Page 36

“Kitchen.”

Baxter and Barret trail after us, hopeful in the way dogs become when someone arrives carrying a bag. Don stops to greet them properly.

“Gentlemen,” he says. “You remain too handsome.”

Baxter accepts the compliment as his due. Barret sneezes on Don’s shoe.

“Bitch.”

In the kitchen, Don starts unloading photographs onto the island. Old party shots. Vacation pictures. Renny in a tuxedo at some award dinner.

Renny everywhere.

I stand at the far end and look at the photographs like they belong to a stranger.

Don watches me over the top of one picture. “Too much?”

“I’m fine.”

I pick up a photo from Puerto Vallarta. Renny is on the patio, shirt open, drink in hand, late-afternoon sun turning him golden in a way he would have pretended not to notice. I took the picture. I remember that. I remember him saying, “Get my good side.”

I set it down.

Don opens the Sweet Stuff bag, revealing mini chocolate éclairs. “Eat one before I do something horrifying to the whole bag.”

“No thanks.”

“Your grief is making feeding you very difficult.”

“I had lunch.”

“Did you eat it?”

I look at him.

He nods. “That’s what I thought.”

He slides the bag toward me anyway.

I turn away to get plates and see the vase.

What’s left of the vase.

It sits on the sideboard in the little sitting area off the kitchen, broken into three large pieces and several smaller ones, arranged on a folded dish towel.

“Well,” Don says. “That seems new.”

“It fell.”

Don walks over and studies the pieces. It was a tall blue glass vase Renny bought from an artist in Asheville after deciding we needed statement pieces. I hated it at first. Then I got used to hating it.

Don picks up one of the larger pieces and turns it carefully in his hand. “This is Murano, isn’t it?”

“Asheville.”

“Even worse. Local art has feelings.”

I take two plates from the cabinet and set them on the island.