Taste for Trouble (43 page)
Kate
frowned at her. “If you’d simply followed the recipe as written, Belinda, you
wouldn’t have to ask.”
Bel
ignored her. “A little more flour, I think. A dusting.” She shook a fine
sprinkle of flour onto her marble-topped pastry board and gently worked it into
her crust, careful not to over-exert the dough. Too much handling developed the
gluten fibers and the next thing you knew you were chewing your crust like a
cow chews cud. It should melt, like angel wings, in your mouth.
And
then she felt it. That perfect combination of give and spring under her hands,
that elusive melding of resilience and delicacy. “There,” she said to Kate,
beaming. “Perfect. It was touch and go there for a minute but—”
“This,”
Kate said, her voice sharpened to an icy edge, “is exactly why you will never
take over my show.”
Bel
turned to stare, triumph forgotten. “Excuse me?”
“This.”
Kate waved an elegant hand at the entire scene before her—the ball of dough on
the counter, the flour streaked across Bel’s face, up her sleeves. The gluey
crud under her fingernails and crusting the face of her watch. “You do this all
the time.”
“I
do what all the time?”
“Improvise.”
Kate dismissed the whole of what Bel had just accomplished with a single,
disdainful word.
“Hey,
a perfect pie crust is nothing to sneeze at,” Bel said, stung.
Kate
looked away from the lump of dough on the counter. “I’m sure it’s lovely,” she
said. “But I don’t sell improvisation. I sell recipes. Exact, time-tested,
bullet-proof formulas that women can count on to work
every single time
so long as they respect the recipe.”
“But,
Kate,” Bel said, baffled. “No recipe is that good. Flours are like
fingerprints. I mean, at first they all look the same but when you get into
them, they’re so different. All those different strains of wheat, all the
different grades of grind? Different tolerances for liquid, for acid, for heat,
for fats? A recipe—I mean, it’s a great place to start, but eventually you have
to trust yourself. You have to give yourself permission to believe what your
hands are telling you above what the recipe says.”
Kate
shook her head hard. “No. It’s better to accept small deviations in quality
than to risk ruining the whole effort.”
“But
why?” Bel spread her floury hands. “Why should we teach people to accept tough
crust when all it costs to be wrong is a few cups of flour and a stick of
butter?”
“It’s
not about flour, Belinda. It’s about consistency,” Kate said coldly. “It’s
about delivering a dependable product. It’s about
trust
.”
Bel
gazed at her with dawning realization. All these years, she thought in wonder, all
this time, she’d had Kate totally wrong. She’d assumed Kate’s beautiful manners,
her exquisite taste and unshakeable calm were an outward expression of an
inward serenity. A serenity Bel had envied with her whole soul. But it was just
the opposite.
“This
isn’t about your brand,” she said slowly. “It’s about control, isn’t it? It’s
about imposing order on a disorderly world. A world of chaos and hurt and
terrible danger. A world where—”
A
world where cancer could defeat a guy like Bob
.
But
she didn’t say that. She didn’t need to. It lay between them like the Grand
Canyon. Neither of them missed it.
She
took a half-step forward. Good God, how had she missed this? Hadn’t she spent
her entire life trying to accomplish the same thing? Trying to wring the risk
out of an impossibly threatening world? How had she not recognized that same
desperate effort in Kate?
“You’re
afraid.” She put out a hand toward the older woman. “Oh, Kate, you don’t need
to be—”
“Yes,
I do.” Something tense and leashed vibrated in Kate’s voice, something that had
Bel’s hand freezing in the air between them. Then whatever iron-clad control
had held her together all these years in such prim, proper order snapped. A
black rage seeped through the cracks and Bel could feel the molten heat of it
on her own skin. “I absolutely do, and do you want to know why?”
Bel nodded,
gazing at her in mute fascination.
“Because
Bob’s dying. He’s
dying
, Belinda. He’ll be gone by morning. But all
this?” She waved her hands in a tight circle, taking in Bel didn’t know what. Everything,
she supposed. Hunt House. Her career. Her health and the thirty or more years she
had left to enjoy it all by herself. “All this is still right here. I was
right
.”
