The Cookbook Club

by Beth Harbison

  She felt her face grow warm and pulled back, hoping he didn’t notice her embarrassment. “Did you walk around the property some? You’re still here, so it’s hard to guess.”

  His fingertips lingered on her arm for a moment, then he looked at them and shoved his hands in his front pockets. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s great. I love it. Nothing but nothing as far as the eye can see.”

  She nodded. “I always kind of liked the idea of being able to walk outside naked and have no one see.” Great, now she’d conjured an image for him of her being naked. Hopefully it was flattering. “So”—she cleared her throat—“you want to see the rest of the house?”

  “Of course, yes.”

  “Let’s do it. So this is where I’d start to fix it up,” she said as they walked through the kitchen. “I can’t stand to eat anything that comes out of a gunky refrigerator or sits on a dirty counter, even with a plate in between.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t really bother me that much.”

  She raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. He had to have been eating in the fanciest places in Manhattan, whereas now the closest restaurant was miles away, and that was a McDonald’s. This was no setting to make a gourmet meal at the moment, and a plate of Hamburger Helper in here would have to be repulsive to him, but whatever. “Now, I always thought I’d want to take out the wall between the kitchen and this room,” she said as they entered the small square block with a fireplace on the side wall. “Make one huge kitchen, you know?”

  “That would be nice,” he said, taking it all in. “You’ve got light from the south and east here. It would be sunny all day.”

  She nodded, and they rounded the corner to the front entryway. “As you can see, the formal front door isn’t really convenient to anything except that random piece of yard.”

  “But the wraparound porch is pretty great.”

  She shrugged. “As long as you don’t fall through the rotting wood flooring.”

  “Noted.” He examined the bannister appreciatively.

  As they started up the stairs she gestured toward the larger room on the main floor to their right. “Good-size family room here. Another fireplace, though I have no idea if it works. I always thought it would be nice to put gas ones in.” The stairs creaked ominously under their footsteps. “Be careful,” she said, “we might end up in the basement, slapstick trapdoor style.”

  “These are solid oak,” he commented, stomping a foot. “They won’t buckle.”

  “Here’s hoping.” She reached the landing and stepped into the full bathroom. It had the original black-and-white tile that was popular in the 1940s. “This actually seems pretty tight, but it needs a good cleaning.”

  He frowned and looked around, tapped at the showerhead, the sink, the faucets. “Nothing too hard to do here.”

  “This,” she said, entering a very long room with stairs back down to the kitchen, “is the master bedroom. I think it has so much potential.”

  “I’ll say.” He walked around, looked at the windows, then pulled what looked like thin wax paper off the top of one of the sills.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Snakeskin.” He dropped it on the floor. “I don’t know how it got up there, but apparently it shed while it was there.”

  Margo felt a lump in her throat and had to struggle to keep herself from gagging. “That’s disgusting. I thought I was kidding when I said they’d come up and sleep with you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t.”

  She was impressed at his utter lack of squeamishness. They’d never had to discuss anything like this before, so it wasn’t as if she had any solid reason to assume he’d find it all distasteful beyond the fact that most people would.

  She was glad he didn’t.

  They toured the rest of the rooms, such as they were—and they were all roughly the same—dusty, spiderwebbed, smelly, and empty. But the windows weren’t broken, though they were old, and the hardwood floors on the entire floor seemed to be in such good condition they might not even need refinishing.

  Eventually they made their way back down to the kitchen, where they’d started. “Well.” She threw her hands up in a broad shrug and sighed. “Now you see what I was talking about. I really hope you don’t feel like you’ve wasted—”

  “It’s perfect.”

  She wondered if she’d misheard. “Seriously?”

  “I love it. If you’re willing to make a deal, I am.” He walked to the door and looked out at what was an undeniably beautiful landscape. Big red barn that, incredibly, didn’t seem to need a paint job; split rail fences lining rolling, if overgrown, pastures. “Would you mind if I brought some livestock in? Horses, goats. It would really help trim back the greenery while I work inside the house.”

