by Luanne Rice
“She loved our little boat,” Dana said.
“I know. I remember the summer you two earned the money to buy it. You were the biggest entrepreneurs this beach has ever seen.”
Smiling, Dana recalled their paper route, their lobstering business, their hot dog stand. Those were old, old memories, and it made her laugh to remember them. Feeling much better, she stood up with a handful of weeds. “I guess I’d better go cancel dinner with the oceanographer. At least I don’t feel so much like clobbering Quinn.”
“You’re going to cancel?”
“You don’t think I should?”
“Well, I was just thinking. If whoever invited him felt strong enough to call, maybe it’s important.”
Dana paused, peering at her friend’s face. Summers in the sun had left a few small lines. Sunlight came through the leaves, turning Marnie’s long hair glossy-black. They had stood in this exact spot, as their mothers had before them, over the course of many years. “How do you know so much?”
“Trial and error. Figuring out that kids are smart too, that sometimes they know what they need better than I do.”
“Okay.”
“And sometimes they don’t. Like when Cameron asked for a horse tattoo because she likes horses. But I think inviting an oceanographer for dinner might fall into the first category. Maybe Quinn wants him here for a reason, and you won’t know it till he comes.”
“We’re assuming it’s Quinn who called him.”
Marnie raised her eyebrows. Then, “I’m going home to check on the young crabbers.”
“Will you tell them I’m going grocery shopping and I’d like them to come? They’d better learn that if they invite someone for dinner, they have to cook for him.”
“Dana, are you really staying for good?”
“To the end of the summer anyway. The girls’ school plans are still in place in France.”
Marnie nodded supportively. “Okay, if that’s what you think. You’re the boss, not the two old mothers.”
“I’m sure Martha and Annabelle would love hearing you call them that.”
Marnie clasped Dana’s hand. “Your mother started it. She called Lily and me the two young mothers. When Lily turned thirty-seven, she thought it was too much of a stretch, but your mother said no, hang on to the position as long as she could, until Quinn and Allie have girls of their own.”
“As long as she could …” Dana said, feeling a shiver go down her back.
“Dana, thank God they have you.”
“Thanks for saying that, Marnie.”
The two old friends hugged, and then Marnie crossed the street to send Quinn and Allie home.
CHAPTER 7
STANDING AT THE STOVE, DANA THOUGHT ABOUT how much Lily had enjoyed cooking. Dana had sent her copper pans from Paris—the ones she was using now—and she had always noticed how much love Lily seemed to pour into the meals she made. She would take her time, measuring ingredients with care, running out to the garden for fresh herbs. Dana could see Lily now, crouched by the small stone wall, picking sprigs of rosemary and thyme.
Inspired by her sister’s memory, Dana walked outside. A west wind blew up from the beach. Kneeling by Lily’s herb garden, Dana ran her fingers through the leaves. She knew that cooking had been one of Lily’s art forms, just as gardening and raising her children had. Dana had been too busy working, trying to paint the perfect undersea scene, to really understand.
“What are you making for dinner tonight?” Allie asked, coming out the kitchen door.
“Bluefish,” Dana replied.
Allie looked worried as Quinn came out to stand beside her. Cooking for her nieces so far, Dana had taken the easy way out: wanting to bribe them a little, she had bought their favorite pizzas and frozen dinners. That way they got their choices, and no one was faced with comparing Dana’s cooking to Lily’s. Today, shopping for supper, she had gone to the fish store and picked out something she knew would be easy to grill.
“Is there something wrong with bluefish?” Dana asked.
“Don’t make Aunt Dana feel bad about getting bluefish,” Quinn said, jabbing her sister. “If the guy’s an oceanographer, he’ll probably love it. Lots of people do. It’s their favorite meal.”
“But it’s not yours?” Dana asked, looking into Allie’s eyes. Her younger niece shook her head.
“When Mom made bluefish for Daddy,” Allie said in a small voice, “she’d make macaroni and cheese for me.”
“That can be arranged,” Dana said.
“For me too,” Quinn said, “but I’ll have fish tonight. To help you out, Aunt Dana.”
