Judith McNaught - Remember When

"The Explorer is Corey's and the BMW is Spence's. Spence is here because we try to have Sunday dinner as a family when we can. The other cars belong to Corey's assistants. Corey's redoing a shoot she wasn't happy with."

The Fosters' home was a stately place, much like many others Cole had been in that were built in the late fifties and early sixties, but the rooms he glimpsed as she led him across the foyer and down a hall toward the rear of the house had a subtly different ambience. Some of the rooms were formal and beautiful, some were casual and cozy, but all of them were inviting.

The kitchen was huge and had obviously been redesigned for very serious cooking projects, with two commercial stoves, two sinks, an oversize refrigerator and freezer, and an abundance of copper pots and pans hanging overhead.

A middle-aged woman who Cole assumed was either cook or housekeeper or both was slicing summer squash at a chopping block, and she nodded toward the back door. "Everyone is still working in the back," she told Diana, and then in a mildly irritated voice she added, "Your grandpa told me his new organic fertilizer is producing much bigger squash. Why does he keep growing squash, squash, and more squash? We don't have enough space or enough recipes for more squash. The freezers are full of squash casseroles and squash-everything-else. Unless your mother and grandma can come up with a recipe for squash ice cream, we can't use any more squash!"

"We can always paint it," Diana replied imperturbably.

Cole was still trying to adjust to the idea of painting squash when he followed her outside into another world. The back lawn was at least three acres in size, and every segment of it was charmingly designed to please the eye and yet be of use in the family business. People were everywhere.

While two photo assistants waited on the sidelines with lights and reflectors, Corey was in the middle of a vast vegetable garden, posing her grandmother, who was dressed in a parka and holding a huge pumpkin in her hands. Piles of dried oak leaves were spread about her feet. Mary Foster, with a jar of paint in one hand and brush in the other, was touching up the face of a scarecrow. All three women seemed startled to see Cole with Diana, but not displeased, he noted. Which meant they hadn't heard the news yet.

"We'll be finished in two minutes," Corey called. "I just want one more shot."

Spence was standing beside a blanket, dividing his attention between his wife and the identical twins who were working their way to the blanket's edge in pursuit of a huge ball. He turned and smiled at Diana. Then he looked at Cole and nodded, but he did not smile.

"We're working on the October issue right now," Diana explained, nodding toward the garden.

"Your grandmother must be roasting in that parka," Cole observed.

Tables had been set out on the right side of the lawn near a workshop that looked more like a storybook cottage. At one of the tables, two women were putting down wreaths and centerpieces made of pinecones, berries, and what looked to Cole liked painted vegetables. Vegetables, he realized with some amusement, actually were very attractive when painted.

At another table a young man and woman were vigorously removing tarnish from a pile of large, old, brass door knockers. Three doors in various stages of refinishing were leaning against the side of the workshop. "We're doing a feature on 'Giving Doors a Personality,' " Diana provided. As she spoke, two more young men with paint-stained clothes emerged from the workshop and began carrying the doors inside.

"Be careful with those doors, boys," Henry Britton called out from his worktable in front of the cottage workshop. The space on top of the table and below it was covered with drawings anchored against the breeze by wooden boxes of various shapes and sizes with no particular use that Cole could discern.

When Henry saw Diana and Cole, he called to them to come over. He wiped off his hand to shake Cole's; then he turned to his granddaughter, his weathered face and light brown eyes intent on what he had to tell her. "I've been thinking about this for weeks, Diana, and I'm certain I'm right. Take a look."

Diana peered at the drawings and then at the small wooden boxes he was making. "What are they?" she asked, trying very hard to concentrate.

"They're birdhouses! Birdhouses would be a big hit!" Henry predicted. "Not just ordinary ones, Diana, but birdhouses that look like little castles and cottages with thatched roofs and miniature barns and Southern plantation houses. I could fix up some modern-looking ones, too, that look like town houses and apartment buildings."

Corey and her mother and grandmother had finished in the garden and were close enough to hear the last of his words. "Henry Britton," his wife exclaimed, "did I just hear you actually say you intend to build apartment buildings for birds?"

"I said no such thing. I was talking to Diana about drawing up a bunch of designs for birdhouses."

"We already featured birdhouses two years ago, Dad," Diana's mother said, sounding a little stressed out by the constant need for originality.

"These aren't birdhouses for birds, Mary," he said, sounding a little frustrated himself. "These would look like birdhouses, only they're ornamental. You set them in your garden for decoration. Hell's bells," he said, slapping his leg in enthusiasm. "They'd be cute as the dickens all lined up in a row in a garden—"

His wife was unimpressed. "Sort of like a suburb for birds, you mean?"

He gave her a testy look. "Corey could set them around in just the right way, with some of my pink and orange impatiens behind them and little green shrubs here and there. Corey could get some great photographs for the magazine out of a setup like that."

"I just don't think miniature birdhouses that birds can't use would go over very well with Diana's subscribers."

"Yes, they would. Every Christmas, you spend two days under the Christmas tree, lining up miniature ceramic houses so they look like one of those Norman Rockwell towns, but nobody's going to live in those either. I can't see why my little houses wouldn't look just as nice outdoors in the summertime."

Everyone paused and looked at Diana for a deciding opinion.

Although Corey was responsible for the artistic presentation of the magazine, and the others were responsible for coming up with the projects that were featured in it, it was Diana who carried the full weight of responsibility for satisfying their subscribers, which, in turn, directly affected the ultimate financial success or failure of the magazine, ergo the family business.

Diana had to force herself to concentrate on this instead of the announcement of her marriage. "Actually," she said after a pause, "I think Grandpa is right. We might even want to use garden ornaments and decorations as the main feature in one of the issues."

Satisfied with that, Henry returned to a more pleasant subject and looked hopefully at Diana. "Last night you and I talked about doing another issue featuring organic gardening. Organic gardening is always popular. Maybe we could combine my birdhouses and some other garden ornaments, like you suggested, with organic gardening.

"Well," her grandfather said, interrupting her mental wanderings, "if you like the idea, I'll start putting together a list of article ideas tomorrow."

Diana was trying to decide where to assemble the family for the meeting. "That sounds good, Grandpa," she said. "Let's do that," she added, which made her mother and her grandmother and Corey all stop and gaze at her in amazement.

"But we already featured organic gardening not long ago," Corey said.

"Oh, that's right. I forgot," Diana said absently. "That was for vegetables and fruits. We can do this one on flowers." She looked at the group and plunged in. "I'd like to talk to all of you in the living room for a few minutes."