  She couldn’t think of an objection. “That would be fine.”

  He cocked his head and looked at her. “Do you ride?”

  “I used to. It’s been years. I used to take care of a few horses down in Travilla when I was a teenager.”

  She smiled and felt her face grow pink under his gaze.

  He continued to look at her, his blues eyes nothing short of piercing, to use the cliché. His hair was buzzed shorter than she remembered, but with a face like that, why create a distraction with hair? “So if I got a couple of trail horses, you’d be interested in riding with me now and then?”

  She laughed outright. Calvin was gone, and with him went his negativity. Now, would she mind riding horses with Max Roginski in the sweet Virginia fields? “I would love it,” she said sincerely. “That would be really fun.”

  “Great!” He put out his hand. “Then we have a deal.”

  She took it, and shook firmly. “Sure, if you’re really up for it.”

  He smiled and gave a quick, rakish wink. “One hundred percent. If you can just send me the details about rent, and where to sign for the utilities, I’ll send them to my lawyer and have him handle all that.”

  She cringed inwardly. “I really can’t see charging anything.”

  “Are you kidding? This place is great!” He followed her gaze, and she thought she saw genuine admiration in his eyes. Whatever it was that had appealed to him when this was still just an idea was still working for him, now that he’d seen it. “Send me the deets and I’ll have them handled as soon as possible.”

  She nodded. “You’ve got it.”

  “And, Margo?”

  She stopped. What would Calvin think if he could see her right now? He’d think he wanted the place back, that’s what. He’d see black dollar signs instead of red numbers, and he’d want to dive in and take advantage of it. “Yes?”

  “I can’t emphasize this enough,” Max said. “Please, please don’t tell anyone I’m here. Not even your closest friends. Please just keep this between the two of us.”

  A chill of a thrill ran through her, waking a sleeping feeling within her. She hadn’t been told a secret in so long, and she certainly hadn’t been excited like this when she was told to keep it.

  Max and she had a secret. And she wasn’t going to tell a soul.

  Chapter Ten

  Aja

  She would have liked to believe Michael was finally seeing a future with her and that was why he decided to introduce her to his mother, but, in fact, it turned out that the older woman was trying to set him up with the “horse-faced” (according to him) daughter of a friend of hers and was being relentless about it until he finally said he was seeing someone.

  It did very little to reassure Aja. He probably would have asked a cocktail waitress to do him a favor and come along if Aja hadn’t been available.

  Still, eager to impress, Aja had made what she now considered her specialty—since it was the only dessert she’d mastered—a strawberry pie. It had seemed like a good idea when she’d made it, but now with every mile it felt like a cheaper and cheaper gesture.

  She might as well have brought a wrapped Twinkie.

  They drove through the posh
town he’d grown up in, and she noticed the houses seemed to get bigger on every block.

  Finally Michael turned down Alloway Drive, through brick entry posts and past a little guardhouse that must once have contained a security guard of some sort, checking to make sure no riffraff was coming in.

  The house was like something out of a vintage Better Homes and Gardens cover. Honeysuckle grew on the white picket fence and scented the air. The grass in the front yard was just a little too long, as if waiting for someone to put their iced tea down on the porch and mow it. There was a small barn behind the house, on the other side of where the driveway turned toward a matching freestanding garage.

  Michael parked the car, heaved a breath, and looked at Aja to say, “Here we are.”

  “Is this where you grew up?” she asked, a little breathless.

  He threw a cursory glance at the place, then gave the slightest shrug, as if it meant nothing. “Yeah.”

