by Liz Flaherty
“I imagine,” he said, “you’ve been a ‘big girl’ your whole life, haven’t you?”
“I guess,” she admitted. “You are when you grow up in a restaurant. I had a place in the kitchen where I had toys and books, but it was more fun helping the chef and the pastry chef. I was a whiz at making salads by the time I was five. That was good for the wait-staff, because I liked doing it and they didn’t.” She gazed off into a sweet memory. “They ordered aprons just for me and had my name embroidered on them. Gladys, one of the waitresses, took them home with her to launder because she didn’t think little girls should have to wear things with starch in them.”
Boone sat on a stool and watched her work. He didn’t have his omnipresent sketch pad close by, and she wondered if he was memorizing her appearance, with her messy ponytail and her apron with cherry pie filling smeared across it. Would someone show up baking pies for Elmer and Myrtle in a comic strip somewhere down the road?
“Coffee?” He took mugs from the hooks above the coffee pot.
“Please.”
He brought her a cup, finding himself a pencil and a pad of drawing paper in the process, and returned to his seat.
“Your aunt seems okay,” she said. “I was afraid she was wearing herself out, but she doesn’t seem to be. She still has the energy to come in and whip us all into line.”
“Will it put a serious damper on tearoom business, not having the den for a while?”
“I don’t think so, and if it does, that’s too bad. This is Gert’s home first. I remember that when we were making the business plans, I wanted her to keep one parlor as part of the living quarters. She just laughed at me. ‘There’s room in there for four tables, girl, and if they’re part of the tearoom, I won’t have to clean them!’ she said.”
His hand moved with broad, firm strokes over the pad. “Do you get lonely here?” he asked. “Richmond’s a lot bigger than Taft, and you must have left behind everybody you cared about when you came here.”
She’d left them before that—scandal takes prisoners, so she’d distanced herself from the chefs and the wait-staff who’d been like family. She missed them, but they’d all gotten good jobs in upscale restaurants in other neighborhoods—some even went to other cities. She wrote references that should have guaranteed them employment anywhere they wanted to go. She made congratulatory phone calls and sent cards with her plans to leave Richmond mentioned as an afterthought. “I don’t know where I’m going,” she’d told them all. “Don’t worry about me. Things will be all right.”
And things were. She’d landed on both feet in a town she liked, in a kitchen that matched her personality and culinary needs, with people she…liked being with. More than “all right,” things were really good. Life was in balance.
She took the cake out of the oven, replacing it with pies. “I feel out of place sometimes, as though I was on a bus and got off at the wrong stop. I miss delicatessens and specialty stores and public transportation, but I like it here.” She went to stand at the window, her back to him.
Jack was working in the garden. He turned as though he felt her gaze, and she waved to him. He lifted a desultory hand, not smiling, and she wondered if something was bothering him. He was a nice kid, could eat a dozen cookies without taking time to inhale, and worked harder and more efficiently than many adults she’d known. In only a few months, he’d become part of the new family she was making her own. She frowned, watching him, and went to open the door. “Hey!”
He lifted his head. “What?”
“You all right? Do you need homework help?”
“Nah, it’s going okay.” He raised his hands in a shoulderless shrug. “Just stuff.”
“You’ll let me know if you need anything?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m Princess Leia in training.”
He grinned then, and made a shooing motion. “Princess Leia probably needs to work at making cookies.”
She laughed and stepped back inside.
Jack was the little brother in Lucy’s family circle, becoming dearer to her on a daily basis. She wondered how Kelly would feel about being placed in the “bratty sister” spot.
Even building a new life in Taft, she still missed the one in Richmond, missed Dolan’s and the staff that had been her family, missed her father. But lonely wasn’t the right word. At least, not exactly.
Now, if I could only sleep through the night. Or wake up without smelling smoke. Or tell Dad I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
*
Why didn’t she just tell him? Boone was certain the story Kelly hinted at so darkly and caused Crockett to maintain a priestly silence was nothing he couldn’t deal with hearing. He’d lost his parents and the woman he loved more than life. What could be worse than that?
