Week 1: Thursday

The waffles came out better today.

Lindsay had thrown away the box mix — not dramatically, not with any ceremony, just a quiet drop into the trash while the coffee was brewing — and started from scratch. Buttermilk, eggs, melted butter, a splash of real vanilla extract. She'd looked up a recipe on her phone while the pan was heating and followed it carefully, whisking the wet ingredients into the dry in a slow, steady stream the way the instructions said. The batter was thick and pale gold and smelled faintly of vanilla even before it hit the iron.

She told herself she wasn't trying to impress anyone. The box mix had been disappointing. That was all. It had come out flat and gummy, the texture all wrong, and it had bothered her in the way that small failures in the kitchen always bothered her. If she was going to make waffles, she might as well make them correctly. It was a matter of principle. She wasn't trying to prove anything. She wasn't trying to earn anything. She just didn't like doing things halfway.

She scrambled eggs on the side because breakfast should have protein. That was just basic nutrition. She wasn't building an elaborate spread. She was feeding someone who lived in her house, and she was doing it properly. The same way she'd fed Naomi. The same way she'd fed Greg before he started grabbing cereal bars on his way out the door. This was what mothers did.

The real maple syrup went on in a thin, even stream, pooling in the squares of the waffle the way it did in the photographs in the recipe. Lindsay added a pat of butter, watched it melt, and carried the plate to the table.

Damian appeared in the doorway at 9:30. He was wearing the same sweatpants he'd worn all week. Lindsay made a mental note to ask if he needed help with laundry and then forgot she'd made it.

"Morning, Lindsay."

"Morning. Sit down."

He sat. She put the plate in front of him. He looked at it — the waffle, golden and crisp at the edges, the butter melting into a glossy pool, the eggs on the side — and then looked up at her.

"You made eggs too?"

"Breakfast should have protein."

He picked up his fork. He cut a piece of waffle, made sure it had enough syrup, and took a bite.

His eyes closed.

"Oh my God."

Lindsay sat down across from him with her coffee. She was trying not to look too pleased with herself.

"The maple syrup is completely different," he said, his voice slightly muffled by waffle. He chewed, swallowed, shook his head. "Lindsay, this is so much better than yesterday. Like, not even the same thing."

"I told you."

"You were totally right." He took another bite, bigger this time. "I didn't realise food could taste like this. Like, I knew waffles were supposed to be good, but this is — this is like a restaurant. This is better than a restaurant." He looked at her with an expression of genuine, almost comical reverence. "Thank you for getting the real stuff. Seriously."

"You're welcome."

He went back to eating with the focused intensity of someone who had just discovered a new category of pleasure and was not going to waste a single moment of it. Lindsay watched him for a moment — the way he closed his eyes when he chewed, the small sounds of satisfaction he made without seeming to realise he was making them — and felt something warm and quiet settle in her chest.

Then she remembered why she was here. The conversation she'd been putting off since Tuesday. Today, she told herself. No more delays. This is the last morning.

She took a breath. She was forming the sentence in her head — Damian, I'm glad you're enjoying the waffles, but I can't keep making you breakfast every morning — when Damian spoke again.

"Lindsay?"

She braced herself. "Yes?"

He was looking down at his plate. His fork was tracing slow patterns in the remaining syrup, and his posture had shifted — shoulders slightly forward, head slightly down, the body language of someone who was about to say something he wasn't sure he was allowed to say.

"I just wanted to say — I know you're not going to be cooking for me forever."

Lindsay's mouth closed. The sentence she'd been forming dissolved.

"I mean, I'm nineteen," he continued. He was talking to his plate now, not to her. His voice was quiet, hesitant, the words coming out in small careful clusters. "I should know how to do all this stuff myself. It's just... I grew up in foster homes, you know? And nobody ever really taught me. Like, there were always meals, but they were just... there. You lined up and you got your tray and you ate and you moved on. Nobody ever stood next to me at a stove and showed me how to make batter. Nobody ever told me about different kinds of syrup. It just wasn't... that wasn't how it worked."

He looked up at her. His expression was open, guileless, a little embarrassed. "So I don't really have a lot of, like, home skills. Cooking and cleaning and stuff. And I really appreciate that you're, like, willing to show me. Even if it's just for a little while. Even if I'm just watching. It means a lot."

Lindsay opened her mouth. The words came out before she'd examined them, before she'd weighed them, before she'd even fully registered what she was responding to.

"Of course. That's — of course I will. I'm your parent now. It's my job to teach you these things."

She heard herself say it and felt something lurch in her chest. I'm your parent. It's my job. Teach you. She hadn't taught him anything. She'd been doing everything for him — standing at the stove at seven in the morning while he slept until nine-thirty, mixing batter and scrambling eggs and setting the table and clearing his plate. Teaching would mean standing next to him and showing him how to do it himself. Teaching would mean letting him make mistakes and learn from them. She hadn't done any of that. She'd been a short-order cook. And now she was calling herself his parent and saying it was her job.

But the words had come out, and they had felt true when she said them. They had felt like something she believed. And she couldn't find the part that was wrong, couldn't locate the seam where the truth ended and something else began.

Damian smiled. That quiet, grateful smile that made his whole face shift. "Thanks, Lindsay. That means a lot."

He went back to eating. Lindsay sat very still with her coffee, trying to replay what had just happened and finding that the sequence kept slipping out of her grasp.

"I was reading about waffles online last night," Damian said.

Lindsay's attention snapped back to the present. "What?"

"Waffles. I was curious about them after yesterday. Did you know people put fruit on them? Like bananas and strawberries and stuff? And whipped cream?"

