Carrie, mystified, took the groceries into the kitchen and began to prep
for lunch.
When Stillwater came in later, she was turning truffle oil into a mist to give
a delicate, subtle flavor to thin diamonds of raw beef for the bottom layer of
a lunch bite. He tasted one, grunted something approving, and passed on before
she remembered the tuna sandwich. She went on to the Kingfisher Grill with the
scent of truffles in her hair. By the time she helped Ella replenish the
dessert tray and started cooking suppers, the homey smells of banana cream pie
and frying fish overpowered any lingering mementos from Stillwater’s kitchen.
But Ella kept giving her little fretful glances whenever she was between
whirlwinds of this or that.
“You’re getting too thin,” she commented as she finished making up half a
dozen salads and put them on a tray for Marjorie.
“Am I?” Carrie said, surprised.
“Have you been eating?”
“Of course. All the time.”
Ella gave her one of those narrow-eyed looks of pure perception, the last
thing Carrie wanted to inspire. “Are you working another job?”
“No,” Carrie said, shoveling halibut over to sizzle on its other side. She
felt cold, hollow with the lie; she peppered the fish, not meeting Ella’s
eyes. “I have been looking,” she temporized. “Just for a part-time,
something mindless and easy, to make a little more money. But I don’t want to
change my hours here. I’m fine with here.” She paused to test the silence,
the weight of Ella’s regard. “I’m worried about my father. We seem to be at
odds, these days. We can’t agree on things, and most of the time I never know
where he is. When I do see him, he doesn’t talk to me.”
“Ah.” Ella went back to bustling, spooning green beans, garlic mash on a
plate for Carrie’s halibut, then filling bowls, two chowders and a split pea
ham for one of Bek’s tables. “You want to leave him. Like your mother did.
No wonder he’s balking.”
Carrie laughed a little, inhaled a pepper flake, and turned away quickly to
cough. “Can you blame us? He doesn’t exactly make things easy.”
Bek backed into the door, arms lined with salad plates; he slid them into the
sink, picked up the two chowders, and vanished again.
“Busy tonight,” Ella commented. “Strangers all over town, I hear.” She
grated some carrot curls on top of the split pea bowl, and handed it to Bek as
he reappeared. Then she stopped moving again, standing in the middle of the
floor, staring down at the ancient linoleum as though it were expressing
something profound, or just revealing old memories.
“Nobody, living or dead, makes things easy even when you love them.
Especially then.”
Jayne whirled through the double doors like a dancer, her purple hair
swirling, her tray full of dirty dishes. “There’s a pair of black-haired,
blue-eyed twin knights out there I think we need to keep. I’ll take one and
you take the other, Carrie. They need a blue cheese dressing and a chowder.”
Ella reached for dishes; Jayne popped some corn muffins and butter into a
basket and danced out again.
Carrie checked the bar when she finished work but found no Merle there. She
went home and crept gratefully into bed. Sometime in the night, she woke up
feeling odd, somehow amiss, then realized it was nothing, only hunger. Zed
came in then from working the late shows at the theater, and she took in a
long breath of the smell of hot buttered popcorn on his skin as he rolled in
beside her. She went back to sleep and dreamed of Merle, or maybe she heard
him in her dreams, singing his song of love or loss or dire warning to the
night.
“You’re working too hard,” Zed told her sleepily the next morning, as they
drank coffee together in the farmhouse kitchen.
“I’m not the one who has to get up at the crack of dawn and walk Harlan
Jameson’s puppy.”
“That’s only for a week, while he’s out of town. I think you should quit
working for Stillwater. He hasn’t told you anything. All he’s done is make
you feel guilty about working for him. Your tightest pair of jeans is starting
to sag on you. You’re getting some killer cheekbones, but I don’t think all
this is good for you.”
“I’m fine,” Carrie said without really listening. “You should eat
something. I could scramble some eggs.”
“There are no eggs. I looked. There’s no bread for toast.”
“Milk and cereal?”
“There’s a wilted stalk of celery and a jar of mustard.”
“Seriously?” Carrie put her cup down, went to stick her head in the fridge.
“Well, where did— Who’s been eating—” She opened the freezer. “There’s
ice cream. No. Frozen yogurt.” She stared at it, and felt something dark,
constricting, ease around her thoughts, her heart. “He hates frozen yogurt.
He says it’s unnatural.”
“Who?”
She looked at him, smiling. “My father. He’s been here laying waste to the
kitchen.”