He drew and Lucy baked as twilight became darkness and soft cool air came through the kitchen windows. He nodded thanks when she refilled his cup and offered him a piece of pie. They didn’t talk much, even though Kelly’s cryptic remarks were an elephant in the room, and he was surprised at how comfortable it was being quiet with Lucy Dolan.
When Gert and Crockett came in, Gert went straight to bed. She was nearly gray with exhaustion. “I’m getting so damn old,” she mumbled, kissing everyone goodnight. “I’ll want to leave early, whoever’s taking me to Cincinnati in the morning.”
Crockett poured himself some coffee and brought the cookie jar to the island. He sat on a stool at the end and offered up the cookies before speaking to Lucy. “You were right, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Her smile was so bright that Boone knew instant and unreasonable jealousy that it hadn’t been aimed at him. Crockett was a priest, for God’s sake—it was probably time Boone stopped thinking they were always going to love the same woman.
Not that he loved Lucy Dolan. He didn’t. But he had to admit to wanting her, to thinking of leaf-green eyes and butterscotch-colored hair at unexpected moments. It was the first time he’d noticed a woman—really noticed her—that he hadn’t seen Maggie instead.
He knew a moment’s fear that he would forget his wife’s face. He had trouble recalling the sound of her voice sometimes, although answering the phone when her sister called could still bring tears to his eyes. In that first heartbreaking moment of familiarity, he forgot every time that it couldn’t be Maggie calling. Couldn’t ever be Maggie again.
“Right about what?” he asked, when neither of the others seemed inclined to tell him what they were talking about, which he thought was a little bit rude on their parts. He sounded grouchy, and nearly apologized, but didn’t—he was grouchy. Their closeness annoyed the hell out of him, and he wasn’t going to spend a lot of damn time examining why. Not now, at least.
Crockett’s face registered chagrin. “When I suggested Lucy come here, it was partly because I know as well as anyone that Aunt Gert’s a soft place to fall. You do, too, Boone.” He laid a twenty-dollar bill beside Boone’s plate with a pathetic sigh and heavenward gaze. “It was also because I was worried about her. She’s always been so sharp, and it seemed to me she was forgetting things. Leaving us by little bits and pieces.” His eyes were gentle when they rested on Lucy. “Unfortunately, Lucy’s very experienced with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. She’s not qualified to diagnose, but she’s well able to see the signs.”
Lucy took the canola oil to the pantry. “When we were preparing to open the tearoom, we both had physicals. We were going to be working with people’s food, so it seemed a good idea to rule out anything infectious. But we checked for other things, too. Maria Simcox, her doctor and mine, almost laughed at the idea of Alzheimer’s.” She slid the pies onto the shallow shelves in the commercial refrigerator, covered the cake and sat down. She took a cookie off Boone’s plate. “However, Father Crockett didn’t believe either of us.”
“I did,” Crockett protested. “Mostly. I just needed a little extra convincing. I got it today when we wer
e coming home from the hospital. When she was giving me hell precisely as she did twenty years ago, she wasn’t living in the past, she was absolutely up to the minute in her…uh…observations. And believe me when I tell you she didn’t forget one little thing.”
“Uh oh.” Boone shook his head sadly. “When Aunt Gert makes observations,” he told Lucy, “we never come out well. Was there any indication my turn was next?”
“No,” Crockett said, “and believe me, I tried to steer her that way. If I’d known you were going to really take back that money you loaned me, I’d have tried harder.”
Lucy laughed. “She’s not even my aunt, but she’s ‘observed’ about me too. She’s always right, but I usually don’t like it.”
“Do you have any sisters or brothers?” Boone asked. She acted like a sister to Jack, and even to Kelly, if sisters didn’t get along that was.
Come to think of it, she pretty much acted like a sister to Crockett, too. Boone smiled with that thought. It went well with the cookies.
