchen." Ryan stood and walked further into the house, motioning for Alex to follow him.
They went down a hallway lined with framed family pictures into the biggest, most well-equipped kitchen Alex had ever seen in someone's house.
Ryan glanced back at her, grinning when he noticed the surprise on her face. "My mom loved cooking and baking, so my dad made sure the kitchen had everything she needed." He moved behind the island in the center of the kitchen, running his hands over the dark granite countertop. "I haven't done much of either since…everything. It'll be nice to work in here again."
Alex moved to sit on one of the barstools on the other side of the island, watching as Ryan pulled supplies from various cupboards. He set a pie dish on the counter before turning around again to take something out of the fridge. The pie dish was made of white porcelain with a pattern of vines and red berries around the edge, the design broken by a small crack on one side. In the center of the dish was the picture of a red-breasted robin perched on a tree branch.
When Alex leaned over to get a closer look at the design, a red aura appeared around the pie dish. She glanced at Ryan to see that he was still occupied before reaching toward it, drawing the memory into her mind.
Ryan walked into the kitchen holding several plastic containers of food, setting them carefully on the counter. Gabe followed close behind him carrying the pie dish. When Gabe moved to set it on the counter, he didn't raise it quickly enough and the edge caught on the stone. There was a crack and a small piece of the porcelain fell to the floor.
Ryan gave him an exasperated look, anger fizzling in his stomach. "Damn it, Gabe, really? I told you to be careful with that."
Gabe huffed and waved a hand dismissively. "Chill out, dude. It's just a dent in some old pie dish. It's no big deal."
Ryan was too shocked to respond for a second, but then indignation flooded into his veins, mixing with his anger until he could feel it bubbling under his skin. "It is to me!" he snapped. "It's part of a set that my mom loved, okay? They're all I have left of her."
Gabe sneered at him. "Really? 'All you have left of her'? Come on, man."
Ryan was too worked up to be stunned this time, his anger surging again as he got in Gabe's face. "What the fuck is your problem, man? You have no idea what it's like, losing a parent—"
Gabe shoved Ryan away from him, his jaw tight as the same rage seethed in his eyes. "Yeah, I do, actually. But unlike you, I don't have a house full of pictures and memories or another parent who's still around. You have no idea what it's like to actually lose everything."
Ryan's anger threatened to roar up again but it was tamped down by a rush of guilt, aided by a hint of curiosity creeping at the back of his mind. "I-I'm sorry, you just…you never talk about your family, so I didn't…"
Gabe made a frustrated noise and rubbed the back of his neck. "Fuck. No, man, I'm sorry." He let out a long breath through his nose before his shoulders drooped. "That wasn't fair."
Ryan opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, watching Gabe closely. "What, uh…what happened to them? Your parents, I mean."
Gabe shrugged. "Mom died when I was a teenager. Dad was out of the picture a couple years later."
Ryan nodded, looking away for a moment as he thought. "That picture you have in your apartment, that's you and your parents, right? But there's…someone else in that picture, isn't there? A little girl. What happened to her?"
"That's my younger sister. Alex." Gabe deflated even further, looking more defeated than Ryan had ever seen him. "I don't know what happened to her. We got separated after my dad left."
"Have you ever tried to find her?"
"No. But it'd be impossible. She could've gone into foster care, been adopted, sent to juvie like I was. I wouldn't even know where to start."
Ryan frowned, tapping his fingers on the counter. "Okay, but if she went through any of those systems, there would be records. There has to be someone who knows what happened to her."
Gabe shook his head and crossed his arms. "It doesn't matter, dude. She wouldn't want me to find her anyway."
"You don't know that."
"I…wasn't a very good brother the last time I saw her."
"But you're just assuming. You don't know for sure. Do you want to see her?"
"Yeah."
"Well, then there's a chance she wants to see you, too. You gotta at least try, man. Yeah, it would suck if she didn't want to see you again, but what if she did?"
Gabe stayed silent for a few seconds, his eyes fixed on the floor, until he slowly nodded. "Yeah. Okay, yeah. You're right. I should at least try." He glanced up at Ryan, giving him an apologetic look. "And I'm sorry about the pie dish. I should've been more carfeul."
"Yeah, of course. And don't worry about it, I can probably glue the piece back on." Ryan reached over to clasp Gabe on the shoulder. "I hope you find your sister. Let me know if there's any way I can help."
Gabe nodded again, giving him a small smile. "I will. Thanks, man."
The memory faded and Alex sniffled, quickly wiping her eyes before Ryan turned around.
Ryan paused with a bag of flour in his hands. "You okay?"
Alex took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. I'm good. Did, uh, did your mom teach you how to make this?"
