Slipping one on with her shorts, Olivia looked in the mirror. She rolled the sleeves and adjusted the blousing at the waist. Leaning closer, she finger-combed her short hair and was about to pinch color into her cheeks when she realized that it was already there. She stared at herself a minute longer. Short hair and all, she didn’t look bad.
Wearing the T-shirt with pride, she went off in search of Tess.
Seven
SUSANNE WAS UP AT DAWN, which was early indeed in June. She was baking brioche for breakfast, or so she reasoned at four-thirty, as she slipped into a robe and crept out of the bedroom, leaving her husband in a deep, jet-lagged sleep.
He had returned the night before from five days of nonstop meetings on the West Coast. In the hope that they would have dinner together, Susanne had bought the fixings for his favorite veal dish. Then the plane was two hours late taking off, and it was after ten before he walked in the door. He did try to eat, but she would have been blind not to see that he was doing it only to please her. Taking pity on him, she sent him into the den, where he sat with his favorite symphony on the stereo, for a few hours of decompression.
Susanne had sat with him until her eyes started to close. She didn’t know what time he’d come to bed, only that he was there when she had woken for the first time, at two.
In the kitchen now, she heated milk, butter, and sugar, added yeast, eggs, and flour, kneaded the dough, and set it aside. She split a fresh pineapple, sliced its fruit, and returned it to the shell in an artful arrangement that included cantaloupe, kiwi, and banana. She whipped up Mark’s favorite sour-cream coffee cake, tossing in blueberries and raisins for good measure.
She punched the brioche dough down. While it rose again, she cooked fresh asparagus, washed arugula, and beat eggs for a frittata. She arranged plates, silverware, mugs, linen napkins, and flowers on linen place mats at the kitchen’s granite island. She rearranged the flowers once, then again.
She formed the brioche dough into individual portions and fit each into its own mold. She ground fresh coffee. Changing her mind about the linen place mats, she exchanged them with woven ones and added raffia ties to the napkins. She scrubbed her work counter, washed and dried everything in the sink, and then scrubbed that, too. She removed the coffee cake from the oven and put in the brioche.
She brought in the morning paper, read as much of it as she wanted in the fifteen minutes that it took to drink a cup of coffee. She wiped out the refrigerator until the brioche was done, brushed her hair and teeth, washed and moisturized her face, then sat at the granite island and waited for Mark to wake up.
By the time he joined her, it was after nine. She had been up for five hours and felt it. He, on the other hand, looked refreshed, sleep-mussed but handsome. Neither thinning gray hair nor ten extra pounds around his middle could change that. It struck her, amidst all else on her mind, how much she had missed him and how glad she was to have him home.
He gave her a long hug that said the feeling was mutual. “Mmmm. I don’t know which smells better, you or whatever that is you’re baking.”
“It’s either Dior or brioche,” she said against his raspy jaw. “Take your pick.”
“I’ll take Dior and a cup of coffee for now.” Loosening his arms, he drew back only enough to search her face. “You were up early.”
“I tried not to wake you.”
“You didn’t, but I’m smelling more than perfume and brioche. From the looks of this kitchen, you’ve done a day’s work already. I’m afraid I won’t be able to eat half of what you’ve cooked. Couldn’t sleep?”
She gave a diffident shrug.
“Bad dreams?” he asked.
“If only they were dreams.”
“Uh-oh. Still Natalie? I thought you were going to talk with her again.”
“She won’t take my calls.”
He arched a brow but remained wisely silent.
“Okay,” Susanne confessed, “so I said things I shouldn’t have that first time, but what did she expect, popping this marriage on me that way?”
“You told me that she’d been mentioning Carl a lot before that.”
“Mentioning Carl. Not mentioning love or romance, and certainly not mentioning marriage. Marriage was totally out of the blue. I’m her daughter. I was hurt.”
“Did you tell her that?”
