by Jane Green
“Have I what?”
“Ever seen a dead body?”
“No, but my mom has.”
“Your mom has what?” Greta walks into the room, her hair now pulled back in a ponytail much like Nell’s, her face looking clean and scrubbed and smelling of coconut and almonds.
I liked her hair loose, thinks Nell. My God, she is beautiful. An image of Greta’s head between her legs, her quick, clever tongue, slips into her head, and she shivers, a pang of lust that forces her to cross her legs.
Greta Whitstable, she thinks. Oh, Greta Whitstable. What have you done to me?
“Seen a dead body,” says Daisy. “Didn’t Ken ask you to check on him when he died, to make sure he was dead? He was paranoid about being buried alive so he had Mom agree to come and see him before they took him away.”
“Ken?” Nell asks.
“A friend,” says Greta, giving Nell a knowing look, a look that Nell interprets as “Don’t worry. I am yours.” “He had cancer,” explains Greta. “It wasn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it would be,” she adds. “It wasn’t Ken anymore. It was just . . . a husk. A shell. It was entirely clear to me that his spirit had gone elsewhere, and in some ways it was quite beautiful. It allowed me to have closure. To let go.”
“That does sound beautiful, actually,” says Lizzy. “Not scary. I wonder if we’ll be able to let go.”
“She says she wants three days. Imagine if those three days are filled with love, filled with happiness,” says Greta. “Imagine if you were able to forgive whatever transgressions you might each think one another has made. Imagine if you could hold her as she moves to the next world. That doesn’t sound scary; it sounds quite beautiful.”
“It does,” says Lizzy. “But no way it’s happening in three days. Three months, maybe.” She looks at her watch. “Shit. Francine is probably here. I said I’d meet her in the coffee shop. I’ve got to run. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and if you’ve already left for Mom’s, I’ll get an Uber and meet you there.” Blowing kisses around the table, Lizzy disappears.
forty-one
Francine is sitting in a corner of the café, her head bowed over her phone. She has worked for Lizzy for over a year and is one of the best. She’s hardworking, has no ego, and is gorgeous, in that particularly French way. Tiny, olive-skinned, she has thick brown hair, large brown eyes, and an ever-present smile. She is always calm on the job, has a great disposition with the clients. When things go wrong, and they always go wrong, Francine shrugs it off. There is no drama with her, Lizzy realizes.
Which is why it’s so odd that something is going on that needed to be discussed in person. As she walks over, she realizes it could only be that Francine is leaving. Which is not good news.
Francine sees Lizzy. She puts her phone down and stands up to give Lizzy a hug, kissing her on one cheek, then the other.
“These are really good,” she says, holding up a half-eaten croissant. “These might be the best croissants I’ve eaten outside of France. They’re definitely the best croissants I’ve eaten in America.”
“That’s high praise,” says Lizzy. “My sister has a . . . friend . . . staying, who, it turns out, is this extraordinary baker. She made these ridiculous muffins yesterday that were insane, and now it turns out she’s incredible at croissants. I want to get her to bake for us.” Lizzy is aware that Francine has not asked to meet to discuss croissants, but she doesn’t want to hear the words that she might be leaving.
“Okay,” Lizzy says, pulling out a chair and sitting down hard. “What’s the story? You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Francine’s eyes fill with tears. “It’s not as easy as that,” she says, with a slight nod. “I think I do have to leave, because it’s too painful to stay.”
Lizzy reaches across the table and covers her hand, shocked. This isn’t a side of Francine she has ever seen, vulnerable and fragile.
“What’s going on?” she says, presuming it is a family matter. Her parents are still in France, she remembers. And a brother. A family illness?
Francine lifts heavy eyes to meet Lizzy’s. “It’s Sean,” she says simply.
“Sean?” Lizzy sits back, not understanding. “What about Sean?”
“I . . . Oh, God. We have been so careful for no one to know, and he made me swear at the beginning that you must never know, but now things have gone too far and I don’t know who else to turn to.”
