Suddenly, Bonnie felt terribly lonely. She looked around the kitchen Ken, his father, and his uncle had built over forty years ago. She wondered if she had really considered what it would mean to sell this place to a stranger, the home in which she and Ken had lived so happily for so long, raising a daughter, hosting meals for family and friends, building snowmen in the front yard each winter, welcoming trick-or-treaters at Halloween with carved jack-o’-lanterns, greeting the first signs of spring with the blooming of the two big forsythia bushes Ken tended so carefully.
Bonnie sighed again, this time more deeply. So much was changing and so quickly. The last thing any of the family needed was this silly dinner party of Carol’s. But Bonnie had promised Judith she would be there, and Bonnie tried very hard never to break a promise.
She would be there.
Chapter 42
Carol had dressed as she would for any dinner party, whether one she gave or one she attended, not in her very finest but in silk separates. Her family, however, seemed to have dressed as if for a casual outing to the mall. Bonnie was wearing sweat pants and an oversize T-shirt. Scott was in a pair of heavy jeans and a plaid shirt. Carol had rarely seen him wear anything else.
Julie looked terrible. Her expression was pained. Her hair looked lank and maybe even unwashed. No, things were not going well for Julie.
As for Nicola . . . It saddened Carol to see her daughter wearing absolutely no bit of adornment or color. Tan pants. A gray T-shirt. Beige sneakers. Was she really such a serious person through and through? As a little girl, Nicola had enjoyed wearing lots of jewelry and wild colors. What had happened to her in Maine? Had she grown into her true self or into someone Bonnie had made her, decidedly not-Carol? There were so many questions.
At least Judith showed a sense of style. A navy-blue and Kelly-green scarf tied jauntily around her neck elevated an otherwise basic outfit of navy slacks and a white blouse. A pair of gold hoops in her ears and a chunky gold ring on the middle finger of her right hand added elegance.
As for Sophie, she was dressed as so many of the teen girls Carol had spotted in Yorktide were dressed. In as little material as was commensurate with public decency. Her shorts were too short; her T-shirt cut too low; her flip-flops were dirty. “I wouldn’t have recognized you,” Carol said, hiding her disapproval of her niece’s appearance. “It’s been so long.”
“And whose fault is that?” Bonnie snapped.
Carol laughed a practiced social laugh. “Entirely mine. May I offer anyone a cocktail?” she asked.
“I’ll have a vodka tonic, no fruit, please,” Judith said briskly, stepping away from the others who were grouped together awkwardly.
“Ken and I are not big drinkers,” Bonnie said. “I mean, he wasn’t one. Nor am I.”
“You don’t have to be a big drinker to enjoy a cocktail on occasion,” Carol said mildly. “But there’s soda water if you prefer. Scott?”
Scott looked generally embarrassed, but he had nerve enough to ask for a scotch. Carol poured him the drink. Sophie reached for a can of soda. Carol looked to Nicola, who shook her head, then to Julie, who whispered, “No,” and then poured her own drink.
“To family,” she said brightly.
“To family,” Judith echoed.
Scott raised his glass, glanced nervously at his wife, and took a sip. No one else seconded the toast.
“Where are you sleeping?” Bonnie asked suddenly.
“In the master bedroom,” Carol replied. “My old bedroom is so small and the closet is insanely shallow. I’d forgotten about that. I don’t know how you ever managed to get renters with all the quirks and inconveniences of this old place.”
“Location, location, location,” Judith said. “If it’s close to the water, it’s a gold mine.”
“Well, that may be, but one of the first things I’m going to do is put in air conditioning, at least in the bedrooms.”
“Ferndean doesn’t need air conditioning,” Bonnie said.
Carol smiled. “Well, I do and as I’m the one who’s going to be living here . . .”
Bonnie’s face grew red and she turned away.
“A bit less presuming, Carol,” Judith advised quietly. “Nothing is set in stone yet.”
Carol nodded. Judith was right. It was just that Bonnie made her so angry sometimes.