“No. My parents had been married for years and years when Mom got pregnant with me, and then it never happened again. Dad used to say that as oopses went, I wasn’t too bad.”
The loneliness of being without Maggie was excruciating, even though time had dulled the razor edge of new sorrow, but Boone couldn’t imagine how awful it would have been if he’d been alone as well as lonely all this time. How awful it would still be. Kelly might be a pain in his ass, and they’d lost the closeness they’d shared as kids, but she was always there, as was Gert. Even Crockett, despite the coolness of their relationship, would have come if called. Probably.
“You can borrow Aunt Gert any time you like,” Boone offered. And me, too. But tell me the truth, Lucy. Trust me.
Chapter Seven
“I am not going to sit in this room like some decrepit old man.” Sims glowered at Gert and Lucy, his white brows beetling threateningly above blue eyes that were usually full of laughter and kindness.
Usually being the operative word here.
“Listen here.” Gert glared back. “You are a decrepit old man. Everyone has bent over backwards to help you. The girls have done all my work so I could spend time with you—which you haven’t appreciated a damn bit, I might add. The boys have run the station and Jack’s mowed your yard and taken care of your garden. The least you can do is behave yourself while the tearoom is open.”
“He may as well behave himself at the station.” Boone stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. “He can enter the numbers while we count inventory. That work for you, you grouchy old goat?”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” Sims grumbled. He nodded at Lucy. “That broccoli and cauliflower soup needs to cook longer. The vegetables almost bite back and the cream part is too thin.”
She smiled at him, trying to keep the expression sweet while gritting her teeth. “You won’t notice that a bit when I dump the whole pot over your head. I’ll do it, too. Just ask Jack.”
Sims’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “I may as well go with you,” he told Boone grumpily. “Sure can’t get any respect around here. But don’t be driving over curbs and parking meters. Tom Simcox will arrest me as an accessory.”
Gert, sliding meat loaf into the oven, scowled at him. “That might not be all bad. He could take you to jail. See how long they put up with your shenanigans over there.”
When the men had gone—a painstaking process involving the handicapped ramp at the side of the house, a wheelchair and a very grumpy old man—Lucy pushed Gert into a chair at the little table by the windows. “I can finish the cooking.” She poured a cup of tea and placed it in front of the older woman. “You have to stop doing this. Every time you get upset with Sims, I see your blood pressure rising with every heartbeat.”
“It’s hell getting old.” Gert sipped the apple-cinnamon tea and stared out the window. She seemed morose and exhausted, as she had most of the time since Sims’s accident. The expression sat out of place on her features.
Lucy refilled her coffee cup and sat across the table from Gert. “So tell me,” she said gently, “do you remember being young as a walk in the park?”
Gert glanced at her, then returned her gaze to the window. “There are days when I don’t remember being young at all.”
Before he’d slipped away entirely, Johnny Dolan lived for hours at a time in his youth. When he looked at his daughter, he saw her mother. For a time, Lucy had felt an unexpected and treasured closeness to the woman she scarcely remembered. All too soon, however, her father had forgotten his wife too. When he was out of the kitchen, he was confused and—more often than Lucy could bear to remember—sad.
She drained her cup, closing her eyes in a conscious effort to push back painful memories. “Memorial Day is Monday. I’m going today to order flowers for my parents’ graves in Richmond,” she said. “Do you want me to send or get any for you?”
“No, thank you, dear. I’ve already taken care of it.” Gert gave her a weary smile. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.” Something sparked in her eyes, a ghost of the twinkle that was usually there. “Of course, you might want to worry about Sims. I may have to hurt him more than he already is.”
“Want to pour my soup over his head? We can let it cool some first.”
“Heavens, no. Your soup is far too popular to waste.”
The phone rang while Lucy was making lemonade, and she tucked the receiver between her ear and her shoulder. “Tea on Twilight. Meat loaf and mashed potatoes today. May I help you?”
