Dolly All the Time(91)

“What?” He’s been doing so well, but I haven’t had him back to the doctor in eight months. My back goes rigid at the thought that he’s having delusions again.

“Chocolate, with white icing. What are those called?”

“Who had cookies?”

“Stewart. Oh, never mind.” Christopher pops another butterscotch into his mouth and presses his lips together tight.

“You went on the boat with Stewart today? Come on, buddy, tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s a surprise. You’ll find out. And I’m not going to tell you because he said I couldn’t.”

“And Dad and Gus know too?”

“Yes, he asked our permission.”

Oh my God.

“For what?” I ask.

“I promised not to tell. He’s just going to ask you something. No big deal, sis.” He bumps me with his shoulder just like any brother would do. I rest my head on his shoulder and let the life that Christopher might have had go. This is just right, the way things are now.

“Did everyone say yes?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

Twenty minutes later, I’m spooning potato salad onto my mom’s chipped ivy platter when Stewart walks through the kitchen door. He’s gotten a little sun on his face since I snuck out of Eight Oaks this morning. He’s holding a bouquet of spray roses and snapdragons from the Eight Oaks garden, and he’s smiling at me like he has a secret. And I’m smiling back like I hope he does.

“Those are beautiful,” I say. “Why are you sunburned?”

“Am I?”

“You are,” I say.

“I did a bunch of stuff today. Inside, outside.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Work stuff. Planning.”

“What are you planning?” I ask.

He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “A really happy life,” he says. “I think I’ve got it figured out.” And he kisses me there by the platter my mother thought might bring her a better life.

“Okay,” I say. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know.” I smile and kiss him again. This is forever, I was right about it all along.

“You cannot help,” he says. “Your job is to act surprised, like you never saw it coming.”

I laugh. “Trust me, Stewart, I never saw any of this coming.”



* * *





The next morning Naomi sends an all-caps crisis text that the corner store is out of basil and she’s making pesto. I bike to Eight Oaks to pick some—I’ve been granted full access to all produce and flowers—and stop at the archway, teeming with tomatoes. I pop one into my mouth and taste that memory, two years ago, on the precipice of falling for Stewart. I’m wiping tomato juice from my chin when I see him sitting there on the herb bed.

“Stewart!” I say, and run over to him. He pulls me onto his lap and kisses me. It hits me like a ghost pepper all over again, still. “What are you doing here?” I look at the surrounding vegetable garden and I feel it all again. The total saturation of my senses in smell and color.

“I love you,” he says.

I smile and say, “I love you too,” just as my phone trills with the first few notes of the song “Brick House.”

“I was going somewhere with that,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair as I answer.

“Brick Fish Express, you’re on a recorded line, how can I help you?” I look into his eyes as the caller tells me that her grocery store doesn’t carry the fresh thyme called for on the recipe card we included with her striped bass. Stewart takes my hand and silently connects us—hands, minds, hearts.

“Yes, dried thyme is perfectly fine, just use a little extra. And get the grill really hot first,” I tell the customer as Stewart traces my palm with his fingers, just the way I did for him that evening. He’s in the blue shirt I modeled my duvet after, even before I could admit to myself that I wanted to be surrounded by him forever. Our eyes meet, and this is forever. I can feel it. Forever is happening right now inside this garden, sweet notes of basil mixing with the earthy scent of thyme. Stewart traces my ring finger, over and over, holding my eyes until I realize what’s happening. “Dried thyme. Rosemary. Anything’s fine. I have to go.” I put my phone down and it drops into the dirt. I don’t move. “Sorry, I—” I take both of his hands in mine. “What’s happening here?”

Stewart smiles that smile that seemed rusty when I met him. It’s always at the ready now. More often than not, he looks at me like he just got the best news, like he finally bought Fenway Park. “What are you smiling about?” I ask now, like I always do.

“You,” he says, like he always does. “So I was saying I love you. And then your phone rang.”

“Yes, sorry about that.”

“And then I had a lot of other stuff I was going to say. I really prepared.” He looks down at our entwined hands and gives them a squeeze. “It was about how you changed my life and somehow you changed my family. How even my dad seems lighter every time you walk into a room.”

“That’s good stuff,” I say, smiling. I really have folded into the Whitfield family like meringue into cake batter. Last night I let Busy pluck my eyebrows and then prepped a week’s worth of piecrusts in the kitchen with Gladys.