The Black Butterfly. Shirley Reva Vernick

      I dropped one of the books. On my foot. George looked as dazed to see me as I was to see him.

      “Hello,” I mumbled, picking up the book and thinking I’d just slip past him and be on my way.

      “Hello,” he said stiffly, not making eye contact. He’d shaved since I saw him last, and now I saw the dimples. “Feeling better?” I asked.

      “Lousy headache. I get them. Then all I can do is hole up in a dark room and pray for sleep.”

      “Too bad you had to miss dinner. Again.”

      “I’m not very good company when I’m in pain. You probably noticed that.”

      “Yeah, well…” Maybe it was his headache, maybe it was whatever Bubbles told him about Mom. Either way, he had plenty of reason to keep to himself.

      He didn’t say anything else, and there was nothing left for me to say, so I walked out of the room. I figured my best hope with George was for peaceful coexistence, and that translated into keeping my distance. But before I’d taken more than a few steps in the direction of the parlor, he poked his head out. “Hey,” he said. “I’m gonna scrounge around for some leftovers. You…uh…wanna come?”

      Wait a minute, did I hear right? It sounded like George just invited me along. Bubbles must have pressured him into making nice, or maybe she struck a bargain with him. He probably didn’t want my company any more than I wanted to take part in a forced conversation. Yet he was standing there looking, I don’t know, sincere. And it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. So I said sure, and we headed down the hall together.

      The kitchen felt different at night without Rita and with only a few ceiling bulbs instead of a flood of natural light. It was cavernous and aloof, if a room can feel that way. I took a stool by the butcher block, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake in coming.

      “Let’s see, what’s good in here?” George said with his head in the fridge. “Cheese, oranges, more cheese, pickles. What’s this?” He turned around to show me the chilling dough ball in his hands.

      “It’s pain d’amandes. Rita and I made it.”

      “Let’s cook it up,” he said.

      “B-but—” This was my project. My first project with Rita. Not his midnight snack. “It’s Rita’s dough. She said we were going to bake it in the morning.”

      “Believe me, she’ll be thrilled to know I used it, especially when she finds out you taught me how.”

      “But I don’t know how.”

      “So we’ll fudge.”

      I was about to protest but thought better of it. “Fine,” I said. “But if we burn the kitchen down, it’s on your head.”

      “I’m not worried.” He breezily set the dough on the island and began banging cupboards open and shut in search of a baking sheet. When he found a tin he liked, he smeared it with butter, then dug into the precious dough with his fingers. He plopped a hunk onto the sheet, and then another and another, not pausing until the tin was plastered with lopsided blobs of my former pain d’amandes dough. Rita’s dough. Our dough.

      “So what do you think?” he said when the demolition was finished. “350, 375?”

      “350 what?” I asked weakly.

      “Degrees,” he laughed. “Never mind, I’ll try 450. They’ll cook faster.” He shoved the pan into the oven and took the stool next to mine. “So,” he said, running his fingers along the butcher block, “did Rita tell you the legend of the almonds?”

      “No. I mean, not yet. She didn’t tell me yet.”