Week 1: Wednesday

Wednesday morning, Lindsay made waffles.

She half-assed them. Deliberately. Box mix from the pantry, the just-add-water kind that required no effort. Regular butter, melted in the microwave. The store-brand pancake syrup that had been sitting in the cabinet since last year, its cap sticky with crystallised sugar. No eggs on the side. No fruit. No presentation. She was keeping her word — she'd promised waffles, and here were waffles — and she was not going to turn this into a production. One time, as promised, and done.

She set the plate in front of Damian when he came down. He looked at it. His face did the thing — that slow, spreading brightness, as if she'd handed him something precious.

"Waffles! Lindsay, you really made them."

"I said I would."

He sat down immediately. He cut a piece with the side of his fork, the way he'd learned to eat pancakes at some group home where knives weren't allowed, and took a bite. He chewed. He closed his eyes.

"These are really good," he said, his voice thick with syrup and genuine pleasure. "Wow. Thank you. This is — these are way better than the toaster kind."

Lindsay sat across from him with her coffee. She watched him eat for a moment, feeling a small, involuntary warmth at his enjoyment. Then she remembered why she was here. The speech. The expectations. Today. No more delays.

She took a breath. "Damian, I want to talk about—"

"What's this stuff on the waffles? The sweet stuff?"

She stopped. "What?"

"This." He pointed at the syrup pooling on his plate. "It's good, but it tastes different from the syrup I had before. At the group home. That stuff was thicker. Sweeter, maybe? I don't know." He took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. "Is there, like, different kinds of syrup?"

Lindsay set her coffee down. She was being derailed again. She could feel it. But the question was so guileless — he genuinely wanted to know — and answering questions was a reflex she'd never been able to turn off.

"That's regular table syrup," she said. "It's mostly corn syrup with artificial maple flavouring. It's fine. It does the job. But it's not the same as real maple syrup."

"Real maple syrup?"

"From maple trees. They tap the trees in the spring, collect the sap, boil it down. It takes something like forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. The flavour is completely different — more complex, less cloying. It's... it's the real thing."

Damian was listening with his fork suspended in mid-air, his expression one of genuine fascination. "Whoa. That's cool. I didn't know that's where it came from." He took another bite, chewing more slowly now, as if he were trying to detect the corn syrup. "Is the real kind expensive?"

"A bit more. But it's worth it."

"Huh." He nodded, filing this information away with the careful attention he gave to everything she told him. "Well, this is still really good. Like, really really good. Thank you for making them."

He went back to eating. Lindsay watched him for a moment — the pleasure in his face, the way he was scraping up the last of the syrup with his fork — and then remembered herself. The speech. She was going to give the speech.

"Damian," she said, and this time her voice had more edge to it, something she had picked up from years of disciplining a teenage girl. "I want to talk about next steps. We've let the last couple of days slide, but we need to get moving on this."

He looked up. His expression was attentive, open. Not defensive.

"I'd like you to spend some time today looking at job listings online. Nothing too intense — just see what's out there. Entry-level stuff, retail, food service, whatever. By the end of the day. Just to start getting a sense of the landscape." She paused. She held his gaze. "Can you do that for me?"

"Definitely," he said. "Yeah, I'll do that."

The agreement was instant. Clean, firm, no qualifiers. He didn't hesitate. He didn't look at the floor. He didn't say maybe or I'll try or can I do it tomorrow? Lindsay was shocked to see that he seemed genuinely on board. A wave of something warm and light spread through her chest.

Relief. That was what it was. Pure, uncomplicated relief. He'd listened. He was on board. She'd been worrying for nothing, building up resistance in her head that wasn't there. He was a good kid who needed a little direction. That was all.

"Good," she said, and she couldn't keep the smile out of her voice. "That's really good to hear, Damian."

He smiled back at her. He finished the last bite of waffle, chewed, swallowed. Then he picked up his plate — without being asked, without even glancing at her — and carried it to the sink. He rinsed it. He put it in the dishwasher. The whole sequence was smooth now, practiced. Two days and he'd already learned. Lindsay felt another small pulse of that undeserved pride.

He turned back to her in the kitchen doorway. He had one hand on the doorframe, the way he always did.

"Lindsay?"

"Yes?"

"These waffles were really good. Like, really really good. But, um..." He paused, looking down at his feet, then back up at her with that tentative, hopeful expression. "Tomorrow, could you maybe try putting some real maple syrup on instead? The kind from the trees? I want to taste the difference."

Lindsay opened her mouth. She was going to say no, tomorrow you're making your own breakfast. She was going to say one time means one time. She was going to say we need to focus on your job search, not on what kind of syrup we're using. She was going to—

"Sure," she said.

The word came out before she could stop it, neat and clean and completely automatic. She heard herself say it the way you hear a door close in another room.

Damian grinned — a wide, unguarded grin that made him look like a kid who'd just been given a present. "Thanks! You're the best, Lindsay." And he was gone, his footsteps light on the stairs, his door closing with a soft click.

Lindsay stood in the kitchen. She was holding her coffee mug in both hands, very still.

Tomorrow. He'd said tomorrow. She'd said sure. He'd asked, and she'd said sure, as if continuing to make him breakfast were a settled fact and not something she'd specifically, explicitly, intentionally limited to a single morning. She'd agreed to make waffles one time. Today was the one time. And she'd just agreed to a second time as if the original limit had never existed.

She should go after him. She should clarify. Tomorrow is the last time, Damian. After that, you're on your own for breakfast. She needed to say that. She'd mention it at dinner.

She didn't mention it at dinner.

That evening, after the dishes were done and the kitchen was clean and Damian was upstairs doing whatever he did upstairs, Lindsay got in her car and drove to the grocery store. She stood in the syrup aisle for a long time. The real maple syrup came in a glass bottle shaped like a maple leaf. It was three times the price of the store-brand pancake syrup. She turned the bottle over in her hands, reading the label: Grade A Amber. Product of Vermont. 100% Pure.

She put it in her cart.

She walked through the rest of the store in a kind of fog, picking up milk, bread, the things she always bought. She didn't think about what she was doing. She didn't let herself think about it. At the checkout, the cashier rang up the syrup and Lindsay watched the total climb without flinching.

In the car, she sat for a moment with the engine off and the grocery bag on the passenger seat. The parking lot was dark. The store's fluorescent sign buzzed softly overhead.

Tomorrow is the last time, she told herself. Tomorrow I'll make the waffles with the real syrup. And then that's it. Back to normal. He'll make his own breakfast. He'll start looking for jobs. I'll be firmer.

She put the key in the ignition and drove home.

The waffle iron was still on the counter when she walked into the kitchen. She put the maple syrup next to it. She stood there for a moment, looking at the two objects side by side — the dusty iron, the expensive syrup — and felt something shift in her chest. A small, quiet warm feeling. Anticipation, maybe. Or something softer than that.

He was going to love it. He was going to taste the real syrup and his face was going to do that thing, that brightening, and he was going to say thank you, Lindsay in that quiet grateful voice, and she was going to feel—

She stopped the thought before it could finish. She turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs to bed.