"Yeah." Ryan paused, his brow creasing slightly as he studied Alex's face. Then he seemed to mentally shake himself, looking down at the bag of flour in his hands with a smile. "It was my and my dad's favorite, so she made it a lot. I'm really looking forward to making it again."
Alex grinned and leaned forward over the counter. "Me, too. Where do we start?"
Ryan swept his arm over the supplies laid out in front of them. "First we make the pie crust." He pointed to a stick of butter sitting on a plate to Alex's right. "You can cut that into small cubes while I measure the flour and salt."
Alex moved to the other side of the counter and cut the butter into pats before dumping it into a large mixing bowl that Ryan had filled with the dry ingredients.
"Now we have to work the butter into it. The easiest way to do that is with your hands." Ryan reached into the bowl, rubbing the butter and flour gently between his fingers. After a few seconds, he pushed the bowl toward Alex, and she mimicked his movements.
Ryan filled a measuring cup with cold water and added a little to the butter and flour mixture. "Now we have to start bringing it together. I'll add the water a little at a time. If we add too much it'll get sticky and be hard to work with later."
Once the ingredients had formed into a ball of dough, Ryan grabbed it out of the bowl, wrapped it in wax paper, and set it in the fridge. "We'll work on the filling now," he said, gesturing toward the stove. "The crust tastes better if we let it chill for a while."
Ryan set a stock pot to heat on the stove as Alex moved to stand next to him. He put several pats of butter, some flour, and a pinch of salt and pepper into the pot, stirring it until it became a bubbling paste. He handed the spoon he had been using to Alex, directing her to keep stirring it while he added some cream and chicken broth. "Once it's boiling, we cook it for about a minute before taking it off the heat," he explained. "Make sure you stir it constantly otherwise it'll burn."
Alex nodded and kept stirring the mixture, watching it closely as it gradually thickened. They let it cook for a moment before Ryan turned off the heat and moved the pot onto a cold burner. He added sliced potatoes from a can, a bag of frozen vegetables, and some shredded cooked chicken breast to the pot before telling Alex to stir it until everything was well mixed.
"Okay," Ryan said, nodding toward the pot. "That's the filling done. Now we have to finish the crust." He moved back to the fridge to retrieve the dough, unwrapping it and dividing it in half before setting it on the counter. Grabbing the bag of flour again, he cleared a larger space on the counter before sprinkling the area with the flour. He picked up a rolling pin he had set aside earlier, dusting it with flour as well before handing it to Alex. "Here, you try rolling it out. Don't worry about the shape, we can patch any uneven spots before we bake it. My mom could always get it into a perfect circle, but I never can, so I have a lot of practice filling out the parts that are too thin."
Alex gently pressed the rolling pin into the dough, going back and forth to gradually flatten it. Once Alex was done, Ryan ran the rolling pin over it a few times to even it out before lifting the dough from the counter and laying it in the pie dish. He grabbed the stock pot from the stove and handed the spoon to Alex, holding up the pot so she could scoop the filling into the dish. After the pie was filled, Ryan floured the counter and the rolling pin again to roll out the rest of the dough and add the top to the pie. He showed Alex how to crimp the edges with a fork and had her to poke several steam holes into the top.
"Okay. Just one more thing and then we can bake it." Ryan grabbed the plate with what was left of the butter stick, cutting off small chunks to scatter on top of the pie. "This'll make sure the crust doesn't dry out while it bakes."
Alex stepped back as Ryan opened the oven, going up on her toes to watch him set the pie inside. "How long until it's done?"
"About forty minutes to bake and then at least ten minutes to cool," Ryan said, laughing when Alex groaned. "You're gonna want it fully baked and cooled before you eat it. Half-baked pie dough is not nearly as good and if you burn your mouth on the first bite, you can't enjoy the rest of it." He laughed again when Alex gave him a skeptical look. "Trust me, I know from experience."
Ryan rinsed his hands in the sink and wiped them on a towel before walking toward the adjoining living room. Alex cleaned her own hands before following him to sit on the floor between the couch and coffee table. Robin immediately ran over to join them and Ryan grabbed a tennis ball from a nearby basket of dog toys, sending it rolling across the floor for her to chase. They sat in silence for a few moments, smiling as Robin skidded across the wood floor after her ball until a purple aura began to shimmer around Ryan.
Come on dude, you have to talk about this with her.
All this crap with Dad is eating you up inside. And it's probably even worse for her.
Alex watched Ryan from the corner of her eye, reaching to stop Robin's ball before it rolled underneath the coffee table. She turned it over in her hands a few times before pushing it away for Robin to chase again. "What made you want to make this with me?" she asked. "I'm really glad we did, I'm just curious."
