Chapter Thirteen #2
With the peaches softened in sugar and lemon juice, they set up a line for mashing.
“A first for me. I’ve never mashed peaches. I never dreamed of mashing peaches,” Sonya added, and laughed as the tablet played Snoop Dogg’s “Peaches N Cream.”
“We’re going to love them after all this.”
“Y’all got this. Mash, then strain. Solids there, juice there. I’m going to cook up the base.”
A change of routine, no doubt, Sonya thought, but she enjoyed hanging out in the kitchen with her mother and her best friend.
And her grandmother, as Clover played tunes throughout.
So damn if it wasn’t a party.
“Into the ice bath. Otherwise, it takes about four hours to cool in the fridge, and I don’t wanna wait. And while that’s happening, I say wine and we sit out front in Owen’s fabulous seats.”
“There’s nothing routine about this.” As content as her girls, Winter sighed as she looked out at the sea while the sky above softened toward dusk.
“Anytime you want to make that your room permanently, Mom, it’s yours. Or the apartment if you’d rather the space.”
“I can’t think of much that fills my heart more than knowing you mean that.”
“The mean that’s from both of us,” Cleo added.
“Your saying it is a gift. I’m a city girl at the core of it. A working city girl. But I sure love coming up here, seeing the two of you, having this time. And I appreciate Trey and Owen giving it to us, though they didn’t have to. You know how fond I am of them.”
She sipped her wine. “To prove it, I’m making breakfast Sunday morning.”
As dusk went to quiet night, they went back in.
“It’s churning time. Takes about a half hour, and the peach solids go in right at the end of that. Anybody want a snack while it’s working?”
“After that dinner, Cleo?” Winter shook her head.
“Look there,” Sonya said as they stepped into the kitchen. “A tea service set up on the table. Molly did that.”
“Yeah.” Winter blew out a breath. “A little jolt.”
So while the ice cream maker did its work, they had tea.
When it was done, Cleo transferred the ice cream to a freezer container.
“It looks like soft-serve,” Winter noted. “And it’s so pretty.”
Sonya got three spoons. “I know it’s not frozen, but we need to sample it.”
“Fingers crossed,” Cleo said, and crossed fingers on her left as she dipped in with the right. “Oh, it’s good!”
“No,” Winter disagreed. “It’s fantastic.”
“We did it! And there’s plenty. I call for a bowl of ice cream for breakfast.” So saying, Cleo put the container in the freezer.
“Who’d argue with that?” Winter slid an arm around each of them. “My girls. What a lovely home you’ve made.”
Sonya woke in the night, listened to the clock strike three. Piano music drifted up, sad and sweet. Weeping added sorrow and grief. She heard, as she sometimes did, murmurs. Voices, sounds that seemed wrapped in cotton.
But she felt no pull, so lay listening awhile before sliding back into sleep.
And dreamed of a storm at sea, a sailing ship rocked by waves as rain lashed down and lightning split the sky. A man stood at the bow, clothes soaked, hair streaming wet, and defiance in his stance.
She heard him speak over the crashing waves.
“I built this boat. Pooles built this boat, and the sea will not take it. No storm will beat it.”
Someone cried out: Sir! And he turned, looked back with eyes of Poole green.
“Stay the course, Captain. We’re going home. We’re going home,” he repeated. “My wife waits.”
And she did. She stood on the widow’s walk in her white dressing gown. The rain hadn’t reached the manor, but the wind blew strong to stream through her hair as she looked out to sea.
“Come home to me, my love.” Laying her hand on her belly, she kept watch. “Come home to us.”
In sleep, Sonya murmured, “Marianne.”
In the morning, she thought of the dream, so clear in her mind. Somehow, they were showing her pieces of the lives lived. The love, devotion, sorrows, and joys.
She’d hold them all. She’d write it all down as she had all the others. He had come home, Hugh Poole, home to the woman who waited with two lives inside her. He came home in the ship he’d built and named for her.
Grateful for the dream, she went downstairs to find her mother already sitting on the deck with coffee.
“You’re up early.”
“Routine. I fed Pye and Yoda. And though the ice cream tempted, I held off. Come join me.”
“Be right there.”
She got coffee for herself, then went out, sat. Sighed.
“I don’t do this often enough,” Winter said. “Sit out in the morning with coffee, even on weekends. It’s always You should do this, or that. Get this done. I’m going to do a change-up there, too.
“Someone watered the pots before I came out,” she added. “I thought to do it for you, so I checked them. It’s such an odd thing.”
“There’s odd, and then there’s Lost Bride Manor normal. We’re pretty sure it’s Eleanor. She waters the solarium plants.”
“You seem well adjusted to Lost Bride Manor normal. I’m working on it. I have to tell you something.”
“Is everything all right?” On alert, Sonya shifted to her, reached out.
“Yes. Nothing’s wrong. I did something. I didn’t mention it because it felt a little silly.
Honestly, a lot silly. I have this picture I took of your dad holding you when you were a baby.
The way he looked at you, and you at him.
You were about three months old, and your eyes were already going green from that infant blue. ”
“I know the photo. You have it in your room.”
“You’d been crying—I’d forgotten that. Just fussy, and he picked you up. I remember now like it was yesterday. He picked you up, and held you. He said, ‘Daddy’s got you, baby girl.’”
As emotion filled her throat, Winter paused a moment.
“You stopped fussing, and looked at him as he looked at you. It was love, and I snapped the picture.
“I love that picture. I made a copy, framed it. I told myself I meant to give it to you, but that’s not what I really meant to do.”
“Then what?”
“I took it out last night, and I put it on the dresser. I felt silly, but I said, out loud, that it was for Clover. That I’d brought it for her to have, to see her son holding his daughter. To see the love between them. And to see the man he’d grown to be.”
