“Married to Meadow. Just up and left that wife when he got tired of her, like he did with Meadow twenty years later.”
“That’s horrible.” I can’t resist this personal thread. “What happened when Augustus left Meadow, do you know? They seemed to have such a good marriage.”
She nods, coughs for a minute or two, then: “He was a womanizer. That’s what they do, womanize. It’s like asking why a snake bites.”
It feels facile, but maybe it’s true.
“Augustus left his first wife for Meadow, after all. How can you trust a man who does that?”
I can’t think of a reply.
“Meadow favored Maya over her own daughter. She said she didn’t, but you could see it in the way she talked to them, the way she talked about them.” Her mouth twists. “I think she felt guilty for breaking up the marriage.”
We’ve wandered off track, and although the things I’m learning are great, I also want to get back to the main idea. “You have no idea where she came from? Or what her life was like?”
“Sorry.” She strokes her cat.
I chew my lip a little, wondering if Rory knows anything. If she’d talk to me.
“Thanks for your time,” I say, closing the notebook. “I don’t really have anything else.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Come back anytime.”
I stand, gathering my things. “I might take you up on that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Meadow
“What if we head over to Peaches and Pork this morning?” I say to Maya over breakfast. She’s devouring her eggs and toast and the grapefruit sections I dusted with turbinado sugar.
She dabs her mouth with one of the dozens of cloth napkins that populate the kitchen linen closet. Linens I bought, long ago. Her hair is pulled sharply back from her face, emphasizing her high cheekbones and the uptilt of her eyes. It’s a face I could stare at all day, as beautiful as a sunrise or a flower or a new puppy. “And do what?”
“Just take a look at things. The books, the way it runs. I’ll call Kara and ask her to meet us there, so she can walk us through everything.”
She opens her mouth, then sighs, her hands on her thighs. “I don’t want this,” she says, urgently. “I keep telling you. I don’t have any skill to run a restaurant and I need to focus on myself right now.”
“I get that.” I pause, pressing my lips together. “Maybe you just sell it, and that’s fine, too. It’s just that it’s a pretty big legacy and you actually did inherit.”
“I don’t know why he did this!” she cries, but even as she grows angry, she keeps eating the grapefruit sections.
Feeding people is my love language, and just now, it makes me feel like the mom of the year. She’s very thin, never so thin as she was when she first came to us after her mother died, but her wrists and elbows are prominent, and I can see her collarbone quite clearly. Her body is no doubt healing from all the trauma, the poisons she’s been pouring into herself for such a long time.
In my head, I hear Augustus say she is the granddaughter and the daughter of women who died of alcoholism.
“We’ve always known this was the plan—the restaurant and house to you, the farm and all that entails to Rory.”
She ducks her head. “Maybe I never thought he would die.”
A wave of electric sorrow moves through my body, burning my heart, my gut, my toes. “He loved you and he was devastated by everything that happened. He felt like he let you down.”
Her face goes hard. “Funny, because I feel like he did, too. At least we agree on something.” She forks up the last grapefruit piece and pushes the plate away. “It just doesn’t make any sense that he’d leave me the restaurant if he meant for it to continue. What was he even thinking?”
“I don’t think he intended for it to be a punishment.”
She looks up at me. “How can you still be so fucking loyal to him? How can you defend someone who hurt you so badly?”
It stings. “I’m not loyal to him. I’m loyal to you. I want you to have what’s yours.”
She drops her head into her palms, and I see her knuckles whiten as she squeezes her hair, a habit she’s had since childhood. She sits with her eyes closed tight for long moments, then sighs. “I know. Thank you.”
“So you want to go over there? Check things out, start trying to decide what’s next? At the very least, the crew wants to get back to work.”