When in Doubt, Add Butter

by Beth Harbison

  “Predictability certainly has its drawbacks.”

  He went to the freezer and took out a bottle of Belvedere Vodka. I was amazed Angela allowed it in the house. He poured a splash into his glass, hesitated, then poured another splash.

  I wondered if he did this a lot.

  Maybe it was the only way to live with her.

  I watched from the corner of my eye as he tasted it, added a little salt, then tasted again. I would have put Worcestershire in, of course, but Angela objected to anchovy, so there was none in the house.

  “You’re sure you don’t want one?” he asked. “It’s not like you’re a cop on duty.”

  I smiled. “I know, but I’m working with sharp objects.” I held up the knife.

  “True. I concede.”

  I don’t know exactly how it happened, but somehow he went left and I went right, and I guess I knocked into his hand, sending his almost-entirely-full glass of Bloody Mary spilling down my shirt.

  “Oh, shit, Gemma. I’m so sorry.” He put the glass down and grabbed a dish towel to hand to me. “What a mess!”

  “It’s okay.” I started to dab at my shirt, but there was too much there—this was never going to do.

  “Come with me, I’ll give you a T-shirt to change into. You should rinse that right away before it stains.”

  Normally, I would have demurred at the offer of a new shirt, but I was completely soaked. There was no way I could hit the streets looking like this. Honestly, I was just lucky it hadn’t gotten all over my pants as well. “Thanks,” I said. “Yeah, if I could just give this a quick rinse in the laundry sink, I’m sure it will be fine.”

  “Come with me. I’ll show you where everything is.”

  I followed him upstairs to the landing and waited while he dodged into what I assume was his and Angela’s bedroom. He came back out with a plain navy blue T-shirt and handed it to me.

  “Less likely to show stains,” he joked. “You can change in Stephen’s room.”

  I took the shirt and went into the small bedroom opposite theirs. It was adorably decorated in a zoo theme, with giraffe, lion, and tiger decals on the walls and a neatly organized row of stuffed animals lining one wall.

  I removed my shirt carefully, turning it inside out so it wouldn’t drip tomato juice on the floor or drag it across my face and hair. I was about to put the T-shirt on when the door opened.

  “What was that?” Peter asked.

  Startled, I dropped the shirt.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He hurried over to pick it up and hand it back to me.

  Why didn’t he just back out of the room and close the door?

  I clutched the shirt to me and waited a moment for him to go, but he didn’t make a move.

  “Excuse me,” I said, annoyance rising rapidly in me. I looked pointedly toward the door.

  “I thought you called out for something.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t. Everything’s fine here, so if you could just go—”

  “Gemma.” He came toward me.

  My nerves sprang to alert. “Peter, I’m not dressed!”

  “I know.”

  I took a step back. “This isn’t happening.”

  “What isn’t?” He closed the distance between us and put a hand on my shoulder.

  I took another step back. “Whatever you have in mind. Nothing is happening.”

  “Right.” He put his other hand on my other shoulder and moved closer, so he was just a couple of inches from me, looking down into my face. Even though this was quickly feeling like an emergency, I could not help remembering the stark difference between this situation and the one with Mack. This was definitely not wanted.

  I put a hand to his chest to push him away, but he was stronger. He didn’t budge. “Please.”

  “I’ve wanted this for such a long time,” he said, as if I hadn’t said a word. “Haven’t you seen how I look at you?”

  “You’re married.” I pushed again, but he was immovable. My hand just slid down his stomach.

  “I won’t be married forever.”

  “You’re also my employer.”

  “People have met in stranger ways.” He dipped closer and grazed my cheek with his lips.

  “Stop it.” I turned, but he captured my mouth with his.

  I shoved him away.

  Then he looked at me, shocked, as if he had no idea where he was or what he was doing here. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Go. Please.”

  “Of course. I’m so—I’m sorry.” He nodded, gave a brief embarrassed smile, then moved out of the room.

  As soon as he was gone, I scrambled to put the shirt on in case he came back in. But then I froze. What was I supposed to do now? Obviously, I had to handle this in some grown-up way, but I didn’t know what, exactly, that meant. Go back out there and pretend nothing had happened? Address it and scold him like a child? Turn in my resignation immediately, even though there was no way in the world I could afford to lose not only another night but also my substantial country club gig—which Angela was in charge of, by virtue of recommending me as the caterer for people who rented the club for weddings, bar or bat mitzvahs, anniversary parties, whatever. The profit on events was tremendous, and a wedding could easily equal or outprofit an entire week of cooking for my regulars.

  I needed the club events, so I needed Angela.

  Peter had never imposed himself on me before in any way. Maybe this was just a glitch. A moment of bad judgment. On the other hand, what if it wasn’t? It wasn’t like I could just start carrying Mace around with me. At least not the spray kind. Although, truth be told, I couldn’t carry the spice mace around here either, because it was exactly the kind of thing Angela would have a reaction to.

  What was I going to do?

  The longer I stood in Stephen’s bedroom, the more lost I felt. There was no obvious answer here. No clear solution to the problem. I didn’t want to lose any more work—I really couldn’t afford to—but I also didn’t want to feel apprehensive every time I came here.

