30. Lucy #2
Saturday was gray, with the fog low on the water and the gulls loud over the courtyard. Grace was up on the counter with her heels knocking the cupboard door before the pan was hot, which was where she sat to help. She had the carton open and four eggs out in a row.
"You do the first one," Lucy said. "What's the rule?"
"If you're not making a mess, you're not trying." Grace said it to the eggs.
Carrington came in at half past eight wearing a sweater and no shoes. She stopped in the doorway with her cup already full, which meant she'd been up a while somewhere else in the house.
"Sit down," Lucy said to Carrington.
"I can help."
"I have enough help. You can sit down."
She sat down on the far stool. Grace cracked the first egg one-handed on the flat of the counter. Nobody had taught her that. It went into the bowl with a sliver of shell.
"Get that out with a bit of the shell," Lucy said. "Fingers won't cut it."
Grace fished it out and held the piece up on her fingertip. Lucy nodded at it, and Grace flicked it into the sink. The second and the third went in clean. The fourth broke all down the front of the cupboard.
"Beautiful," Lucy said.
"That one was me trying," Grace said.
She got a cloth without being asked and climbed down and wiped the door. Then she straightened up with the cloth still in her hand and looked across at her aunt.
"Aunt Carrie," she said.
Carrington had her hand around her cup and didn't take it off.
"That's what I'm going to call you now," Grace said. "The long one's just what other people call you." She put the cloth on the edge of the sink and lined it up square. "Is that all right?"
"Yes," Carrington said.
"You can say if it isn't."
"It's all right, Grace."
Lucy put the pan back on the burner and kept her back to the room for a second. Carrington got off the stool, and Lucy heard her go up the hall.
Grace watched the empty doorway. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Lucy said. "Put some milk in and don't beat it to death."
Grace poured the milk. Lucy heard the study door open, then nothing for about a minute, then the door again. Carrington came back in and shifted her cup an inch along the marble.
"Flour," Lucy said, and pushed the bag along the marble at her. "Cup and a half."
Carrington looked at the bag, then she rolled her sleeves up and slowly measured it out. A good deal of it fell down her front.
"How many pancakes is she making?" Carrington said.
"Eight, but she’ll only eat two."
Grace flipped the pancakes, and Lucy took over when the handle got hot. Two got burned, but they still had six good ones to share. After she finished eating, Grace took her plate to the sink and left to get her shoes. Deborah was coming at eleven.
Carrington got something out of her pocket and put it on the marble. It was a key on a loop of green string.
"It’s for the courtyard door and gate," she said. "Not the cottage."
Lucy looked at it and didn't pick it up.
"It's a key," Carrington said. "That's all it is."
"I can see."
"You don't owe me anything for it. Leave it in a drawer if you want." Her hand was still on the counter next to it. "I just don't want you standing out at that gate waiting for somebody to come let you in."
Lucy didn't move. On a bus, with everything she owned packed into six boxes, she'd told herself she'd never let somebody else control her life or hold anything over her again. She'd meant it every time she'd said it since.
She wanted the key. But it took a moment for her to let her feel it.
She picked up the key, then dug her key ring out of her coat pocket and worked the split ring open with her thumbnail.
It took three tries and the metal went into the pad of her thumb.
Carrington stood on the other side of the island and watched her.
"Thank you."
"You don't have to thank me for a key."
"It’s not just a key."
Carrington watched her put the ring in her pocket. "You've never let me give you anything."
"You gave me that letter to the social worker. You didn't tell me about it until you wrote and sent it."
"That wasn't for you."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it wasn't."
"All right."
Lucy walked around the end of the island and stopped a foot short of her. "I love you."
Carrington put both hands on the edge of the counter and met Lucy’s eyes. “I love you too.”
"The room in town is paid up to the end of the month," Lucy said.
"You’ve said."
"Afterward, I’m coming back here, and I'm paying my way," she said. "I'm not being kept in this house."
"I figured you’d say that."
"You're not going to argue with me?"
"No."
"But you argue about everything."
"Not about this thing," Carrington said.
Upstairs, a door banged. Grace bounded down two at a time with one shoe on and the other in her hand.
"Tell her," Carrington said.
"It’s your information to share."
"She asked you, not me."
"Grace." Lucy waited until she stopped on the bottom stair. "You asked me something yesterday. About whether I live here."
"Yes."
"I'm moving back in on the first of the month."
Grace looked at Lucy, then she looked at her aunt. Then she dropped the shoe on the stairs and ran across the kitchen. She wrapped both arms around Lucy's stomach and whispered something in her coat that she couldn’t hear.
"What was that?" Lucy asked Grace.
"I said good," Grace said.
Over the top of her head, Lucy watched Carrington get a clean plate down out of the cupboard. She put it out in the middle of the island and pulled out the stool in front of it.
Lucy flipped the last two pancakes before they burned.