“I guess. She was serious enough about leaving me and Mia for a life in Santa Barbara and Paris with the husband she’s now leaving. If she left us, I’m sure she could leave him too.”
“So maybe there’s another man in the picture?” Holly asked. Not you, she added silently. Meanly. Selfishly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t see her going from an international banker with houses in four countries to a Maine lobsterman. We’re meeting tomorrow night to talk, so I’ll find out everything then.”
Meeting. As in getting together. At Liam’s house, most likely. No, most likely at Veronica’s hotel, so they could talk privately.
She tried to remember Juliet’s words about not being able to control everything. But she would do anything for a magic wand or her grandmother’s gift of knowing.
The kitchen couldn’t get any cleaner. Despite not even holding class earlier, Holly had scrubbed the stove, refrigerator, counters, and floors. She was out of things to scrub. And the one thing that did need a good scrubbing was her brain, to get Liam and Mia out.
“What’s going to happen, Antonio?” she asked the cat, who stared at her from his cat bed. She held out her hand with his favorite liver snap and he waddled over, his little belly pooch swinging from side to side. He gobbled it up and wound his warm body between her legs.
At least she’d won him over. Even if it took liver snaps.
“Come, Antonio. I’m going to take a long, hot bath. You can curl up on the fluffy rug.”
And indeed, the cat followed her up the stairs and sat in the doorway, then came in and lay down on the gold rug beside the tub. Holly ran the bath, pouring in bath beads, large mother-of-pearl ones that smelled like baby powder and comfort. She headed into the bedroom and picked up the diary from where she’d left it on her bed, then undressed and slid into the hot water, holding up the composition book so it wouldn’t touch a drop of water. She needed to exit her life for a little while and perhaps she would find some lesson in her grandmother’s experiences about how to deal with the unexpected.
The moment she read the first sentence, though, she closed the book, not sure she wanted to find out just what happened to Lenora Windemere’s poor baby. But she adjusted her little bath pillow and took a deep breath and began to read.
May 1964
Dear Diary,
Lenora Windemere did not have her baby at home with a midwife. When the contractions started, according to Annette, Lenora began timing them, and then when she knew it was time, Richard grabbed her bag and off they went to the hospital.
It was a difficult birth.
And the baby, sickly and underweight, was born with a hole in its heart. “The baby would not have survived if you’d had him at home,” the doctor told Lenora. “Thank God you had the sense to deliver in the hospital.”
But the baby, named Richard after his father, did not get better. Given weeks to live, then perhaps months, little Richard Windemere died just after he turned a year old, in his little bassinet at the pediatric intensive care unit at Maine Medical Center, where he’d spent the past several weeks fighting for his life.
The morning of the funeral, I cooked and packed a week’s worth of dishes I knew the Windemeres liked and would freeze well. Then I bundled up Luciana in her good wool coat and drove across town to the Windemeres’ mansion on the water.
“Remember, Luciana,” I said as we waited for someone to answer the door. “You do not need to say anything while we are here, but please use your best manners.” Luciana is now six and has lovely manners, yet I worried because I was afraid the gathering of solemn faces in black, the crying, would bring back memories of her own father’s funeral, and she might start to scream. I did not plan to stay long, for that reason. A funeral is not a place for a little girl who’s already experienced the loss of a parent.
Martha, the Windemeres’ live-in housekeeper, opened the door and said that Lenora and her friends were in the formal living room, having coffee.
The moment I stepped across the threshold, I felt it. The anger. It swirled in violent slashes of black and purple in front of me, like tiny floaties before my eyes that would not go away. I held tighter on to Luciana’s hand, not quite sure that I should even go in, yet I was there, with the food and my sincere condolences. I would stay just a minute or two.
The anger grew stronger as I entered the living room. Lenora sat on the camelback sofa, flanked by Annette and Jacqueline, two older women, Lenora’s mother and grandmother, whispering on the sofa across from them. Lenora held a white handkerchief under her eyes. Annette was holding on to her hand.
“Oh, Lenora, I’m so—” I began.
“Get out of my house,” Lenora screamed at me. “You should have let well enough be. I should have gone with my instincts and had the baby at home with the midwife. I hate you!”
Luciana gasped and I felt her stiffen. I tucked her closer against me.
“But Len, he would have died minutes later,” Annette said, rubbing Lenora’s shoulder. “He wouldn’t have made it to the hospital.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Lenora screamed. “And the past year wouldn’t have been a living nightmare, always waiting for him to die. You made the last year hell, Camilla. My little boy would have died peacefully as a newborn. Instead he had a life of pain! Surgery after surgery! And it’s all your fault. You’re a disgusting witch. Get out of my house.”
Luciana started to cry. In shock, I dropped the bag, which thudded to the floor. I just stood there, unable to move, unable to think, as though Lenora’s hatred had blocked everything inside of me.
“Get out!” Lenora screamed again. “It’s your fault!”
She was crazy with grief, I knew. She needed someone to take her pain and anger out on. And I was that someone. There was nothing I could possibly say. I held on to Luciana’s hand and hurried out and down the steps, tears stinging my eyes.
