‘What do you think?’ asked his wife.

‘I think she’s in town or maybe she drove to Wesley; we need to get out of here.’

‘I pray she’s all right. Should we close the front door?’

‘Best to leave things as we found them. I’m sure she’s fine.’

How did they manage to everlastingly insinuate themselves into other people’s business, Ireland being a prime example?

She sighed; he declined to mention it.

‘Maybe we should do our shopping at the Local,’ she said, ‘and come by again before we go home?’

‘Good. Let’s do it, let’s go.’

‘I’d really like to check out her closet to see if Chester’s tux is in there.’

‘Good Lord, woman, leave off.’

He took her hand and led her to the top of the stairs, and down they went. Cherry Garcia.

Chapter Two

If not for her, he would eat the entire pint at one sitting. But she would seize it at the halfway point, preach him a homily, and stick it in the freezer behind lamb chops wrapped in butcher’s paper. A week might pass until she deemed it timely to let him finish it, straight from the carton.

He hated this monitoring business, for her and for him, but where would he be without surveillance? Lost, he supposed, in some diabetic coma, as twice before. Lord knows, he hoped Wilson would be up to it if anything dire ever happened again. With Hoppy in South Sudan, he could be as morte as Chester McGraw with a mere slip of the fork.

She waited for a northbound van to pass, and turned right on Main. ‘Remember you have an appointment with Dr. Wilson on Monday.’

‘Got it,’ he said.

He hiked his pant leg and surveyed his right ankle. No swelling. Same with the left. What a life, when a man had to check his ankles and shoot himself with a needle and leave half a pint moldering behind the chops.

‘I meant to tell you,’ she said. ‘Olivia called. Lace will be home for fall break on October eighteenth.’

‘And Dooley comes in on the twenty-sixth and out on the twenty-ninth.’ He mused on the unfortunate juxtaposition of dates. Being in separate schools with different holiday schedules was tough on romantic, not to mention sleep-deprived, relationships. On the occasional long weekend, the round-trip drive time between UVA, where Lace was a sophomore, and UGA, where Dooley was a junior, was fifteen or sixteen hours.

‘We’ll have him all to ourselves for two days and three nights,’ she said. ‘And he seems happy about it.’

‘No mention of going out to Meadowgate?’

‘Not a peep. I think he misses us.’

He couldn’t remember when they’d had Dooley’s company for two days running—given the boy’s fondness for disappearing out to Meadowgate Farm and honing his veterinarian skills.

‘What do you think about two dinners?’ she said. ‘One for Dooley and the young siblings, and Buck and Pauline, of course. I think it would be good for Dooley to spend more time with Jessie and Pooh. We know Sammy and Kenny won’t see their mother, so we could have Sammy and Kenny the following night.’

‘There’s Harley,’ he said.

‘He could come both nights.’

‘And what about Hélène the first night? She’s a terrific landlady, he says.’

‘Fun. How many is that?’

She nosed the Mazda into a parking spot across from the Local, a pretty good grab.

‘Dinner One, nine. Dinner Two, six.’

‘Dinner One, burgers, coleslaw, and baked beans, two pots,’ she said. ‘Dinner Two, your special ham, Puny’s potato salad, and we’ll have the second pot of beans.’

‘I’ll get Esther to make the OMC,’ he said. ‘It’ll serve both nights.’ He loved doing this stuff. ‘I’ll just take my low-fat yogurt and enjoy it in the garage.’

He could see the whole thing—the gathering in the study around a long folding table laid with Nanny Howard’s tablecloth, the view to Baxter Park, sunlight slanting through the window on Esther Bolick’s unbeatable orange marmalade cake . . . and Dooley, there was Dooley wolfing his food and glad to be home but never letting on, and laughing, Dooley laughing, and later they would shoot pool in the dining room, and on the night of Dinner Two, Sammy would hammer the lot of them. Which reminded him . . .

‘Which reminds me,’ he said. ‘I promised Sammy I’d learn to shoot pool.’

‘Sammy being your instructor?’

‘May as well learn from the best.’

‘When Lace comes home, we’ll have her over,’ she said. ‘Lunch, I think. We’ll get to see the ring.’

Ah, the ring. Lace’s ring from Tiffany was being resized when they traveled up the mountain the other night from the airport. Not exactly a friendship ring, Dooley had said, but not exactly an engagement ring, either.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He needed to talk with the bright and beautiful girl whom he first met at Fernbank. She had worn a battered felt hat and carried a mattock and sack; he’d surprised her in the act of stealing Miss Sadie’s ferns. Now she was the adopted daughter of the town doctor and his wife, an honor student at the University of Virginia, and Dooley’s ‘intended,’ as they used to say in Mississippi. Things seemed to be coming up roses, albeit with a fair amount of thorns.

Cynthia took the key from the ignition. ‘Remind me to get treats for Violet.’

Heaven knows, his wife’s white cat was the biggest breadwinner in the family. In addition to being the star of the long-famous Violet books for young readers, Violet was a winsome and agreeable creature whom he’d come to like very much.

There had been, so far, a total of four white Violets to pose for and inspire the work of the author/illustrator, all but the current Violet now deceased. In their fictional incarnations, one or the other had gone to Paris, visited the Queen, attended school, vacationed in the country, played the piano, lived in a bookstore, you name it. Out rolled the Violet books and in rolled the dough.

‘Will do,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep Violet happy.’

•   •   •

IMPRESSED BY THEIR RECENT international travel, the proprietor of the Local checked them out personally.

‘Buy one, get one free,’ said Avis, bagging the two pink grapefruit.

‘Great. Thanks.’ He pulled out his wallet. ‘You should do coupons in the Muse.’

‘Too expensive,’ said Avis. ‘A Magic Marker, a sheet of butcher’s paper, and a little tape to stick it on the window—that does it for me. How about today’s special?’

‘Missed that.’

‘Medley of Root Vegetables. Beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots—already washed an’ in a reusable bag—four bucks. A little olive oil, a little thyme, rosemary, and sea salt; roast on four twenty-five for twenty minutes.’ Avis kissed his fingertips in the Italian fashion.

‘We’ll take a bag. But four bucks?’

‘Fresh and full of flavor, not wilted and half dead like in some stores I could name.’

‘Can we get fingerlings instead of parsnips?’

‘No substitutions,’ said Avis, punching around on the register screen.

‘How about a ham?’ he asked Avis. ‘Bone in. Third week of October.’

‘How about a valley ham you can cut with a fork—old-fashioned flavor, low on sodium, and exclusive to the Local? Free-range hogs, meat succulent and sweet. Bottom line, the best ham between here and Smithfield . . .’

Avis leaned into the clincher. ‘. . . bar none.’

‘Book it,’ he said. ‘Ten to twelve pounds. Do you have a spoon, by any chance?’

•   •   •

‘IF WE GO BY IRENE’S, the ice cream will melt,’ he said, piteous.

She gunned the engine. ‘We spent an eon in there. We hadn’t really stocked up since we got home.’

‘I have a spoon,’ he said, taking it out of his jacket pocket. He held it forth, awaiting her pronouncement. He had made sure that the bag with the pint was within easy reach on the floor of the backseat.

She eyed the spoon, sighed. He would let this one pass, too, but one more and she could never again call herself a Yankee.