“Where’s the green vase that sits here?” Bonnie was pointing to an occasional table with a white marble top.
“That hideous thing?” Carol said with a laugh. “I put it in the hall closet. I should probably have just thrown it out.”
“You can’t throw it out!” Bonnie cried. “It belonged to our grandmother!”
“That might be,” Carol said, “but it’s worth about two dollars at a garage sale.”
“It’s a priceless heirloom,” Bonnie insisted. “It’s been in the family for years and years!”
Carol sighed. “Fine, then take it home with you.”
“It belongs here, in Ferndean House, where it’s always been.” Bonnie’s voice was now tremulous and Carol was sure her sister was about to burst into tears.
Judith cleared her throat meaningfully. “When do we eat? I for one am starved.”
“The food is already on the table,” Carol said, gesturing for the others to follow her to the dining room. Once there she began to take the covers off the silver-toned chaffing dishes.
“Did you do all this?” Sophie asked. Carol thought she sounded impressed.
“The caterer provided everything,” Carol told her. “I’m afraid I’m out of practice.”
She took the seat at the head of the table, where Ronald Ascher used to sit. Bonnie hurried to take Shirley Ascher’s seat at the other end of the table. Julie sat at her mother’s right side; Sophie sat on Bonnie’s left. Scott took the empty chair between Sophie and Carol. To Carol’s other side sat Judith and then Nicola, next to her cousin, Julie.
“There’s wine on the table,” Carol said. “And water. Help yourselves. Bon appetite.”
The meal consisted of roast beef with gravy, scalloped potatoes, green beans, rolls, and for dessert, a chocolate torte. Judith patted her stomach before reaching for the potatoes. “Now this is the kind of spread I could get used to,” she declared. “Stick to your ribs stuff.”
“A bit heavy for summer,” Nicola commented, taking one thin slice of beef.
Carol smiled at her daughter. “My appetite has never been affected by the weather,” she said. And since when had her daughter’s?
“These rolls are awesome,” Scott commented. “Aren’t they, Julie?”
There were two rolls on Julie’s plate and she was busily chewing a piece of a third. She seemed startled by her husband’s question—or maybe by his addressing a question to her directly—and hastily swallowed. She did not reply.
Bonnie, Carol noticed, had put a bit of everything on her plate, not too much and not too little. That was Bonnie. A carefully middle-of-the-road person. Not one prone to excess or to its opposite. Carol wondered if her sister would help herself to seconds of anything. Maybe to the cake. Bonnie had had a sweet tooth as a child. Did she still?
The meal progressed. Carol’s sense of failure and frustration grew.
Sophie was acting the typically bored teenager, annoyed beyond measure with the dull adults with whom she was forced to spend the evening, bending her head over her phone whenever she thought no one was looking, occasionally sighing but otherwise silent.
Julie was strenuously avoiding looking directly at Scott. For his part, Scott looked miserable, the cheating husband among his wife’s female relatives. Carol had nothing personal against him and as he was a guest, she treated him politely, asking if he would like more scalloped potatoes and inquiring as to his job. He said it was fine.
Just when Carol was tempted to do something drastic to inject some life into the party, her sister piped up.
“I ran into Linda Hopkins this morning,” Bonnie said. Carol had no idea who this Lind
a Hopkins was. “It’s been a very difficult pregnancy for her. Just last week her husband had to rush her to the emergency room because—”
“We should consider Scott before embarking on a topic like pregnancy woes,” Judith interrupted, for which Carol was glad. “His being the only man among women.”
“That’s how he likes it,” Sophie muttered. Though she sat only inches from her father, the essential distance between them seemed a gaping void. Carol was sure she was not the only one to notice this.
Julie picked up her glass of water and gulped down enough to make her sputter and cough.
“Someone tell me what’s going on in Yorktide politics,” Carol said brightly.
This topic seemed to energize the guests gathered around the table. Even Julie offered a brief remark regarding a proposed change in parking laws. Aside from Carol, who largely listened, only Sophie had nothing to say.
