Leaves (7 page)

“In other words, it has a microwave.”

“You got it.”

Two customers came up at the same time with two more right behind them. Tyler stepped to the side and watched Patrice's brow crease as the first customer sent her in multiple directions to choose a single piece of this chocolate and then maybe just one of that chocolate and then quizzed her on several others without choosing any of them. When the customer again took her in his direction, Tyler said, “Do you want me to give you a hand?”

Patrice faked a swoon and said, “I'd love that.”

Tyler moved behind the counter and helped the next several people in line. He'd been around the store enough that answering questions was easy. By the time Patrice finished with her first customer, he'd taken care of everyone else.

“Thanks,” she said when the little rush was over.

“You're welcome. Where's Lindsay?”

“Ithaca. She's in college now.”

“Jeez, I forgot she graduated. So who's doing weekends with you?”

“A girl named Marisa. She's usually here by now, but she needed to come in at one thirty today.”

“Good thing I stopped by then, huh?”

“Yeah, good thing.” She smiled again and Tyler realized he desperately wanted to kiss her.

“I don't work free, you know,” he said. “This is going to cost you a bag of sour gummy spiders.”

“Take two.”

“Yeah, maybe I'll do that.” He watched her watching him. He couldn't remember the last time Patrice's eyes had lingered on him this long. He felt a little buzzed by the experience.

He wished they could be alone together. There was no one else in the store at the moment, but he had a much longer respite in mind. Tyler knew it would get busy again soon and a lot busier later in the afternoon, especially given the weather.

“Want me to stick around until Marisa gets here?”

Patrice broke eye contact to look at her watch. “She'll be around pretty soon. I'm sure I'll be okay. Not that I'm kicking you out.”

Tyler wasn't sure if that meant he should stay or go. In the past, he never worried about outstaying his welcome in the store. Certainly Patrice seemed comfortable enough with his being here now. And he definitely didn't want to leave. It felt good to be here with her.

Then he thought about the new girl coming in and wondered what kind of introduction Patrice would make. She'd probably just say, “This is Tyler,” like he was someone she hung out with occasionally. That wouldn't work for him.

“I've got a bunch of things to take care of, actually,” he said. “I was just passing by the store and thought I'd see how you were doing.”

“I'm glad you stopped in.”

He reached over and hugged her, kissing her cheek as they separated. He walked around to the front of the counter as another customer came into the store. He turned back to Patrice.

“You want to maybe have dinner sometime?”

“I think I'd like that.”

“What are you doing Tuesday night?”

“I might be available,” she said with an expression that indicated that she knew she was.

“I'll give you a call.”

“Sounds good.” Again she held his eyes. He loved the way she looked at him when she was paying attention to him. “Hey, I'm really glad you dropped in. And thanks again for the hand. Don't forget your gummies on the way out.”

Tyler walked over and picked up a bag. “Got ‘em. Maybe you can bring me the other bag on Tuesday.”

“I'll do that.”

The customer walked to the counter and pulled Patrice away from him. Tyler waved and walked outside.

It really was a gorgeous day.

It was just after noon and Deborah had been at the inn for a little more than a half-hour. She didn't need to be here this early today. The stock was already prepared for the Chicken Miso Soup that was tonight's appetizer. She wouldn't pat the spice rub for the seared tuna onto the fish until an hour before she cooked it. And the pears poached in caramel and Marsala would be cooked while diners ate the rest of the meal. Still, she didn't have anything going on at home, so she was just as happy to be here.

She wanted to give some thought to the October thirtieth menu. It would be the final formal meal she served at the inn and she wanted it to be a memorable one. As silly as it sounded, she thought better about food when she was in this kitchen than anywhere else. Maybe it was the ready access to the hundreds of cookbooks she‘d collected and stored here (she was going to have to figure out where she was going to put these in her apartment). Maybe it was that she could smell an ingredient or heft a piece of equipment for inspiration. Or maybe it was just sheer force of habit. This was where she'd always thought about her menus.

It was never difficult for Deborah to put a menu together. When a dozen German dignitaries talked her mother into an impromptu opening of the dining room for lunch once, Deborah improvised effortlessly. When a shipment of Dungeness Crabs failed to arrive one night, she shifted direction without missing a beat. However, this upcoming menu was giving her fits. All she'd decided so far was that she would serve six courses rather than four and that she would give the diners a little something to have with their breakfast the next morning. It was her way of saying, “To be continued.” Beyond that, she had no idea what to present. Maybe she should throw darts at a list of ingredients and just put a meal together out of that.

