The Husband Hour(9)

“I don’t think that’s a nice thing to say,” said her mother. “And Ethan, hon, it’s called a banquette.”

The salt and pepper shakers were little bluebirds. Ethan reached for one.

Her mother’s marinated flank steak was set out on an American flag–pattern serving tray, a nod to the holiday weekend. Lauren appreciated the attempt to make things festive, but since her husband’s death, she’d found the sight of the flag funereal.

“This room is pretty crazy,” Stephanie declared, opening a bottle of wine. She seemed overdressed for dinner at home in her skintight jeans perfectly flared around her ankles and her strappy, high-heeled sandals. Lauren hadn’t changed out of her running clothes.

“I don’t think you need to drink tonight,” Beth said. Stephanie poured a glass anyway.

“Listen to your mother,” Howard said.

She ignored him too.

Ethan played with one of the bluebirds, tilting it so it spilled salt onto the table.

Stephanie went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of Bagel Bites. They actually looked pretty appealing. As if reading his aunt’s mind, Ethan smiled at Lauren, his big brown eyes wide and adoring, and handed her one of the crusty little circles.

“Aw, thanks, hon. Looks so good, but that’s yours.” She tousled his hair.

“Lauren, a friend of your father’s—you remember Simon Hanes—is opening a restaurant in the Borgata this summer. Seafood. Very fancy,” said her mother.

So that was why Neil Hanes was in town.

“Oh, well, that’s nice,” Lauren said, reaching for a piece of corn on the cob.

“Tell her, Beth,” her father prompted.

Her mother cleared her throat. “We were thinking, maybe once things got off the ground, you’d like to work there instead of that little place you’re at now?”

Lauren shook her head. She knew her parents meant well, but their pushing and prodding was getting more invasive. They just didn’t get it. Four years into her life on the island, at least her old friends had taken the hint and left her alone. At first, after Rory died, they offered to come to town for weekends or just to meet her for dinner. They sent invitations to weddings and birthday parties. For a while, she felt obligated to concoct some reasonable excuse to decline. And then, she did not.

“Why would I want to work at the Borgata?” Lauren said.

“Well, you’d be more in the swing of things. Less isolated. It might be fun. Even in the winter, you’d have steady business.” Lauren could hear the subtext: And you might meet someone.

“Thanks, but I’m happy where I am,” she said evenly. She couldn’t get angry with her mother. After all, her mother never got impatient with her. Beth, on top of the long hours she had always put in at Adelman’s, helped run Lauren’s foundation. It was so much work, more than Lauren had imagined when she began with the simple idea of raising money to donate to various causes in Rory’s memory. Her favorite organization was Warrior Camp, a place for soldiers to heal from the trauma of combat. And yet, as passionate as she felt about this work, when she was invited to fund-raisers or meetings, she would not leave the island.

Her mother glanced at her father: Well, I tried.

Silence fell over the table. The only sound was Ethan crunching on the mini–pizza bagels. Things were always awkward when the whole family was together, but it felt especially weighted tonight, and Lauren remembered what Stephanie had said about her mother seeming upset about something—although she had put it a little more crudely, as Stephanie tended to do. She watched her mother, looking for a clue that something was wrong, and decided it was probably just Stephanie’s divorce setting her mother on edge. Of course her parents had to be upset about it, though they couldn’t have been any more surprised by it than Lauren was. After Stephanie had gotten pregnant by “some rando,” as she put it, and decided to keep the baby, there was probably little that could surprise them.

“Speaking of Simon Hanes,” her mother said suddenly, “his son Neil is here for the summer. I’m sure you two met at some point. Very good-looking young man.”

“I literally just ran into him a few hours ago,” Lauren said.

“You didn’t! What a coincidence!” her mother said, way too delighted.

“You should spend some time with him. Very ambitious young man. He’s a screenwriter now,” her father added. “Moved to LA after graduating from Penn.”

“Yeah, no, thanks,” Lauren said.

“I’ll spend some time with him,” said Stephanie.

“You’re not even divorced yet!” their father said.

“Oh, as if that’s the issue. I could be totally single, never married, and you’d still only think of setting him up with Lauren.”

Lauren glanced uneasily at Ethan. “Hon, can you get me a bottle of water from the fridge?” she asked, and he dutifully scooted away. She turned to Stephanie. “Why do you have to make everything about you?”

“Like you don’t? Your whole Jackie Kennedy routine is getting old.”

“Really? You’re criticizing my life?”

In that moment, it was hard to believe they had once been close. But they had. Lauren, dark-haired, dark-eyed, quiet and watchful; Stephanie, blond and blue-eyed, outgoing and a chatterbox. A year apart, their mother called them “the twins.”