  Clearly I had to talk to him about this.

  I went downstairs and paused in the hallway, taking a bracing breath before going into the kitchen, where he was making another Bloody Mary.

  Great. What if he was now buzzed?

  “Peter?” I stood straight and went in.

  He looked up at me.

  “Can we talk about what just happened?” I asked.

  “What just happened?” a razor-sharp voice asked behind me.

  Angela! When did she get here? What had he already told her?

  “I…” What? What?

  “Again, I’m sorry for spilling tomato all over you,” Peter said pointedly. “I hope your shirt isn’t ruined. Obviously, I’ll pay for cleaning or replacement.”

  “Oh.” It was true, he had spilled on me. I don’t know why I had to sound so damn surprised. “Well, that’s fine, then.”

  I could feel Angela’s eyes on me from behind, and I turned to her. “It’s a tuna Caesar salad for tonight.”

  Her gaze shifted from me to her husband, and back. Then her brow lowered fractionally. “I see.”

  What kind of response was that?

  What did she see?

  This was a new kind of uncomfortable.

  “Okay, then, I guess I’ll be on my way.” I needed to get out of here. Whatever had happened, the evening had taken a weird turn, and I needed to get out. “I’m just going to put the finishing touches on the salad and put it in the fridge.”

  Peter raised his glass to his lips but first added, “It looks terrific, as always.” His return to a normal conversation that fit in with the one from fifteen minutes ago was unnerving.

  I hurried to arrange the sliced tuna on top of the salad, covered the whole thing in plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator, all under what felt like two watchful gazes.

  It felt like hours crept by before I was finally finished and left, but the weird feeling that had bubbled up the mome
nt Peter touched me stayed with me for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 11

  “You have to quit,” Penny said the minute I told her what had happened with Peter Van Houghten. “Ask Lynn. She’ll agree with me. You have to quit.”

  We were sitting on the sofa, having mocktails. Penny always insisted that she didn’t mind if I went ahead and had wine when she couldn’t drink, but it felt rude. So instead, we were drinking seltzer with cranberry and a twist of lime, which she declared unsatisfying just about every time she sipped it.

  “I can’t afford to.”

  “You can’t afford not to!”

  I sighed. “Be real, Pen. I don’t have the kind of reserves that can keep me afloat indefinitely while I look for another job. Willa, tough as she might be, was a godsend. I can’t expect to get that lucky every time. Besides”—I set down my glass and she poured more into it—“that’s just how some men are. You know it and I know it. There’s no guarantee that that won’t happen again with someone else. In fact, there’s pretty much a guarantee it will.”

  “Yeah.” She sipped thoughtfully. “Remember that Bernard Liski guy I worked for down on Connecticut? Older than dirt and made a stinking, gross attempt to kiss me.”

  “Then told you that you were mentally unstable when you quit, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “See? There are a million of them out there.” I leaned back against the embroidered pillows my grandmother had made for both Penny and myself to put in our hope chests when I was twelve. Now it was a “hope not” chest. “Anyway, Vlad didn’t mention anything about me finding a new job, so I don’t think it’s in the stars right now.” I gave a laugh.

  “Excuse me? Who is Vlad?”

  “You know. Vlad Oleksei. The psychic? Well, the guy I work for who turns out to be a psychic? Come on, I told you about that!”

  “You did not! Vlad Oleksei is a psychic?” She leaned forward, as much as she could with that baby in her, wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

  “The other night when I was there, he pulled me into his office because he had something important to tell me. Or warn me about. Actually, I’m not totally sure because it ended up being pretty nebulous, whatever it was.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Tell me everything. Every single detail.”

  I told her as much as I could remember. It was the oddness of the whole thing that had stuck with me more than the details of his predictions. Like I said, I didn’t believe in that stuff.

  Penny, on the other hand, did. “You’re going to have a TV show. I know it. Now you have proof positive.”

  I laughed. “Okay, despite the fact that you know me, and you know I have never so much as liked having my picture taken, you’re going to twist the words of a psychic into meaning I’ll have a TV show rather than consider the possibility that the guy’s not right?”

  “Um, hello? He’s psychic.”

  “Well…”

  “How much does he charge?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t charge me anything. Why?” She’d always been into this kind of thing. “Don’t tell me you want a consultation.”

  “Actually, that could be interesting.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Good chance to test him on a basic boy-or-girl thing”—she indicated her belly—“but, no, I was asking because the really good ones either charge a fortune or nothing. None of this five-dollar psychic reading shit like they have in storefronts. They’re criminals. Somehow, it always ends up that you’re ‘cursed,’ and for a mere five hundred dollars, they can fix you—”

  I looked at her. “Are you serious?”

  “What?”

  “Have you paid some lying gypsy five hundred bucks to lift a curse from you?”

  “Of course not!” But I could tell from the way she said it that she had.

  “Good Lord, Penny, who raised you? Why don’t you have more sense than that?”

  “Can we get back to the point?” She shifted uneasily in her seat. “What else did Vlad say to you?”

