*
Lisette loved the flavors of old, simple recipes, ones made so often that their edges were worn down and they tasted soft and sure of themselves. They made her think of her grand-mère, who had lost her husband and two of her sons in the war. She had cried every day for a year, walking the same stretch of road from her home to the train station, waiting for them to come back. Her tears fell as black stones to the ground, and to this day those stones lodged themselves in car tires and let all the air out slowly in a wail. People called it Sorrow Road. Lisette had very few memories of her grand-mère and her house in the country. She remembered the bread she had baked there in a sooty black stove. And she remembered her grand-mère once holding out her spotted, papery fingers and telling Lisette that old hands made the best food. “Old hands can hold memories of good things,” she had said.
That made Lisette look at her hands as she stood there at Jack’s door that next morning, holding a tray of food.
She had old hands now. Sometimes it came as such a surprise. Interacting with Luc could make her believe she was so much younger sometimes.
Jack opened the door. He was wearing khaki pants and a pink polo shirt with the name of a symphony on it. On anyone else, it would have looked prissy or pretentious. On Jack it just seemed sincere. She had not seen him jog around the lawn that morning, so she had decided to bring him breakfast. “Lisette? Is this for me? Come in.”
She walked in. She had been in this cabin many times, just never when Jack had been occupying it. Sometimes, when he left for the season, she would help Eby clean the cabin, and she would always look for things he left behind. But he was so meticulous that he never forgot anything. There were signs of his life that drew her eye now, making her curious. There was a photo of him and his three brothers on the kitchen counter, next to several bottles of vitamins. An iPhone was on the coffee table, with a ladies handkerchief next to it.
“That’s Selma’s,” Jack said, when he noticed Lisette looking at it. “Everyone ate in my cabin last night.”
Lisette nodded as she set the tray down on the table. Jack walked over to her, limping slightly. “Thank you for this, but it wasn’t necessary. I could have walked to the main house. I decided to forgo my morning jog, though.”
Lisette’s eyes went to his wrapped ankle.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Just a mild sprain. Trust me. I spend a great deal of time with feet.”
She felt uncomfortable, like she had just revealed more about her feelings than she had wanted to, like last night, when she had run back into the house. She had gone back to her room and then realized her bra could be seen through her buttonholes. She had touched those buttonholes worriedly, wondering if anyone had seen.
“Will you sit with me?” Jack asked, pulling out a chair for her.
She nodded and sat, though she did not know why. She had not intended to stay.
Jack sat beside her and poured coffee. He did not feel the need to fill her silence with talk. She had always liked that about him. Her silence made most people nervous, but it seemed to comfort him. Perhaps that was why she liked him so much. She had never been a comfort to anyone but Eby. And that had been a long time ago.
The first time she had set eyes on Jack, he had been in his late twenties and he had been sitting in the dining room with an older couple. The camp had been full in the summers back then, and she and Eby had had to replenish the breakfast buffet several times every morning. At one point, they had even had to hire a waitress to help. Lisette remembered that morning in vivid detail. Her hair had still been long, and it had been braided. Her dress had been yellow. She had been carrying a plate of chive biscuits. She had entered the dining room and had been walking to the buffet table when she had seen him. Startled, she had stopped. For one fleeting moment, she had thought it was Luc. He had the same hair, the same nose. Only he’d been dressed in different clothing. It had made her smile, thinking Luc had moved out of the kitchen, that he had changed clothes and had decided to join the living. But then Jack had looked up at her, and she had seen the differences. He was not Luc. For some reason, the realization had been devastating. It had been at a time in her life when she had begun to feel like she had wanted to move forward. She had not missed breaking hearts, but she had missed feeling loved by a man, the weight of his body, the smell of his skin. And every time she had seen children at the camp, she had felt her heart squeeze a little, telling her it was still there, that it was possible to love again.
But it was not to be. She had walked back into the kitchen and had seen Luc there in his chair, looking at her with such sympathy. He was not going to move on until she let go of him, of her guilt. And that was one thing she could not do. If she lost that, she would lose the thread that had sewn her new life together. She would become that careless, cruel person she had been before.
The feeling of wanting to move on had not lasted long anyway. She had still been young. The older she got, the less she wanted it.
Still, she looked forward to seeing Jack every summer. She liked seeing him grow older. She kept waiting for him to bring a wife. For there to be children. Grandchildren. But he remained single, and she grew close to him. She had not wanted to, but it had happened anyway. Had she been kinder to Luc, he would have grown into a Jack. He would have been quiet and kind and successful.
“What will you do when Eby sells?” Jack suddenly asked, as if he had been carrying on a conversation with her in his head and he was now letting her in on it. “Where will you go?”
Lisette lifted the notebook from around her neck and wrote, Nowhere. I will stay here.
He read that and nodded, as if it was the answer he had been expecting. He sat back and looked into his coffee, as if there were secrets there. More silence.
Lisette pointed to the eggs on the plate and mouthed the word Eat.
“Oh, right. Of course.” He set his cup aside so quickly that the coffee sloshed over the rim onto the table.
With a smile, she handed him his fork, then picked up his napkin and cleaned up the coffee while he ate.
He kept sneaking glances at her. Finally, his eyes on his plate, he asked so sincerely that it felt like a lullaby, “Will you have dinner with me one night? Maybe after the party? I know you have a lot of work to do.”
He had his fork suspended in midair, waiting for her reply. She paused, then wrote something on her pad. She reached over and showed it to him. I will break your heart.
He put down his fork and made a face. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Never dinner.” He turned to her and said, “How about lunch?”
There was a sense of tightness in the room now, filling the space. Attraction was like that. It filled. It poured into you like batter into a pan, sticking to the sides. Lisette stood abruptly.
“Lisette?” Jack called as she ran out, knowing he could not chase her. She tripped and fell on her hands just as she reached the end of the path.
She got up quickly and went to the kitchen through the back of the house so no one would see the great spectacle she was making of herself, running away from the sweetest man on the planet because she thought her presence might poison him somehow, like it had done with Luc. Luc was leaning back in the chair when she entered. He watched with great interest as she angrily scrubbed her hands at the sink. He was smiling at her, as if he knew what had just happened. Smiling as if it made him happy.