“Thank you,” Dana said, staring down at the garden. The spicy scents of sage and thyme rose around her and the girls; Lily’s presence was so strong, Dana felt that if she turned around, her sister would be standing right there.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked. “Sitting in the herb garden?”
“Well, I was thinking of your mother. What she would pick to go with the bluefish.”
“Some of this,” Quinn said, breaking off a piece of rosemary. Then, pulling out a handful of thyme, she handed the whole bunch to Dana. “And some of this. When she cooked with her herbs, she said she was cooking with love.”
Dana closed her eyes and smelled the herb bouquet. Tendrils of thyme fell from her hand, tickling her bare knee. Her senses were so alive right now, she felt prickles on the back of her neck. Was that what she was doing? Cooking with love? She wasn’t sure she had ever really done that before.
“What time’s he coming?” Allie asked.
“Seven,” Quinn said a little defiantly, as if she thought Dana might be mad. Dana brushed her lips against the tangle of soft stems and leaves, then pulled both nieces into a hug. They didn’t resist, and Dana didn’t let go. She thought of Sam, due to arrive at seven, and she wondered what it meant that tonight she was cooking with love, and her old friend Sam Trevor was coming for dinner.
THE AMAZING THING was, Quinn wasn’t being lectured. Aunt Dana, probably the world’s worst cook, was peacefully making dinner for someone she hadn’t even invited. Hovering in the kitchen, Quinn wondered what her aunt thought about the situation. Maybe she assumed Sam had invited himself over. Or perhaps she thought she had asked him herself and just forgotten.
That was probably it.
The strange thing was, Quinn wasn’t even sure why she had called him. After she had gone mad with her father’s tennis racket, beating her poor mattress and pillow and accidentally—tragically—breaking her mother’s shell lamp, she had walked like a zombie into Aunt Dana’s room and gone through her bag. She had been formulating a plan already, it was true, but when she found Sam’s number, her fingers did the dialing as if they weren’t even attached to her body. Her voice had left the message.
Had she expected him to actually call back?
The answer had to be no, because when Aunt Dana announced to her and Allie that he was coming, Quinn nearly had a heart attack. She had felt the redness starting in her chest, zooming into her face like lava in Mount Vesuvius. Watching Aunt Dana pick herbs she had no idea how to use had made Quinn want to sink into the earth.
Guilt city.
Aunt Dana was trying so hard to be nice and fair, like a wonderful Mary Poppins–style aunt making up for almost taking them to France. She hadn’t even yelled at Quinn. In fact, besides shooting her looks of concern, Aunt Dana seemed positively calm about the whole thing. Quinn almost felt like sitting on the floor and letting the whole truth pour out. If it wasn’t so scary, confession would be a great relief.
Worst-case scenario, it could really piss her aunt off, and then … who knew what she might do?
One thing really bothering Quinn was this question: If Aunt Dana was really settling in, why hadn’t she started painting? Why hadn’t she sent to France for her special paints and supplies? And why wasn’t she launching the boat? Quinn almost hoped Aunt Dana would, so she herself would be forced to sail again.
But she was too close to being in trouble to ask. To make up for what she had done, Quinn threw herself into helping.
She ripped up lettuce for a salad and showed Aunt Dana how to make her mother’s dressing. She ran down to the garage and unearthed her father’s special bag of apple wood charcoal, cut from a tree on the Vineyard—that oily bluefish needed all the help it could get. She helped Aunt Dana arrange the herbs on the fish.
“Are we eating outside?” Quinn asked, hoping.
“It’s windy,” Allie said. “The bluefish will cool off too fast and taste even worse.”
“Good thinking,” Aunt Dana said. “How about the dining room?”
Quinn could almost feel Allie wishing she could take her words back. When Aunt Dana asked Quinn to set the dining room table, she really had no choice. Having called Sam, she had brought it on herself.
This was the hard part.
The family never ate there anymore. Grandma had let them eat on trays in the living room, and Aunt Dana seemed to like eating in the kitchen.
