She shook her head and smiled. “No. Kick-ass.”
“Watch your language,” he said sternly. She smiled wider. Evie’s smile could knock a hurricane right off its track. Rob said, “You’re right. Sorry. That fantastic basil.”
“Okay. I will.” Evie nodded and laid her head on her pillow. Sometimes she still slept as she had as a toddler; every now and then Rob looked in on her and she was on her stomach with her little bottom sticking up in the air, like it was floating on a cloud. When he saw that he wanted to freeze-frame her entire life.
“Can you do me a favor, Evie?” he whispered.
“What?” Her voice was already sleepy.
“Can you avoid becoming a teenager?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll try.”
Downstairs, after he’d poured himself two fingers of Scotch, Rob opened the door that led to the garage. His car was gone, and Eliza’s Pilot was in its usual spot. That made sense, of course; her car was the family car, and should remain with the family. But he felt a small spasm of loss at the sight of the empty garage space. He loved his car. He loved his boat too, a Hinckley Sou’wester 52, a fortieth-birthday gift from his mother.
You weren’t supposed to love material things so ardently, but when he was standing on the deck of A Family Affair, with everything exactly where he wanted it, each knob, each instrument, each rope, Robert Barnes II couldn’t help but think that a Hinckley Sou’wester 52 didn’t seem completely material. There was something about it that bumped against the celestial.
Once he closed the garage door an unnamed bleakness descended on Rob like a duvet. He didn’t like having Eliza gone. He missed her! And he didn’t like the fact that they’d left the Phineas Tarbox situation unresolved. He wasn’t accustomed to having anything unresolved between them.
One or two days, though: that was nothing. Just a blink, and she’d be back.
5
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
“Hey, Dad,” Eliza called from the kitchen. “Your fridge was empty, what’ve you been eating?”
She stepped into the living room. Her father was in his recliner. The remote rested in his hand, though the screen was quiet and dark and his eyes were closed. When he opened them his face took on the discomfited expression of a person caught in the act of something shameful. He rubbed at his eyes in a way that reminded her of Evie.
“Oh, sorry,” whispered Eliza. “I didn’t know you had dozed off. I was just saying, thank goodness I went shopping, you have nothing here. You’re like Old Father Hubbard.” She spoke with a levity she didn’t feel.
Eliza reached for the hair elastic around her wrist—the de facto jewelry of the busy mother—and wrapped it around a makeshift bun before she began to unload the groceries. She’d gone to Ellsworth, to the new Hannaford, which, in her childhood, was a grim and stalwart Dave’s Shop ’n’ Save. (Who was this mysterious Dave? She never knew.) Now, at the Hannaford, you could buy kombucha and quinoa and hemp seed; you could buy organic strawberries and mangoes, natural cures for urinary tract infections, gluten-free bagels. Although Eliza had bought none of these things: the first rule of cooking, she knew, was to know your audience. She bought two bags of white rice, a box of cornflakes, two packages of chicken cutlets, coffee, milk, bananas, a dozen eggs.
She took the desiccated sponge from its perch on the edge of the sink, wet it, squirted soap onto it, and went at the fridge’s grimy shelves.
“I don’t like to waste groceries. I eat at Val’s most days.”
“Val’s isn’t open for dinner. What do you eat for dinner?”
He shifted. “I manage.”
“You go to the new place, The Cup?”
He snorted. “Right. Yuh, that’s exactly what I do, I go over to The Cup and pay fifteen dollars for a sandwich.”
“They’re not fifteen dollars. And, anyway, I have it on good authority that you like the lobster cookies they sell there.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. Little bird.”
“The coffees are five.”
“Not five, Dad.” Just that morning, admittedly, Eliza had paid four twenty-five for a large cappuccino. (Worth it.) The same girl, Vivienne’s daughter, had made it for her. She was sweet, too, taking great care with the frothing of the milk. She even made a lobster claw design with the foam in the top of the cup.
Eliza’s phone, which she’d set on the coffee table, announced a text message. Evie, from her iPad Mini. I FOUND OUR NEXT DOG. There was a link that brought Eliza to a photo. Since they’d put Fred, their beloved golden retriever, down the year before, Evie had been on the hunt for a dog to rescue. She tended to be attracted to the scrappiest of the scrappy, the neediest of the needy. Eliza took comfort in the knowledge that this exhibited Evie’s rock-solid heart and charitable leanings, but some of the dogs really forced a person to be generous with the word pet. The current offering was named Maisy. She was a sorry sight, with patches of fur missing from her back and shoulders, and a desperate look in her eyes. A tip of one ear appeared to be absent. Eliza texted back, I DON’T THINK SO HONEY, and set to work on the chicken cutlets.
Eliza broke an egg, mixed it with water, and dipped the cutlets first in the egg and then in some crushed cornflakes. She never made chicken cutlets at home. It simply wouldn’t occur to her to introduce this very basic component of her childhood cuisine to her own children. Zoe didn’t like cornflakes, and Evie disapproved of the way chickens were treated; she’d accept a free-range egg, but that was her limit. Making them now, though, especially in this kitchen, was soothing and familiar. For the longest time this was the only meal Eliza knew how to make for her father. Sometimes she’d add a very simple green salad, sometimes a bowl of buttered noodles.
At the kitchen table, which was so small her knees and her father’s knees bumped up against each other, Eliza tried to keep the conversation moving. She caught Charlie up on the Barnes family summer: Evie’s theater camp, Zoe’s science camp, Rob’s plans to take his outrageously expensive boat A Family Affair on an extended cruise to the Caribbean the next spring if he could find a couple of buddies to go with him. She was fully aware of what a privileged idiot she sounded like, but when she wasn’t talking, the silence encroached.
She described Rob’s first project on his own after leaving Mo Francis’s firm. “We thought he’d be home all the time!” she said. “But he’s working more.” She told her dad about Cabot Lodge, and about how Mrs. Cabot had decided that she didn’t like the plans Rob had drawn up based on her specifications and had him start all over.
“Rich people,” said Charlie, shaking his head.
“Right?” said Eliza agreeably. “They are such a conundrum.”
Charlie gave her a look.
“I know,” said Eliza. “I know.”