Susanne sighed. “Not the way I should have, but when I call now, someone else always answers the phone. She’s hired a new assistant who is disgustingly bouncy.”
“A corporate assistant?”
“A personal one,” she said and added a drawled, “Apparently, her social life is that busy.”
Mark gave a soft meow.
Susanne dropped the drawl, though she wasn’t apologizing. “Marie is leaving, and she says she isn’t the only one. So part of me is pleased that I’m not alone in being upset by this marriage. The other part feels that the Asquonset I know is … is slipping away.”
“You’ve always claimed not to care,” he reminded her gently.
“I don’t. I just feel bad for Dad.”
“More than he can feel himself. He’s dead, Susanne.”
“Yes. He is. It’s like Natalie was just waiting for that.”
“I don’t think so. She was a loyal wife.”
“Maybe she wasn’t. I never thought she’d remarry. Maybe I don’t know about the other, either.”
“You do know,” Mark chided.
Yes, Susanne supposed that she did. But that didn’t forgive what Natalie was doing now. “She bided her time until her husband died and not a minute longer.” She felt a moment’s satisfaction when Mark didn’t deny it.
But immediately he said, “Why don’t you take a drive up?”
Her satisfaction faded. “To Asquonset? I can’t. I have things to do here.”
“What things?” he asked, holding her gaze.
She didn’t answer. None of what she had to do was important—they both knew that. She was at a crossroads in her life and didn’t know what path to take, but going home—going back—was at the very bottom of the list.
“Mother doesn’t want me there,” she reasoned. “We’ll only fight.”
“Maybe you’ll talk.”
“Mother talk? Mother talk?”
“Well, you two have to communicate somehow before the wedding.”
“Why? I’m not going.”
His hands unlocked and slipped away. Moving around her, he helped himself to coffee. Cupping the mug, he leaned back against the counter. “I think that would be a mistake.”
“Greg isn’t going.”
“A double mistake, then. She’s your mother. Boycotting her wedding will cause a permanent rift.”
“The wedding is the thing causing the rift.”
He didn’t answer, just stood there nursing his coffee. Finally he asked, “How old is Natalie?”
“Seventy-six.”
“How old do you think she’ll live to be?”
The question startled Susanne. “I can’t answer that.”
“Does longevity run in her family? Heart disease? Cancer?”
“Why are you asking this?”
“Because Natalie is approaching that age where she may be wondering how much time she has left. She may be thinking that she can’t afford to do things that people in their thirties, forties, or even fifties consider ‘proper.’”
“You condone this marriage?”
“No, but I can’t condemn it, either. She’s coming from a different place from you and me.”
Susanne folded her arms. “She’s in good health. She’ll live another twenty years. At least.”
“Spoken by the daughter who wants that to be so, but what’s the point for you, if you cut yourself off from her?”
“She’s the one doing the cutting. She’s making a choice.”
“Seems to me you’re the one making the choice. She wants her children and grandchildren in her life. That’s what the invitation was about.”
<
br /> “But … an invitation, Mark?”
He let out a long breath. Setting his mug on the counter, he approached her and stroked her arms. “She tried to tell you, but couldn’t quite get it out. Sweetheart, that’s her way. It always has been. She’s more formal about things than you are, just as you’re more formal about things than our daughter is. Maybe it’s generational. Maybe it isn’t. Either you can condemn her and live with the consequences of that, or you can swallow your pride and drive on up there. You do have the time, Susanne …”
GREG WAS UP nearly as early as Susanne, watching daylight steal over Woodley Park from the small balcony off his bedroom. One after another, his neighbors’ rooftops were touched by pale gold. The paleness would deepen in no time. Washington was in for another hot day. He could feel the humidity even now. It was thick, slowing everything down.
Or so he explained standing there for as long as he did. If life moved at its normal pace, he would be on his way to work. He was behind. He had been behind for three weeks now. His e-mail had piled up unanswered. Same with phone messages. His desk was covered with proposals to study, findings to analyze, correspondence to handle.