  But it didn’t mean anything. It was a beautiful piece of land, a beautiful piece of nature. The house had been built by people who cared—it had to have been, it was so unbelievably perfect. Even the fence that lined the pasture all the way around was perfect, long white rectangles, none of them loose or in need of a paint touch-up. It was a child’s play set around a green velvet field with perfect plastic horses, stamped MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN on their bellies, perched about like perfect decorations.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, and found herself imagining the glory of even being a live-in maid here, much less the owner. “Aren’t you bowled over every time you come here?”

  He looked at her, seeming genuinely puzzled. “Bowled over?” He gave a laugh. “No? Babe, have you been drinking?”

  “No.” He didn’t notice her dry tone, or, in fact, her dry body. She hadn’t had a drink in weeks. She opened the car door and got out, unwilling to continue the conversation, but as soon as the outside air hit her she smelled the boxwoods and had to wonder how long the house had been here if it had such large, fragrant boxwoods.

  She didn’t dare ask, though, since she’d obviously already touched a sore spot with Michael, so instead she just walked around the car and joined him to walk up the white stone pathway to the door. For him it was undoubtedly old hat, but for her it was pure beauty.

  They got to the front door and, to Aja’s surprise, Michael rang the bell.

  “It’s your house, why don’t you just go in?” Aja asked.

  “It’s not my house, it’s my mother’s house.”

  “When you were growing up here, did you always ring the bell to get in?”

  “No.” He looked at her like she as an idiot. “But I don’t live here anymore so walking in would be rude.”

  Aja opened her mouth to object, but the door squeaked and jerked and then opened. A woman opened the door with a tight smile. She had high, perpendicular hair, and dark, careful eye makeup. She looked like a soap opera matriarch. “Michael. Lovely to see you.” She bent forward for fake cheek kisses.

  Michael accommodated them. “Mother,” he said, all but genuflecting. “This is Aja.” He swept an arm in her direction.

  “Asia?” his mother repeated quizzically.

  “Well, not exactly . . .” Aja started. And really, it wasn’t her name. Angela Jennifer Alexander had been going by “Aja”—the nickname she’d inadvertently given herself as a child who could pronounce neither “Angela” nor “Jennifer” fully—for so long that it always surprised her when people thought she was foreign.

  She was not. Which would probably be a relief to Michael’s mother.

  That should have helped her right now to not take someone else’s tone to heart. But how was she not supposed to take it to heart that Michael clearly didn’t want her to meet his mother and for the obvious reason that his mother wasn’t all too pleased to be meeting her?

  “I’m Angela,” she said, in as strong a voice as she could muster. “My friends call me Aja. A-J-A.” She smiled and held out her hand.

  The older woman looked from her face to her hand but didn’t otherwise move a muscle. “I see” was all she said.

  Aja wanted to question her on that, but she felt Michael shuffle his feet beside her, clearly uncomfortable. “Mother, we don’t want to keep you long, I just wanted—”

  “Come in,” the older woman commanded, then looked Aja dead in the eye and trailed her gaze down to her feet. “Wipe your shoes on the matt, please. Then leave them by the door.”

  Aja eyed her for a moment, wondering what on earth Lucinda Carter thought she might inadvertently bring in.

  Then she remembered that she was bringing something in; something way more important and consequential than dirt or grass clippings.

  She was carrying Lucinda Carter’s grandchild.

  Having grown up in this area, Aja had seen new money and old money all her life. This was old money. This was gleaming mahogany and equestrian art and the rich smell of saddle leather and fresh cut flowers.

  “We’ll sit in the drawing room,” Lucinda said, with a sweep of the hand, indicating the direction, though Michael would already know it.

  He looked uncertainly at Aja, then put a hand on her lower back and guided her to follow his mother.

  All Aja could think was that she didn’t belong here, carrying this stupid pie that no one had even mentioned. Had Lucinda even noticed it? Did she think it was some sort of Security Pie, rather than the gift it obviously was?

