Mom’s meatloaf was simple, but smelled and tasted like home. When he’d decided to make an effort to learn how to cook after moving in with Sam, Mom had sent him her old Betty Crocker’s Cookbook. She’d said it covered all the basics, and was where many of her own staple recipes came from, now mostly memorized. Her meatloaf, he’d learned, was one of them. Hopefully his cookbook was in one of those boxes stacked in Emmitt’s living room. Who knew what his frame of mind had been back when he’d been packing up his stuff to leave Sam’s four months ago.
The side dishes were pretty basic fare, too. Smashed red potatoes, frozen peas and carrots, and a spinach salad with grape tomatoes, croutons, and a simple dressing.
Emmitt didn’t seem to have any objections to the unpretentious meal. He gobbled
