Chapter 3 #2
Kate had only said they were having company. She tried to explain about Lillian, but her father didn’t register anything unusual. She had no idea how her father would react when he saw Lillian. Her grandmother’s Mercedes pulled into the driveway, and Kate’s heart raced.
Through the frost-covered window, Kate watched the driver open the door.
Lillian emerged into the snowy evening like something from another era, tall, straight-backed, wrapped in what looked like cashmere.
She stood for a moment in the falling snow, looking up at the inn, and Kate saw something cross her face, pain, perhaps, or memory, or loss.
Then the mask reassembled itself, and she walked toward the door with the measured steps of someone approaching the gallows.
Kate opened the door before she could knock.
They stood facing each other across the threshold, grandmother and granddaughter, seeing themselves reflected in each other's eyes.
Lillian seemed to search Kate's face for something, Elizabeth, perhaps, some trace of the daughter she'd lost. Kate knew she wouldn't find it.
The mirror had told her that truth years ago.
“Katherine,” Lillian said, and it wasn't a greeting so much as a confirmation.
Kate moved to the side to let her grandmother in. Whatever the woman wanted, Kate didn’t care. The only thing she wondered was how long it would be before she threw her grandmother out, once and for all.
The dinner that followed was torture dressed in candlelight and good manners.
They sat at the table, Lillian at one end, Pop at the other, Kate and Dani flanking the sides like chess pieces.
The pot roast steamed between them, and conversation came in fits and starts, punctuated by the clink of silver on china.
Kate found herself studying Lillian when she thought the older woman wasn't looking.
Her grandmother's hands were elegant but spotted with age, adorned with rings that probably cost more than the inn's repairs.
Her face was carefully made up but couldn't hide the hollowness around her eyes, the way her clothes hung slightly loose as if she'd recently lost weight.
Cancer, Dani had said. Pancreatic. A death sentence dressed in designer clothing.
Pop kept looking at Lillian with suspicion, occasionally muttering something about “that woman” under his breath. Once he asked Dani who the stranger was. Another time he pushed his plate away, saying Elizabeth didn't like strangers who weren’t guests in the dining room.
“This is excellent pot roast,” Lillian said at one point, clearly trying to fill the awkward silence.
“Marcy's recipe,” Kate said curtly.
More silence. More careful cutting of meat, more precise placement of forks on china.
“The inn has... character,” Lillian observed, her eyes taking in the water stains, the worn edges of everything.
“It has history,” Kate said defensively.
“Quite.”
Pop suddenly looked up, agitated. “Where's Elizabeth? She should be here.”
“She's resting, Pop,” Dani said gently, not wanting to agitate him further.
“No.” He looked at Lillian with something like recognition, but not the good kind. “You. You're the reason she's not here.”
Lillian went very still.
“Pop,” Kate warned.
But he was already sliding into confusion, his brief moment of almost-clarity fading. “Elizabeth doesn't like strangers at dinner,” he muttered.
He got up from the table and walked back to his chair in the living room.
“I’m sorry about that, but you should have known, this isn’t…”
“Normal?” Lillian interrupted Kate. “No, I understand. This might have been a mistake. I think I should go.”
Lillian stood to leave, pausing to look at Kate. “You're very like her,” she said quietly, though it wasn't entirely clear if it was meant as a compliment.
No one walked Lillian to the door. Instead Kate stayed seated, unable to look at either her grandmother or her sister.
As soon as the door shut behind Lillian, Dani stared at Kate.
“You could have been nicer,” Dani said.
Kate’s jaw tightened. “Stop, Dani. I don’t want to hear another word about her.”
After Lillian left, Kate stood in the empty dining room. The candles had burned down to stubs, wax pooling on the table despite the protective glass beneath them. The room still smelled of her grandmother's perfume, something French, probably, something Elizabeth might have worn in another life.
Kate began clearing plates, her movements automatic.
In the kitchen, she found herself at the window again, watching her reflection in the black glass.
She looked different somehow, older, maybe, or just more aware of the weight she carried.
The inn, Pop, the history she'd never known, it all showed in the slope of her shoulders, the set of her jaw.
Dani appeared beside her in the reflection, and for a moment Kate saw what others must see, the pretty sister and the practical one, the one who left and the one who stayed. They were both their mother's daughters, but in such different ways.
“She's right, you know,” Dani said softly. “You are like Mom.”
Kate didn’t say another word.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, erasing footprints and tire tracks, making everything clean and new. By morning, there would be no trace that Lillian Whitfield had ever been here, which suited her just fine.