“Only if you have spare pies.” Jenny Sawyer, the proprietor of Down at Jenny’s, Taft’s most popular café, sounded desperate. “My ovens are down—damn technology anyway—and the only thing I have for dessert is ice cream and a cake made from a new recipe I never should have tried. The bakery’s cleaned out for the day.”
Lucy sketched numbers in the air. “We can let you have six, and half of them will be frozen. That work?”
“Oh, yes, you’re a godsend. I’ll run right over and get them. Just let me close up for a few minutes. Wanda called in today—her daughter’s in labor.”
“I can bring them to the café. We’re all set for lunch here and I need to pick up some half and half anyway. You have an extra quart?”
“Sure do.”
*
Lucy delivered the pies to the back door of the café, accepting a quart bottle of half and half in trade. She was getting into the van when she smelled something familiar.
Familiar and awful.
She backed out of the vehicle and closed its door. Nothing seemed untoward in the alley where she was parked. There were no plumes of smoke or angry tongues of flame shooting from anywhere. Abby, the head librarian, waved at her as she rode away from the back of the library on her bicycle. She was on her way to the tearoom for lunch—she always ate there on Fridays. Lucas Trent, the mostly retired senior partner in the law firm where Kelly worked, walked into the pharmacy at the end of the block. He’d be at the tearoom today, too, but not until one o’clock. Hummingbirds whirred around the feeders suction-cupped to the side windows of the café.
Nothing.
Lucy opened the car door again, setting the bottle of half and half on the passenger seat. After a few seconds of dithering, she got in and started the car. And smelled it again.
Oh, Lord. The van had twelve years and nearly three hundred thousand miles to its credit—it could be anything. She turned off the engine and got out, going around to open the hood and peer at what was under it. Like she would know if there was something wrong. The car either ran or it didn’t, and it had been running like an antique charm since Sims went over it after it died on Lucy’s first day in Taft.
Boone. He’d know what to do. He’d know if it was safe to start the car again. She wouldn’t let him drive it, but she was certain he was mechanically superior to her. She reached for her cell phone. And stopped. It was all her imagination. Surely it was.
&nb
sp; Jack rode his bicycle past the alley at the end of the block and Lucy waved frantically. He was a teenager—he’d know, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t see her and kept going, disappearing when he’d passed the alley.
She smelled it again and this time she dialed Boone’s number. “I hate to sound like an idiot,” she said when he answered, “but I’m over here behind Down at Jenny’s and I smell something funny.”
He laughed. “Well, don’t tell Jenny.”
“No, really.” She was close to tears. “I don’t know if it’s my car or what, but it smells like something’s burning and I can’t find it.” Her voice rose and she heard hysteria in it when she repeated, “I can’t find it, Boone.”
She must not have been the only one to hear the sound of panic, because he said, “I’ll be right there,” and hung up.
Lucy stood in the middle of the alley, undecided on what to do. She could wait for Boone, but she was blocking the alley. If someone wanted to come through, she’d need to move her car and she was afraid to start it.
Then she saw it. The thin curl of smoke came from under the crooked lid of a galvanized trash can. The rack of cans sat near the small storage building behind Down at Jenny’s.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, God.”
She fumbled with the phone as tendrils of flame began to lick from under the lid, reaching for the wood trim around the window on the building. What was in there? What if it was cooking oil or aerosol cans? Oh, please, oh, please… She dialed 911. Was that right? Was that where you called on a cell phone or was it another number? She couldn’t remember. “Oh, God,” she said again. “Please.” Oh, she hated the smell of smoke. Hated it. Nausea pushed at her throat and she swallowed hard once. And again.
She headed toward the building. “There’s a trash fire behind Down at Jenny’s,” she said when the dispatcher answered the phone. “The flames are in a can but they’re getting out. They’re getting out. What if—”
“Don’t approach it,” warned the dispatcher, her voice soothing. “Someone will be there in a few minutes—they’re already out. Is the way blocked?”