While Gina toasted walnuts in vanilla sugar for tonight's salad, Deborah sat at the table in the kitchen with a pad and created columns for the six courses: salad or soup, appetizer, fish course, first meat course, second meat course, dessert. Maybe just looking at the columns on a piece of paper would get her started in the right direction. She wrote various ingredients into the columns with the same thing in mind.

While she was writing, Paul popped his head through the kitchen door to tell her she had a phone call. It was unusual for anyone to call her here on a Sunday. Most of the calls she got were from suppliers, and none of them would be around today.

“Deborah, hi, it's Sage Mixon from the gourmet shop.”

“Oh, hi,” she said brightly. “The marmalade was great, by the way.”

“I had a feeling you'd like it. Listen, if you aren't too busy over there, I'm having a tasting this afternoon for a new line of dessert toppings. I thought you might be interested in stopping by. There'll be ice cream and my homemade pound cake. It's from two to three thirty.”

“Sounds great. You hit me on a good day. I'm usually knee-deep by three o'clock, but the menu is easy tonight.”

“I'm a lucky guy. I now know at least one person will show up.”

“Are you kidding? You're giving away food at the height of tourist season. I just hope you have enough.”

Deborah was certainly right about how much of a crowd one could draw by giving away free tastes. By the time she arrived at two twenty, there were a couple dozen people in the store, all crowded around Sage and one of his assistants as they doled out little servings. Deborah laughed to herself as she heard Sage tell various customers about where the company that made the toppings got their chocolate and how they made their butterscotch. He was such a foodie. Deborah knew many people who loved to eat as much as she did, but she rarely met anyone who shared her passion for the process of cooking.

Sage made eye contact with her and she waved, but she stayed on the periphery of the crowd until it began to loosen. Clearly this tasting was good for business. Customers walked up to the cash register not only with a dessert topping or two, but also with several other items from the store. When she got to Sage, he handed her a small scoop of ice cream and two squares of pound cake, each with a different topping.

“To get the most out of it, you should try the caramel first, then the butterscotch, then the fudge,” he said.

Deborah nodded as she took the plate.

“You knew that already, didn't you?” he said sheepishly.

She just smiled and took a bite of the pound cake with caramel sauce. The sauce was rich and unusually creamy, almost like a dulce de leche. The butterscotch had the same consistency and the butter flitted over the sugar pleasantly rather than overwhelming it the way so many did. The fudge was robust and dense, edging just close enough to bitter to make the taste memorable.

“These are very good,” Deborah said. She read the descriptive handwritten sign Sage had posted next to the display. “They're from Michigan? How'd you find them?”

“My sister went to college with the woman who started the company. We're the first store on the East Coast to carry them.”

Deborah spooned a final bit of fudge sauce. The after notes were really pleasant.

“Want more?”

“Nope,” she said, smiling. “I want a piece of your pound cake with nothing on it.”

“That almost sounded obscene,” he said, handing her a square. Deborah was a tiny bit embarrassed by that comment, but hid it by popping the cake into her mouth.

“Pretty decent,” she said. “A touch of nutmeg, some orange peel. What kind of vanilla?”

“Madagascar. Beans, not extract, of course.”

“Goes without saying.” Sage really knew his stuff. She hadn't met many people like him since she left the Culinary Institute. She'd “talked food” with numerous restaurateurs over the years and her staff, of course, and she'd discussed technique with numerous appreciative patrons of the inn, but Sage was a breed apart from all of these. It didn't hurt that he had such expressive eyes, either. “I guess a few people showed up after all.”

“They did, yes,” he said, looking around the crowded store. “I'm still getting the rhythm of this place.”

“Where did you say you came from?”

“I don't think I did, actually. I'm from Delaware.”

“Did you have a shop there as well?”

He chuckled. “I was Chief Technology Officer for an insurance company.”

Deborah laughed out loud. She would have been better prepared if he'd told her he was once the bearded lady at the circus. “You're kidding!”

“Sort of what I ultimately realized. I decided to follow my bliss.”

“Good choice.”

“Not everyone agrees, but that's a story for another day.”

His station got busier again, and at one point he needed to go to the back room to get more ice cream, but Deborah stuck around. She told herself she should probably be back at the Inn by four o'clock, but she knew she could stretch that a little if necessary. She liked watching Sage interact with customers.