Something in Lindsay's chest tightened. A small, instinctive wariness. He'd been reading about waffles online. He'd been researching what else she could put on them. She could feel the shape of a request forming in the space between them and she didn't know what it was yet, but she knew it was coming.

She didn't respond. She took a sip of her coffee. She waited.

Damian looked at her for a moment, and then — as if sensing the shift in her posture, the slight retreat — he changed the subject entirely.

"Oh — so, about the job thing." He set his fork down. "I actually started looking."

Lindsay's guard dropped. Her whole body leaned forward slightly, a reflex she couldn't control. "You did?"

"Yeah. I went on some websites, like you said." He nodded, looking pleased with himself. "There's a lot of stuff out there. Like, a lot. I didn't realise there were so many jobs."

Relief bloomed through her chest. Warm, real, physical relief. She could feel it spreading behind her sternum like a sip of good whiskey. He'd done it. He'd actually listened. She'd been worrying — she'd been genuinely starting to worry, the worry building up layer by layer with each morning of waffles and delays — and he'd come through. He was a good kid. He just needed a little direction. That was all.

"That's great, Damian. I'm really glad to hear that." She was smiling. She couldn't help it. "What kind of things did you see?"

He started telling her. He'd been on a few job boards, he said. He'd looked at the listings at the mall, and some restaurants near the community college, and there was a bookstore that was hiring, and also a place that did something with shipping — he wasn't quite sure what, the description had been confusing — and there were a few things that looked like they might be possible. He was animated now, talking with his hands, clearly pleased to have good news to report.

"So there's definitely options," he said. "I started making a list. But, um..." He trailed off. The animation faded. He looked down at his plate, then back up at her with a slightly sheepish expression.

"But what?"

"Well, so I started looking, but I kind of got distracted. I was reading about maple syrup — like how they make it and stuff. And I went down this whole rabbit hole about the trees and the sap and the boiling and everything." He shook his head, as if marvelling at his own distractibility. "Did you know they have to boil like forty gallons of sap just to make one gallon of syrup? That's crazy. I had no idea it was so complicated."

"I did know that, yes."

"Oh. Right. You probably did." He smiled, a little embarrassed. "Anyway, I got kind of sidetracked reading about all that, and I didn't get through as many listings as I wanted to. I know it's a lot to ask. And you've been so generous already." He paused. He looked at her with that earnest, hopeful expression. "But it's almost end of day" — Lindsay glanced at the clock on the microwave; it was 10:15 in the morning — "and I didn't get through that many. Do you think I could maybe have until next week? To really look properly?"

He was asking for more time. He'd had one concrete task — look at job listings — and he'd spent the morning reading about maple syrup instead, and now he wanted an extension. Lindsay's rational mind registered this as a failure. It registered the extension as a step backward. It registered the timeframe — "by end of day" had become "next week" in the space of a single request — as a pattern she should not be establishing.

"Sure," she said. "Next week is fine."

She heard herself say it. She felt the word sure leave her mouth the way she'd felt it leave before — automatic, reflexive, already gone before she could catch it. She was aware of the gap between what she should have said and what she did say, and the awareness was sharp and clear and completely useless.

"Thanks, Lindsay." He was smiling. That genuine, grateful smile. "You're the best."

He pushed his chair back. He stood up.

"Oh, and —" He paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "Could you put bananas on the waffles tomorrow? I want to try the fruit thing."

"Sure."

He went upstairs.

His plate was on the table.

Lindsay stared at it. The plate with the last bite of waffle still on it, the fork balanced across the edge, the syrup cooling into a sticky amber residue. The plate he hadn't rinsed. The plate he hadn't put in the dishwasher. On Monday, she'd asked him to clean up after himself. Tuesday, she'd reminded him. Wednesday, he'd done it without prompting and she'd felt a flicker of quiet satisfaction — the satisfaction of a lesson learned, a habit taking root. Today, Thursday, he'd walked right past it and gone upstairs without a glance.

She should call after him. Three words. Damian, your plate. Two seconds. No confrontation, no lecture, just a simple reminder that he was supposed to clean up after himself. She should walk upstairs and knock on his door and say you forgot something. She should do the thing she'd told herself she would do, the thing she'd done on Monday and Tuesday without hesitation.

She picked up the plate. She scraped the last bite into the trash. She rinsed the plate, put it in the dishwasher, wiped down the table.

She stood at the sink and ran through what had just happened.

Her deadline — "by end of day tomorrow" — had been set on Wednesday. It had lasted less than twenty-four hours. The reason it collapsed was maple syrup. He had gotten distracted reading about maple syrup instead of looking at job listings, and she had extended his deadline to next week because of it, and she could not articulate why that made sense except that it did, at the time, when he was sitting there being sweet and grateful and telling her he'd started looking. The logic had been convincing in the moment. It had felt like a reasonable accommodation. It was only now, standing at the sink with the kitchen empty and the house quiet, that the logic evaporated and left behind the bare uncomfortable fact: she had given a nineteen-year-old an extra four days to do a task he'd agreed to do yesterday because he got distracted by a Wikipedia article about tree sap.

She was now making him waffles every morning. She was now buying specialty ingredients for his breakfast — real maple syrup, buttermilk, vanilla extract, bananas. She was now cleaning up after him when he forgot. And she had a week before she could bring up jobs again without contradicting herself.

She told herself: fine. Next week. She'd hold that line. Next week was firm. Monday morning, first thing, she would sit him down and say Damian, you agreed to have a plan by today, so let's see what you've found. She would not let it slide. She would not get derailed by waffles or syrup or fruit or whatever new thing he'd read about online. Monday. Firm. Unmovable.

She went to the grocery store and bought bananas.