The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(37)

She squints, then pokes one in the side, where the flaky dough shatters obligingly. “How’d you get them so light?”

“That’s my secret, dear Iris,” I say sweetly. “However, should you let me sell them at Bunny’s, I’d be happy to share.”

“Unsalted butter?” she guesses.

“Well, of course, but that’s hardly the secret,” I answer.

“Let me try one,” Rose says, breaking off a piece. Her palate is legendary. “You used vinegar in the dough, didn’t you, smart girl?”

“I absolutely did not,” I lie. Darn that palate.

“Come on, girls, we’ll be late,” Mom calls from the second set of doors. She’s armed with food, too…pureed chicken paprikas, which is basically chicken, butter, sour cream and paprika. Mom has also brought another Hungarian delicacy—galuska…salted, shredded cabbage fried in salted butter, mixed with salted, buttered noodles, topped with salted butter and then heavily salted. Horrifyingly delicious, nearly fatal in its fat content. It’s amazing that the women in my family live to be so old. You’d think our blood would’ve thickened to a lardlike sludge long ago.

“Oh, Boggy, don’t you look pretty today!” Rose coos as we arrive in our shriveled relative’s room. Iris agrees in her thunderous voice that Boggy does indeed look well, and the two of them adjust Boggy, who, as usual, stares into the distance, unresisting. Mom zips down the hall to heat up the food. I set my tray of baked goods down and sit on the little sofa in Boggy’s room and listen to Iris and Rose argue over whether it’s good or bad for Boggy’s window to be opened.

I remember the glamour of Boggy coming to visit when I was a kid. She married a car dealer and was fairly wealthy. Great-Uncle Tony was rumored to be connected, though just about everyone in Rhode Island could claim some cousin or neighbor who was a made man. Boggy and Tony didn’t have kids of their own and spoiled my mother and her older sisters when they were children, taking the girls on trips into Providence or down to the Connecticut shore for brunch, once even taking my mother to Paris for a week, which still causes flares of jealousy in Iris and Rose when mentioned. Long after she was widowed at age forty-eight (Tony was rumored to have been hit by a rival family, but the autopsy only showed that he had drowned), Boggy continued the tradition of never marrying, never dating. She didn’t lose her joie de vivre, however, and continued to dote on the Black Widows and her grand-nieces and-nephews. Once she took me to the Indian casino down Interstate 395, handed me five crisp Ben Franklins and told me to get busy. I was ten at the time.

But Boggy had a stroke when I was sixteen, and she’s been at High Hopes ever since. Only her nieces (and I) visit, which we do with great devotion, mind you. But still. No grandchildren’s loving pats, no great-grandchildren…just the four of us.

Will that happen to me? I suddenly wonder in a seize of panic. Will Emma be the only one to remember poor Aunt Lucy? Lord, I hope Corinne would have more babies if that’s the case. Maybe she could have seven, and each one could take a day on my deathwatch…not that I would know, if I ended up like Boggy there.

I find that I’m sweating. My breathing is a little shallow. No. I won’t end up alone. I’m going to get married again. I’ll have a hubby soon, that nice, solid, slightly dull guy who will take really good care of me. I’ll have funny, sweet little kids who will adore me. I won’t have to borrow Emma or Nicky in order to have a child to love.

“How’s the search for a husband going?” my mother asks, reading my mind. She sits gracefully next to me, a bowl of fragrant paprikas puree in her manicured hands, and takes on her Barbara Walters Aren’t we fascinating? look.

“Oh, it’s okay,” I answer, fiddling with the cuff of my sweater. “Fine.”

“Have you gone out with Charley again?” she asks, stirring the sludge to cool it a little. Over by Boggy, Iris and Rose are still bickering over the health benefits/death threats of opening the window.

“Um, no. I don’t think he’s what I’m looking for,” I answer, breaking off a piece of brioche to test its texture. So flaky, the glaze gleaming sweetly. I bet it tastes great. My throat closes at the thought of actually eating it, and I swallow. Dang pebble.

“So what are you looking for? Another Jimmy?” Mom asks. “Because you won’t find one, sweetheart.”

“I know that, Mom.” I pause. “Ethan and Parker might be going out,” I add. I wait, hoping she’ll have something insightful and maternal to say about that.

“Oh, nice,” she murmurs, blowing on the paprikas.

“Ethan and Parker should go out,” Rose chirrups from Boggy’s bedside. “They should get married. Poor Nicky shouldn’t have to grow up a bastard.”

“Rose!” I exclaim. “Don’t call him that! Half the kids in this country don’t have parents who are married to each other.”

“Which is why I wonder about you looking for another husband,” my mother says, meeting my eyes.

“I never wanted to remarry,” Iris states. “My Pete was the Love of My Life. And what’s this I hear about the Mirabellis moving? What do they have in Arizona that we don’t have right here in Rhode Island?”

“Well, the desert, for one,” I say. “And Jimmy was the love of my life, too, but I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want kids.”