by Vicki Delany
“Sandra’s come with her son, Brian McHenry, and his wife, Darlene. They’re Heather’s parents. Also Heather’s brother, Lewis, his wife, Julie-Ann, and their two children. I told them to come down at eight for breakfast so you could join us.”
“I don’t—”
“So you could join us.”
“I can’t cook and eat at the same time.”
“Why ever not? Edna can finish up in here.”
Edna came into the kitchen in time to hear that. “Cooking is not in my job description.”
“I believe when I hired you, I specified, ‘Other duties, as assigned.’ ”
“I believe when you hired me, you said, ‘Please, Edna, I need you desperately. Help me and you can do your job exactly as you like.’ ”
“I believe,” I said, “I’m the cook around here. Which means I’m in charge and I decide who does what.”
As if either of them ever pays any attention to me.
“As it’s still an hour until eight o’clock,” Rose said, “I’ve changed my mind and I’ll have my tea now.”
“Pot’s over there.” Edna sat at the table to slice fresh fruit for the salad. Robbie, whose full name is Robert the Bruce in honor of my grandfather’s Scottish heritage, left Rose’s lap to sniff at the bananas. Edna put him on the floor. She and I exchanged glances, but we didn’t say anything.
What would be the point?
I’d told Rose, more than once, that I don’t want animals in my kitchen. Never mind what the health department would have to say if they saw a cat sitting on the table and sniffing at the food bowls. Rose reminded me that advertising for her B & B plainly says a cat is in residence. People who object are welcome to stay elsewhere.
I don’t believe dogs belong in commercial kitchens, either, but if Rose’s cat can come in, then my dog can, too. So there!
Such minor victories make up life with Rose. Everyone in my family thought I was crazy to even consider going into business with her. My mother, most of all.
I plugged in the kettle for Rose’s tea. “Do they all, except for Heather, live in Iowa?”
“Yes. Brian owns some sort of a car dealership, and Darlene, his wife, is a nurse. I’m not sure what Lewis or Julie-Ann do.”
“What’s the story with Heather?” The kettle boiled and I added hot water to the bags in the teapot. In the B & B, I don’t bother with making individual flavors of tea or using tea leaves. I also never make scones. If people can have specialty tea and homemade scones in here, why would they come to my tearoom?
“I like her enormously. Such a fun girl. What did you think?”
“She seemed nice. She’s looking forward to this family vacation. Bernie didn’t warm to her, though. She thought Heather’s overly keen to make sure we know she has money.”
Rose shrugged. I put the teapot on the table in front of her, along with a cup and saucer and a small jug of milk. Robert the Bruce stuck his little black nose into the jug. Rose poured a splash into her saucer and he licked it up eagerly.
“Ah, yes. Money. Heather has rather a lot of it and perhaps she does like to show it off, but she has no ill intentions. She wants everyone else to share her own pleasure in it. I knew Heather when she was a teenager. She didn’t get on with her parents and spent a lot of time at Sandra’s house. They were difficult years, for the parents, for Sandra, for Heather. The teenage years often are, aren’t they? Your mother, for example—”
I cut that line of conversation off. “Let’s not go there today, Rose.”
My grandmother sipped her tea. “You didn’t steep the leaves long enough.”
“I didn’t use leaves. How did Heather manage to strike it rich?”
“She eventually settled down, after much drama and a lot of turmoil, in her mid-twenties, got her GED and went to the local community college to take some sort of business course. While there, she met a part-time teacher who was a good deal older than her.”
“Hold that thought until I get back.” Edna had finished the fruit salad and was about to carry the big glass bowl from which guests would serve themselves into the dining room.
“I most certainly will not,” Rose said. “I’m exchanging news of my longtime friend and her family with Lily, not gossiping.”
“Sounds like gossiping to me,” Edna said. “And as my mother always said, ‘If it sounds like gossip, it is gossip.’ ” Her voice faded away as she left the room.
“Who’s gossiping?” Simon came into the kitchen. “Morning, all. You’re up early today, Rose.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you’re up early,” I said.