Ryan's face lit up as his purple aura dimmed slightly. "Steph asked me to. She thought cooking with us the other day really helped you, so she thought it might be good to keep doing it."
"Oh." Alex let out a breathy laugh, her chest aching with a feeling that made her want to smile and cry at the same time. "That was really sweet of her."
"It was." Ryan glanced at Alex before looking away, his face becoming more serious. "I thought it was a good idea, so I said I would. But I wanted it to be just me and you because I have something I wanted to ask you. About my dad and…everything he did."
Alex frowned slightly, taking a deep breath before she nodded. "Okay," she said, leaning back against the couch behind her. "What did you want to know?"
Ryan sighed, running his fingers through his hair as he pushed it back from his face. "So, obviously, there's...a lot we should talk about at some point, but I guess the main thing is…why did you forgive him?" He paused, the muscles in his jaw flexing as his aura flashed bright red. "I feel like what he did is unforgivable. And I'm not even the one he hurt the most."
Alex shrugged as her eyes dropped down to the floor. "It was more for me than for him."
Ryan tilted his head to the side, his brow furrowing. "What do you mean?"
Alex stayed silent for a moment, watching Robin chase after her ball as she gathered her thoughts. "I know what it's like to hold onto hatred. To have it fester and tear you up inside when you can't let it go. And that's not what I want for myself anymore."
"So, you're not even angry about what he did?"
"Oh, no, I'm definitely angry. But that anger is for me. Because I need it to help me process everything. But if it starts to hurt me more than help, I know I can let that go, too." Alex paused, a small smile briefly playing across her face when Robin trotted over to Ryan and immediately rolled over to show her belly to him. Her face fell before she started speaking again. "Hating Jed won't change anything. The same shitty things will have happened no matter how much I hate him. The only thing the hatred will change is me. And I don't want to be that person anymore."
Ryan reached out to pet Robin, burying his hands in her fur. "You can let go of that anger? Just like that?" His expression hardened as his red aura flared again. "I hate what my dad did to those miners. To your dad. It's so unfair and there isn't anything I can do about it." His face twitched before he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "And I hate that I took Gabe away from you, too."
"Ryan…" Alex moved to kneel next to him, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. "Typhon took Gabe from us. Not you. I know you cut the rope and I know you hate yourself for it. But there wasn't any other choice. If you hadn't done it, you and I would be dead, too." She squeezed his arm gently, waiting for him to meet her eyes before she continued. "You only had to make that choice because a bunch of other people made all the shitty decisions leading up to it. Because of them, you had to make a fucking awful choice where every option meant someone got hurt. And none of it was your fault."
Ryan exhaled slowly, looking away with tears shining in his eyes. "It can't be that easy."
"It's not easy at all. It's really fucking hard." Alex stopped when her voice wavered, pausing to take a deep breath before she continued. "But if you replay what happened over and over in your head, you're just torturing yourself. It's never going to change the way things worked out. The only thing it will do is make you feel like shit for something you couldn't control. And that's not how Gabe would want us to live. He would forgive you, Ryan. You know that."
"I know he would." Ryan took a shuddering breath as he met Alex's eyes again. "But it's a lot harder to forgive myself."
"I know. But I need you to try. You don't deserve to have this eat you up inside any more than I do. So, we can work on it together." Alex jerked her head toward the kitchen, a small smile flickering across her face. "While we eat pie. I know that'll make it easier."
Ryan laughed softly and wiped the tears from his cheeks. "Yeah. That sounds a lot better than doing it by myself. And the pie will definitely help." He reached into his pocket as the timer on his phone went off. "Speaking of pie…"
He stood and moved back into the kitchen to remove the steaming pie from the oven. After setting it on the counter to cool, he joined Alex in the living room again, grabbing a few more of Robin's toys from her basket before sitting down.
Ten minutes later, they were both seated at the island in the kitchen looking hungrily down at the slices of pie on their plates.
Alex eagerly took her first bite, chewing as slowly as possible to savor it. She swallowed and leaned to the side, holding her hand up to her forehead as she turned to look at Ryan. "Ugh, that's so good. What's wrong with us that we keep eating shitty frozen food when we know how to make stuff like this?"
Ryan shrugged. "It would take way too long to go through that list." He smiled when Alex laughed. "But you were right. All that stuff we talked about feels a lot easier with pie. And with a friend."
Alex reached over to poke his shoulder. "Dude, okay, we have to make a promise. Anytime we get stuck in that loop of wishing things worked out differently, we have to cook or bake something and eat it. And ask each other for help if we need it."
Ryan held out his fork toward her. "Deal."
Alex grinned as she clicked her fork against his. "I'm gonna hold you to that."
"I know. Thank you."
"You're welcome. Now I need another slice of this pie, this shit is fucking amazing."
