After Alice Fell(50)

“It will be.” Lionel leans his hip to the rail and continues to pare an apple. The peel twists in the air as he runs the blade under the fruit’s skin. He glances out to the pond. “Cathy wants a vista.” He points the knife to the posts and boards of the boathouse, now stacked across the foundation of the glass house. “It’s a useless structure. No one swims anymore. We’ll have a grand bonfire soon.”

“More cherries?” Cathy passes a porcelain serving bowl to Ada.

Ada sets her fan to the table and picks out a few of the less battered. “Marion?”

I shake my head and grip the chair arms, rubbing my thumbs to the wood. Ada hasn’t made one gesture to me that she’s got a letter from Kitty. Instead she followed Cathy all around the house for a tour that included details on every bit of new furniture, parquet, wallpapers, plates, and the stores in Boston and London from which they were ordered and shipped. “So difficult without Paris available,” she said when the tour stopped in the dining room. “The blockade . . . well, you know.”

“So difficult with a war,” Ada murmured. But she oohed and aahed, and Mr. Hargreaves shared a smoke in the front yard with Lionel.

Cathy is well on form today. She wears a frock of insolent reds splattered with pink dragonflies. It is the third she brought down in the morning, begging my opinion, though when I declared the blue adequate and the fabric cool for the weather, she took her own advice and now hovers over the company. She watches Ada so closely as she chews a cherry and spits the pit to a napkin.

“They’re late season, but I think very sweet. Don’t you think they’re sweet?”

Ada folds her napkin and tucks it under her plate. “They are. They are.” She tips her head and looks at Toby. “There are three left. Would you like them?”

“They give him gas.” Cathy slides the bowl toward her. The base catches the tablecloth, hooking a thread and pulling the fabric forward. With a quick tsk, she snaps the thread. “It’s so kind of you to call this way. We are far out of the circuit. I know Mr. Hargreaves is busy with the start of the school year.”

He swivels to us. “The maddening boys. Isn’t that what Benjamin called us?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Maddening boys.”

“He called you that, yes,” I say. “And other things.”

“Which we no doubt deserved.”

“Ada teaches too,” I say to Cathy. “Roman history.”

“Roman history.” Cathy laughs and claps her hands to her lap. “That’s . . . wonderful. How do you fit that in with all your volunteering?”

Toby crosses his legs on his seat and picks at the hem of his shorts. He rocks back and forth, his chairback knocking the wall.

“Toby.” Cathy gives a small shake of her head.

He slows, then shoves the chair back with a thud, lifting his eyebrows in surprise. As if he hadn’t meant it. But his smile curls enough to show he meant it.

“Toby.” I rest my hand next to his plate and tap a finger. He drops his legs and sits straight.

“Is that a secret language?” Cathy smirks. “Marion and Toby are very close. She’s taught him to be a wild child. Or continued the lessons of her sister. So, we have a teacher in the family too.”

Ada frowns. “I’m sorry our card came so late. I didn’t know about Alice’s passing until Marion told me.”

“What card?”

I shift in my chair. “I forgot to give it to you.”

“Did you?”

I stand, picking up each of the plates. “I’ll take these in.”

“I’ll help.” Ada makes to stand, but Cathy stops her with a hand to her arm.

“We’ll all leave it. Saoirse will take care of it. Let’s just enjoy the sun.”

“I think a walk.” Thomas rocks forward on his toes and snaps his heels to the wood. “May I escort you, Mrs. Abbott?”

“Of course.”

Lionel gives the pared apple to Toby. “Then I will be in charge of your wife.”

“What about me?” Cathy asks.

“Toby will take you.”

Toby grimaces and drops the apple to the plate. He reaches for Cathy’s hand.

“Wipe your hands,” she says.

As the men pull out the chairs, Ada leans toward me, then loops her arm through mine. “I think I will escort Marion.”

“Good,” Cathy says. “Toby can go with his father.”

Ada is much taller than me. Like a reed. Her arm is light in mine, her fingers drumming my wrist as we follow the others to the garden. Cathy has her head tipped and her attention to Thomas. She deadheads a rose along the way, crushing the petals in her fingers and scattering them to the ground. She hasn’t stopped looking at Thomas as she does it. Lionel’s hefted Toby to his shoulders, and the boy giggles and squeals as his father tickles his stomach, then bounces him up and down.

Ada slows and runs her hands along a weeping willow branch, then turns toward me. “Do you know what you’re doing, Marion?”

“Did Kitty give you a letter?”

She shakes her head once, slow, and glances to the others. Thomas has pinched the stem of a peach dahlia and hands it to Cathy.

My stomach drops. “Nothing?”

“She’s an odd girl. I thought she was a patient when we first visited.”