When the pound cake ran out, Sage closed down the tasting. Over the next fifteen minutes, the store slowly emptied.

“The treats are gone and so is my clientele,” he said as he cleaned up.

“Well, nothing attracts like free food.”

“I can't complain. I think this has been our busiest day yet.” He wiped down a counter with a damp cloth and then returned a display of gift baskets there. “I'm really glad you could come.”

“Me too. Hey, I feel the same way about free food as everyone else. Definitely invite me to these things whenever you have them.”

“You'll be the first call on my list.” He looked directly into her eyes, looked down for a second, then looked back up at her. “What if I invited you somewhere else?”

Deborah felt a little charge. “What did you have in mind?”

“A drink sometime this week?”

“I think I'd like that.”

He smiled. “When are you available?”

“It would have to be pretty late. Unless you want to go on Wednesday. The dining room is closed that night.”

“Wednesday would be great.”

Deborah nodded. She didn't want to make too much out of this, but she was thrilled at the opportunity to get to know Sage better. She noticed the clock on the wall and that it was a quarter to five. “I definitely need to go. My staff is probably wondering what happened to me. I'll see you Wednesday?”

“Absolutely. I'll give you a call.”

Deborah waved and then exited the store. She'd meant to buy a couple of the toppings before she left, but thought it would seem foolish if she went back in now.
Maybe I'll ask him to bring me some when I see him on Wednesday
, she thought.

Maxwell got up in the middle of the night because he had to go to the bathroom again. Decaffeinated coffee didn't keep him awake because of the caffeine; instead it kept him awake because he had to pee. Most people learned these things earlier in life.

He flicked on the bathroom light, closing the door as quickly as he could. He didn't want to stir Annie, but at the same time, he'd learned from messy experience that he wasn't very good at doing this kind of thing in the dark. He stood for a second in the room to allow his eyes to adjust. As he looked down, the random pattern of the floor tiles seemed to readjust into a checkerboard. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, but the image held.

His first thought was
what the hell?
Then another memory followed it almost immediately. It was of playing checkers with Tyler when Maxwell was twelve and the kid was just four. Some aunt who didn't know much about what boys played with at that age got Tyler a checkers set for Christmas. Tyler seemed befuddled by the thing, and one afternoon Maxwell saw him with the board out, stacking the checkers on top of one another with no sense of purpose. Maxwell decided to show him how to play the game, which took some doing. The concepts of moving only in diagonals and only in one direction were a little hard for someone Tyler's age to retain. Tyler seemed to like doing this with him, though, and he regularly brought the board out when Maxwell got home from school, hoping for a game.

Maxwell let Tyler win most of the time, foregoing obvious opportunities for multiple jumps and being kinged. Then one day, maybe seven or eight months after they'd started playing, Maxwell realized Tyler was winning the game they were playing on his own. In fact, while Maxwell had barely been paying attention, his little brother had pulled off a triple jump. The game was already lost at that point, but Maxwell played the rest of it aggressively, laughing out loud when Tyler's three kings backed down and captured his final piece.

“Nice game,” Maxwell said proudly.

“Thanks,” Tyler said, beaming. He wondered at that moment if the kid knew that Maxwell had been going easy on him. He also wondered if the kid knew that those days were through.

Over the next few months, they played checkers nearly every afternoon. Maxwell won more often than he lost, but he never won easily. That Christmas, Maxwell found a handmade wooden checkerboard with brass pieces at one of the local craft shops and bought it for Tyler. It was a ridiculously elaborate gift – much more expensive than anything he got for his sisters – but he got it with the money he'd earned doing small tasks around the inn and the expression on Tyler's face when he opened it was priceless.

They continued playing until Maxwell went off to Penn and even picked up the game the first few times Maxwell came back during breaks. Eventually, they both had other things going on when Maxwell was around, and the checkerboard became an accent piece in Tyler's room, covered over with CD cases and photography books.

Maxwell hadn't thought about those games with Tyler in years. He wondered if Tyler even remembered they used to do that together and what it had meant to both of them.

Finally Maxwell moved from the spot in the bathroom where he'd stood fixed. He noticed that the floor was back to normal, the checkerboard some three-in-the-morning illusion.

He really needed to stop drinking coffee of any kind at night.