  “Something about a woman around me being really angry.”

  “Marie Lemurra.”

  “I guess. If anyone, I mean. See, they say all this vague stuff, like the speeding ticket stuff, and then you make it fit.”

  “What speeding ticket stuff?”

  “He saw me talking to someone in uniform and warned me to drive safely so I don’t get a speeding ticket.” Funny enough, that I’d taken a little bit seriously. Not that I thought he was predicting anything real, but if it impacted my already-depleted bank account, I tended to be extra careful.

  “Maybe you’re going to date someone in uniform.”

  I drained my “wine” and set down the glass. “You are such a sucker.”

  She put down her glass, too, though it was still half full. “Say what you will, but you can’t prove he’s a fake any more than I can prove he’s real. All you can do is wait and see what happens.”

  “Right.”

  A quiet moment passed. Then she asked, “Gemma?”

  “Yeah?”

  She touched her hand to her belly, a gesture I later thought had to have been subconscious. “Do you ever think about … you know…” Her eyes met mine. “The baby?”

  I knew exactly what she meant. No need to play coy. “Yes. Not as much now as I used to, but, of course, there are times when I think about it more than others.” I gestured at her stomach and smiled. “Little reminders.”

  She looked concerned. “Is that hard for you?”

  “What?”

  “Me being pregnant, sitting here with me, waiting for the big moment. Is that all really melancholy for you?”

  What did she want? The truth or some vague reassurance that her happiness didn’t equal pain for me? “No,” I said. Then, when she looked at me skeptically, I added sincerely, “That was a long time ago. I will never forget and of course, seeing you pregnant reminds me of my own experience, but it doesn’t make me feel bad. In a way, it’s interesting to remember.”

  “Good.”

  “And I’m also glad I’m not pregnant now,” I added, then laughed.

  She laughed as well. “Right? This ninth-month business sucks.”

  “That I remember. The not being able to bend without this huge and seemingly permanent obstacle in your way.”

  “Not being able to see your toes.”

  “Sometimes not being able to feel your toes.”

  “And what about peeing every three minutes?”

  “I don’t miss that!”

  We laughed; then she sobered and asked, “Do you ever hope he or she will come looking for you?”

  I shook my head. “That is one thing I think I did right. For every other decision I have made and questioned, I made sure that this was a closed adoption.”

  “But surely there’s a way around that!”

  “No. And I don’t want there to be.”

  “You don’t want to meet her or him?” she asked incredulously.

  I sighed and looked at a woman who was completely immersed in motherhood right now, a woman who loved her children so much that she couldn’t imagine another woman loving her own children in a different way. Of course, she couldn’t imagine not wanting to meet her own child … because imagining that required her to put Charlotte’s face on the baby or to come nine months in her current pregnancy, set up the nursery and study sonogram pictures for hours, and then reject him.

  “I knew,” I said evenly, “that I would spend the rest of my life wondering if every child who looked even vaguely like Cal or me, and who appeared to be about the right age, was the One. And I have.” My throat tightened. I didn’t usually feel this emotional about this anymore. Something about looking at Penny, in her full bloom of pregnancy, reminded me of my last moments of thinking I was going to keep my baby before suddenly, and irrevocably, deciding on adoption. “If I had to wonder now if every knock at the door might be him or her, or any ring of the phone, or even every stu
pid spam e-mail that gets caught in the junk file might be an attempt at contact, I’d go mad.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I can imagine. I think I’m just being overly romantic or something, dreaming of the great reunion.”

  “It’s not romantic,” I said sternly. “It’s just wrong. I wanted the baby to have a life free of any possible eventual feeling of obligation to the woman who conceived her or him. Free of any stray idea that his or her mother—the adoptive mother—is anything less than a real mother. Whatever they say about his or her origins”—now tears burned in my eyes—“I never wanted there to be one iota of conflict because of the circumstances of the birth.”

  She was crying openly now. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental.”

  “You didn’t. I understand where you’re coming from. Totally.” I gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I certainly didn’t want her to feel bad. How could she understand? She was a grown woman with a good husband and a solid family. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be seventeen, pregnant, and terrified. “This isn’t a hot button for me anymore. Honest.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “I’m absolutely okay.”

  “Do you ever hear from Cal? Like on Facebook or anything?”

  It had been so long since I’d heard his name out loud that he’d started to feel like a dream, or something I’d made up. “Never. Once in a while he’ll show up as ‘someone you might know’ because we have mutual friends, but he never contacts me and I never contact him.”

  “Did you see his picture?”

  “Of course.” I laughed. “Don’t we all do that after a few drinks, Internet-stalk people we used to know? When they leave all their information open, it’s like Christmas morning.”

  “Right? So what does he look like now?”

  “He’s big. Kind of doughy. I wouldn’t have known it was him, to be honest.” Funny how time shakes things out. Once, I had thought I’d never get over him. That he was this gorgeous, hot Prince Charming, and no guy could ever compete with him.

  Now, he just looked like some guy who worked a job he hated in the accounting department of some large, anonymous company.