The dining room table reminded Quinn of her parents. It was made of oak. They never covered it with a tablecloth. The grain was dark and swirly, with pictures that told a story. Each person got a place mat with a different ship. Quinn’s was White Star, Allie’s was Eliza Nicholson, Mommy’s had been Istamboul, and Dad’s had been James Baines. Putting out the place mats, Quinn found her hands shaking.
She couldn’t give her parents’ place mats to anyone else. But there weren’t any more in the cupboard. Quinn solved the problem by sliding all the mats under the lowest bookshelf. The table looked bare, but she hoped Aunt Dana wouldn’t notice.
To make up for it, she put out the crystal candlesticks and a centerpiece of periwinkles and scallop shells and channeled whelk-egg cases. This was an important night. The conversation had to be led to the sea. What better way than by mollusks and bivalves?
“That looks beautiful,” Aunt Dana said, coming in to check.
“Thank you.”
“I like the way you arranged the shells.”
Nodding, Quinn walked around the table. She placed her hands on each Hitchcock chair to make sure her aunt understood where everyone had to sit. “Allie and I are here and here,” she said, touching two chairs facing each other. Then, hoping she wouldn’t get any grief, she slid the two armchairs, usually opposite each other at the table’s ends, to flank the side chairs. “You sit in this one, and he sits over there.”
“The table’s cramped this way,” Aunt Dana said. “We need chairs at the heads.”
Quinn froze. Her braids were like shock absorbers, and they felt the impact of all the emotions she was trying to keep inside. She had to stay calm, but she wanted to punch her fist through the wall. She felt as if her braids were electric, glowing like wire coils.
“No,” she said with a softness she did not feel.
“Quinn, I lived here a long time before you were born. There’s always a chair at each end of the table. Grandpa sat in one and Grandma in the other.”
Quinn shook her head. Allie had come out of the kitchen to stand close behind her. Quinn felt her small body giving off the same heat Quinn felt inside, and she heard Allie breathing through her nose like the monster that ate Denver.
“No one sits there,” Quinn said.
Aunt Dana smiled. She looked really pretty, and her eyes seemed as if they wanted to laugh. They wanted this to be one of those funny times—Quinn knew her position in the family. She was the stubborn kid. She had wacky ideas—her mother called them “original”—that didn’t always make sense at first. Aunt Dana started to move one of the chairs, and Quinn clapped her fingers down on her aunt’s hand with a force that left no doubt as to her degree of seriousness.
“No, Aunt Dana,” Quinn said.
“Quinn, I know these were your parents’ chairs, that those were their places.”
Sorrow washed through Quinn. If her aunt understood that, why was she making it so hard? Staring at the seats, Quinn thought: They sat there every night.
“Are,” Quinn whispered. “Not were.”
“Okay. Are.”
Staring through narrowed eyes, Quinn refused to look away from the seats.
“But there’s not room for four people at this table unless we put the chairs where they belong. See? We’ll all be scrunched up, banging each other with our elbows.”
“Bluefish flying everywhere,” Allie said.
“Shut up, Al.”
“I don’t want to be banged by elbows,” Allie said.
“You’re a jerk. You’d better hang tight to Kimba, because I know a nice window he might fall out of.”
“Look,” Aunt Dana said, prying them apart as the pressure in Quinn’s chest made her think she might explode. “We know the real story, don’t we?”
“What real story?”
“That those are your parents’ places. No matter who sits in the chairs, they’re just borrowing the space.”
“Borrowing?”
“Yes. Someone can sit in your mother’s chair, in your mother’s place, but we’ll all know the truth.”
“That it’s really Mom’s.”
“Right.”
For some reason, the next question was so hard to ask, Quinn almost couldn’t get the words out. “Are you going to be the one to sit there? In Mom’s seat?”
“I could.” But then, at Quinn’s expression, Aunt Dana smiled. “But I don’t have to. Sam could sit there. I could sit in your father’s.”
Quinn nodded. “Borrowing their places.”
“Temporarily.”