A year after Janice died, Corrina was in a store with Ryan, who was fourteen at the time. Within Ryan's earshot, the elderly sales clerk helping them said, “Your son is so handsome.” Corrina smiled and said, “He is, isn't he?” When she glanced over to toss Ryan a teasing look, though, the expression of reproach on his face was unmistakable. It said, “I am not your son.” It chilled Corrina to see it. She'd never presumed to be his mother and certainly never as much as suggested she could replace Janice. She simply agreed with the sales clerk because it was such a non-moment and it didn't seem necessary to explain that Ryan was her stepson. Watching Ryan appear so appalled at the notion made an indelible impression on her. She would never make a mistake like that again.

Her relationship with Gardner's son had been mostly cordial, but it rarely extended beyond that point. Ryan was three when his parents split up, four when she and Gardner started dating, and five when they got married. Janice moved him to Concord, Massachusetts, and Corrina and Gardner saw Ryan only once a month and three weeks in the summer after that. He was cute, bright, and likable, but Corrina felt that in many ways she'd never gotten to know him. The visits were too brief, and when he was here he was too removed from his normal life to be the kid he really was.

Then Janice died suddenly. All at once this teenaged boy only seventeen years her junior was dropped into her household. He was filled with grief, adolescent confusion, ambivalence about his father, and reticence about his stepmother. His mother had never remarried. They were a team. In an instant, the team had been broken up forever, and Ryan was cut loose into the world.

Ryan came into their home all attitude and defenses. He and Gardner had never gotten further than being “buddies,” and given the fact that Gardner had been busy building his law practice for the three years of Ryan's life in which he was married to Janice, they had no practical experience living together. Gardner's response to his son's delicate situation was to heap material things upon him. It was more of a well-meaning gesture than anyone other than Corrina understood, but it left more than a few unfilled spaces. Corrina took it upon herself to try to provide the rest: structure, boundaries, a sense of family, and most importantly a safe harbor. She was still aching from the string of miscarriages that all but guaranteed her childlessness, and while she knew that caring for Ryan couldn't be a substitute, it soothed her soul a little. And as much as he struggled to project the opposite, Ryan needed people to make him feel at home. In an odd way, that defining incident with the sales clerk had made it easier for Corrina to understand her role with him – he wasn't looking for a new mother and she didn't need to pretend to be one. It was enough for her to be the nearest adult female in his life and let him know she was around.

The past year had been both the easiest and hardest between them so far. Ryan was sixteen and testing his limits. He spent much more time alone in his room. He was out with friends every weekend. His disposition had taken a dramatic change in the past six months. At the same time, though, he was more willing to help around the house, especially in the kitchen. And he was surprisingly sensitive after Corrina's mother died, asking questions about her, pulling humorous stories from Corrina that made her mother feel just a little bit more alive. Corrina was deeply grateful for these gestures, and for the first time she felt a kind of tenderness toward Ryan that extended beyond responsibility. She doubted this was what maternal love felt like, but it was different from anything else she knew.

“Need someone to chop?” he said as he came into the kitchen while she prepared the evening's stir-fry.

“Yeah, I'd love it. You take the carrots, the peppers, and the squash. I'll do the garlic, the lemongrass and the onions.” Corrina knew Ryan wouldn't want to chop the onions because it wasn't acceptable to have her see him with tears in his eyes, even if they were artificially induced.

He pulled out a chef's knife and cutting board and began slicing the yellow squash into half moons. “What's tonight's theme ingredient?” They often watched “Iron Chef America” together on The Food Network on Sunday nights.

“Something especially challenging. It's chicken.”

“Ah, the rare delicacy found only in the American specialty shop known as the supermarket.”

“I thought I'd throw in some of that Thai Basil sauce I found at Sage the other day.”

“Nice. Way to push the envelope, Cor.”

Corrina finished slicing the onion and moved the bowl to the other counter, wiping at her eyes while she did so.

“Tough onion?”

“Nah. I was just moved by your compliment,” she said sarcastically.

He grinned. He really was a handsome boy. Lean and angular like his father, but softer around the eyes and mouth. Many girls would fall for those eyes. Many might have already, for all she knew. She wasn't allowed to ask such questions.

“So a friend of mine got tickets to the River concert at Madison Square Garden and asked me if I wanted to go.”

“Madison Square Garden? That's a hell of a long ride from here.”

“It's not that far away.”

“Doesn't River play shows that go on for something like four hours?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“School night?”

