Liz Flaherty - Back to McGuffey's

“I think you should buy the inn from Marce,” said Penny, “and we should be partners. I can’t afford half—no one will pay enough for the kids or Dan’s ’57 Chevy for that—but I’m good for twenty-five percent and I’ll throw in one of the boys. Michael gives good shoulder-rubs, but Josh takes out the trash without being asked.”

Kate got up and went around to hug her. “We’ve been best friends since first grade. I’m not giving that up for a partnership. Not to mention, I don’t think Marce is interested in selling.”

Penny looked sorrowful. “I can’t get you to take any of the kids, even if we don’t buy the inn?”

“Not a one. You’d end up wanting them back and we’d fight over them. The kids would like it—the boys always like a good fight—but it would be ugly for us. We’re too old for the whole hair-pulling thing.”

“Oh, well, okay.” Penny stopped poring over coffee cake recipes and leaned her chin in her palm. “So, best friend, how was lunch with Ben yesterday?”

“It was fine,” said Kate, “but I swear, he seems as much at loose ends as I am.”

“He is.” Marce got up when the bell on the oven dinged, opening the back door to admit Joann at the same time.

Kate looked up in surprise. “You’ve talked to him, Marce?”

“My word, I thought you knew. He’s the tenant in the garage apartment. He said he thought he’d outgrown spending summers with his parents.” Marce handed out scones before biting into one herself. “I don’t know about these. They’re cranberry, which some people are quite picky about. What do you think?”

Kate took a taste, blowing out crumbs when she sighed in ecstasy. “Yum. You need to forget about college and the B and B, Marce. You and Penny need to build a bakery where my house used to be.”

“I’ll insure you,” Joann offered, grabbing another scone before she’d finished the first one. She held up the second one. “This is the real meaning of insurance. If you’re in a kitchen with a bunch of women, don’t be too polite or you’ll end up with nothing to eat but the parsley garnish on the plate.”

Penny ignored her, latching on to the bakery idea. “But who would teach my boys algebra?” she demanded. “Although if it was a bakery and caterer combined, I could be the catering half and just make Dan help the boys with their math.”

Joann shook her head. “Dan was in my class. He only got by with a C minus because he was charming and Mrs. Wildermuth was susceptible. He should have flunked.”

Penny smiled fondly. “He was something, wasn’t he?”

“So, anyway.” Joann leaned her elbows on the solid surface of the island. “How was lunch at McGuffey’s, Kate? I heard you and Ben danced and that no one heard the music except you two.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Penny snorted derisively. “Everybody dances at McGuffey’s.”

“Not at lunchtime, without music,” said Marce wisely, “although Frank and I did, and then we had the twins.” She paused, her cup halfway to her mouth, her eyes softening in memory.

“That’s a lie,” Kate accused, sending more crumbs flying.

Marce smacked her with a folded napkin. “It is not a lie. We danced at McGuffey’s and then a year later the twins were born.” She refilled everyone’s coffee cups, grinning. “It was a really long pregnancy.”

“All of them are,” Penny agreed.

Joann sighed. “I’ve heard all these stories before. I just want to know about Kate and Ben’s lunch.”

“We just walked a little, talked some and ate potato soup and corned beef sandwiches. On that rye bread Maeve makes from scratch. You need to get her recipe when you open your bakery.” Kate looked down at her list, trying not to remember the momentary look in Ben’s eyes. She ached, knowing something was wrong but not what it was. “My refrigerator was really old. Do you think I could list that under Antiques and increase its value?”

“I remember that refrigerator.” Joann reached for the cream pitcher. “You would have had to pay someone to haul it away, so you need to reimburse the insurance company for that.”

It was easy to laugh when Kate was in Kingdom Comer’s kitchen with her friends or even when she was walking with Ben McGuffey, but later that night, when she was alone in the back suite of the B and B, her situation was overwhelming. She sat in the window seat of the sitting room, hugging her knees and staring at the stars that peeked through the maple trees in the inn’s backyard. Below, Dirty Sally walked slowly across the courtyard toward the pet door that led into the three-season room on the back of the inn. Before she got there, however, a man stepped into Kate’s view and scooped the cat up, cuddling her against the side of his neck.

Ben.

They’d always been able to talk. One long and cold night soon after he’d broken up with her, she’d sat in the dark for hours, the silence of her apartment a screaming assault to her senses. Penny was just a few blocks away, but it was Ben’s voice she needed to hear.

The day she and Tark Bridger had broken their engagement, it had taken all the willpower she had not to get Ben’s number from his parents and call him. In the end, she hadn’t had to—he’d just shown up and made her laugh. He’d held her until she’d stopped shaking. When the laughter turned to tears, he mopped them up with a dish towel on her kitchen counter. Later, after he’d kissed her cheek and tugged at her ponytail before returning to Boston, she’d put the towel at the back of her underwear drawer. Sometimes, when she couldn’t convince herself she was only independent and not lonely, she’d take the towel out and hold it against her cheek.

Even at the weddings and funerals where they’d seen each other for the past thirteen years, they’d stood in corners and talked long beyond the point of good manners. Afterward, she would always tuck the memories of those conversations away behind her heart as carefully as she had stored the worn dish towel.

She started from the window seat to get the dish towel before she remembered that it had been lost in the fire. Grief, deeper and more scalding than she’d felt for her dishes and her quilts, made a shaking fist in her stomach. She hugged her knees and pressed her face against the soft cotton knit of her skirt.

A few minutes later, she was able to take a deep breath. A few deep breaths. And laugh a little at herself. She’d been so self-congratulatory that she’d felt scarcely any need to mourn over the possessions claimed by the fire, yet she was brought to her knees by the loss of one threadbare dish towel.

As though he could hear her thoughts, Ben looked up at the window where she sat. He waved, and she waved back. When he gestured— come on down —she didn’t hesitate, just slipped on the jeans and sweatshirt that had become her uniform and ran stocking footed down the back stairs of the B and B. She tiptoed past the closed door of Marce’s private quarters and stepped outside, stopping on the step to put on her shoes.

When he came to stand in front of her while she tied her shoelaces, she looked up. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she blurted. “It was easy when I was the face and voice people knew at the law office and the woman who owned the duplex on Alcott Street.” She knew there were tears on her cheeks, and if she’d been talking to anyone besides Ben, she’d have been embarrassed by them. As it was, she just let them fall.

“I wouldn’t have thought my house and job and taste in household items made me into the person I was, but now that they’re gone, I don’t know who’s left. It used to tick me off so much that I was only Sarah Rafael’s little sister or one of the McGuffey boys’ girlfriends, but at least I was somebody. I wasn’t invisible even to myself.” She drew in a sobbing breath. “I’m not even somebody’s mom.”