That was the end of my relationship with Lenora Windemere.
Yet it was the beginning of my fortune-telling business taking off. The sad story of the poor Windemere baby spread all over Blue Crab Island and the nearby towns. How I had saved the baby’s life by telling Lenora to deliver in a hospital instead of at home with a midwife. That the baby had died was like a sad afternote to the story that went around; what people cared about was that the baby had lived for a year, had had a fighting chance. And my phone began ringing with appointments. To save my sanity, I limited fortune-telling to one client per day and I charged twenty-five dollars.
But things between me and Luciana were never the same, not since that terrible day in Lenora Windemere’s living room. When she called me a witch. A disgusting witch. And threw me out of her house.
When Luciana had questions, concerns, fears, dreams, she turned to her teacher, a lovely woman who looked like a princess with blond hair and blue eyes and a very sweet manner. She insisted on being called Lucy and refused to answer to Luciana. And she looked at me with something like suspicion in her eyes. As if I could do something bad to her.
So I turned even kinder, and for a while things were better. But only for a while.
The entry finished, Holly closed the book and realized her hand was shaking. Oh, Nonna, she thought, trying to imagine that moment in Lenora Windemere’s living room, her mother as a frightened six-year-old hearing all that, being a part of it.
She got out of the bath and slipped on the thick blue robe her grandmother always had hanging on the hook for her, went into her bedroom, and called her parents’ house in Newton. It was almost eleven p.m., and her mother and father were likely watching Law & Order in bed, getting ready for the news, after which they’d watch a little of The Tonight Show and then turn off their bedside lamps.
Her mother answered on the third ring, as always. She could be sitting right next to the phone and reading Good Housekeeping magazine, but always waited for the third ring so as to seem like she was busy and leading a full life, a phone call just one of her many activiti
es.
“Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“Holly? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I was just getting ready to head up to bed and wanted to say hi and see how you are. How Dad is.” And to somehow transmit through the telephone wires that I’m sorry about what happened that day in the Windemeres’ living room. You must have been so scared.
“Oh, well, we’re fine. Same old, you know. I won a contest at the library and am getting a signed copy of a mystery author’s book. And your father’s cholesterol check was much better this time. If I could just get him to stop it with those disgusting cigars already. He’s like an eighty-year-old man, your father.”
Holly could hear her father muttering, “Oh, please, Lucy.” She laughed, picturing Bud Maguire with his almost bald head and auburn fuzz on his ears puffing on his cigar and absently watching TV while flipping through his favorite magazine, Popular Mechanics.
She thought about telling her mother what she’d read in Camilla’s diary, then decided against it. If she brought it up, her mother would stiffen and go silent. She knew her mother that much. It would not be a conversation that would bring them closer; it would only widen the gulf. Holly was choosing to take over the life her mother couldn’t wait to escape.
“So you’re still teaching the cooking class?”
“Yes, and in fact, I just had my fourth class tonight.” Not that they’d actually cooked anything. “Once I started calming down and just following the recipes, really paying attention to the ingredients themselves instead of how much work was before me, I got pretty good.”
“Well, to be honest, I don’t know how you stand it up there. But you were always a decent cook. Remember that prime rib you made your father for his fiftieth birthday when you came to visit a few years ago? And the garlic mashed potatoes? He loved those. He always asks for the garlic mashed when we go to Olive Garden. You could sell the house and open a diner.”
Holly smiled. Now that she knew more about her mother’s childhood, why she was so negative about the island, Holly didn’t quite attach an attack to everything her mother said. “Well, I’m committed to Camilla’s Cucinotta, so maybe you and Dad could come up sometime and try my risotto alla Milanese. I’ve almost got it down. In fact, I’m going to be catering a local wedding at the Blue Crab Cove. Was that here when you were growing up?”
Luciana was silent for a moment, then said, “Oh, yes, that’s been around forever. Well, isn’t that something, Holly. I suppose you’re all right then, up there?”
Except for my worried heart, yes. “I’m more than all right, Mom. I feel like I belong here. I feel bad saying that to you because I know how much you hated it here.”
“You’re your grandmother’s granddaughter,” she said. “You always were. Tell you the truth, Holly, I was always a bit relieved about the special relationship you two had. My mother and I never saw eye to eye, but I loved her. And I respected her, even if I didn’t like the fortune-telling. I didn’t have an easy time of it growing up, but I’ve always felt bad about all but estranging myself. It helped to know she had you. And that she still does.”
It must have been awful—and at six years old—to hear your mother being called a “disgusting witch.” And from what Holly read in the diary, that was only the beginning. “That means a lot to hear you say, Mom.”
Lucy Maguire was silent for a moment. “I’ve always wanted you to be happy, Holly. And you never did find your place. Maybe Blue Crab Island is it. Maybe it’s always been it for you.”
“I think it is,” Holly said, picturing the sign Liam had made her. HOLLY’S KITCHEN. “I think this is where I belong, Mom.”
“Well, I’m sure your grandmother is at peace. And I’m glad you called, Holly.”
“Me too.” And then after a bit of small talk and a say hello to Dad, Holly hung up, her heart feeling slightly soothed.
