Jack rubbed the bird tattoo absently, as if the ink could speak. "There's more. Mae's secret, mostly. She'll tell it if she wants. Or she'll make me scrub the grill with a toothbrush if I tell it wrong, and Mae's toothbrush sentences are longer than most sermons."
"Then don't tell it wrong. Or tell it gently."
He hesitated, listening to the floorboards above them settle as Mae moved through her night rituals—water glass, glasses on the nightstand, the radio turned low to a station that played old songs for people who remembered dancing. Then he leaned back against the vinyl and spoke as if the story had been waiting for a listener who had already made a face at the truth.
"My grandfather, Walter Brennan, proposed to Mae on Thanksgiving Day in 1929, the afternoon before the market fell apart and took half the town's savings with it. He was a cook even then, working a lunch counter that doesn't exist anymore. He made gravy so bad Mae almost said no on culinary grounds alone. She said yes anyway, because he had kind hands and a laugh that made hard days shorter. She spent the next fifty years trying to fix his recipe without admitting she was fixing it—adding salt, taking away flour, arguing with ghosts over pepper. When he died, ten years ago this month, right before Thanksgiving, she locked his handwritten recipe card in a tin and started making what she calls 'the improved version' for customers. The truth—and she'd scold me for saying it plain—is she still puts one spoonful of his old mix into every batch. On purpose. So it tastes a little wrong. So she remembers he was here, standing where I'm standing, burning things with love."
Claire's throat tightened. The pendant lamp above them hummed. "That's why it's—"