Chapter Nine
THE CHARITY AUCTION is at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s waterfront venue. Glynnis organized it because she decided six weeks ago that O’Hara Miniatures deserved a public debut whether I was ready or not.
“You’re ready,” Glynnis said when I tried to argue. “The work is good. Your father has been fact-checking your wallpaper for months. If Sam O’Hara certifies your crown molding, the colonial-history community should take notice.”
She wasn’t wrong. The display table holds Megan’s finished room (the Victorian nursery, dentils corrected per Dad’s specifications) on loan, one speculative Federal-period parlor I built on my own initiative to show range, and a set of work-in-progress photographs mounted on card stock that Amy designed, then printed at the Annapolis FedEx.
The photographs are better than the originals deserve because Amy has an eye for presentation that I’ll never match.
People come to the table. They pick up the room boxes. They look at them from angles I didn’t consider, tilting the boxes to see how the light falls through the miniature windows and examining the wallpaper seams with a closeness that makes me want to apologize for every imperfection.
Local influencer, Patricia Oakes, who collects nineteenth-century miniatures with a following on Instagram, spends fifteen minutes examining the Federal parlor and then hands me a card.
“I’d like to commission a piece. A dining room, Adams style.
Full service, period silver from real silver, and the table set for twelve. Can you do that?”
I can do that. Dad can certainly research that. I take the card and three more behind it. By the end of the evening, six clients have paid deposits for future pieces. Patricia mentions me in her Instagram story, and a design blog asks for an interview.
During a quiet moment between patrons, Glynnis pulls me into the coat room, which is empty except for a rack of abandoned wraps and the faint smell of cedar.
“I need to tell you something about Frank and me,” she says.
She stands with her back against the wall and her arms crossed.
“You know we’ve been talking. It’s become more than talking.
We’ve had dinner three times since you moved to Sam’s, and I’m telling you because tonight, we’re leaving together. People will notice.”
“Glynnis, I’m glad.”
“You might not be once you hear the rest.” She uncrosses her arms. “I regret my divorce. I’ve regretted it for twenty-five years.
What I don’t regret is leaving. We were destroying each other by then.
Evan’s illness consumed everything. Frank stopped being able to look at me without seeing the hospital, and I stopped being able to look at him without seeing Frank’s silence during the worst year of our son’s life. ”
She pauses. I wait.
“I regret that we waited twenty-five years to find out whether we could become better people,” she says.
“Frank is better. I’m better. We wasted twenty-five years being afraid to test that.
” She looks at me. “I’m not telling you to go back to Evan.
What I’m telling you is that I understand what it costs to stay gone.
I also understand what it costs to try again, and neither one is free. ”
I hug her. She holds on for a second longer than Glynnis usually allows.
Then she straightens her jacket and walks back to the auction floor, composure fully restored.
Glynnis has been managing public appearances for thirty years.
I have considerably less practice so need an extra moment to compose myself.
EVAN IS AT THE AUCTION. I spot him across the room near the bar, holding a drink he doesn’t appear to be consuming, watching the display table.
He doesn’t approach or try to talk to me.
From the far side of the room, he watches women pick up room boxes I built at my father’s kitchen table.
He watches me discuss chair rails with Patricia Oakes as though he has never seen me speak with authority before.
Glynnis and Frank are both here. They arrived in separate cars. I watch them leave together, Frank holding the door, Glynnis letting him, and I have to look away.
My phone buzzes while I’m packing the display pieces. Evan has sent a photograph of a miniature writing desk sitting in an antique-shop case. It’s early nineteenth century, perfect scale.
Thought of you when I saw this.
I save the photograph. I don’t answer.
Dad notices Frank and Glynnis too. He’s been stationed near the wine table all evening, holding a glass he’s been nursing for two hours and offering unsolicited historical commentary to anyone who makes the mistake of asking about the miniatures.
“Those two are circling each other like graduate students who haven’t read the syllabus,” he says, watching Frank and Glynnis disappear through the lobby.
“You think they’re getting back together?”
“I think they’ve been apart for twenty-five years and neither of them has remarried. That tells you everything you need to know about the O’Hara intelligence assessment.” He sips his wine. “Your room boxes sold well.”
“They aren’t sold. They’re commissioned. I have deposits.”
“Deposits are better than sales. Deposits are commitment.” He sets down his glass. “Second date with Estelle tonight.”
“How did it go?”
