She brought the rest of the meal in two trips: crisp round slices of browned potato with the red skins still on, steaming broccoli and a dish of dark greens dotted with onion and bits of bacon. Simple fare, indeed, but Tyler could not remember ever being quite so hungry. Intent on the food, he startled when Hap spoke.
“Heavenly Father…”
Tyler looked up to see Charlotte and Hap with hands linked and heads bowed in prayer. Stunned, he could only sit and stare in uneasy silence.
“We thank You for Your generosity and for our guest. Bless the hands that prepared this meal and the food to the nourishment of our bodies, that we might be strengthened to perform Your will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
“Amen,” Charlotte echoed, lifting her head.
Tyler gulped when her gaze collided with his. Belatedly, he realized that she had reached out to offer him a small spatula. When it finally dawned on him that she expected him to serve himself, he shook his head.
“Oh, uh, ladies first.”
Smiling, she began to cut the meatloaf into wedges. Not one to stand on ceremony, Hap dug into the potatoes and plunked the platter down in front of Tyler, reaching for the ketchup. After a moment hunger trumped discomfort, and Tyler began to gingerly fill his plate.
Everything looked, smelled and, to his surprise, tasted delicious. The greens took a little getting used to, but the broccoli and seasoned potatoes were wonderful, and that was saying something, given that he employed an expensive chef and routinely dined in the finest restaurants to be found. The meat loaf, however, came as the biggest surprise.
Melt-in-the-mouth tender with a beguiling blend of flavors, it whet his appetite to a greedy fever pitch. He ate with unaccustomed gusto, and only with gritted teeth did he find enough discipline to forgo a third helping. Hap apparently possessed no such compunction, but as he reached for that third wedge, Charlotte spoke up.
“Pity no one’s found a way to take the cholesterol out of beef. You can cook as lean as possible, but there’s still that.”
Hap subsided with a sigh. Looking to Tyler he commented wryly, “I keep telling her that no one lives forever in this world, but it seems she’s in no hurry to see me off to the next.” Charlotte made no comment to that, just smiled sweetly. “My first mistake,” Hap went on, “was letting her take me to the doctor.”
“Mmm. Guess you could’ve hitchhiked,” she commented calmly.
Tyler found himself chuckling as Hap latched onto that gentle riposte with clownish fervor, drawing himself up straight in his chair. “You don’t think some sweet young thing would come along and take me up, then?”
Charlotte looked at Tyler and blandly said, “If she happened to be driving an ambulance.”
Laughter spilled out of the two men, unrestrained and joyous. Tyler laughed, in fact, until tears clouded his eyes. Whatever clever rejoinder Hap might have made derailed when the door to the lobby opened and two more elderly men strolled in.
“Y’all are having fun without us,” one of them accused good-naturedly.
Hap introduced them as Grover Waller and Justus Inman. A third man identified as Teddy Booker called from the outer room, “I’m stoking this here stove. These dominoes are cold as ice!”
Hap got to his feet, eagerness lending speed if not agility to his movements. “You play dominoes, Tyler?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”
“You all go on,” Charlotte said, “and don’t stay up too late. I’ll heat up some cider after a while.”
“We’ll be having some popcorn, too,” Hap decided.
“I was hoping for carrot cake,” Grover Waller said at just a notch above a whine.
“Now, Pastor,” Charlotte told him, “you know you have to watch your sugar.”
A belly as round as a beach ball, thin, steel-gray hair sticking out above his ears in tufts and brown eyes twinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses gave the preacher a jovial appearance that belied the mournful tone of his voice as he complained, “You’ve been talking to my wife.”
“And she says you’ve got to lose twenty pounds or go back on meds,” Charlotte confirmed.
He thinned his somewhat fleshy lips and hitched up the waist of his nondescript gray slacks before turning away with a sigh.
“Oh, the burden of a caring wife,” Hap intoned, following the two men from the room.
“Seems to me you used to call it meddling,” someone said.
“We all do until they’re gone,” another gravelly voice put in before the door closed behind them.
Charlotte shook her head, smiling. “They’re all widowers except for the pastor,” she explained. Tyler didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply nodded. “They live to play dominoes, those four, and really, what else have they got to do? Well, three of them, anyway. Pastor Waller’s nearly twenty years younger than the others, and he’s got the church.”
“I see.”
After an awkward moment of silence, she rose and began to clear the table, saying, “Just let me put these in the kitchen and I’ll point you to your room.”
The idea of going off alone to a cold, less than sumptuous room did not appeal to Tyler. Rising, he heard himself say, “Can’t I help you clean up?”
He didn’t know which of them seemed more surprised. After a moment, Charlotte looked down at the soiled dishes in her arms.
“It’s the least I can do after such a fine meal,” Tyler pressed, realizing that he hadn’t even complimented the cook.
“I suppose your wife expects you to help out at home,” she began, shaking her head, “but it’s not necessary here.”
“No,” he denied automatically. “That is, no wife.”
“Ah.” Charlotte ducked her head shyly. “Well, if it’ll make you feel better to help out…”
“Oh, it will,” he said, lifting a dish in each hand and following her toward the kitchen. “I never expected a home-cooked meal, especially not such a healthy one.” She looked back over her shoulder at that, just before disappearing into the other room. “And tasty,” he added quickly, raising his voice. “Very tasty. Delicious, even.”
Hearing her wry “Thanks,” he stepped into a narrow room with doors at either end.
Countertops of industrial-grade metal contrasted sharply with light green walls and cabinets constructed of pale, golden wood. The white cooking range in the corner by what must have been the outside door looked as if it came straight from the 1950s, while the olive-green refrigerator at the opposite end of the room appeared slightly newer. Tyler noted with some relief that a modern thermostat for a central air-conditioning system had been mounted above the light switch on one wall. He hoped the rooms were similarly equipped.
What he did not see was a dishwasher. It came as no surprise, then, when Charlotte set down the dishes and started running hot water into the sink below the only window he had yet seen in the small apartment. Covered with frilly, translucent curtains in yellow trimmed with green, that window looked out over a small patio lit by a single outdoor light. Leaves swirled across the patterned brick, snagging on the thin legs of wrought-iron furniture in need of a new coat of green paint.
“You can put those down there,” Charlotte said, indicating the counter with a tilt of her head.
Hurrying to do as instructed, Tyler looked up to find her tying that white apron around her impossibly narrow waist again. Quickly switching his gaze, he watched suds foam up beneath the running water as she squeezed in detergent.