“Like Daddy’s buildings,” Allie said. “Where people pay rent and don’t stay forever.”
“Butt rent,” Quinn said.
“To sit in those chairs,” Allie continued.
“Exactly,” Dana said.
Quinn almost smiled. The sensation came hard and fast, on top of wanting to cry, so she blocked them both by giving Aunt Dana the hardest frown she could muster. “If you’re really staying, where are your paints?”
“They’re coming.”
“Really?”
Her aunt nodded. She didn’t look very happy about it, and for a minute Quinn wondered whether she was lying. Until last summer, she’d thought she had the most honest family in the world, but once a person was lied to by her parents, she just never knew anymore.
“Can you paint without Monique around?” Quinn asked.
Aunt Dana’s head jerked around. “How do you know about Monique?”
“Mommy told us about her, how she was your studio helper. She wrote her a letter, but Monique never wrote back. She kept waiting.”
“Well, Monique wasn’t really the writing-back type.”
“How come?” Allie asked.
“Well, you’ve heard your mother call me a free spirit, right?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said.
Aunt Dana was quiet, as if she were thinking something very serious. It took the last of her smile away and made her look sad. “I wanted Monique to be like a little sister. She was far from home, and she wanted to be an artist. The thing is, many people have that desire… .”
“But not the talent,” Quinn said, cutting to the point.
Aunt Dana nearly smiled, but not quite. “I don’t know about that. Anyway, some people try to live like artists. They can’t always paint the way they want to, but they’re drawn to an artistic way of life.”
“They’re wanna-bes,” Quinn said. “I know what that is. They wear black and smoke a lot.”
“Like you,” Allie said.
“Shut up, Al.”
“I never thought of Monique as a wanna-be,” Aunt Dana said, her eyes deep and her mouth soft. “I thought of her as someone with promise. She hung around the studio—modeling was part of it, but she also helped me build canvases and clean up my paints. She was shy about showing me her sketches. She’d come to Honfleur for the same reason I did—because Impressionism had started there. Many artists made thei
r way to that town. Monique was making a pilgrimage …” Aunt Dana swallowed, and was it Quinn’s imagination, or was Aunt Dana trying to talk herself into something?
“What color clothes did she wear?” Quinn asked.
Aunt Dana smiled now. “She did wear black, and she did smoke. Those were trappings your mother and I never bothered with.”
“You didn’t have to,” Quinn said. “You were too busy painting—the real thing.”
“Thanks,” Aunt Dana said, looking really touched, as if she appreciated what Quinn was saying.
“Is that how you knew she was a free spirit—like you?” Allie asked.
“Well, I’m like a stickin-the-mud compared to Monique. She’s really free.” Aunt Dana frowned, thinking. “Rules, conventions, etiquette—they don’t apply to her at all.”
“So that’s why she didn’t write back to Mommy?” Allie asked.
“That wasn’t nice,” Quinn said. “She might be free, but she’s not nice.”
Aunt Dana didn’t reply; she still had that far-off hurt in her eyes, as if she had seen and felt something she didn’t want to talk about.
“So she’s not your studio helper anymore?”
“No, she’s not,” Aunt Dana said quietly.
“You’re an artist, but I never see you doing art,” Allie said, voicing similar worry.
“Then I’ll make us place cards—to keep us all in the right seats. Do they count?”
Quinn shrugged, but Allie said happily yes. It was six o’clock. There was an hour before Sam arrived. Quinn had knots in her chest, and she knew she had to write in her diary. She could just about make it to Little Beach and back in time. Edging through the door, Quinn was almost free. But then Aunt Dana looked up.
“The ship place mats that used to be here,” she said. “We haven’t used them since I came, but I know they must be around somewhere. If you come across them, Quinn, will you put them back on the shelf?”
“Sure,” Quinn said, turning red again. “If I find them.”
WHEN SAM KNOCKED on the kitchen door, he couldn’t help noticing—as he had on his last visit here—the great view. Over the garden and stone terrace, he looked past the beach and marsh to Long Island Sound. Still admiring the vista, he smiled when Dana answered the door.