Simon washed earth off his hands at the sink, then helped himself to a cup of coffee, added a generous splash of cream, and leaned against the far wall. The gardens of Victoria-on-Sea are one of the highlights of the property and one of the reasons Rose can charge as much for a night here as she does. An English country garden, particularly one on a hilltop so close to the ocean, needs a lot of work, and looking after it is Simon’s job. We’d been lucky to get him. Our longtime gardener quit at the beginning of the season. As he gave his notice, while driving out of town in his new girlfriend’s convertible, he also provided Rose with the number of his nephew, an experienced horticulturalist who’d recently arrived from England for a summer job, only to find the job had fallen through.
“I’m telling Lily about the granddaughter of one of my longtime friends,” Rose said.
I spotted Simon eyeing the warm bran muffins. “Help yourself. We’ve enough guests today, so I’m making a second batch.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
“Guests arriving.” Edna came back into the kitchen. “Four places, all for a full breakfast. Three with eggs over easy and the other well done.”
“Well-done eggs, ugh,” I said. “Might as well eat shoe leather. I’m on it. As long as you’re sitting there, Rose, I need those tomatoes sliced.”
“Really, love. I don’t employ you so I can cook.”
“If by employ, you mean pay,” I reminded her, “you don’t.”
Edna carried out the fruit salad, while Simon took a knife from the wood block on the counter and laid the tomatoes on a cutting board. They’d be sautéed in a splash of olive oil, along with mushrooms, to accompany the cooked breakfast. I turned the heat down on the sausages and started on the next batch of muffins. I’d get them into the oven before cooking the eggs.
“Simon understands the meaning of ‘other duties, as assigned, ’ ” Rose said.
“I understand what side my muffin’s baked on,” he said.
“Whatever that means,” I said. “Anyway, Rose, you were telling me about Heather.”
“Ah, yes. Heather. The rebellious one in her staid Midwest family. She married her part-time college teacher, who was about twenty years older than her. As well as teaching at the college, he had a small Internet start-up company. Something to do with on-time inventory for large stores. Sandra didn’t understand much of it, but she understood well enough when one of the country’s largest computer corporations bought his business for sixty-five million dollars.”
“Wow!” I said.
“That’s rather a lot,” Simon said with typical English understatement.
Edna reappeared. “One for the frittata. And one who’ll just have muffins and fruit.”
“Heather’s husband was kept on by the new owners as a consultant,” Rose said, “and they moved to New York to be near the corporate offices. That happened about five years ago. They bought an apartment on the Upper East Side, as well as a house in Westchester, where he could keep his cars. He was an antique-car enthusiast, and now he had the funds to support his hobby.”
“I don’t suppose I dare hope she divorced him and is now looking for a handsome English gardener to be her second husband?” Simon asked as he handed me the plate of sliced tomatoes and I added them to the frying pan. I quickly cooked the eggs and served up four plates for Edna to ca
rry out.
“She might be,” Rose said. “He died not six months after they moved.”
I turned around, still holding the spatula. “Oh, no. What happened?”
“Hit by a car while crossing the street outside their apartment building. Poor man. He didn’t get to enjoy the fruit of his labors for long.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “Was that when you came to Manhattan for a visit a few years ago? I remember now. You said you’d come to be with a friend whose granddaughter had just been widowed.”
Rose nodded. “Heather was estranged from her family. They hadn’t approved of her marrying Norman and didn’t spare any words in telling her so. They had a wedding in the registry office, and the only member of her family who attended was Sandra.”
“Her parents didn’t go to her wedding? How awful.”
“Sandra told me Heather pretended she didn’t mind, but she was badly hurt. Anyway, when Norman suddenly came into all that money, Heather’s family equally suddenly wanted to kiss and make up. Heather wasn’t having any of it, and she didn’t want their support after he died. Sandra was worried about her for a while. She was the only one Heather wanted to see. Sandra was visiting them in New York when Norman died, and I came to the funeral to support Sandra. Which gave me a chance to visit with you and your mother.”