She fired the word like it was a bullet, a weapon she could wield against the
grief. “I was
right
to choose it over his goddamn
ring
. I was
right
to stay here instead of flying off to the south of fucking
France
.” She
gave a jagged chuckle and shook her head. “France. My God.”
Then
her eyes went hot and narrow, and she took a menacing step toward Bel. “So you
can sit here and
improvise
all you like. I prefer recipes, and I won’t
apologize for that. Not to you, not to
him
—” She stabbed a finger at the
ceiling, toward Bob and his death bed. “—not to anybody. I have nothing to
apologize for. I made my choices and I’m
satisfied
.”
“Are
you?” Bel asked softly. “Are you really?”
“Yes.”
She jerked at her apron strings until they gave and she yanked the thing off
over her head. “Good night, dear.”
As
usual, Kate had been right. Bob didn’t see Thanksgiving. He passed away quietly
and without drama on Wednesday morning, Bel holding one hand, James holding the
other. Drew and Audrey took turns keeping Jillian otherwise occupied, and Will,
in deference to Bob’s wishes, refrained from breaking out of rehab. Barely.
Kate
paced the gardens between their houses, unable or unwilling to bear witness.
Bel
served Thanksgiving dinner the following day at three o’clock, exactly as Bob
had wished. They all sat down—Kate included—to a meal nobody wanted, capped
with picture-perfect slices of sour cherry pie with the almond scented crust.
The
next morning, Bel embarked on the business side of death. She wasn’t surprised
to learn there was one. Everything was business in the end, wasn’t it? Kate
would have told her that, and happily. But she
was
surprised at how
grateful she was for the work.
Because,
despite the solid anchor of James’ love, she still felt disconcertingly adrift.
She’d let go of the old dream—
Kate Every Day
was off the table and she
was okay with that—but she hadn’t fallen in love with a new dream yet. Wasn’t
really ready to, if she was perfectly honest with herself. So she stayed busy
and thanks be to Bob for the one last gift.
She
spent her days sorting and filing, calling and emailing, making lists and
checking items off them. And every night she baked. Christmas cookies, mostly. ‘Twas
the season, after all. She baked cookies by the dozen, everything from humble
Russian tea cakes to elaborately decorated sugar cookies to deep fried
Norwegian rosettes. She grieved in her kitchen, and everything she baked tasted
of love and sorrow. Which—to Bel’s mind—suited Christmas completely. She’d
always thought the Jesus story was sort of a mixed bag when you got right down
to it.
And
when it was finally over, when she’d filed the last paper, signed the last
form, and closed the last account, she brewed up gallons of the strongest,
blackest coffee she could find. (Unless it supported a spoon at a perfect
vertical, Bob hadn’t considered it coffee.) She bought half a dozen antique
platters with gold edges and tiny roses, and piled them high with the most
perfect cookies of her hundreds. She sliced into her sour cherry pies. Then she
flung open the Annex doors to everybody Bob had ever known, met or worked with.
The
doorbell rang for hours—Johnny Cash’s “Wayfaring Stranger” which Bel didn’t
know but James assured her was perfect. She accepted hug after handshake after
air kiss, many from people she’d never even met but who had loved Bob and
needed somebody to console. Finally, when her throat was too tight to even
murmur
thank you so much for coming
, she snatched up an empty cookie
platter and escaped to the kitchen.
She
was deliberating over the placement of the Russian tea cakes when James pushed
through the kitchen doors.
“Hey,
Bel.”
“Hey.”
She smiled sheepishly. “I ran away.”
“No
shame in it.” He ambled her way. “Some crowd.”
“Bob
was a popular guy.”
He
hooked a warm hand around the nape of her neck and comfort slid warm into her
veins. He pressed his forehead to hers and she released her first full breath
in hours. “How you holding up, hon?”
She
shrugged against the now-familiar swell of tears. “I miss him.”
