“Of course she has to be involved,” Stella called from the scullery. She’d reached behind the bottles of pond water for the oldest cookbook in the house, the one that had belonged to Elisabeth Sparrow, and was now thumbing through the grainy pages stained with suet and jam. “Gran and I are making dessert. I found it!” Stella declared as she returned to the kitchen. “Bird’s-nest pudding. Isn’t that perfect?”
“Perfectly awful,” Elinor replied.
“Actually, I have to agree with your grandmother.” A shock for them both, a first, perhaps. All the same, Jenny was pleased by Stella’s interest. Anything other than stomping out of the room was a definite movement forward. Here they were, three women from the same family in one kitchen, and trouble had managed to stay away, at least so far.
“It’s custard poured into apples.” Stella tied back her hair and set to work coring the apples. “We can make vanilla or butterscotch. Elisabeth preferred vanilla,” Stella informed her grandmother, whom she’d set to work beating eggs. “I wish Juliet could see me now. She wouldn’t believe I could cook.”
“Juliet?” Jenny’s radar went up.
“My best friend,” Stella reminded her mother. “Ever hear of her?”
“Well, well,” Elinor said, not exactly pleased by the obvious rift, but glad to see a chink in Jenny’s alleged perfection, grateful for human nature. “So you don’t know her best friend.”
“I know her. I just don’t think Juliet is the right sort of person for Stella to spend time with.”
“At least Juliet’s mother went to college. She went to Smith. She didn’t give up her whole future to support some man’s education.”
“That man was your father. And are you comparing me to the woman who poisoned her husband? You don’t have to go to Smith to do that.”
Elinor noticed that the custard was cooking too fast on the back burner of the stove, boiling over, in fact. In no time, the filling for the bird’s nest would be singed, a faint rubbery skin formed at its edges.
“Well, now I have a parent who’s been in jail, too. Does that make my friendship with Juliet all right, Mother? Is she good enough for me now?”
“You take everything I say and turn it around.”
“I don’t need to! You turn it around yourself! You always think you’re so damned right!”
“Well, I am about some things! Not that you can ever admit it!”
They faced each other across the table, the cored apples turning brown between them, the leeks cut to pieces, the pudding boiling over.
“Everything was perfect until you got here,” Stella declared. “Everything was absolutely fine.”
“This is clearly none of my business, but the pudding is on fire,” Elinor announced.
Stella grabbed a tea towel and ran to lift the heavy pan from the flame. In the old cookbook, Elisabeth Sparrow had recommended stirring for fifteen minutes, but this pudding was ruined, scorched beyond use.
Stella threw up her hands and ran outside, so it was Elinor who placed the pan in the sink and ran the cold water. Billows of steam rose and fogged up the kitchen window. In the reflection of the old green glass, thick as a bottle, Elinor could see that Jenny had sunk into a chair, her head in her hands. The chopped leeks and onions made the room smell like spring, a sweet, rainy scent. Elinor stayed where she was, by the soapstone sink. A long time ago she had known how to comfort someone, she had rocked her baby in her arms, but she had lost the knack for consolation. She really hadn’t a clue of what to do next.
“Don’t worry about the pudding,” Elinor said briskly as she scoured the burned pan. “Everyone in town knows Matt Avery doesn’t eat desserts. He’s a bread-and-butter man.”
“He used to love sundaes. I guess he gave them up.” Jenny blew her nose on a paper towel. “Good old easygoing Matt.”
“Somebody had to be.”
To Elinor’s surprise, Jenny laughed. Elinor felt a tinge of pride at having cheered her daughter when Jenny went back to fixing the meal; at least her daughter had the ability to get on with things, to pick up the pieces, to adhere to the task at hand. By the time Matt’s truck pulled up, the casserole was browning in the oven, the rice was made, the salad was on the table.
Matt had brought along a bottle of wine and some caraway cakes, the kind his mother had liked for him to pick up at Hull’s Tea House. On the porch, Argus woofed at him and ambled over, back legs dragging due to arthritis.