He could delegate—that was what his staff was for—but no one at the office could help him here at home, not with what he needed to do.
The place was neat and clean. He had done the laundry the night before, had folded it and put it away. Now he made the bed. He made breakfast. He read the paper cover to cover and gave his laptop a distracted glance, thinking all the while that he ought to shower and dress.
Instead, he remained in his boxer shorts, wandering from room to room, checking his watch. At nine he put in a call to Akron. His mother-in-law answered, just as she had each of the other times he’d called.
“Hi, Sybil. Is Jill around?”
There was a pause, then a cautious, “She’s in the other room, but I’m not sure she wants to talk.”
“She’s my wife. She has to talk.”
The line was silent.
“Sybil?”
“Yes.”
He ran a hand around the back of his neck, hung his head, and sighed. “Okay. I was upset last time I called. I probably shouldn’t have been so …”
“Imperious?”
“Yes.”
Jill’s mother was clearly skeptical. “And you feel differently now?”
Yes, he felt differently. He had run out of anger. What was left was harder to name. It wasn’t anything he was used to feeling. “I miss Jill.”
The tone of his voice must have conveyed something he couldn’t put into words, because Sybil finally said quietly, “Hold on.”
He held. And held. He imagined an argument going on in the other room. Jill really didn’t want to take his call. He wasn’t sure where that left them.
“Hi, Greg,” she said in a chilly voice. “What’s up?”
“You tell me,” he said, then caught himself and added a more contrite, “Forget that. I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have shouted at you the way I did last time.”
“You’re right.”
“I was angry.”
“That wasn’t what I needed.”
“I know.” He was wandering again, holding the cordless phone. For a small house, the place seemed monstrous. Jill was at the same time everywhere and nowhere. “I miss you,” he said. It had worked with Sybil. He wanted it to work with Jill.
It did, but in a very different way. She let loose. “Well, now you know how I’ve been feeling for the past five years. You run all around the country—gone for days at a time—building the business, you say, but after a while that sucks, Greg. Marriage is supposed to be about you and me. There’s supposed to be an us in it, only there isn’t in ours. Our lives are about you—you and your business, you and your clients, you and your friends. There’s always something else you have to do, other than me. Why in the world did you ever get married?”
Strange. He had never asked himself that question. Not once. Not once in five years had he regretted marrying Jill. That was such a basic fact of his life that he found her remark to be offensive. “I could ask you the same question,” he shot back. “What kind of woman runs home to her mother at the first problem?”
“The kind who can’t get through to you any other way.”
“You’re my wife. You should be here.”
“Because I’m your wife? No. I should be there because we love each other.”
“We do.”
“You can’t even define what love is!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and swore softly. “Come on, Jill. Let’s not go there again.”
“I need to go there. Saying the words just isn’t enough. I need to know what they mean.”
She would. She was a woman. But he was a man, and his mind grew unfocused when confronted with words like “love” and “soul” and “eternity.”
But possession was nine-tenths of the law. She was his wife. She had taken vows. “Fine,” he said. “Come back, and we’ll talk.”
She didn’t respond.
“Jill.”
“I don’t want to come back. I know what’ll happen. One look at you and I’ll cave right in.”
He dared a small smile. “Because you do love me.”
“Yes. I’ve never denied that. But it doesn’t mean that I want to stay married to you. I can’t live this way, Greg. It’s too lonely.”
Lonely. That felt familiar. Perhaps he was feeling that, too. “Come back, babe,” he said in a voice that was heavy with emotion. “Come back and we’ll talk.”
She said nothing.
“Jill?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Eight
OLIVIA AWOKE NEARLY AS EARLY as Susanne and Greg, but while Susanne’s sleep was disturbed by annoyance and Greg’s by loneliness, Olivia’s was broken by bliss. Dawn found her on the window seat in her bedroom, delighted to be at Asquonset.