Holly bolted up in bed, having awoken from a strange dream she couldn’t quite remember, except that Juliet was in it and that there was something Holly wanted to tell her, but Juliet kept floating behind a cloud with the word hospital carved into it (dreams were odd that way) every time Holly tried to get her to listen.
Yes. There was something she needed to tell Juliet.
She glanced at the clock. Almost two a.m. She picked up the phone anyway and called her friend, who she doubted was sleeping.
She answered on the first ring.
“Juliet, it’s Holly. I’m sorry for calling so late, but there’s something I need to tell you.”
Juliet was silent for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
“I’ve been reading my grandmother’s diary about teaching her first class. One of her students was pregnant, and Camilla knew that it would be a difficult birth and cautioned her to deliver in the hospital and not at home with a midwife, as she’d done with her first child.”
Juliet said nothing, but Holly could feel her listening. Waiting.
Holly got out of bed and walked over to the window and stared out at the few twinkling stars, at the almost full moon. “The baby was born sick, a hole in his heart. But he lived because of immediate medical attention. But then just after his first birthday, he died.”
“Why are you telling me this, Holly?”
“Because the mother of the baby blamed Camilla for her grief. She would rather have lost the baby at birth than loved him and lost him a year later. I just read all this tonight and it’s so heartbreaking and—”
“She would rather have lost him at birth?” Juliet repeated. “I can’t imagine thinking that for a moment about Evie. I had three precious years with her. Three years I wouldn’t give up for anything, not for this unrelenting pain and black grief. No, I wouldn’t give up those years for anything.”
“I didn’t think so,” Holly said, gazing at the perfect white stars in the night sky. It seemed that once again, her grandmother had managed to help Juliet.
Sixteen
Over the next few days, Holly kept busy by making lists of local gourmet shops and then surreptitiously dropping in to make notes on their offerings and what might complement their menus. She set up seven appointments to bring in her pastas and sauces, and today she was determined to work on a couple of pasta salads, something her grandmother had never been a fan of. But Holly could live on cold pasta salads with olives and sun dried tomatoes, and it seemed a safe way to start making Camilla’s Cucinotta a tiny bit her own.
Twice, once on her way out and once on her way in, she’d seen Liam’s navy SUV turning down Cove Road, a dark-haired woman in the passenger seat. She wished she knew what was going on. She missed Mia. She missed Liam. She missed that brief few hours when she’d given in to how she felt about him and had allowed herself to be excited about a new romance, a new relationship.
Nothing soothed her and distracted her as much as making fresh pasta. And today she was determined to make her own rotini, a spiral pasta, for her cold pasta salads. She measured out the semolina and durum flour onto the wooden work surface and cracked in the eggs, mixing and kneading until it was beautifully elastic, when the bell jangled and Liam appeared under the archway. Looking serious.
She glanced at the clock. Almost ten. “Taking the day off today?” The question was so light and banal that no one would guess she she’d seized up inside at the sight of him, her stomach full of those butterflies. And knots.
He looked at her so intently, with a mixture of what seemed like confusion and surety at the same time. “I’m actually taking the week.”
“I can understand that. You want to be around and available while Mia’s mother is in town. Just in case she up and leaves again, despite all the talk about buying a house.” She was rambling. “How is everything going, by the way?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then took a deep breath. “Holly, I—” He ran a hand through his hair. “Veronica, Mia’s mother, she’s very convincing.”
Holly could feel her stomach drop. “Convincing?”
�
��About how she feels. What she wants. Mistakes she made.”
“About you?”
He leaned his head back for a moment. “Yeah. About me. About Mia. What she gave up and what she’s supposedly learned.”
“Supposedly?” she asked, hating the hopeful note in her voice. Hopeful that he was putting air quotes around the “supposedly.”
“She wants a second chance.”
Holly turned away for a moment, tears filling her eyes. She blinked them away. “And what do you want, Liam?”
He was silent on that.
If only she had the gift of knowing. If only she were even 30 percent psychic so she could have seen this coming and could have stuffed Liam’s mouth with the cheese and grapes and then sent him home instead of to her bed.
Do not burst into tears all over the pasta, she ordered herself, tightening her lips.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I thought I hated her. For what she did to me. To Mia. To our family. My family was everything to me, and she shattered it without a thought to me or her own daughter. And now she’s back and she’s asking for a chance, and at first I told her I’d never take her back—never. And then she talked and talked and talked, and after a while I found myself listening, and—” He stopped and glanced out the window. “And this part of me thought, maybe she has changed, got what she needed out of her system, realized what she really wanted.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know if I’m the biggest idiot in the world or what the hell I’m doing. What I’m supposed to do.”
He sounded so distraught that she wanted to go to him and put her arms around him and tell him everything would be okay, but of course she couldn’t. She had no idea what “okay” meant in this situation.
“And this morning, to see Mia so full of hope, so happy, so completely wrapped up in this fairy tale that her parents will get back together—” He glanced down. “It’s powerful, Holly. All of it is very powerful.”
For a second she was so overcome with emotion that she could only nod. “I can understand that.”
The Love Goddess’ Cooking School Page 19