Lizzy’s heart is pounding, her mouth dry, as her brain struggles to compute what Francine is saying.
“You and Sean. You’re having an affair?” Lizzy can hardly breathe.
“It isn’t just an affair. He was going to leave his wife for me,” Francine says, unaware of Lizzy’s churning emotions. “We had it all planned, and then I got pregnant, and”—the tears are back, this time spilling down her cheeks—“I miscarried last week, and he didn’t come to see me, and wouldn’t respond to my calls or texts, and now he has told me it is over.” She looks pleadingly at Lizzy. “I can’t stay. It’s too painful. I am so sorry. I know what you must think about me having an affair with a married man. I am not proud of myself. I thought this was not an affair. I thought this was the love of my life, and we would . . .” She shrugs, dismissing her own naiveté. “I thought I would live happily ever after. Stupid, huh? God.” She shakes her head. “I have been so stupid.”
“How long has this been going on?” It takes everything Lizzy has for her voice to emerge as normal.
“Nine months.”
Nine months? thinks Lizzy, as a wave of rage starts to build. Nine months during which Sean was pulling her into pantries and bathrooms and behind barns. Nine months during which they would occasionally book a hotel, if the event was far away, and have the luxury of sharing a bed, of falling asleep in each other’s arms, of waking up and having breakfast, just like every other normal couple.
Nine months during which Lizzy too thought it was more than an affair. Of her too thinking that he was going to leave his wife and children, if she left James. Nine months of falling for him, of living for those stolen moments together, of never being able to walk away, no matter how hard she tried.
And all the time, he was fucking Francine. Not just fucking, it would seem, but spinning the same bullshit, the same stories, the same lies. Lizzy thinks of how he makes love, the stroking, the murmuring, the way he insists on making her come before he enters her, how he says her pleasure makes him happy.
“What?” says Francine, alert.
“What?”
“You just said, ‘Your pleasure makes me happy.’ How do you know? How do you know he says that?”
Oh, shit, thinks Lizzy, who had no idea she had said that out loud. “You’re not the only one,” she says to Francine. “This isn’t the first time he has done this. I’m so sorry. He’s a fucking sleaze, and a liar. I am sorry that you thought he was someone special, and I’m sorrier still that you have gone through a miscarriage. The only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that you’re better off without him. You are so much better off without him.”
Francine nods. “I know. Intellectually I know that; it’s just hard. I feel so much emotion, and I still can’t believe he just disappeared when I miscarried. Now I realize he was just pretending to be happy when I told him I was pregnant. He was obviously terrified.” She looks back at Lizzy. “I love working for you, Lizzy. I think you are an amazing woman. You have always treated me so well. You treat all of us well, and you have good . . . boundaries.”
“Yes, I do. Something that . . . Sean should have learned.” Lizzy is almost foaming at the mouth, her fury red-hot, as she stops herself from using every curse word she has ever known. And with her anger comes disgust—at herself, at falling for it, at believing the same shit he was feeding Francine at the same time.
“But I have to leave,” says Francine. “I can’t work knowing he will be the
re. I am so sorry. I have been so happy and it is the best job I have had, but—” She shakes her head. “All good things come to an end.”
“What if Sean wasn’t there?” Lizzy finds herself saying, as the anger subsides enough for her brain to slowly click into gear.
“You would do that for me?” Francine is shocked.
“It’s not just because of you. As I said, it isn’t the first time. I think he’s now too much of a liability.”
“It’s none of my business, but he’s your partner. How do you even split from him? Other than falling pregnant by him and miscarrying.” She snorts at her sad joke.
Lizzy doesn’t crack a smile, her brain working too hard and too fast. “What if . . .” She speaks slowly, looking out the French doors of the café, beyond the gravel courtyard, to the cluster of barns in the distance. “What if I tried something else? It’s something I’ve been thinking of for a while, and I’ve been speaking to my sister about it. What if I started something out here? On this farm.”