In the west, the sky was the color of eggplant. In the east, it was a paler, softer mauve. The occasional cloud added texture and depth, more purple to the west, more pink to the east. A blanket of fog lay on the lowlands farthest from the house. Olivia fancied that the vines in that part of the vineyard were stealing a last few winks before facing the work of the day.
And that work? Making grapes. It had been the major point of discussion at dinner the evening before.
Dinner had been in the dining room, a welcome feast of a roast duck served on fine china by the husband of the cook. Only Natalie and Carl, Olivia and Tess had been there, a small, intimate group—a one-step-removed-from-family group. Olivia found it such fun to pretend.
Olivia and Tess had overdressed, of course. They had worn long skirts, bandeaux, and sandals—all new. Natalie and Carl had on the same clothes they had worn that afternoon, and though they had gone overboard telling Olivia and Tess how nice they looked, Olivia took it as their first lesson of the evening about Asquonset life. It was casual, unpretentious, and focused on work.
The second had to do with wine. It was served, but only sparsely. No one at Asquonset really drank; they merely tasted. This night’s sampling was of a three-year-old Estate Riesling, a sweet white wine that went well with duck. There was sniffing, gentle swirling, then sniffing again as the bouquet was released. Even Tess took part in the ritual, though her wineglass was filled with Asquonset Little Bunches, a snappily labeled grape juice that was actually one of the vineyard’s biggest sellers.
The third lesson concerned the weather. Carl talked about it at length, and this was no small talk. The weather could make or break a vintage, and the weather this season had been far from optimal. Spring had come late and been too wet. Still, the vines had bloomed, and what Carl called, with some reverence, the “grape set” looked good. But the weather remained iffy. They needed sun more than one day out of four—if not, he explained, the year’s yield wouldn’t ripen and grow sweet.
Holding Tess’s hand, squeezing it now and again
to keep her focused, Olivia had listened closely to every word. She had followed as best she could the talk about sugar and acid, about Brix levels, prophylactic spraying, and predatory beetles. Greater understanding would come this morning—Natalie was giving them a tour of the vineyard.
In anticipation of that, Olivia already had her camera loaded and ready. But she couldn’t wait. On impulse, she opened the casement window and carefully removed the screen. Suddenly the morning air entered unhampered, cool and moist, fresh, sweet. It should have chilled her—she wore only a light nightshirt—but instead she was invigorated.
Taking up the camera, she photographed the sky, varying her settings to make sure she got the color and the clouds. She photographed that blanket of fog, which was lifting and thinning even as she watched. She photographed the vineyards below as, minute by minute, dawn embraced the vines. She photographed the patio beneath her window, where wrought-iron furniture was artfully placed and peonies were still damp with dew.
She was like a child in a penny-candy store, and the tempation was simply too great. Tiptoeing through the connecting bathroom, she peeked in at Tess. The child was sleeping soundly on a mound of pale blue linen, her face nearly buried in a jumble of hair. Olivia had watched her sleep often enough to know that she would be out for a while still.
Closing the door carefully, she crept out to the carpeted hall and slipped down the narrow staircase that led to the outside directly from their wing of the house. Not that I expect a fire, Natalie had assured them when she showed them where it was, but it served Olivia’s present purpose well.
Only after she turned the handle and had the door ajar did she freeze, wondering if the house was alarmed. Most everything in Cambridge was, as was just about everything in most every city in which she had lived.
The thought of waking the entire house gave her a moment’s pause. She would feel like a total fool.
But all was quiet. There was no alarm. The door opened without a squeak.
Heart pounding with excitement, she slipped out onto the patio. The flagstone was cool and damp, but the effect was bracing. Clearing the awning, she crossed to the edge of the stonework and stood, taking in the view, for a good ten minutes. The camera hung idly from her shoulder while her eye captured images as precious as any she might capture on film.
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