“I’m sorry I made that crack about her being divorced,” Simon said. “In light of what you’ve just told us, it was pretty tasteless.”
Rose smiled at him over the rim of her teacup. “You didn’t know, love.”
“Time for me to be off, anyway,” he said. “Those weeds won’t kill themselves. It’s supposed to be a hot one, and I’ve already stood around talking longer than I should have. Thanks for the coffee and muffin, Lily.”
“Thanks for helping out.”
When he’d gone, I turned back to my grandmother. “Heather’s family is joining her on this vacation. Does that mean they’ve made up?”
“They’re going to give it a try. It’s really Sandra who Heather wants to spend time with. Sandra told her about this B and B I’ve bought, said she’d like to visit me here, and Heather asked if she could come, too. Somehow the rest of the family got involved.”
“Heather seemed excited about it yesterday.”
“Yes, she did. And I was pleased. It’s been six years since she and Norman married, and four and a half since his death. Long past time to bury grievances.” She studied me over the rim of her teacup with those intense blue eyes. The same eyes I saw in the mirror every morning. “Family’s important, Lily. More important than anything.”
I smiled at her. I didn’t have to say I knew that. Family, after all, was why I was here, sweating over a hot stove in the dated kitchen of a B & B.
Edna brought in a tray of dirty dishes. “Your guests are here, Rose.”
My grandmother got to her feet and picked up her pink cane. Yet another bright color to add to her purple, orange, and yellow ensemble. “This visit is important to me. Please treat my friends well.”
“You mean unlike the way in which I treat the rest of our guests?” Edna said.
Rose gave her a wicked grin. “I’ll have a fresh pot of tea in the dining room, Edna.”
I laughed. Score one for Rose.
Chapter 4
I didn’t have breakfast with Rose and her friends because I was in the kitchen cooking it, but when the final order was served and the pots stacked in the sink were almost touching the ceiling, I texted Cheryl to say I might be a bit late today. She has a key to the back door of the tearoom and could get work started if I wasn’t there.
When things go well at breakfast, and I get out of the kitchen before nine, I like to take my second cup of coffee and a muffin or slice of coffee cake home to relax on my tiny porch. I sit, watching the sea come to life, enjoying a precious period of calm before leaping back into the fray of running the tearoom. We open at eleven, and I need to be in the tearoom by ten to get started on the day’s baking and making sandwiches. Today, I’d skip my alone time and do my duty by my grandmother.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, put a muffin on a plate, took off my apron, told Éclair, who’d recognized the going-home signs and had run to the door, to stay, and went into the dining room to join my grandmother and her guests.
Rose sat at the head of the biggest table, the one closest to the French doors, and a woman about her age, whom I took to be Sandra, had the foot facing the outside. The doors were thrown open, letting in the fresh sea air, the soft sound of the surf rushing to shore, and the scent of the gardens. A few other guests lingered over their tea or coffee, checking maps and guidebooks and making plans for the day.
Robert the Bruce was nestled in Rose’s lap. At least he wasn’t sitting on the table. My grandmother smiled when she saw me coming. The two men at the table stood up.
“Everyone, meet my granddaughter, the marvelous Lily Roberts.” Rose made the introductions. Fortunately, she’d told me their names earlier, so I was able to keep them all straight: Sandra, looking every inch the proud matriarch. Her son, Brian, with a big smile full of white teeth, and an outstretched hand. His wife, Darlene, short and thin with neatly bobbed silver hair, eyeglasses with heavy black frames, comfortable clothes, and plain gold hoops through her ears. Their son, Lewis, with his wife, Julie-Ann, and their two teenage children. Heather, whom I’d met, was Brian and Darlene’s daughter, and Lewis was her brother.
“You look exactly like Rose when I first met her,” Sandra said. “All those many years ago.”
I smiled at her. “So I’ve been told. Welcome.”
“Hi!” Heather said. “Nice to see you again, Lily. Thank you for the lovely breakfast. You need a chair. Tyler, get the lady a chair.”
