Dolly All the Time(42)

And just like that, I am stumped. I don’t know how to answer this question. Of course I cook, my kid and I need to eat. “Yes,” I say finally. “Just meals.” What does that even mean?

Kendall laughs. “Oh, not snacks?”

“I just mean I make eggs and sandwiches and chicken. It’s not so much cooking as making something to eat. Nothing fancy.” I look up at Stewart, who is shooting Kendall a look. “I do like to bake when I have time.”

“On Sundays, she bakes,” Stewart says, deftly painting a picture in everyone’s mind of me pulling a fresh pie out of his Beacon Hill oven. “Dolly has a thirteen-year-old son,” he adds. It surprises me. It’s the biggest, most important fact of my life, but for some reason I thought we’d be deliberately not talking about it.

“Yes, Gus,” I say.

“For St. Augustine?” Victoria asks.

“More like the mouse from Cinderella,” I say.

Victoria nods but says nothing.

“Who makes the crabcakes at your dad’s store?” Henry asks, tucking into a second piece of chicken. “Victoria sometimes picks those up for lunch when she’s trying to butter me up.”

He gives her a smile, and she says, “It’s true.”

“My dad makes those, but it was his mother’s recipe. My grandmother was a great cook. She made everything. Always won the fall bake-off.”

“I think I remember her,” Henry says. “A redhead?”

“That was her,” I say, proud. “Her name was Maud.”

“Maud!” says Ellen. “The redhead. Did she sew?”

I guess we’re doing this. “Yes, she did your mother’s sewing. Always brought home a big bag of pretty things to be fixed.” I smile, closed mouth. I have placed myself firmly in the servant category.

“And she brought pies sometimes,” says Henry, as if he can smell one of those pies. “Blueberry and peach. Could that be right?”

“Definitely,” I say. “That was one of her specialties. She gave my dad her house on Goose Lane when he married my mom, and she moved out closer to Harvey. She grew blueberries in her yard there.”

The conversation is easier after this, not because we’re suddenly best friends but because I have almost nothing to hide. When our plates are cleared, Gladys comes out with coffee and chocolate-dipped biscotti. She pours mine first, and I thank her.

“Dolly doesn’t like coffee,” Stewart says, to my absolute horror. “Is there something else you’d like? Tea?”

“No, thank you, I’m fine,” I say, flustered. My face is hot sitting in this moment where I am potentially sending something back to the kitchen at Eight Oaks because it is not to my liking. I pick up my coffee and sip it black to prove how much I like it.

“Come on,” he says. “You’re a terrible faker. Tea? More wine?”

I give him that look that usually comes with a knuckle sandwich and say to Gladys, “May I please have tea?”

“That’s no problem at all,” she says. “What kind do you like?”

“Whatever you have would be lovely, thank you.” My skin is too tight on my body.

Stewart’s shaking his head, and I shoot him a few more daggers. “Just say it,” he says.

“If you have Earl Grey, that’s my favorite. But anything’s fine.”

“Earl Grey it is,” she says. “Lemon? Sugar?”

“Honey?” I ask. It hurts to get it out. The absolute arrogance of asking for honey.

Gladys laughs. “That’s no problem at all.”

Stewart leans in close and whispers, “You know it’s okay to say what you want. Doesn’t make you a bad person.” His whisper against my skin makes me shiver. I don’t think I could be completely honest with either of us about what I want in this moment.

“I say what I want plenty.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Okay, that’s not something I’ve had a lot of occasion to do.”

“I’m going to make you practice,” he says, a smile in his eyes. He turns back to his coffee and lets his words hang in the air.





Chapter 17





Kendall gets quiet after her third glass of wine, Ellen does not. She wants to know when anyone is going to bother opening the pool house this summer. She wants to know if Henry plans on having the south tennis court repaved or if he’ll just let that languish too.

Grant rattles the ice in his bourbon to free the last sip. “Put Stewart on that. Maybe he could hire a bunch of artisans from Europe to come hand-pave the whole thing.”

“Good one,” Stewart says.

Grant turns to me. “Preservation. That’s his thing. Nothing new and efficient, nothing that makes money. Stewart likes to stick to the vision.” He uses a single air quote, which seems lazy.

Ellen says, “Grant, you’re drunk.”

“Am I, Mother?” He rolls his eyes and says to me, “He’s going all in on some restoration project in San Francisco. We’ll ride his love of old crap all the way to the poorhouse.”

Stewart turns to me and says, “Grant’s not a huge fan of the Kramer deal. If it were up to him we’d tear down the Paul Revere House and put up a 7-Eleven.” I match his smile and rest my hand on his to show my loyalty. I am distracted by the way the skin on the back of his hand feels against my palm and the way he loops his pinkie over mine, like a tossed leg over a bedsheet in the morning.