Francine looks around. “Here? In this coffee shop?”
“No. We can maybe do something in here, but I’ve been talking to my sister about taking over the large hay barn, and using this as a semipermanent base for the pop-ups. But as I think about it, maybe it makes more sense to do something permanent. We could call it something like The Farm Table: supper on the farm. What if I left the supper clubs in the city altogether and moved out here?”
She is thinking out loud, all the thoughts she has had over the past few days, the conversations she has had with Nell, cementing as she speaks. “Sean can keep the supper clubs. It won’t work in the same way without me, anyway. That’s not ego talking, but people come for me. He doesn’t even have to buy me out. He can keep it. They’ll come here because this is mine, and it will have nothing to do with Sean.”
“Oh, my God. You are serious? You would actually do this?”
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while. You coming here and telling me what’s been going on has just expedited what I was already planning. Jesus.” She shakes her head again in disbelief. “What a sleaze. We are all better off without him.”
“You know all the staff will follow you.” Francine is smiling for the first time since Lizzy walked in. “If you want them to. Their loyalty is with you.”
“That’s great.” Lizzy is distracted, her anger rising again. She forces her attention back to Francine. “Thank you for telling me, and I’m sorry you had to go through this. I’m sorry we all have to go through this. And you have no idea how grateful I am. Can we keep this between us?”
“You have my word.”
“And you won’t say anything to Sean?”
“Absolutely not. I’ve taken a week’s vacation after the . . . Well. You know. I need the money, but I don’t want to go back and see him.”
“We’ll figure it out,” says Lizzy.
• • •
Her overwhelming urge is to get him on the phone and scream at him. Instead, she goes into the barn, climbs to the top of the hay, and howls in there.
“Lizzy?” Nell comes running in. “What’s going on?”
“Fuck!” Lizzy shouts from the top. “I didn’t know you were here. I thought you had left to go to Mom’s house.”
“I’m going soon. Why are you screaming in the hay barn? Is someone with you?”
“No. I’m furious. It’s a long story.” Lizzy peers at Nell, standing in the barn, looking up. “Want to come up?”
Nell walks over to the hay and starts to climb. Once she sits down next to her, Lizzy tells her everything. When she finishes, she says, “You’re a good listener. I’d forgotten what a good listener you are.”
Nell smiles. “It’s because I don’t talk much. I’m much more comfortable listening.”
“But what do you think? Can you believe that fucking sleaze? Can you believe he was sleeping with me, and with my number one waitress, and, frankly, with God only knows who else? Thank God I used condoms. Who knows what I might have caught. What do I do? I want to just tear him a new asshole. I’m so goddamned angry.”
“You don’t speak to him,” says Nell. “You retain a lawyer. I know someone great in Westport. You stay unemotional and calm. The lawyer will help you figure out the best way to move forward.”
“And what about using Fieldstone Farm as a base for my new company?”
Nell looks at her sister. “Yes.” She nods. “Let’s do it.”
“What?” Lizzy shrieks, her first smile in two hours, as she flings her arms around her sister. “You’re serious?”
“I am. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but I need to do something else with the farm. We need to bring in more money.” She laughs as Lizzy keeps squeezing her tightly, refusing to let her go.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God! I’m so excited!”
“Okay, okay.” Nell disengages. “And your waitress? If you can’t get rid of Sean immediately and want to find something else for her, I could do with someone else helping out here.”
“That’s a lovely offer. Thank you. I’ll speak to her. It would be perfect, actually. And Greta could bake for us out here too! Wouldn’t that be amazing? Keeping it in the family! How perfect is that?”
Nell shakes her head. “I don’t know. Greta’s going back to St. Louis in a week. At least, that’s her plan.”
“Plans can change,” Lizzy says. “Especially when you’ve just met the woman who’s going to change your life.”
