“This is so stupid.”
“I know. I know,” he agreed. “But they want to get back to normal, and this is their version of normal.”
“So Monday. One week from today.”
“They’re firm on it. Sorry, Abby.”
I didn’t know what to do first. I started by texting Charlotte, to give her an update on my schedule so she’d know she could rent out her apartment again. As soon as I’d sent it, I stared at my cell phone, wondering what to tell Paul. When to tell Paul. The right answer was right away, and I couldn’t make myself do it.
There was a knock on the door. My heart leapt in my throat. I didn’t know if I could face Paul right then. I wasn’t ready for good-bye.
It wasn’t Paul, though. It was Mrs. Mahoney from downstairs.
“I found some recipes,” she said, holding out a set of small, hand-written notecards. “Since you asked about Newfoundland specialties.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to pull myself together. “Do you want to come in and have tea and tell me about them?”
“No, no,” she said. “I have to get back downstairs. I’m baking.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you. These look amazing.” I looked down at the carefully copied ingredient lists on the lined white notecards, touched.
I noticed she was watching me as I looked at the pile. “If you come downstairs, I could talk you through them.”
I had done it. I had broken through. It made me happy and sad at once. I smiled. “Sure.”
Mrs. Mahoney’s apartment immediately revealed that she had downsized to her apartment from somewhere larger. It felt like an overstuffed exhibit from a museum about Newfoundlandculture. Every corner was filled with teapots, sewing tables, white enamel basins filled with pottery and bric-a-brac.
“You have beautiful things.”
“I don’t know about beautiful,” she said. “But they’ve been in my family a long time.” I watched her make tea and then check on some bread in the oven.
“I like to make my own bread,” she said. “The stuff you buy at the market is garbage.”
I nodded, deciding it was not the right moment to tell her that this was exactly why I went to the French boulangerie in New York.
“So where did you come from before St. John’s?” I asked her. “Some of this stuff looks like you didn’t grow up in the city.”
“I hate cities,” she agreed. “But it wasn’t practical to stay in the country anymore. We used to have a farmhouse.”
“Whereabouts?”
She eyed me suspiciously, like I might be a census worker here to ferret out back taxes and then fussed around with dishes as she began to tell her story.
“I spent my whole life in Newfoundland,” she said. “Except when I got married and went on my honeymoon to Bermuda for a week.”
“Bermuda!”
“It was too hot,” she said. “They served us warm soda.”
“Nightmarish.” I smiled, and for the first time, so did she.
Her husband was a fisherman, and they had one daughter together, who stayed in Newfoundland just long enough to come out as gay and then immediately moved down to Ottawa.
“I wasn’t supportive of that lifestyle,” Mrs. Mahoney said. “I didn’t understand it. And my church, you know, I go to the Catholic Church. You didn’t do that kind of thing.”
“I understand,” I said, quietly. There was regret in her voice, but the quiet kind, and I didn’t push at it. I knew there had been a break in the family that she was only beginning to dissect.
“My husband was…he didn’t want to talk to Penny at all. I kept in touch, but it was distant.”