“She brought corrections. Printed. Double-spaced.” He picks up his glass again. “I’m considering a third date, but I may need to finish the manuscript first, or she’ll rewrite it for me.”
TWO DAYS LATER, DAD invites Evan to dinner.
I find out when Amy texts me from the kitchen. Sam just called Evan and invited him for pot roast on Thursday. I thought you should know before you walk in and find place settings for four.
I call Dad immediately. “You invited Evan to dinner.”
“I did.”
“Without asking me.”
“I’m eighty-one years old. I’ll have dinner with whoever I please in my own house.” He pauses. “Amy is making the pot roast, and she’s using your mother’s recipe. There will be enough for four. If you’d prefer to eat in your room, I’ll bring you a plate, but I’d rather you joined us.”
“Dad.”
“Penelope.” He echoes my exasperated tone.
“I’ve been watching this boy sand my porch, fix my gutter, and drive me to College Park without complaining about my taste in archive music.
He’s trying. I don’t know yet whether he’s good enough.
I’m willing to give him a pot roast and see how he handles it. ”
I don’t have a good argument against this.
Dad is right that Evan has been doing the work, Amy’s pot roast is worth tolerating an awkward dinner for, and some stubborn, quiet part of me wants to know what it feels like to eat a meal with my husband at my father’s table without the accusation sitting between us, if I can forget the way it hurt for that long.
THE DINNER STARTS AWKWARDLY. Evan arrives with wine.
Dad accepts the wine with careful neutrality.
He’s already poured his own bourbon. Amy serves the pot roast and excuses herself to the study to work on footnotes, which is her way of giving us the room without making a production of it.
Oscar begs from Evan’s chair. Dave sleeps under the table but drools because of the meat smell in the air.
The conversation starts with Dad’s book, which is safe territory. Evan asks about the surrender chapter.
“The interesting question about Appomattox isn’t whether Grant was generous,” Dad says, cutting his pot roast. “The interesting question is whether Lee understood, before he walked into that parlor, that the war was already over. Most generals know. They keep fighting because admitting the loss costs more than the battle does.”
Evan sets down his fork. “You think surrendering is about knowing when to stop.”
“I think surrendering well requires a man to value the peace more than his pride.” Dad takes a sip of his bourbon. “Very few generals manage it. The ones who do are worth remembering.”
I eat my pot roast and listen to my father teach my husband something about how wars end. The lesson underneath the history is clear to me. I think Evan can hear it too.
Then Dad tells the story about Mom. “Jean told me she was pregnant with Penelope while I was mid-lecture prep,” he says.
“I was writing on the overhead projector. I’d been making notes about troop movements at Antietam when she walked into my office and said, ‘Sam, I’m pregnant.
’ I wrote the word ‘baby’ in the margin of my lecture notes without thinking.
I was fifty years old and in a happy stupor.
The next morning, I taught the whole class with ‘baby’ visible on the screen, and three midshipmen asked if it was a code word for a flanking maneuver. ”
I laugh. Evan laughs too, and the sound catches me off guard. For one second, this feels like family dinner instead of an experiment, and I hate how much I want that to continue.
After dinner, Evan and I do the dishes. Side by side at Dad’s old farmhouse sink, the one Mom picked when they renovated the kitchen when I was twelve. I wash. He dries.
Dave is asleep under the table. Oscar is asleep on a dish towel Evan left on the bar stool at the breakfast bar, and Dad has retreated to his study to give us time alone in his own way, which is to leave without announcing his departure.
“January,” I say, handing Evan a plate.
“For the due date?”
“Mid-January. The doctor hasn’t pinned it down closer than that.”
“Do you have a preference for names?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.” I rinse a glass. “I’d want to honor Mom somehow. Maybe a middle name.”
“Jean.”
“Jean...or Gene if it’s a boy.” I hand him the glass. “What about first names?”
“I haven’t let myself think about it,” he says, and the honesty of that admission stops me for a second.
He hasn’t let himself plan because he doesn’t know whether he’ll be in the child’s daily life or visiting on weekends, and the not-knowing has kept him from imagining a name for a daughter or son who might grow up in two homes.
Evan dries the last pot and sets it on the rack, then folds the towel. He hangs it on the oven handle. “Thank you for letting me be here tonight.”
I nod. He goes to the door and puts on his jacket. He doesn’t try to kiss me. Then he walks out into the dark. His car starts. Tires crunch on Dad’s gravel driveway, then the kitchen falls quiet.
I briefly wish I had given him a reason to stay.