The salad. Wilted kale, Vincent explained, and roasted potatoes with plenty of garlic, topped off with a luscious tahini dressing. Who needed a main dish after all this? I did, I realized—once the veal and brandied squash arrived. I don’t know who ever thought up brandied vegetables, but I’d like to shake their hand.
I had no room at the end for the dessert, a creamy, nutty, not quite cake, not quite pastry thing that called to me from the center of a chocolate-drizzled plate. All I could do was nibble lovingly at the pistachios and the cocoa powder. The finale was an espresso served in a little Art Deco cup. Lingering over it, I knew Mom might be having more adventures than me right now, and Chad Laramy might be getting a better tan in Aruba, but no one was getting a better supper.
When I finally set my linen napkin on the table and pushed my chair back, I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. I’d spent two full hours here. That’s like ten normal dinnertimes for me. How did that much time go by?
As I left the dining room, I planned to head straight upstairs, but the caffeine hit me by the time I reached the parlor. Then I remembered a room I’d passed in the hallway on my way to and from dinner, a little room lined with bookshelves and crowded with armchairs and a sofa. A study, I guessed, or a lounge. Maybe it would have some decent magazines to help me while away my wakefulness or even some boring ones to put me to sleep. I turned around.
The study, softly lit by two table lamps, was windowless, which was a bonus. In here, I could pretend it wasn’t winter outside. I could pretend it wasn’t even Maine outside. This could be the study in some Caribbean retreat. Chad Laramy might be right next door. I liked this room—I didn’t even mind being alone in it—and I had the feeling I’d be spending a lot of time here in the long days ahead.
The bookshelves were loosely organized by category: travel, spiritual, food, boats, paperback novels, even comic books. I stopped at the paperback section, hoping to find a mystery I hadn’t read yet. I hadn’t read any of them. They were all wonderfully old, outdated and heavily thumbed. Six Parts Joy, One Part Murder caught my eye, and I took it out. The back flap promised a lurid tale of grisly crimes and a first-rate gumshoe—my kind of story. Just as I was turning to the first page though, a loud blare behind me nearly stopped my heart. I spun around and pressed my back against the shelves.
The face of a woman peered from around an armchair. Its high back had hidden her from my view. “Hello,” she said in a slight accent—French, I thought—and then she sneezed thunderously twice more. “I am sorry to startle you.”
“No, no,” I panted, heading to the sofa. “I just didn’t see you there.” Plus I thought I was the only guest.
At least old enough to be my mother’s mother, this woman wore jeans and a loose sweater and sat with her legs curled under her, a thick book crooked in one arm. With tawny eyes, milky skin and silver hair, she’d clearly once been beautiful, and, in fact, still was. I hoped I’d like my elegant inn mate, whoever she was, since we were bound to be tripping all over each other in the confines of the inn.
“How was supper tonight?” she asked.
“Great.” I patted my belly, wondering why she hadn’t eaten. Maybe she’d only just checked in. Maybe she was an unexpected arrival. “Really outstanding.”
“No, it was not. It was bland—mediocre at best.”
The hair on my nape bristled. I felt personally attacked by this insult to the closest thing to nirvana I’d ever tasted. “I don’t think we had the same thing,” I said, wondering where and when she’d eaten, if not in the dining room at the appointed hour. “Did you have the veal?”
“No. I cooked it. I am Rita, the chef.” And then she smiled.
This was Miss Rita? I’d imagined someone bigger, more Italian, wearing white and smelling of oregano. It took me a second to adjust to the reality. “Penny,” I said at last.
“I know.”
“Oh. Well, I thought everything was fabulous. Especially the soup. And the dessert—I should have saved room.”
She smiled broadly, the lines at her temples crinkling into crescents. “I am glad it was all right. You know, I can hardly get anything fresh, really fresh, out here this time of year. All I can do is improvise.”
“But it was wonderful, really.”
“I am glad. So, what are you reading?”
“Pure pulp,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed about my choice of literature. “How about you?”
“A cookbook.” She held up Cuisine Under the Stars. “It is how I sustain myself in the dreary winter. I decide what I would make if I could get the ingredients. Then I am not so sad about waiting. Let me tell you what would have been on tonight’s menu, no?”
I nodded.
“Since I did much of my training in Brussels,” she started, “I would prepare a Belgian supper, goose a l’instar de Vise. It is only worth bothering with if you can find a fresh young bird, in springtime.” Rita described how she’d quarter the goose and simmer it in a garlic and white wine broth brimming with celery, carrots, onions and spices fresh from the garden. Next, she’d fry the bird golden crisp in a batter of eggs and crumbled homemade bread. Then she’d dribble a sauce of mashed garlic, broth, egg yolks, heavy cream and butter over it. “Flemish asparagus, just picked, and boiled potatoes on the side and voilà.”
I think I actually whimpered, but at least I didn’t drool.
“And for dessert,” she went on, “gaufres Bruxelloises. Waffles cooked in a pint of beer for crispness, sprinkled with brown sugar and topped with butter.”
“Sounds amazing,” I said.
“And you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What would you make for supper?” She tried to hand me her cookbook.
“No, no. The only poultry I handle has been precooked by Frank Perdue.”
“But you can imagine.”
So I did. Leafing through her cookbook, I used the photos to create a four-course meal of scallop and mussel bisque, mesclun and persimmon salad, grilled tenderloin with papaya chutney, and something called chocolate melting cake. Not that I’d ever eaten these dishes before, but the words tasted delicious as I spoke them.
“Bien!” Rita clapped her hands when I finished presenting my menu. “Good!”
After that, she asked what my all-time most memorable meal was. “Tonight’s supper, definitely,” I said. “And you, what was your favorite?”
She sat back and rested her head against the armchair, gazing at one of the table lamps. She looked far away, as if she were reliving a memory instead of just trying to put her finger on one. Finally she said, “It was a tuna and potato chip casserole. Tuna, from a can. And the potato chips were stale.” She laughed to herself, still staring at the memory hovering above the lamp.
“That must’ve been some recipe,” I said.
“No, the recipe was silly. But the cook, he was extraordinary.”
“He?”
“Now tell me. Tell me who you would invite to a dinner party. If it could be anyone, anyone at all.”
Okay, so she didn’t want to spill about the guy. All right, fine, for now. “Anyone?” I asked. “Even people from the past?”
“Certainly.”
For some reason, the first person I thought of was George Henion. What was I thinking? Why would I want to break bread with a guy who either didn’t know how to talk or who didn’t want to talk to me specifically? “I guess I’d want to have some