“Me,
too.”
“Kate
didn’t show.”
“Did
you expect her to?”
Her
throat was too tight to even sigh. “I don’t know. I hoped.”
The
doorbell pealed yet again and James smiled. “Ah, the man in black.”
She sighed
and pushed the platter of cookies into his hands. “Here we go again. Put those
on the sideboard, would you?”
“Yes,
ma’am.”
Bel
excused herself through the crowd while James offered his platter left and
right in her wake. She finally reached the door and pulled it open. Then she
simply stared.
“Belinda!”
Vivi sailed in, draped beautifully in black. Her hat was massive and airy all
at the same time, a mournful wedding cake of lace and tulle. She flung her arms
around Bel just like she had at the Fox Hunt Ball. “Oh you poor, darling girl! Look
at you! You’re so
gaunt
.”
James
handed his platter to a startled hockey player and arrived at her side within
split seconds. “Hey, Ms. Pietrantoni,” he said with that easy charm of his. Bel’s
lips were too numb to force out a single word.
Please,
it’s Vivi.” Her mother gazed gravely at him but kept Bel’s cold hands. “She’s
not eating well, is she?” She ran a dismayed glance over Bel’s neat black suit.
“James, you must make sure she’s taking care of herself!” She blinked tear-brightened
eyes. “I know
I
haven’t much influence over Belinda but she’ll listen to
you, I know she will! You must promise me. Promise me you’re looking after
her!”
“I
am, ma’am.” He patted her shoulder. Bel stared helplessly, her pulse thudding
ominously in her ears. She wasn’t going to pass out, was she?
Vivi
drew in a shuddering breath, released it and looked around the packed great
room. “Oh, dear. I’m not late, am I?” She offered Bel a tremulous smile but
satisfaction was rich in her voice. “I’d hate to cause a scene.”
James
eyed her hat. “I’m sure.”
Bel
snapped back to herself.
Oh, hell, no
. This woman was
not
hijacking Bob’s funeral. Bel could tolerate a lot but that was beyond enough.
So
move, damn it. Do something
.
“You
won’t cause a scene,” Bel assured her. It was amazing how calm she sounded. How
cool and rational. She took her mother’s elbow and drew her to the still-open
door. “Because you’re leaving now.”
“Oh,
but Bel!” Vivi gazed up with huge, hurt eyes, but Bel knew her mother. The hurt
was a thin layer slapped over eager appetite. Vivi loved nothing more than a
scene. “I know we’ve had our differences, darling, but you must know I wouldn’t
allow you to walk through this tragedy, to bear your grief, alone!”
“Vivi.”
James stepped forward, gently disengaged Bel from her mother’s grip. He folded
her tiny hand in his and smiled warmly down at her. “Actually, I’m glad you’re
here. I wonder if you could come into the study for a moment.”
Bel’s
heart took a sudden unpleasant lurch.
Déjà vu
. “James, I don’t want—”
“I
know.” He met her eyes evenly and she sucked in a sharp, focusing breath. Because
what she saw there wasn’t
I’m sorry
or
Grow up
or even
Come
on, Bel
. What she saw there was
Trust me
. Which she did, completely.
So she just nodded and stood silently as James offered Vivi his arm.
Triumph
was a split-second flash over Vivi’s beautiful face, covered almost immediately
with sorrow and dignity. Then her mother sailed into the crowd on James’ arm
like a grief-stricken prom queen.
He
gave no signal that Bel could see, didn’t speak to anybody he passed. But
somehow Bel found herself leading a parade into the study that included Drew
and Audrey, Ford and Annie. Vivi sank gracefully onto the settee before the
massive desk and Drew snicked the doors shut behind them.
James
went to the desk and withdrew a large rectangular envelope. He caught Bel’s eye
and nodded her toward the settee beside Vivi.
Everything
in her resisted but she trusted James so she sat. Audrey and Annie took up
posts behind the couch like foot soldiers while Drew and Ford manned the doors.
She wondered what the hell was going on.