Dusk Harbor 1999

Bacon

The large kitchen with its granite breakfast bar and cream-colored tiles was bathed in bright noon sunshine coming in through the skylights and the giant windows on either side of the kitchen door. The place was filled with the scent of almost burnt bacon.

Jake was in a green t-shirt and dark blue jeans, he had black socks on his feet to protect them from the drippings of hot oil from the pan of bacon he was working on. Too many times he'd burnt the tops of his feet with boiling grease.

With a pair of tongs, he turned a few pieces of pork and turkey bacon --the turkey bacon was for Jordan, who hated pork-- and waited for them to finish crisping up around the edges. They already looked somewhat charred but he wasn't yet satisfied.

In another pan next to him, he was melting some butter so he could fry up some eggs in a minute or so.

On the back burner, he had a plate of pancakes stacked so high he could have taken twenty away and still had half left.

Any minute now, his friends Mason, Jordan and his cousin Olivia would arrive at his mansion for Sunday brunch. The same thing they did every single Sunday--with a few exceptions for sicknesses and other things-- for the past three years ever since Mason and Jordan got back from their year-long stay in Paris. Jordan had been there for art school, and Mason was an apprentice under a blacksmith.

They grew apart and almost forgot about each other in that time.

They'd come back a few weeks after Houston was born, so Jake was too busy to hang out with them for a while further driving them apart. But they made Sunday brunch a tradition so they could get closer again. They'd become a lot more than friends since then. They were more like family. A family of friends.

In the living room, his seven-year-old son Drake, and his twin five-year-old daughters were on the long brown suede couch, watching Rugrats on the big TV that sat in the corner between one of the twenty-foot high windows and the great stone fireplace. Both of the girls had straight blond hair down way past their shoulder blades. Sarah had a braid crown around her head, Olive's was unstyled, she hated anyone touching her hair.

Drake had swept back hair that was the same light blond as his sisters.

Jake stepped away from the stove for a moment. Went round the breakfast counter to peer around the kitchen wall, and saw Houston, the only child of his with brown hair, standing at the front doors. Standing on his tiptoes on a little red stool, peering out through the crystalline window. Waiting for Olivia and Jordan and Mason's cars to pull up. He especially was waiting for Mason and Jordan. He didn't love many people, but he loved them.

"Hey Houston? Do you see them yet?" Jake called out.

Houston glanced back at him and shook his head. Gave a short shrug and then went back to watching like a hawk. Houston never talked much. He didn't have to. They always knew what he meant.

Jake went back into the kitchen. Rounded the breakfast counter. Came back to the stove. The bacon had gone a little too long and was sort of blackened on the ends, but that wasn't unusual. He grabbed the blue handle of the pan and scraped the bacon onto a nearby pile of napkins, where there was already a mountain of bacon. All charred around the edges.

"That'll do just fine," he commented to himself.

His wife Catherine, who was tall and fair, and had wavy brown hair tied up in a messy bun came around the kitchen wall, holding his youngest son Elijah to her chest. He was just eight months old. Had thin, blond hair. Clothed in a blue t-shirt and black shorts.

"Hey sweetie," Catherine half sang as she walked around the breakfast bar, through the kitchen, and onward to the dining room that was a step down into a cute little space with a long wooden table, a white runner, cream-brown tiles, and an electric fireplace set in stone behind the head of the table. Ten heart-backed chairs all around.