“I don’t know that she’s going to change my life,” says Nell, even as she thinks that she already has.
“I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about you. You’re going to change her life.”
“I don’t know about that,” says Nell, embarrassed.
“Nell”—Lizzy grabs her sister’s hand—“there’s something special between you two. I was being facetious when I was saying ‘yay, lesbians,’ but truly, I think it’s amazing that you have found whatever you have found together.”
“We’ve only just met,” says Nell, flustered.
“So what? I can see it. I bet you anything Greta doesn’t leave. Or, if she leaves, she comes right back.”
“You’re such a romantic.” Nell laughs.
“I am, and I’m also insightful. I know shit. How do you think I built the business I did? How do you think I know that we’re going to build something incredible here? You’re never going to have to worry about money again.”
“I hope you’re right.” She looks at her phone. “Meredith is texting, asking where we are.”
“Oh, God,” groans Lizzy. “Avoiding the Dreadful Derek.”
“Come on,” Nell says, smiling. “We’d better go.”
forty-two
Derek has always been very good at errands. He likes being useful, and this morning, rather than have him underfoot in the house, Meredith sends him off to Trader Joe’s to buy some wraps and salads for lunch.
He came into her room this morning, waking her by sitting on the bed and stroking her arm like a cat, hurt that she had left their bed and found somewhere else to sleep, hurt that he had woken up alone.
Meredith tried to reassure him, keeping her voice light as if it was no big deal, but it was a big deal. The thought of sleeping in the bed with him again tonight, the thought of feeling his large, sweaty body on top of hers as he covers her face with pecks, like an overeager, pompous sparrow, fills her with horror.
She finds herself thinking about Billy. He seems positively boyish, next to Derek. Simple, unpretentious, clever. He is down-to-earth and so relaxed. Not at all the sort of man she would expect to pay attention to her, but he seems to be paying attention to her.
What does it mean? Nothing, she realizes, given that she lives in London, that he is here to write about her mother, and more specifically, she now knows, her mother’s illness and immi
nent death. Of course nothing is going to happen between them. Not now, certainly. And there is the small fact that she is engaged to another man who happens to now be here.
Derek. Her mother. Her sisters. It all feels overwhelming. Perhaps that’s all Billy is, a distraction from thinking about, or dealing with, the things in her life that are so painful, that fill her with a sadness so great, it is easier to focus on what feels suspiciously like a schoolgirl crush.
He probably doesn’t like me, she thinks. He couldn’t possibly like me. Maybe he just feels sorry for me. But he was so sweet on their walk, so attentive, asking all the right questions, showing interest and no hint of judgment in how he spoke to her. She found herself opening up to him in a way that felt unfamiliar.
And then bloody Derek showed up, with his loud, awkward laugh and his hairy back, and the way he insists on telling Meredith what to do. Thank God she has gotten rid of him for an hour or so, and where on earth are her sisters?
On the way to taking laundry downstairs, she stops in her mother’s bedroom.
“Shall I sit you up?” she asks, hiding her shock at her mother’s appearance. Ronni’s face is stripped of everything, gaunt and hollow, but she smiles as Meredith walks over to the bed.
Meredith props the pillows up behind her mother. “Mom, I’m wondering about maybe looking into getting you a wheelchair. Maybe we could get you one of those chair lifts for the stairs. As lovely as your bedroom is, don’t you want to spend some time downstairs? Imagine if we made it really comfortable for you. Your friends could come around and sit with you.”
“What friends?” says her mother, when she is propped up. “They’ve all disappeared.”
Hm, thinks Meredith. That is surely more to do with how her mother treated her friendships, breezing in and out, disappearing for years at a time when she was busy touring or busy with other people or simply busy, jumping back into people’s lives only when she needed something.
“How are you today?”
“Not great,” she says. “I’m having these terrible nerve twitches. It’s called fasciculations. Sometimes I can see them jumping under my skin. Can you bring me up my painkillers?”