the house. She put me on hold but it wasn’t long before Roger picked up.
I didn’t waste any words. “Roger, I think we need to talk. Could you drop by after work today?”
“If you spoke to your lawyer, Lauren, you know I’m well within my rights—”
“Roger,” I said pleasantly, “please. I know the house is going on the market. Sondra was here this morning and we went through the entire house together,” I said, making it sound like we’d bonded while discussing cracks in the ceiling. “She made a list of liabilities that I think we need to discuss.”
“Liabilities?”
I smiled. I’d gotten his attention.
“What kind of liabilities?”
“Well, the list is quite detailed and I thought we should probably go over it together.”
“Just fax me a copy, okay?”
“Roger, since I’m going to be living here while these repairs are being done, I’m the one who will have to handle the plasterers and painters and the carpenters. So I think—”
“Plasterers? Carpenters?” he grumbled before giving the kind of sigh that would have made me nervous if we were still married. “Yes, maybe we better discuss it.” I could hear him flipping pages on his day planner. “I’ll be there around six-thirty.”
“Perfect,” I said. When I hung up the phone I headed for the shower. I needed to get rid of the stench of yesterday’s pity party, then start making a grocery list.
I’d decided to splurge on ingredients, so I drove to the Market in the Cove in the heart of the village. When I pulled into the parking lot my heart did a little flip. God, I used to love this place. When Roger and I were still married I relished shopping here on Friday mornings, planning special dinners for the weekend. Once Roger split I’d started going to the bigger, less expensive chains. But they were just grocery shopping. The Market in the Cove, with its low green awnings and its clusters of pumpkins and corn stalks flanking the entrance, was an experience.
Buckets of fresh cut flowers greeted me as soon as I was through the door. Warm gold and vibrant orange zinnias. Jaunty brown-eyed Susans and roses of yellow and pink and red. There was a bucket of pale, creamy giant mums. I decided I had to have some of those. I grabbed a shopping cart and chose half a dozen. After the flower girl, in an adorable cobbler’s apron, wrapped them for me, I moved on to the butcher’s counter. The butcher wasn’t the same one as in the old days, but he was just as friendly when he held out the length of white butcher paper where an expertly trimmed loin of pork reclined for my approval before he wrapped it.
The fresh vegetable section was even more beautiful than the flower department. Every tomato appeared to be the same size and fully ripe. The asparagus was thin and tender enough to make one doubt the calendar and there were varieties of mushrooms I’d never even heard of. I chose a selection of vegetables to marinate and pan grill and was sorting through the fresh rosemary when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
“Lauren! I haven’t seen you shopping here in ages!”
I grimaced. Amy Westcott. The biggest gossip in the Cove. I made myself smile before I turned around.
“Amy! What a surprise!”
Amy lived across the street from me in a huge Colonial that was decorated within an inch of its life. She had parlayed a fondness for painting vines, flowers and birds on assorted surfaces into a business. Amy’s Ambience, her little gift shop in the village, was stocked with the overflow from her house as well as hand-dipped candles, homemade soaps and a selection of useless, overpriced gifts. Moira and I had often speculated on how she managed to keep her shop open since there never seemed to be any customers.
“Is it true what I’ve heard?” she asked with that overly concerned air that people affect when they’re hoping that whatever horrible thing they’ve heard really is true.
My stomach clenched. Had Amy somehow heard that I was soon to be homeless? “I don’t know,” I answered pleasantly. “That depends on what you’ve heard.”
“That you’re selling your little house!” she exclaimed, her fresh-scrubbed face looking the picture of innocence. Amy never wore makeup. She didn’t have to. This was a woman who’d sailed through high school without a zit or a blackhead to slow her down. And she was sailing into middle age with barely a crow’s foot to her name. “I mean, I saw Sondra Hawk over there this morning, so I just thought—”
“Oh, that,” I said as I turned my attention back to the rosemary. “I was just having the house—um—appraised.”
“Appraised?”
I didn’t have to look at her to know that she was skeptical.
“Yes. I’m thinking of having another bathroom put in,” I said, a little astounded that I’d grabbed this idea out of thin air.
“But, didn’t Gordy just leave for college? I would think the last thing you’d need is another bathroom at this point.”
I looked at her in her white button down and sixteen inch strand of pearls and wanted to tell her that it was none of her business but it’s like I was programmed to be nice. So instead I gave her a bright smile and said, “Well, you never know what the future will hold, do you?”
I could see that this response had whetted her appetite for more information. I decided to counterattack. “So how is Chuck doing? The stock market is so unpredictable these days.” Chuck was a stockbroker who liked to brag that his clients were the only ones who hadn’t lost money in the ’90s.
“Oh—well—Chuck is fine. And, as always, he just has a knack for picking the right stocks,” she said with a brief laugh, then opened her mouth to pounce again.
I beat her to it.
“And the girls? How are Annabelle, Belinda and Camille doing?”
“Oh, the ABCs are doing terrifically,” she gushed. “I’m sure you heard about our Belinda coming in first at her twirling contest and—”
I nodded, smiled, oohed and aahed in all the right places as Amy talked batons and gymnastics and swim meets. The ABCs, as Amy and Chuck liked to refer to their girls of eight, ten and twelve, were, as Moira liked to put it, “nauseatingly talented.” Not to mention Amy’s favorite subject. She could go on for hours. And that’s exactly what it felt like she was doing.
I looked at my watch. I didn’t have any more time to be nice. “Oh, gosh, look at the time!” I interrupted. “Gotta rush. Nice to see you.” I tossed a bundle of rosemary onto my other groceries and took off, rattling my cart down the aisle and leaving her standing there in her Eddie Bauer khakis with a dumbfounded look on her face.
Shameful, maybe, but I fully admit that I enjoyed every minute of preparing that meal, even though I was going to be feeding it to Roger.
The plan was to fill the house with the scents of home cooking so he wouldn’t be able to resist accepting my invitation to stay for dinner. Then I’d whet his appetite with baby spinach and fresh pears tossed with his favorite vinaigrette and a sprinkling of blue cheese and walnuts and wow him with my honey mustard pork loin and my pan grilled vegetable medley.
