“I had no idea you were so friendly with Danny.”
“I’m not. I mean, I’m notunfriendly with him. I just haven’t talked to him much before today. He’s really nice. And also, there’s one other thing, about Kristie.” Louisa pauses for dramatic effect. She’s back in the game now, which gives her something to focus on. “She’s pregnant. I don’t think Danny knows yet.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” says Annie. “Like mother like daughter, I suppose.”
“Mom!”
“What?” says Annie.
“You can’t say that.” Annie doesn’t respond; she’s biting her lip, studying the cards.
“I think we should invite her for dinner,” says Louisa. “I think she deserves to meet Daddy.”
Now Annie glances up. “I believe she met him in the garden, when she brought that strange note.”
“To meet him for real, I mean. To beintroducedto him, properly. And if you don’t want to be involved, I understand that completely. We can do it on a book club night.”
“Book club takes August off,” says Annie frostily.
They go on like this for a time, card upon card upon card. Then Annie lays down her final card; they haven’t finished, but neither can make a move.
“Stalemate,” says Louisa.
“I’ll say,” says Annie. They begin to count the foundation cards to figure out the winner.
“You win,” says Louisa. Annie smiles thinly. “You can go out to dinner with Patty Miller!” says Louisa. “You can go to Primo, or into Camden. You deserve a night out. Go to Peter Ott’s! Have a nice cocktail.”
Annie takes a long breath. Louisa tries to figure out what’s in her eyes. Stubbornness? Fear? Vacillation? “I can have a cocktail right here,” she says. “I don’t care to be displaced from my own home. If you must go ahead with it”—she pauses, giving Louisa time to say she willnotgo ahead with it, but Louisa doesn’t claim the chance—“I think I will attend this...dinner.”
Annie rises and walks to the kitchen. Louisa follows her. Counters gleaming, dish towels laid out to dry. Annie looks at the calendar hanging next to the refrigerator. She chews her lip and doesn’t meet Louisa’s gaze. “I think the tenth will work fine,” she says. “Why don’t you ask her for the tenth.”
Louisa says, cautiously, “Danny too? I got the feeling there’s a chance for them still—”
“Why the hell not,” says Annie, whonevercurses. She throws up her hands. “Danny too.”
39.
Kristie
The World’s Best Grandma stays so long at Renys that Kristie thinks Diana may have to offer her a job. “I heard you say you’re pregnant,” she says to Kristie, after Louisa and Claire have left, after Detective Harding has packed up his tiny pencil and his small notebook and his chin dimple and departed.
“Yes,” says Kristie. The cat is already out of the bag, may as well set it loose around the neighborhood.
“To me, you look thin,” says Frances.
“I’m small-boned,” says Kristie. “Always have been.” (Not true: she’s actually pretty curvy.)
“How many weeks did you say you were?”
“Ten.” Kristie returns to her station to continue unpacking the boxes. Frances follows. Kristie wonders where the World’s Best Grandkids are; Frances seems to have nowhere else to be.
“Well, we’re going to have to plump you up a little, aren’t we?”She roots around in her giant bag and pulls out an aluminum-foil-wrapped oblong shape. “Here,” she says. She points the shape at Kristie. “It’s a sandwich. Turkey and swiss.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” says Kristie.
“Of course you can.” Frances pats her bag. “I always travel with a few extra sandwiches. You never know when you might run into someone who needs a meal. Take it, okay? It would mean a lot to me if you’d eat it.”
Then the funniest thing happens. Kristie’s stomachrumbles.Her stomach hasn’t rumbled—hasn’t expressed actual, legitimate hunger—since the day she took the pregnancy test. Suddenly she is ravenous. Suddenly nothing sounds better to her than Frances’s torpedo of a sandwich. She takes it.
