Hannah's List (Blossom Street #7)(57)

The oven timer went off and Leanne leaped to her feet as if she welcomed the intrusion.

I stood, too. "Do you need any help?"

"No, but thanks." She was away for a short while. When she returned, she reached for her glass and sat back down. "The lasagna will have to wait for a few minutes. We're also having a salad."

I nodded. "Hannah used to love cooking, too," I said, and remembered the wonderful meals my wife had put together. She always felt it was important for me to follow a regular eating schedule, even during my residency, when the hours were crazy and days melded into one another until time lost all meaning. Often I had no idea what day of the week it was. Hannah brought meals to me at the hospital and cooked for the other residents, too. Everyone loved her. How could they not?

"This recipe is one I got from her."

"From Hannah," I breathed, abruptly drawn away from my musings.

"We were talking about our favorite dishes and she told me about this one. The next day, she handed me the recipe."

I was touched that Leanne had made it for me. At an earlier stage of my grief I might have found that presumptuous--or distressing. Now it warmed me with memories of Hannah and with gratitude toward Leanne.

While I ate another olive, Leanne set the salad bowl on the table. I rejoined her in the kitchen and we sat down at the small dinette table together.

She'd gone to considerable effort to make this meal as pleasant as possible. The salad, which included several leafy greens, was full of green peppers, red onions and radishes, plus pine nuts and goat cheese. The poppy-seed dressing tasted homemade.

"Another of Hannah's recipes?" I asked as I poured a small amount over the salad.

Leanne shook her head. "This one comes from my mother."

I licked some dressing off the end of my finger. "It's delicious."

"Thanks."

All at once we seemed to run out of things to say. Potential topics raced through my mind. If I was more interested in baseball, I could've discussed the Mariners, who'd played on both Saturday and Sunday. I couldn't recall who'd won either game, although Ritchie had gone on about it for several minutes that morning.

"Do you like baseball?" I asked, a bit desperately.

She looked up as if the question had startled her. "No, sorry. Do you?"

"Not really." We both fell silent.

"Most women seem to enjoy cooking," I said, trying again. "Hannah's cousin--" I stopped abruptly, realizing I'd sounded like an idiot. It wasn't a good idea to mention that Winter had made me dinner the week before.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

One of Ritchie's cardinal rules of dating was not to talk about other women. It wasn't as though I considered Winter a real date, though. I was glad I hadn't said anything about her cooking for me to my brother-in-law. The less he knew the better.

Leanne seemed to be all out of conversation, too.

"Would you like more champagne?" I asked, eager for something to do.

"Yes, please."

We both stood at the same time. She opened the refrigerator and retrieved the champagne bottle and I refilled our glasses. While she was up, Leanne brought the casserole dish to the table, along with a loaf of warm, crisp bread.

We sat down again, and the silence seemed to yawn between us.

"How are things at the clinic?" she finally asked.

"I'm having a mural painted," I said. It was the first thought that came to mind.

I almost blurted out that the woman doing it was someone on Hannah's list. But that would've been even stupider than talking about Winter.

"Who's painting it?" Leanne asked. She seemed genuinely interested.

"Her name's Macy Roth. She's done several murals for businesses in the area." I described the jungle scene, with its baby animals and multicolored parrots. "Macy's quite a character. She doesn't have a normal nine-to-five job, which is no doubt for the best because she'd drive any employer insane."

"Why's that?"

"Where do you want me to start?" I leaned back in my chair and realized I was smiling. "To begin with, she's constantly late." Now, that was a bit unfair. Macy had been late for our first meeting, but she'd made a point of letting me know she'd been on time ever since, as if this was some impressive achievement.

"She seems to have a houseful of cats and dogs," I elaborated, "and she gives them ridiculous names."

"Such as?"

"Puffball--I think. And Sammy."

"That's not outlandish at all."

"Maybe not, but she refers to them as though they're human. I thought Sammy was her neighbor, only her neighbor is Harvey, who's in his eighties and going through his second childhood. That's in his own words, apparently." In my opinion, the two of them, Macy and Harvey, would be perfect together because Macy acted like a kid, too.

"I guess she's an eccentric artist type."

"Eccentric fits her to a tee." Or, as my father would say, her elevator doesn't go all the way to the top. He has dozens of expressions like that, and I smiled, remembering his sense of humor.

"She sounds like a lot of fun."

That was why Hannah had put Macy on her list. My loving, patient wife had viewed Macy as fun. I, on the other hand, saw her as a screwball. A flake. I didn't typically know people like that.