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“I like it,” she says. “You definitely need to put it up on your blog.”
I tell her that I will, which pleases her, even though I plan to delete the picture the first chance I get.
Next, it’s time to arrange and photograph the pumpkin bread. I let Sam saw away at one of the loaves, the uneven slices unfolding off it like pages torn from a book. The ceramic pumpkins are replaced with vintage teacups I found a week earlier in the West Village. I fill them with coffee, varying the amounts in each. When a splash of coffee hits the table, I leave it there, letting it pool around the base of a teacup. Sam finishes things by lifting the cup and taking a long, slurping sip. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the brim. A ruby kiss, mysterious and seductive. She stands back to let me photograph it. I click away, taking more pictures than necessary, drawn to the chaos.
8.
Dinnertime arrives in a panicked whirl of preparation and last-minute details. I whip up linguini with the homemade puttanesca sauce Jeff’s mother taught me how to make. There’s salad, freshly baked breadsticks, wine from actual bottles, all perfectly laid out on the rough-hewn dining-room table we bought the previous summer in Red Hook.
Jeff comes home to find Rosemary Clooney standards drifting from the living-room stereo and me clad in the mid-’50s party dress I felt compelled to change into, my face pink and gleaming. God knows what’s going through his mind. Definitely confusion. Perhaps worry that I’ve gone a little overboard, which I have. But I hope there’s pride in the mix too. At what I’ve accomplished. At the fact that after so many crowded, informal meals with his family, I finally have a guest.
Then Sam emerges from the dining room with her face scrubbed of flour and a fresh coat of lipstick, and I know exactly what Jeff is thinking. Concern mixed with suspicion tinged with surprise.
“Jeff, this is Sam,” I announce.
“Samantha Boyd?” Jeff says, more to me than to her.
Sam smiles and offers her hand. “I prefer Sam.”
“Sure. Hi, Sam.” The situation has jolted Jeff so much that he almost forgets to return Sam’s handshake. When he does, it’s weak. More hand than shake. “Quincy, can I talk to you for a sec?”
We go to the kitchen, where I quickly brief him on the afternoon’s events, finishing with, “I hope you don’t mind that I asked her to stay for dinner.”
“It’s certainly a surprise,” he says.
“Yes, it happened very suddenly.”
“You should have called me.”
“You would have tried to talk me out of it,” I say.
Jeff ignores the remark, mostly because he knows it’s true.
“I just think it’s very strange that she suddenly showed up like this. That’s not normal, Quinn.”
“You’re sounding a bit too suspicious, Mr. Lawyer.”
“I’d just feel better knowing more about why she’s here.”
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I say.
“Then why did you invite her to dinner?”
I want to tell him about that afternoon, how for a moment Sam was so much like Janelle that it took my breath away. But he wouldn’t understand. No one would.
“I kind of feel sorry for her,” I say. “After all that she’s been through, I think she just might need a friend.”
“Fine,” Jeff says. “If you’re cool with all this, then so am I.”
Yet the shadow of a scowl crossing his face tells me that he’s not entirely cool with it. Still, we go back to the dining room, where Sam politely pretends that we just weren’t talking about her. “Everything good?” she says.
I smile so wide my cheeks hurt. “Perfect. Let’s eat!”
During the meal, I play hostess, serving the food and pouring the wine, trying hard to ignore that Jeff is talking to Sam like she’s one of his clients—genial but probing. Jeff’s a conversational dentist that way. Extracting what needs to be removed.
“Quinn tells me you vanished for a few years,” he says.
“I like to think of it as laying low.”