When everyone’s knives and forks were silent, Carol rose and began to clear. Bonnie insisted on helping. Carol did not protest. When the empty plates had been stacked on the kitchen counter, Carol shooed her sister back to the dining room while she took the cake from its box and placed it on a footed stand she had found in one of the cabinets. It was a rather attractive cake stand; Carol thought she would keep it, though much of the contents of the kitchen would see its way to the dump. Unless, of course, Bonnie thought it all precious heirlooms and carried it off to her own home.
“I see you still have a sweet tooth,” Carol noted when the cake had been cut and Bonnie picked up her fork.
“And?” Bonnie snapped.
“And nothing. I hope you enjoy the dessert.”
“I’m sure it will be fine.” Bonnie took a bite, then another, and placed her fork on the edge of her plate.
Carol hid a smile. Fine. It didn’t bother her one bit if Bonnie felt the need to deprive herself of a delicious dessert in an effort to insult her sister. If that, indeed, was what she was doing. Maybe, Carol thought, she was simply no longer hungry.
Nicola had declined a piece and Carol wondered if by refusing the cake, Nicola, too, was making a statement, refusing her mother’s efforts at peace and reconciliation.
When was a piece of cake just a piece of cake?
“This is killer,” Judith pronounced, scraping the last of the chocolate from her plate. Sophie nodded and reached for the knife to cut herself another piece.
“Would you cut me another slice, too?” Scott asked his daughter.
Sophie ignored him.
No one said a word about the incident. Carol wondered if Julie had even noticed; she was determinedly chewing, her eyes fixed on her plate.
The evening wound down quickly after the cake had been eaten and coffee drunk. Thanks were murmured and within a very few minutes Julie, Scott, and Sophie were getting into their car; Nicola was opening the passenger side door of her car for Bonnie; and Judith was climbing into her vehicle.
When the last of her family had disappeared down the drive, Carol closed the front door firmly and sighed. What a disaster. She had badly miscalculated the possibility of a successful gathering.
Talk about drama, and not even all that interesting drama. Okay, so Scott had cheated on his wife. That was bad, but there was plenty worse he could have done. And Bonnie had been so hypersensitive, taking offense at every innocent comment Carol made. And Sophie, the troubled teen. Well, that was no fault of her own. As for Nicola and her grim determination not to offer her mother a kind word, let alone a smile . . .
Well, Carol was sensitive to her daughter’s situation even if no one else thought her so.
At least Judith had behaved well. Judith had always had a steady nature; maybe it was because she was an only child and hadn’t had to contend with an irrational sibling.
Suddenly, Carol’s eye caught sight of the hideous green vase on the occasional table. It was back. Someone—Bonnie? Nicola?—had retrieved it from the hall closet and reinstated it where, according to her sister, it belonged.
The nerve, Carol thought, her pulse quickening. This was her home—or soon to be—and it was her right to decide what she did and did not want on display. When had she—Bonnie or Nicola—done it? When Carol had gone to the bathroom? Had everyone witnessed this act of blatant disrespect?
And then the craziness of it all struck her and she laughed out loud. Fine. She would leave the thing where it was. For now.
Carol looked at the mess that remained after the meal, shrugged, and went upstairs to the master bedroom. There was nothing that couldn’t wait until morning and she was suddenly very, very tired.
Chapter 43
Nicola couldn’t sleep.
Her closet-size bedroom was hot. The fan was running at its highest speed, but the air in the apartment was so close the fan had little effect. She considered moving into the living room, but the couch was the least comfortable surface in the apartment. Better to stay where she was and stew.
The audacity of her mother, hosting a dinner at Ferndean, treating the house like it was already her own! Only Judith seemed to have enjoyed herself, but in a way she was an outsider. She had no personal stake in Ferndean House. It could be argued that Nicola and Julie didn’t, either, but it was their mothers who were battling for sole ownership. They were too close to the situation not to feel intimately involved. That both younger women were on Bonnie’s side in the war was irrelevant.
