* * *
The dinner party on St. Anne Island was moved out onto the veranda when a yellow jacket invaded the dining room.
The buzzing menace appeared out of nowhere and alighted on the rim of Maris’s as-yet-unused coffee cup. She sent up a faint squeal—ill-timed because it immediately followed Parker’s statement about sexual favors.
Remembering the instruction of a summer camp counselor many years before as to what one should do when stinging insects threatened, she froze in place.
Parker, seeing the real cause of her squeal, yelled, “Mike! Bug spray! Now!”
Mike charged out of the kitchen armed with a can of Black Flag. He aimed it with deadly accuracy, and the yellow jacket died an agonizing death, witnessed by the three who fanned chemical fumes away from their faces.
Parker ventured that the pest had been hiding in the flowers in the centerpiece. Mike insisted that if the magnolia blooms had had a yellow jacket in them when he brought them inside, he would have discovered it long before now.
Before a full-blown argument could ensue, Maris tactfully submitted that the insect could have gotten into the house any number of ways, and then suggested that they take their desserts onto the veranda, which should be comfortably cool if Mike were to turn on the ceiling fans that had been thoughtfully installed during the house’s refurbishing.
He served their pink sorbets in frosted compotes garnished with sprigs of mint. Maris insisted on pouring the coffee in the gracious manner that Maxine had taught her and accomplished serving them without one rattle of cup against saucer.
Parker frowned down into the bone china cup. “This thimble doesn’t hold enough coffee to taste. What’s wrong with an ordinary mug?”
Neither she nor Mike paid any attention to his grumbling. She rocked contentedly in the porch swing, listening to the night sounds that had been so foreign to her when she arrived and had now become so familiar.
“Penny for them,” Parker said.
“I was wondering if I’ll ever become reaccustomed to the sounds of traffic on Manhattan’s streets. I’ve gotten used to cicadas and bullfrogs.”
Mike gathered their empty dessert dishes onto a tray, then carried it into the house.
As soon as Mike was out of earshot, Parker asked, “Planning on leaving us anytime soon?”
The overhead fans blew gently on his hair. The light spilling through the front windows was cast onto only one side of his face, leaving the other side in shadow. Maris couldn’t make out his eyes at all, and what she could see of his expression was inscrutable.
“I’ll have to leave eventually,” she replied softly. “When your first draft of Envy is finished and you no longer need me around.”
“Two different things entirely, Maris.”
His stirring voice caused her tummy to go weightless again.
The front door squeaked with a homey, comforting sound as Mike rejoined them and refilled their coffee cups, giving Parker a mug this time. When he sat down in the wicker rocking chair, it creaked dangerously and they all laughed.
“Hope that relic holds up,” Parker remarked.
“Are you referring to me or the chair?” Mike asked good-naturedly.
“I don’t dare sit in it,” Maris said, patting her stomach. “Too much dinner.”
“It was a good meal, Mike,” Parker said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He idly stirred a sugar cube into his coffee. “What we need to round out the evening is a good story.”
“Hmm. If only we knew a good storyteller.” Being deliberately coy, Maris looked at Parker from beneath her eyelashes.
He grimaced and groaned, but he was pleased by their curiosity. Clasping his hands, he turned them palms out and stretched them above his head until his knuckles popped. “Okay, okay, I can’t fight both of you. Where’d you leave off?”
“They’d gone to the beach and killed a bottle of whisky,” Maris said, the scene still fresh in her mind.
“I still don’t understand why their language must be so vulgar.”
Parker frowned at Mike’s comment and motioned for Maris to continue.
“Todd accused Roark of being less than straightforward about the critiques he had received from the professor.”
“Have you read the part where Roark got pissed?” Parker asked.
“Yes, and his anger was justified. He’s never given Todd any reason to mistrust him.”
“Conversely, he’s been burned by Todd on numerous occasions,” Mike noted.
“Most recently with Mary Catherine. I think I need to add another scene with her,” Parker said, almost to himself. “Maybe she tells Roark that the child she miscarried was Todd’s.”
“I thought you’d decided to let the reader draw his own conclusion.”
“I had. But I might change my mind. This would strengthen the animosity building between Roark and Todd. What if…” he thought it over for a moment before continuing. “What if Todd drops Mary Catherine flat? Avoids her. Even complains to Roark that she’s a pest, a clinging vine, something like that.
“Meanwhile, she pours her heart out to Roark. She admits that it was Todd’s baby she lost, and that she has fallen in love with him, and so forth. Roark likes her as a friend, and he was there that night to clean up Todd’s mess, literally, so he’s really bothered by the way Todd treats her.”
“Does Todd ever know about the baby?” Maris asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Mary Catherine doesn’t want him to know, and Roark won’t betray her confidence by telling him.”
“I told you this guy had honor.”
“Not so fast,” Parker said quietly. “Didn’t it strike you that he protested too much when Todd accused him of being less than honest about Hadley’s critiques?”
Slowly, she nodded. “Now that I think about it… Have they been more favorable than he let on?”
Parker withdrew several sheets of folded paper from the breast pocket of his shirt. “I dashed this off just before I quit for the day.”
She reached for the pages, but Mike suggested that Parker read them out loud.
“Want me to?” Parker asked, addressing Maris.
“By all means. Please.”