“Should I be thankful that might be better than I could’ve done, or just a little pissed off?”
She decided she could be both, and went in to put away the groceries before somebody else did it for her.
“You know,” she said to the dog, who was busy gnawing on his new chew bone, “I was going to hire a cleaning service. But somebody else already keeps it all cleaned and polished.”
She decided to work through the evening, so had pizza at her desk with the fire she hadn’t lit crackling. She completed the proposal for the Doyles, worked up another for the florists.
As an experiment, she deliberately left her plate and empty glass behind when she shut down for the night.
A light snow fell as she walked the dog. He amused her by leaping at it, turning in his happy circles. When she rounded back, she noted the lamp glowed against the glass in her bedroom.
No doubt the fire would glow as well, the bed turned down. No light in that third-floor room, but she wondered if the glass held darker there than all the other windows.
Back inside, she walked up, turned first to the library.
No plate, no glass on the desk.
And in her bedroom, a turned down bed, a low fire, and the quiet light to guide her way.
* * *
She planned out her dinner party day not like a general prepping for battle but like a lowly recruit who’d been inexplicably field promoted.
Stage one, marinate the giant slab of cow, then say a desperate prayer she hadn’t screwed that up.
Stage two, work until noon, and pretend she had no other tasks.
Stage three, put on an apron, line up all the ingredients, and face the music. Literally, as her tablet played Lil Wayne’s “No Worries.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Twenty minutes later, she FaceTimed Cleo.
“Hey, hi!”
“Can you take a break?”
“Sure. Is everything all right?”
“I’m cooking. I’m afraid. Mom said to brown the hell out of the roast, so I did. Does this look right?”
She turned the screen so it showed the roast resting on a platter.
“I guess. This is above my pay grade. No one would pay me to cook, so it’s definitely above my pay grade, but it looks right. Is it done? This early?”
“No, no, I’m peeling potatoes and carrots, and I’ve got to do celery and onions. I need moral support.”
“I’m here for that.”
“Then talk to me. How’s the purging and packing going?”
“Purging’s harder than I thought. Not the big stuff, but all my pretty little things. I don’t want to part with my pretty little things.”
“Then don’t. We’ve got the room.”
“I’m boxing some up to send with Winter next weekend. And I’m having a yard sale—your mom’s lending me her yard—for the big stuff. Son, you look stressed.”
“I’m cooking!” She said it as if she were hacking her way through a jungle full of sound and snakes.
“I have to do all these vegetables, then sort of stir them around in the meat juices. Herbs! I need to do the herbs. I’m supposed to scrape up all the brown stuff. What does that mean? Look at the size of this pot.”
She turned the screen again, then attacked the pot with a wooden spoon. “Oh! There is brown stuff. Look at that!”
“Magic. Listen, everything’s smooth here. Jess is taking over the apartment.”
“Jess and Ryan? Your place is a lot smaller than theirs.”
“They broke up. Bad breakup, and she’s moving on.”
Jess and Ryan, and Boston in general, seemed a world away.
“When did that happen?”
“About three weeks ago, and he’s already seeing someone else. Since she moved in with him, she moved out. And she’s already moved some of her things in here. Trust me, I’m ready to get out. Send vibes for the yard sale. If it works, I can pack up the rest in two, maybe three days. And then I’m heading to Maine. Where’s our puppy?”
Sonya stopped long enough to hold the screen down. Yoda angled his head back and forth as Cleo cooed at him.
“I need to tell you about the room on the third floor. The Gold Room. I need to tell you before you do that yard sale and pack the rest.”
“What about it?”
Sonya started at the beginning as she quartered potatoes, chopped herbs.
“Sonya, why didn’t you call me?”
“Now you sound like Trey.”
“You should have called him. He’s a lot closer than I am. Just … stay away from that room.”