  Maybe it embarrassed her with its obvious homemade-ness. Every knickknack on the dark wooden built-ins probably had cost more than everything in her whole apartment. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that cost less than her car. It should be noted that her car was a fifteen-year-old Corolla with almost two hundred thousand miles on it, but still. The thought of being able to pick and choose any beautiful thing in the world to decorate a home seemed like absolute bliss to Aja.

  She gathered her nerve and, when Lucinda finally stopped walking, said, “I made you a pie.” She thrust it forward into Lucinda’s unprepared hands just as the woman was probably trying to shield herself. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Aja said.

  Lucinda got ahold of the pie dish and gave a tight smile. “Quite all right. You made this? How clever you are.”

  “It’s a strawberry pie,” Aja said unnecessarily, as if the pie dish, the pie crust, and the strawberry filling bursting out of the crust like something from Alien weren’t enough clues.

  “Indeed.” Lucinda smiled and Aja relaxed fractionally. “It smells delicious. I’ll just put it in the kitchen if you’ll excuse me a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  Lucinda walked away, holding the pie in front of her like a box of rodents, and Michael said, “That could have been done a bit more gracefully.”

  Aja nodded. “Right? I’m so nervous I don’t know how to talk even.” She threaded her hand through his arm and gave a squeeze, but he remained stiff.

  “It might have made more sense to leave it in the foyer so she could have the help take care of it.”

  Aja gave a laugh. “It might have made more sense to bring flowers too, but I can’t really put the smoke back in the chimney now.” She looked for him to smile but he didn’t.

  Instead he watched with a tightened jaw until his mother came out of the kitchen. “Sorry about that, Mom. I could have taken that for you.”

  Lucinda looked at him curiously. “I’m perfectly capable of walking to my own kitchen.” She looked at Aja again. “That was really so sweet of you. Now, both of you, please. Take a seat.”

  She gestured, and Michael and Aja sat on a silk-covered French Provençal settee—Aja couldn’t guess as to which Louis it was in the style of—and it creaked briefly under their weight.

  “How are you feeling, Mom?” Michael asked, settling in the seat and glancing at his watch before setting his gaze on her.

  She waved her hand. “My allergies are absolute madness. Dr. Robbins says I shouldn’t go outside at all, lest I should have an
other spell.”

  Aja pictured an overly dramatic fainting spell, but Michael said, “Asthma is nothing to mess around with. Do you have Albuterol ready for your nebulizer?”

  Aja looked at him in surprise. She’d never seen him in anything that could even remotely be called a caretaking role. He was frowning at his mother, which made Aja want to nudge him to soften his expression, but it wasn’t her place and he wouldn’t know what her nudge meant anyway. They didn’t have that kind of Couple’s Shorthand.

  “I know it, I just get so bored rattling around in here. I barely see another living soul, and when I do it’s usually that gardener and he’s a son of a bitch.”

  Aja stifled a laugh. The dichotomy of the language with the carefully powdered and pulled seventy-something face—or was she older than that?—was unexpected. Plus, who hated a gardener? A landscaper, maybe, because that implied business, contracts, teams, and noise. But gardener conjured a little Englishman with clubfoot, a dead tooth, and the mystical ability to breathe life into nature.

  There was nothing more magical than a garden.

  “I thought you’d put the idea of a vegetable garden to rest,” Michael said, as if she’d suggested she could bury some pennies and grow a money tree.

  “It’s never a bad idea to have your own organic food, of course,” Aja jumped in. “It’s just better for you. The strawberries in the pie are organic. Actually, all of it is.” God, she really sounded like she was trying to sell the pie.

  Michael took what Aja recognized as an impatient intake of breath, when they were interrupted by a tall, wiry blond man with pale blue eyes, skin the color of raw hamburger, and a container of Roundup weed killer in his hand. “Ma’am,” he said to Lucinda without an ounce of deference, “I cannot work with the dogs swarming me.” He had an indeterminate accent. Eastern European? Russian, maybe? “I’ve told you this before. Dogs, children, cats using my beds as litter boxes. I am not a circus act!”