This Place of Wonder (22)

The dinner is simple and straightforward, family food, kid food, the fresh tacos and lettuce and chopped fresh tomatoes that taste of sunshine and summertime. “These tomatoes must be from Meadow Sweet,” I say, unable to stop shoving them into my mouth. I have such greed for things now, weird things, but my therapist tells me to just go for it. Better than wine.

“Yeah, she starts them in January in the greenhouse.”

“So good.” I spoon another hefty helping into a fried soft corn tortilla and eat it plain.

Polly says, “You really like tomatoes, huh?”

I pause midbite to give her wide eyes. “You don’t?”

“Not like that,” she says with a raised brow.

“Dude, the shade!” I wipe my fingers, blot my mouth. “Try again.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Do you have a whole one left, Nathan?” I ask.

“Sure.” He pops into the kitchen area and brings back a beautiful red-and-yellow heirloom with deep creases cracking the top and bottom, along with a sharp knife.

I hold up a finger to Polly. “It’s all in the presentation.” I slice a beautiful chunk from the tomato and sprinkle it with salt and pepper very lightly. “Now try.”

She gives me a look, pulling back her chin like she’ll be infected. “No thanks.”

Emma holds out her round little hand. “Me! I will.”

I give her a big smile and hand it over. She slurps it with great enthusiasm. Polly rolls her eyes. “She’s only doing it for you.”

I smile, slicing another piece of tomato for myself. “That’s okay.”

Rory has a funny expression on her face.

I take a bite, incline my head. “What’s up?”

“You just reminded me of Dad right then. You have a lot of his mannerisms.”

A wave of emotion swells through my gut, resistance and recognition rolled up together. “He was good at getting us to try things.”

“Remember the artichoke challenge?”

I smile, reluctantly.

“Tell us,” Nathan says, loading another taco.

“He made them forbidden,” Rory says. “We weren’t allowed to ever eat them. Ever. He told us they were only for adults, and then he and Mom created an artichoke garden.”

I laugh. “With a fence around it, so we couldn’t get in.”

“And then, at the end of the season—must have been what? July?”

I nod. “They ‘allowed’ us to watch them harvest them.”

“And cook them.”

“And by this time, of course,” I add, “we’re dying to taste artichokes, and the air smells of garlic and spices and fresh lemon.” My mouth waters. “They sat down to eat and we’re watching them with our usual dinner in front of us. I say, ‘C’mon, you guys, are you really not going to share?’”

“So Mom looks at Dad and he looks at her, and they say something like, ‘The artichoke committee wouldn’t like it,’ but of course they shared.”

“And they were so insanely great.” The craving for that flavor wells up in my mouth, so intense that I’m going to have to stop and buy artichokes on the way home, even if they’re not yet in season. I shake my head. “So good.”

“Artichokes are disgusting,” Polly says.

“Yeah, that’s what you think,” Rory says. “You never had them the way your grandpa cooked them.”

“When is he coming over?”

I look up, alarmed.

Rory shakes her head at me, fiercely. “I don’t know, baby.”

Nathan drains his glass. “Man, that was an elaborate scheme to get kids to like a particular vegetable.”

“Yes,” I say, but I’m reeling with the recognition that Rory hasn’t told the girls that Augustus is dead. I give her a wide-eyed look, and she shakes her head back at me, like back off.

Nathan, oblivious, rests his fingers on the ring of the glass. “You guys had a weirdly happy childhood, you know that?”

“Some parts, for sure,” Rory says.

“For sure,” I say in agreement, but I hardly know how to sit there with such a yawning thing sitting between us. I look at my nieces, oblivious to their great loss, and it makes me want to howl. I stand. “I guess I’d better get back.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah, I just . . .” I can’t think of an excuse. “Mom,” I say, waving my hands.

“Okay,” Rory says.

“Walk me to the street?” I ask.

She gives Nathan a look, then stands and follows me out. In the yard, I turn and face her. “Why aren’t you telling them?”

“I will,” she says, and dashes tears off her face. “I just . . . I don’t know. I just can’t tell them yet.”

“You’re lying to them!”

“For God’s sake, Maya, what difference does it make? He’s gone either way.”

I see the misery in her eyes, the way her lower lip trembles, but all I feel is the lie. “I have to go.”

“Maya!” she protests as I start to walk away. “Don’t be such a dick. We all grieve different ways, or maybe you’re not going to grieve at all, huh?”