Vegetable Soup.

"Oh goodness! It's so beautiful!" Hazel's blue eyes widened as she held up the glass in both hands. Her fingers traced the white rabbits painted on the glass. One stood up straight and looked forward, and the other, a much smaller rabbit, ate the grass at the feet of the first. 

"I thought you might like it," Isaac said. "I found the set at a thrift store last week. Aren't they adorable?"

"I think this is the best cup I have ever seen." She smiled. "Can I have some juice in the rabbit glass, please?"

"Sure." Isaac turned on his heel and opened the fridge. "What kind? I have... Most kinds, because I wasn't sure what you would like."

"Do you have ABC juice?"

"Umm... What's ABC juice?"

"Apple and Black Currant. ABC." She smiled. "Sorry, Mrs Gale calls it that."

Isaac laughed and grabbed a bottle from the fridge. "Well, ABC juice I have."

"Yay!" Hazel put the cup on the table and waited for Isaac to pour the juice. "Can I please have a lot? If I can, please."

Isaac nodded and poured the juice until the cup was nearly full. When he was finished, Hazel took a sip and smiled. "Thank you."

"Any time," Isaac said. 

He put the juice away, and when he turned back, Hazel was looking at a small wooden box he kept on the counter next to the microwave. "What's that?"

"Oh, that's full of recipes."

"Oh, cool!" Hazel walked over and picked up the box. She opened the top and saw it was full of small colourful index cards with different recipes on them. "Wow, there are so many! Which one is your favourite?"

"Oh, I don't have one, actually."

"Why not?" she asked.

"I don't really use them."

"What do you mean you don't use them?" Hazel placed the box of recipe cards on the kitchen table.

"Well... I just don't use them."

"Really?"

"Yeah, not really."

"But you have so many of them! Why do you have so many if you don't use them?"

Isaac walked over, picked one up, and ran a thumb over the thick, glossy card. "My mother dropped them off a few years ago. They were her Aunt Ruth's, I think she bought them in the late seventies, and she used them a lot. I never really used them. I don't cook in the kitchen."

Hazel looked up at Isaac and squinted. "So... Do you cook in the lounge room?"

Isaac chuckled. "No. I don't cook much at all. I only cook if I have to."

Hazel held up Sasha, her small blue stuffed dog, and then cocked both of their heads to one side. "But you need to eat every day, though."

"Yes. But food can be delivered to my house faster than I can cook it, and it will probably taste better too."

Hazel took a breath so deep her shoulders rose up over her ears. She let it out and said, "Well, it's a special night, and I think we should have a special food, and takeaway isn't special if you do it all the time." Her long auburn curls that framed her face danced and bounced up and down as she spoke.

It was Hazel's first overnight stay since the adoption process started, so this was the most special night either of them had had in quite some time. Isaac smiled. "Well, I can't argue with that logic."

"I'm very logical," she said, beaming.

"Spock would be proud."

She looked up at him with a blank look. "Who's that?"

Isaac shook his head. "Long story. I'll tell you later. We will need to pick up a few things from the store before we get started."

"But you don't even know what card I picked for dinner."

Sheepishly, Isaac rubbed the back of his head and said, "I guarantee you that no matter what you picked, we are going to need something from the store that I don't have." Hazel held out the recipe card, and Isaac took it. He glanced down and said, "Oh hey, this one's not like the others."

"No, the others are smooth magazine paper, and they all have 'Better Homes and Gardens' written on them. I like this one. It's rough like book paper and doesn't have a picture of the food on it, so you have to use your imagination."

Isaac looked at the card. "Vegetable soup."

Hazel nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, please. I've never had it before, but there was an old Disney cartoon with Donald Duck that Mrs Gale would put on some Saturday mornings. He made soup, and it looked really yummy. Even though it was only drawn, it looked really good. I bet the person who drew it really liked soup a lot."

"Soup sounds good, actually. I can't tell you the last time I had soup."

"So it will be an extra special dinner," she said excitedly.

Isaac pulled out his phone. "I'll jump on the Dash app and get the ingredients for the soup delivered."

"No!" she pouted. "We can't just have them show up like takeaways. Then it's not special."

"That's... a fair point actually."

"And besides, it's only a short walk from here. Only two turns!" She leaned forward and whispered, the little blue plushie dog at arm's length, "Sasha counted because she likes to know where things are. She gets scared if she doesn't know where everything is."

"Okay, then," Isaac grinned. "We'd better get going if we want to pick this stuff up for dinner. While we're there, did you want anything else?"

Hazel put her finger to her chin and moved her head side to side. She stopped and excitedly asked, "Do you have Vegemite?"

"Vegemite? No, I don't right now. Did you want some for breakfast?"

"Yes, please. I love Vegemite. I eat it every morning." She smiled and called out, "Four triangles!"

Isaac asked, "Four triangles?"

"That's how I eat them. The correct way. Two toasted breads, but four triangles. It's the only way to eat Vegemite toast. All the other ways are just wrong."

"I always liked squares myself."

Hazel nodded. "It's okay to be wrong sometimes."

Isaac grinned. "Anything else?"

She shook her head. "No, I think that's everything."

Isaac looked down at the card and read the ingredients to himself "Celery, tomatoes, tomato paste, and vegetable stock." He finished the front, turned it over, and saw an addition he couldn't read.

"Hey, Hazel, did you add something to the recipe card?" Hazel shifted her eyes to her feet. "Um, maybe."

"What does it say? I can't read it."

"It's the secret ingredient. All cooking has a secret ingredient." She smiled.

"Ah, okay. But it can't be too secret because we need to know what to put in the soup later. Did you want to tell me what it is?" Hazel looked at her feet and mumbled, "I didn't hear you, sorry."

She took a deep breath, looked up, and said a little louder than she had intended, "Love!" She blushed. "The secret ingredient. It's love."

Isaac looked again, and on a second read, he could see it plain as day. He smiled. "Oh, I see that now."

"Yeah, but you can't buy it from the store."

"That's okay," he answered. "I think we have plenty of that in the house already."

Hazel tried to hide a smile poorly, then said, "This really is a special meal. My first time having soup, your first time in a long time, and our first time together as a..." She paused, the words catching in her throat. "Our first dinner. That's just us, you know... without Mrs Gale or anyone else from the foster home being nosy and watching us eat or do things."

"They weren't being nosy. They were observing us to make sure we were a good fit."

"Okay. What does observe mean?"

"Um... Well... Watch..." he smiled. "But a different kind of watching."

Hazel pushed air into her top lip and gave Isaac a look.

"They just want to make sure that when all is said and done, you're happy here, and I'm happy you're here," he said.

Hazel blinked. "Yeah." She took a deep breath and asked, "And are you?"

"Am I?"

"Yeah. Are you... happy? That I'm here?" She said the words carefully, as if saying them wrong might cut her.

Isaac smiled. "Yeah, I am. Are you happy you are here?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I like this place. It's warm, and I like the black oak trees in the front yard. They have a funny texture that tickles my hand when I touch them, and I like that. I also like that even though you didn't have to yet, because it's still a trial, you set a room up for me."

"It would be a pretty awful trial sleepover if you showed up and you didn't even have a bed," Isaac said. "I didn't get everything here in time, though, so next time you are here, your side table and bookshelves will be here for you to fill up with your books, tchotchkes and knick-knacks."

"Next time?" She hid her face behind Sasha, one eye hidden behind the blue felt, the other fixed on his eyes.

"Yeah, because you need to go back to the city tomorrow, but..." Isaac smiled back at her. "Yeah. Next time. If that's okay?"

Hazel put Sasha to her side and smiled. "Yes. I think that's more than okay."