Avalon took a bite and chewed it happily. “You know, I never feel luckier than when I have a plate full of broccoli, Leesy.”
Mac concurred somberly. “You know, it’s the one food I’d take with me to a desert island. The last food in the world I’d ever eat.”
All the adults were now busily chewing broccoli.
Annelise seized her fork with a certain resolve.
Clutched like Poseidon held a trident.
Everyone jumped when she stabbed a floret with her fork as if it were a mastodon needing killing.
She lifted it up and eyeballed it like Hamlet communing with a skull.
Brought it closer, and closer still, to her face.
Gazes ricocheted every which way around the table.
“Don’t move,” Eden whispered to her sister. They were seconds away from gripping hands, like people in an aircraft going down.
Then Annelise levered it up to her mouth and whispered something that sounded like an incantation.
She opened her mouth.
Eden’s brow appeared to be sweating.
And Annelise thrust the broccoli inside her mouth.
Screwed her eyes closed.
Clapped her mouth shut.
Experimentally moved her jaw.
Once.
Twice.
Three, four, five times.
The chewing accelerated.
And, for the denouement...
... her throat moved in a swallow.
Not one adult in that room was breathing.
“It’s good,” Leesy said mildly, finally, as if the tectonic plates of her life and her mother’s hadn’t just shifted. “I like it.”
And then she...voluntarily took another bite.
Silence, of the ringing awestruck sort, ensued. The kind of silence often punctuated by chanting medieval monks and celestial music. A hushed and holy silence.
Eden looked drained and pale and wearily happy. As if it was the aftermath of childbirth.
“What did you whisper, Annelise?” Gabe asked.
“Promise you won’t get mad?” Annelise said to her mom.