Beyond the Pain

Chapter 6

ONCE WE WERE IN THE west wing, we passed through a door on our right and found ourselves inside a huge kitchen. It looked like something you might see in the cooking shows I used to watch with my parents on the weekends. We had loved watching these shows together. My father was especially enthusiastic about them; they made him want to experiment in the kitchen. Thankfully, my mother was never far behind him to clean his messes because he had two left hands and lacked talent in the culinary department.

He was hilarious to watch though. He used to pretend to be in a cooking show and tell my mother and me a lot of made-up facts about the ingredients and utensils he used. My mother often went after him to turn down the temperature he had set on the oven or switch the knife he was using for a more appropriate one. I had loved watching them cook together. I missed it more than I thought I would.

"Girl, you're too early for lunch," said a guy in his mid-twenties, who was dressed in a traditional white chef's jacket paired with black and white houndstooth pants and black shoes. "I like you, but not enough to disrupt Captain Sue's dear old schedule. I'm too young to die."

The modern kitchen felt so out of place in such an old house that I had been too distracted by it to initially notice the two men in it with us. The one who had spoken was big. He reminded me of a bear because of his size and his beard. But he had a friendly smile and kind eyes behind his square glasses. Upon reflection, he looked more like a giant teddy bear.

The other man, preoccupied with the vegetables waiting to be chopped in front of him on the island counter, was older, probably in his early to mid-sixties. The small amount of hair still on his head had grayed, but the hairs of his bushy eyebrows had retained their ebony color for the most part. His olive skin and particular facial features made him look foreign, but I couldn't have guessed his ethnicity. He didn't seem bothered by our presence whatsoever. I wondered if he had even noticed us at all.

"We're not here to eat, Ben. I'm giving Lily a tour of the mansion," said Ashley while showing me off with a gesture of her hands like a model on a television game show presenting a prize.

The teddy bear guy looked at me for the first time, his eyebrows raised. Had he not seen me before? He smiled at me and nodded in my direction.

"Hey, I'm Ben." He lightly rubbed the palms of his hands on his apron. "This is my kitchen," he said while gesturing to the room.

The man in the back cleared his throat without taking his attention away from the knife he was using to chop away at his vegetables.

"I mean, our kitchen," Ben laughed. The man didn't seem completely satisfied with that either, but he didn't argue.

Ashley rolled her eyes, though she was still smiling. She pointed towards a wooden double door in the middle of the wall to our right.

"That's the dining room. Nothing to see there, just some boring tables and chairs. So, let's keep going. Bye Ben, bye Chef. See you at lunch. I'm already fantasizing about it. It smells amazing and I'm starving! Maybe I can just steal a bite?"

Chef stopped cutting mid carrot, rendering the kitchen uncomfortably quiet, before Ben broke out into a deep laugh.

"Get out of here, girl, before Chef decides to cook you."

Ashley chuckled as she slowly backed away with her hands raised over her head while Chef waved his knife in our general direction. I wasn't sure if it was a threat or a farewell.

We were back in the hallway of the west wing, the one I had been in earlier when I'd left Doctor Walsh's office. The door at the opposite end of the hallway led to the bedroom I now shared with Ashley and Susan.