“Why me?” said the teenage boy, all knees and elbows, bad skin, greasy brown hair, and overlarge Adam’s apple. And attitude. Plenty of attitude.
“Because your aunt Heather told you to,” said Brian, Lewis and Heather’s dad, Tyler’s grandfather.
The boy grumbled, but he got up and dragged a chair over from the nearest table. I thanked him and sat down.
Sandra gave me a huge smile and said, “I can not believe we’ve never met before. Rose is so very fond of you.” She was small and her shoulders were bent, her face a network of deep wrinkles; her white hair had been forced into tight curls and was thin enough to show patches of pink scalp beneath. She studied me with intense dark eyes.
I smiled at Rose, and then glanced around the table. Something, I thought, had happened here. Postures were stiff and people weren’t looking at each other. Only Sandra and Heather continued smiling after everyone had greeted me.
“Great breakfast, Lily.” Heather patted her flat stomach. “I haven’t eaten so much in ages, and after that tea yesterday! They’ll have to roll me into the gym when I get home.”
“Please!” The woman who spoke was Julie-Ann, Heather’s sister-in-law and mother of the kids. “I hope you’re not going to spend the entire week complaining about how fat you are.” She turned to the skinny teenage girl at the table. “It’s perfectly all right to enjoy good food, Amanda. Eat in moderation is what I say, and if you do that, you don’t have to worry about your weight.”
“Like you’d know,” the girl sneered.
Julie-Ann threw her daughter a poisonous look. She was a few years older than Heather, around the same age as her husband, Lewis. Julie-Ann wasn’t fat, but she carried more weight around her waist and hips than she probably liked. Her hair was dyed a brassy blond and the red polish on her fingernails was chipped. She wore a pale blue T-shirt, beige Bermuda shorts, and practical sandals. Her face was drawn, and the bags under her eyes were deep and dark.
“That’s enough of that sort of talk, Amanda,” the man seated next to Julie-Ann said. “Your mother has health concerns. Which brings us back to my point. With her back, Julie-Ann shouldn’t be flying economy.”
“Brings us back to your point, Lewis?” Brian said. “I do
n’t think we’ve ever left it. You’re lucky Heather paid for your tickets. You could have taken the bus, you know.”
I had no wish to be in the middle of what appeared to be an ongoing family quarrel. “What are your plans for today? The weather report’s excellent. Sunny all day and in the mideighties. Should be the same for the rest of the week.”
“We’re going shopping, isn’t that right, Aunt Heather?” Amanda said.
“I promised Amanda a small outing,” Heather said.
“I’m coming with you,” Julie-Ann said.
“Mom!” Amanda protested.
“I don’t trust you to get suitable things. I don’t trust”—Julie-Ann threw a sideways glance to Heather, dressed in a formfitting, sleeveless turquoise dress, with a deep-plunging neckline—“modern fashion when it comes to girls your age.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. Heather winked at her. Julie-Ann grabbed the last muffin from the plate in the center of the table.
“I’m hoping to get some fishing in,” Brian said. “I was checking out charters in the room last night before we turned in. Did you get my email with the name of the one I like, honey?” he asked Heather.
“Yes, Dad,” she said.
“Great. Book it for Tyler and me for tomorrow, why don’t you. You coming, Lewis?” he asked his son.
“Might as well,” Lewis replied.
“Three places then,” Brian said.
“Okay,” Heather said.
“Thanks, honey.”
“While the boys are doing that, I want a spa day,” Darlene, Heather’s mother, said. “Julie-Ann, why don’t you come, too, and Amanda?”
Amanda looked up from an intense study of her fingernails. “Cool.”
“Rose, you must know a good place,” Darlene said.
“I can make a few suggestions.”
“Let Heather know which is the best. We’ll want a full-day package, one that includes a spa lunch.”
I exchanged glances with Rose.
“It’s okay to make plans,” Heather said, “but don’t forget I’ve chartered a boat to take us whale watching on Wednesday.”