Week 1: Sunday

Lindsay was in the kitchen. She was making waffles with strawberries, like she had promised.

She'd sliced them carefully — each berry washed and hulled and cut into thin, even fans, the way she'd seen in a cooking video she'd watched on her phone at six-thirty this morning while the coffee was brewing. She didn't remember deciding to look up a video. She'd just done it, the same way she'd done everything else this week: automatically, without examination, her hands moving through the motions while her mind was somewhere else.

She arranged the strawberries on top of the waffles in a neat overlapping row. She drizzled the maple syrup — real maple syrup, the one in the leaf-shaped bottle that she'd bought on Wednesday and already needed to replace — in a thin, even stream, letting it pool in the waffle squares and run down the sides of the strawberries. She added a pat of butter and watched it melt. She scrambled eggs on the side because breakfast should have protein. She poured a glass of orange juice.

She looked at the plate. It was beautiful. The strawberries were perfectly fanned, glossy with syrup, the bright red against the golden waffle like something from a breakfast café. The eggs were fluffy and pale yellow. The orange juice was freshly squeezed — she'd bought a juicer, or she was thinking about buying a juicer, or she'd seen one online and put it in her cart and then taken it out and then put it back in. She couldn't remember which.

She didn't know when she'd started caring about how the plate looked. It had started as a functional thing — eggs on a plate, toast on the side, eat it and go. Then it had been waffles with syrup. Then it had been waffles with bananas. Now it was waffles with carefully fanned strawberries and warm syrup in a small pitcher and orange juice in a glass that she'd specifically chosen because it was the one Damian had said was a nice colour. The escalation had happened incrementally, one small aesthetic decision at a time, and she hadn't noticed it happening until it was already done.

She was annoyed. She'd been annoyed since last night. She'd gone to bed annoyed and she'd woken up annoyed and now she was standing in the kitchen making waffles for a boy she was annoyed at, and the waffles were beautiful, and she was going to serve them with a smile because that was what mothers did.

Damian had not moved the clothes to the dryer. He had not folded them. He had not put them in his drawers. She had done all of it — the sorting, the washing, the drying, the folding, the stacking — while he watched and nodded and said thanks, Lindsay, you're amazing. And she'd let him. She'd done it without protest, without correction, without even the smallest pushback. She'd folded his underwear while he sat on his bed and watched.

She flipped a waffle. The iron hissed. The batter was perfect — the buttermilk and vanilla giving it a richness that the box mix had never had. She was getting good at this. She was getting very good at this, and she didn't know how to feel about that.

She heard footsteps behind her. Greg came into the kitchen in his weekend uniform — old jeans, polo shirt, running shoes — and made a direct line for the coffee maker. He poured himself a mug. He didn't reach for the cream. He never did. He leaned against the counter and watched her plate the waffles — the strawberries, the syrup, the eggs, the juice — with the mild, slightly detached curiosity of someone watching a nature documentary.

"Linds," he said.

She looked up. She was holding the small pitcher of warm syrup, about to set it down next to the plate. Her hand paused in mid-air.

"I just wanted to say — you're being a really good mother to this kid."

She blinked.

"I mean it." He took a sip of his coffee, nodding to himself. "I know this whole thing was your idea, and honestly, when we started the process, I was worried. I thought you'd end up putting it all back on me. The cooking, the logistics, the day-to-day stuff. But you've really taken to it." He gestured at the plate — the waffles, the strawberries, the carefully fanned fruit. "The breakfasts, the laundry, all of it. I'm impressed."

He said it simply, plainly, without irony. Greg was not a man who gave compliments easily. He was a man who showed love by showing up, by being present, by not leaving. Verbal affirmation had never been his language. When he said something like this, he meant it.

Lindsay stood at the counter with the syrup pitcher in her hand and a smile frozen on her face that she had put there without thinking.

You're being a really good mother to this kid.

She was not being a good mother. She was being managed. She was being managed by a nineteen-year-old who had somehow — over the course of a single week — gotten her to cook him gourmet waffles every morning, let him sleep until nine-thirty, clean up after him when he forgot to wash his plate, dress up in skirts and blouses because he said she looked pretty, push back his job search deadline so many times that she'd lost track of what the current deadline even was, and do his laundry while he sat on his bed and watched.

She was not in control of this situation. She had not been in control since approximately Tuesday, when she'd agreed to make waffles "one time" and then watched that commitment dissolve into a standing daily obligation that now involved specialty ingredients and fruit garnishes and warmed syrup in a separate pitcher. She had meant to be firm. She had meant to set boundaries. She had meant to teach him independence and instead she was teaching him that if he looked at her with those earnest eyes and said I never learned how in that quiet, hesitant voice, she would do whatever he asked.

She didn't say any of that.

"Thanks, honey," she said. Her voice was warm. She could hear the warmth and couldn't stop it. "It's been going really well. He's a little — he's a little unprepared for the real world, I think, but it makes sense given his background."

Greg nodded, satisfied. He took his coffee and wandered off toward the home office. His footsteps faded down the hall. The door closed.

Lindsay stared at the plate of waffles. The strawberries were beginning to soak into the syrup, the edges going soft and dark. The eggs were cooling. The juice was sweating condensation onto the table.

He is a nightmare, she thought. The word surfaced in her mind — nightmare — and she felt a flash of something like recognition, like she'd finally named a thing she'd been dancing around all week. He was a nightmare. He was sweet and polite and grateful and he was a nightmare, and she didn't know how to bring it up with Greg because Greg had just stood in her kitchen and told her she was doing a great job and she hadn't corrected him. She'd smiled and said thanks, honey and let him walk away with the impression that everything was fine.

It was probably fine. It was probably nothing. He was adjusting. She was adjusting. They were all adjusting. By next week things would settle into a rhythm and she'd get the job search back on track and he'd start doing his own laundry and everything would be normal.

She picked up the plate and carried it to the table. She set it down at Damian's place — the same place he'd sat every morning this week, the chair that was becoming his chair the way the plate was becoming his plate and the waffle iron was becoming a permanent fixture on the counter. She went back for the juice, the syrup pitcher, the napkin. She arranged everything neatly. She sat down with her coffee and waited for him to come downstairs.

Next week, she thought. Next week would be better.