Nicola kicked off the sheets. Her stomach grumbled. She should have eaten more at dinner. Pride and a generalized antagonistic attitude had gotten in the way of common sense and politeness. What was wrong with her?
Her mother was what was wrong with her. Her mother being back in Yorktide was forcing Nicola to . . .
Nicola sighed. That was wrong. No one was forcing her to act badly, to choose anger over forgiveness. She had sole responsibility for thinking and acting as she was, which was a little too much like she had been acting in the year before she had been sent to Maine to live with her aunt and uncle. Bad-tempered. Self-focused. Careless.
With another sigh, Nicola sat up and left the miniscule bedroom. There was some leftover Chinese takeout in the fridge.
Nicola sat at her little table and hungrily consumed the cold sesame noodles. And for the first time in a long time, she realized that she felt lonely.
Really lonely.
Chapter 44
Julie was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Scott might be on the couch in the living room or in the den or in the garage, which doubled as his workshop. There was a lawn chair in there; it couldn’t be comfortable, but Julie didn’t care about her husband’s comfort.
Not much.
What a trial the evening had been! Julie had felt so uncomfortable in the presence of her aunt, who had been dressed so nicely, even elegantly, though Carol had been nothing but polite to her. To everyone, really.
No, Carol had not been the problem, at least not for Julie.
It had cost her greatly not to look directly at Scott. Ignoring someone wasn’t natural. And it had felt childish, but Julie had been powerless to turn in Scott’s direction even once, powerless to acknowledge his presence. What sort of example her behavior was setting for Sophie she could only imagine.
A bad example. Sophie had been downright rude to her father. And Bonnie hadn’t been a shining example of good behavior, either.
Julie rubbed her forehead. She had such pleasant memories of family meals at Ferndean. What a difference between the past and the present! What an unhappy difference.
Julie stretched her left arm across the bed. No one was there. But she knew that.
She realized that she felt lonely. Relieved, as well, that Scott wasn’t breathing beside her.
But lonely.
Chapter 45
Bonnie lay on her side of the bed—she still thought of the right side as hers and the other as belonging to Ken—and stared up into the darkness. The entire evening had been a disaster. She never should have allowed Judith to convince her that
a family dinner hosted by Carol Ascher would be a good idea. Carol hadn’t even prepared the food herself! Okay, it had been delicious, especially the cake, but still. How lazy did a person have to be?
And that remark Sophie had made, the one about her father preferring the company of women. Bonnie had been on the point of scolding her granddaughter for speaking disrespectfully, but she had caught herself. She might only make a bad situation worse by calling attention to Sophie’s rudeness.
Bonnie sighed and glanced into the darkness to her left. If only Ken had been with them. He had been a uniting presence, able to engage the shyest person in a pleasant exchange, to calm the conversational bully, to deter a controversial turn in the talk by introducing a neutral but interesting topic.
And the nerve of Carol to have hidden the green vase! Their mother had loved that vase; it was a treasured piece of family history. Well, Bonnie had solved that little problem, at least for the moment, but if she found that Carol had made the vase disappear again she would simply take it away with her for safekeeping. And when Carol was gone back to New York—and she had to go!—Bonnie would return to vase to its rightful place.
Poor Julie. Bonnie sighed. She had hardly uttered a word the entire evening. And not once had she looked at her husband, who, on the other hand, Bonnie had caught staring rather forlornly at his wife. His attitude had been a mix of embarrassment and shame that had made Bonnie—and no doubt the others, too—very uncomfortable. Well, Scott should be embarrassed and ashamed, but if something didn’t change between Scott and Julie soon it would be impossible to be around the two of them together ever again. Julie should . . . But what should Julie do? Forgive her cheating husband? Throw him out?
Bonnie wanted to see Julie smile, to hear her laugh, to watch her spontaneously wrap Sophie in a hug, or to kiss her husband’s cheek. But none of that was going to happen until Julie’s mood lifted. It was all too close to the depression Julie had suffered after Sophie’s birth. But then she had gotten professional help.
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