“It's a Friday.”

Corrina nodded. If he went to the show, he wouldn't be home until three in the morning at the earliest. Gardner and she had never let him stay out anywhere near that late before. What she knew of the audiences at River concerts was that they tended to be relatively relaxed – but this was largely because of a liberal use of marijuana. She'd talked to Ryan a couple of times about drug use as casually as she could. So far, she'd gotten no indication that Ryan was taking drugs or even thinking about experimenting with them. Still, she knew the temptation was everywhere.

“What do you think?” Ryan said.

“I hear they put on a great show.”

“Yeah, that's what I've heard too.”

“It would be tough to miss out on a show like that.”

Ryan smiled.

“You'd have to bring me back a T-shirt, you know,” Corrina said.

“Maybe. If you're good.”

Corrina thought this was one advantage to their relatively small age difference. While Gardner was hardly ancient at forty-five, his pop culture touchstones were vastly different from his son's. It was Led Zeppelin and George Carlin and Harrison Ford for him rather than the White Stripes, “South Park” and Channing Tatum. Corrina actually listened to River. She even found “South Park” funny, though Gardner thought it was offensive. It gave her another way in which she and her stepson could relate, a topic of conversation they could fall back on.

“What do you think Dad'll say?”

“Depends on how the day went at the firm.”

Ryan's expression darkened. “Is that what it depends on?” Corrina arched an eyebrow at him. “I mean, really, is that what it depends on? I always got the impression the code was a lot harder than that to break.”

Did he really want to get into this? And if he did, what should Corrina say? She had her opinions about the way Gardner and Ryan dealt with each other, but she rarely expressed them to Gardner and never to his son. She looked into Ryan's eyes to gauge how serious he was about this discussion, but he broke contact with an angry chortle and returned to the cutting board. When he was through chopping, he went up to his room.

“Thanks,” she said, calling after him.

“You got it.”

Corrina finished getting dinner ready. Gardner had a rare early night. The firm's caseload was building to the point where they were considering taking on another associate – one of these days – and the three of them hardly ever ate together anymore. He came into the house a few minutes later. The first time Corrina met him, Gardner was wearing a fine suit, and she never stopped admiring how good he looked when dressed professionally. He was cute enough in jeans, and he kept himself in the kind of condition where he looked great wearing nothing as well, but a well-tailored suit embellished him. He walked into the kitchen and kissed her tenderly.

“I'm glad you were able to get out of there tonight,” Corrina said.

“Me too,” Gardner said, kissing her again. “We're starting depositions on the Mansfield case tomorrow, so we might want to enjoy this while it lasts.” He reached over and pulled a spear of pepper from a bowl on the counter. “I'm starving.”

“We'll have a nice early dinner,” Corrina said. “Followed by a nice early bedtime?”

“Are you propositioning me?”

“Depends. Will you take me up on it if I do?”

He smiled unabashedly. “I think I just might.”

“Then I definitely am.”

Gardner pulled her toward him, at which point Ryan came down the stairs.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, Rye. Good day in school?”

“The usual.”

“A lot of homework?”

“Done. So did Corrina tell you about the River concert?”

“I just walked in the door. What about a River concert?”

“Andy Summers got tickets to see them at Madison Square Garden and asked me to come along.” Ryan glanced over at Corrina and Gardner did the same.

“He's buying me a T-shirt,” she said, hoping to deflect them away.

“Madison Square Garden?” Gardner said.

“Yeah. It's gonna be a great show.”

“That's a long way from here, Rye.”

Corrina could see Ryan's face tighten. Certainly, she hadn't given him permission to go to the concert – that was his dad's call – and she knew Ryan hadn't interpreted their conversation that way regardless of how he made it seem now.

“Andy's older brother is driving,” Ryan said. “He's twenty-two and a total grownup.”

“That's not really the issue. The issue is that you're sixteen and going all the way to Manhattan for a rock concert isn't really appropriate.”

“A lot of my friends have done stuff like this already and they're sixteen.”

“I'm currently trying a case against two sixteen-year-olds who robbed my client's house and killed her dog. There are many things sixteen-year-olds do that I wouldn't condone.”

Ryan looked in Corrina's direction again, but she didn't make eye contact. She knew Gardner had ruled unilaterally here and there was no chance he was going to change his mind. As much as she knew Ryan wanted to go to this show, arguing was a waste of time.