Page 9 of Daddy Bear Picnic

“I’m twenty-eight,” he announced.

I was forty-one. A bit of an age gap, but we weren’t even in that place. I’d only just met him.

Gladys shooed me away. “Don’t you have work to do,” she said. “I want to know more about Malcolm. I always get the scoop on who’s who in town. I used to be a reporter back in my prime.”

“I think you’re very much still in your prime,” he responded.

There was a certain level of responsibility I felt for him, not like I should have. I barely knew him beyond saving his trapped leg and taking him on a tour through his childhood summer home. I could almost picture him there with how fondly he talked about things he did.

Ezekiel was in the kitchen, a place he never went, spying on us from the hatch. “You two looked awful cozy in your van. I hope you’re not going to have him running for the hills.”

“I’m helping him,” I said, approaching the sink to wash my hands. “Besides, he’s got a certain charm to him, don’t you think?”

“Brother, we do not have the same type,” he said. “Besides, you know I have a thing that guy in Snowflake Springs.”

“The guy you met at the hotels, motels, and B&B convention I told you wasn’t a real thing.” The smell of vanilla was so sweet in my nose from the hand soap. It always made me want to whip up a crepe batter or make cupcakes.

“The New England Small Town Lodgings Convention is very real,” he said, and even repeated again, it seemed far toowordy to be a real thing. “Ok, well, you met him once, and what?”

“Well, he said he’d visit.”

“And did he?” I asked, knowing the answer. “Because I don’t remember seeing an Arnold Pink in the log book.”

“That’s not his name. It’s Arnie Pique, spelled in the French way, or it looks French.”

“Sounds like he gave you a fake name.” Drying my hands, I put my apron on. “And I’ve told you that. He doesn’t have any online stuff going on. So, come on, you’ve got to put two and two together.”

Ezekiel scoffed. “He’s real, Eli. He’s just busy. His motel won the red ruby prestige award at the event. It had his name on it and everything.”

“And what did we win?”

“Well, we got an acknowledgement,” he said. “People still think our name is confusing.”

“It’s our name. We’re not changing it. It’s our heritage,” I told him. It was a regular argument and I always won. It wasn’t just that it was our name, but it represented a space in the history of this town, and that meant so much to me and should’ve meant a lot to him as well.

As I worked on some lunch, mostly using the soup stock I had from theStock Marketkitchenattached to the bakery where they only sold soups, but they were great, people came from all over for a serving. Soup was never enough for me though, it was all just water with a little flavoring, if I wanted that, I’d do as the Brits do and drink tea.

Every day, even when we didn’t have guests, I made a small luncheon made from fresh meat, breads, soup, and a selection of fruit. If it wasn’t eaten, then I would do my best to devour it, or call the community center and see if anyone had been in requesting food bank resources.

In my element, I was usually unflappable. But all I could think about was Malcolm and how he’d walked me through his childhood. He shared things with me that I didn’t know if they had more meaning to. Like his teddies, he’d mentioned them, a collector, and I knew in some circles that meant something, like a circle I’d once frequented meant they were a little or boy, partaking in the play of age regression.

In a jump scare of motion, he was at the hatch, his head. Not sure how long he’d been there watching me, but his soft eyes melted me. A smirk appeared on his face as I flinched in recoil to the scare. “Gladys left and told me she wanted the whole pie eaten,” he said. “I don’t think I could eat that whole thing.”

“Gladys will do that to you,” I told him. “But don’t worry, she’s harmless. I promise.” I turned the hob off for the soup to sit and simmer. It would be transferred over to a slow cooker that would keep it warm. “Did she give you any other advice?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “She basically told me that I needed to put some muscle on my arms which I think are fairly muscular already. You know, you’ve got have muscles when you carry buckets of paint.” He rushed to remove his arm from a jacket sleeve and show me his muscle in a flex. There was some definition there, he was so pale, I just wanted to brush my fingers across him to see if it felt any different. “I guess you’ve got to show me yours now.”

“Ha.” I pulled my checkered shirt off and tucked it into the string around my apron. “I work with my hands all day, now, I don’t want you to be intimated when you see these guns.”

Ezekiel’s voice nearly shrieked as it raced towards the kitchen. “We don’t have guns in the house,” he said. “What are you—”

Both arms posed to show off my muscles. I was strong, my muscles had muscles. “These guns,” I joked, tensionsqueezing at them. I knew I was going red in the face from it. “How do I look?”

Malcolm giggled, putting his arm back inside his jacket. “They`re—well, big.”

Ezekiel scoffed. “You know, you don’t have to entertain him,” he said. “Are you going to get the food put out in the dining room?”

I nodded once. “Are the other guests getting hungry?”

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