“Mom. Mom, that’s not silly. That’s so kind, kind and loving.”
“This morning, it wasn’t there, but where I’d put it?”
With her eyes damp, Winter had to take a breath before turning to Sonya.
“There was a little frame, and inside a clover. A four-leaf clover that had been dried and preserved. More? When I picked it up, not jolted but so touched, my phone played. Alanis Morissette. ‘Thank U.’”
“It’s beautiful. What you did, what she did. It’s beautiful.”
“I started thinking how I wish I’d known her, then I realized, in a way, I do. I do know her. And I’m so glad she’s here with you. I can’t be, and it eases my mind knowing she can, and is.”
In reassurance, Clover went to Colbie Caillat with Sheryl Crow. “I’ll Be Here.”
Smiling, nodding, Winter sipped her coffee. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Let’s go wake Cleo up with a bowl of ice cream.”
Laughing now, Winter rose. “Let’s do that.”
When Trey and Owen arrived, dogs in tow, Winter greeted both men with hard hugs, and the dogs with happy rubs.
“It’s so good to see you. All of you.”
“Like the new do,” Owen told her.
“Thanks. Me, too.”
Cleo put her hands on her hips. “I have a plan. I’m no Bree with a massive open house to run, but I have a plan.”
“Chill some, Lafayette. It’s a barbecue.”
“What you call a barbecue, I call a fais-dodo, and where I come from, you don’t stint on those. Table, long enough to seat all of us. Smaller one for a carving station.”
“Carving what?”
She just pointed at Owen. “You’ll find out. Another one for a bar. One more for dishes I’ll keep cold on ice. Chairs.”
“Why can’t the food be on the table where we eat?” Trey wondered.
Cleo sent him a withering look. “Because there’s too much food for that.”
“I’ve seen the menu.” Winter widened her eyes. “She’s not wrong about that.”
“People’ll start coming around four, so, Sonya, you should start doing the tables up by three. I have drawings of what I’m after.”
“Seriously?”
Cleo pointed at her face. “Look at my face. Don’t I look serious? Music, Clover’s handling it. Winter’s in the kitchen with me. Son, you’re on reserve there.”
“Have I been insulted?”
Trey just lifted his shoulders. “I’m a little afraid to say.”
“All right.” Cleo clapped her hands. “Let’s get cracking. Women, kitchen. Men, tables.”
Sonya sent Trey a wide-eyed look as she followed Cleo. And Trey turned to Owen.
“When did she get so scary?”
“It’s always been there. Something’s wrong with me, man. Because I like it.”
Once again relegated to chopping, Sonya took time between to study Cleo’s drawings. And breathed a sigh of relief, as she’d kept it simple. Very pretty, but simple.
When the time came, she spread on the blue-and-white-checked cloths, cut flowers for the old blue mason jars. As she folded napkins, Trey came by.
“Looks nice. You, too.”
“She gave me fifteen minutes to get my party on. I think she could out-Bree Bree.”
She’d done her hair in a short, single braid, tossed on a yellow summer dress about the same shade at the black-eyed Susans on the table.
“Remind me of this next time I think, much less say, let’s have a cookout.”
“Actually.” As he looked around, Trey skimmed a hand down her arm. “It feels right.”
“It does?”
“Sure, a few clicks up from what I expected, but it suits the manor, and both of you. It’s friendly, and it shows a lot of care. I think we’ve hit the end of our list, so I can give you a hand.”
“Well, according to Cleo’s illustration, which belongs in an art gallery, cocktail napkins on the bar table, dinner napkins—the extras—on the other tables.”
“I can handle that.”
“Later, I want to tell you a couple stories. Good ones.”
“Okay.”
“And you know what?” Sonya took her own look around. “You’re not wrong. This does feel right.”
When Anna and Seth arrived, Anna handed Cleo a large covered cake dish. “I know you said bring nothing, but who says no to mini cream puffs?”
“Not me. Go on out. Drinks are all set. There’s wine, beer, and this evening’s specialty, Bellinis. Lemonade, soft drinks, and water for you and the baby.”
“Sounds…” Anna stopped as she looked outside. “Well, wow, that looks fabulous. Oh, there’s Owen. I got a look at the new seats out front, and I want one.”
“You’ll talk him into it.”
“If not,” Seth said, “I’ll bribe him.”
“Sounds like the rest of the family’s here. They were driving up together,” Anna added.
“Perfect. Go sweet-talk Owen, and tell him to start the grill.”
Outside, Sonya put herself in charge of the bar, poured lemonade for Anna, red wine for Seth. She made a Bellini for Corrine, another lemonade for Deuce—who was behind the wheel.
“A Bellini, my own darling?” Ace asked Paula.
“Who would say no? Sonya, everything’s just lovely.”
So was she, Sonya thought. Trey’s grandmother exuded easy elegance like breath in her summery floral dress.
If she did a poster on handsome couples, the senior Doyles would be her first pick.
“What’s your pleasure, Ace?”
She smiled at him, finding him so dashing with his steel mane, his bold blue eyes behind the silver-framed glasses.
“I have so many pleasures, including being right here, right now. But to drink? I see that one says hard lemonade.”
“Cleo’s grand-mère’s brew.”
“I’d trust Imogene, so I’ll try it. This reminds me of being here a long time ago. Remember, Paula, coming to the manor after Collin had done some of his remodeling, but before he added the apartment? He had us over, just like this. The family.”
“I do. Another lovely day. And I remember thinking he’d brought the manor back to life. Just as you have, Sonya. You and Cleo.”
“Sometimes, like now? I think we were waiting for each other.”
“Collin chose well in you.” Ace took the glass she handed him, had a sip. His eyebrows wiggled. “Now, that’s what I call lemonade.”