Dinner by Dad

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Dear Dinner by Dad,

I love how you write about your wife and your boys. I hope they know how lucky they are to have you. Even so, I wish you were single! Hey, if things ever don’t work out between you and Jacqui just PM me . . .

Anon in Alabama

Dear Anon,

I’m flattered. Truly, I am. I consider myself the luckiest man on the planet, and I wouldn’t jeopardize my family for anything. But thank you for the kind words, and keep on cooking!

Dinner by Dad

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Dear DbD:

How do you stay so cheerful all of the time? Don’t you ever feel like throwing in the towel? The dishtowel, that is. I do.

—Lauren

Dear Lauren:

Abso. Freaking. Lutely. Sometimes being at home is hard. The average toddler cries between four and six times a day. Dishes SUCK. Always: they always suck, I don’t care who you are. It takes forty-five minutes to make a meal and four seconds for a kid to throw it on the floor. I get it! Just yesterday, the dog threw up, the coffeepot exploded, and Charlie fell off his skateboard and opened up a crater in his knee. I almost lost it. I haven’t ended the day with a clean shirt since Britney had a song on the Billboard 100. But I’m here for you, readers, and we can all be here for each other. Let’s make this work. Let’s make some food.

DbD

Chapter 15

ANTHONY

“ANTHONY PUCKETT! HUXLEY Wilder here.”

This was his agent, who, once the nitty-gritty details had been dealt with, had commenced dropping Anthony like everyone else in his life had dropped him. There was something so . . . well, so unaccidental about Anthony’s misfortune. It really stopped people in their tracks. He hadn’t fallen ill or lost a parent, he hadn’t been summarily fired, his house hadn’t burned down, he didn’t even have anything as interesting as a drug addiction that might have been discovered to be chemical in nature. He had simply been dishonest. He had cheated. He had stolen.

“Huxley!” Anthony said. “Great to hear from you.” It was great to hear from Huxley, especially after the thing with the car earlier that day. He had thought he was stranded before, just by virtue of being on an island, but now, with the Le Baron temporarily out of commission, the word stranded took on a new meaning. Hearing Huxley’s voice, which had its very own swagger to it, something vaguely Clint-Eastwood-meets-Harrison-Ford-meets-Bryan-Cranston, gave Anthony a brief flash of hope. Maybe all was not lost. Maybe Huxley had some good news for him. Maybe the publisher had had a change of heart.

“Yeaaaah,” said Huxley throatily. “Maybe not so great. So listen, buddy.” Huxley and Anthony were close to the same age. How had Huxley earned the right to “buddy” him? Buddy was what a father was supposed to call a son. It was what Anthony called Max. Last Anthony had checked, Huxley Wilder was not his father.