The Guest Cottage (30 page)

Sophie only nodded, afraid to break the flow of her mother’s words.

“You, like your father, were such a
perfectionist.”

“Ha. I’m hardly a perfectionist these days.”

“No one with children can hope for perfection. No, I’m speaking about your music. For you it had to be all or nothing.”

“Mom.” Sophie stopped walking. “You and Dad were, too! Dad told me I could either be a winner or a loser! You both encouraged me—you didn’t
force
me, but you helped, you pressured, you pushed. It was always clear to me that
perfection—total
and public success—was the only thing that would make you both proud of me.”

Hester stood still, looking down at the ground. “You were extremely talented. We were, naturally, proud of you. We wanted only the best for you.”

“You wanted only the best
from
me.”

Hester met Sophie’s eyes. She nodded. “I suppose that’s true. We were younger then, like you are now with your children, hopeful, believing you were capable of excellence.”

“You and Dad were disappointed that I wasn’t good at science. That I didn’t want to go into the medical profession.”

Hester continued walking, Sophie at her side. “Yes,” Hester admitted, “that’s true. The need is so great.”

“I’m sorry I failed you,” Sophie said quietly.

“You didn’t fail me, Sophie. You failed only one competition. Maybe you stopped playing piano at that point because you disliked competing.”

“I mean I’m sorry I didn’t—oh, I don’t know—help the world, like you and Dad.”

Hester raised her arm to move a low branch away from her face. “But Sophie, you can still help, and in your own way.”

“I can?” Sophie chuckled. “I can’t envision going to nursing school.”

“Can you envision playing piano in a nursing home?”

Sophie stumbled over a branch. “Huh. I never thought of that.”

“Music is one of the most efficient mood elevators we have. People in nursing homes, whether ambulatory or even bedridden, whether lucid or not, would be provided with great pleasure by your playing. Maybe they could even dream, return to the best times in their lives, when they were loved.”

Tears filled Sophie’s eyes. “I’ve never heard you talk like this.”

Hester’s posture stiffened. She didn’t do sentimental. “I haven’t heard you play the piano for years. Why would I think of it?” She glanced at her watch. “We’ve walked for fifteen minutes. Shall we turn around?”

Sophie waited for her mother to continue, but Hester was quiet. She’d never been one to gush—but she was a good, no, a
great
doctor, Sophie remembered. “I wish I could help Connor. I wish you could help Connor.”

“And Connor is?” asked Hester.

Sophie explained about the older gentleman in the apartment, his move from the Midwestern state where he’d lived all his life, his wife’s death, his talent for carving. “You’d approve of his worktable,” she told her mother. “Everything in its place, all neat as a pin.”

“So why do you wish I could help him?”

“When Leo was talking to Connor about his mother’s death, Connor told him that he, Connor, was dying. Since then, he hasn’t joined us for dessert or even for a chat. He has a limp, and I think he has a bad foot, but his eyes have always looked bright and healthy. Maybe he’s just depressed, but it was such a strange thing to say to a child, although he apparently meant it in a consoling way.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Hester said.

Sophie smiled. “Good luck with that.” As they turned onto the drive of the guest cottage, Sophie paused. Gently putting a restraining hand on her mother’s arm, she asked, “Mother, were you happy?”

Hester pulled back slightly, as if offended. “What kind of question is that?”

“A reasonable one, I think. I never thought about what it was like for you, being married to such an…absent…man. He was never affectionate with me, and, well—” Sophie stumbled over her thoughts. “It must have been lonely for you.”

Hester’s face softened. “I don’t often indulge in thoughts of the past. It’s past. I’ve learned as an ER doctor to do what I can and get on with it. I’ve had a
useful
life. That’s what’s important to me. I’ve helped heal and save and bring consolation. Your generation is much too pampered, always picking away at the slightest discomfort and whining about it.” To Sophie’s shock, Hester spread her arms. “I’m
here.
The sun is shining. My daughter is healthy, my grandchildren are healthy. So yes, I’m happy, Sophie. Happy enough.”

“I’m—I’m glad,” Sophie sputtered. This was as intimate as her mother had ever been.

Before Sophie could say anything else, Hester announced, “And now I’m going down to the apartment to have a chat with that Connor fellow.”

“Mother! At least let me come with you and introduce you.”

Hester waved a dismissive hand. “You should check on Lacey. I’ll be fine.”

The afternoon passed in a lethargic preoccupation with the children. Sophie went up and down the stairs, taking Jonah iced ginger ale, carrying down smelly towels, doing laundry, taking everyone’s temperature. Leo felt better, restless, and begged to be read to, so Trevor sat on the sofa with a few of the beginning books of
The Boxcar Children
in his hands and read to his son. Lacey curled up on the other side, listening, too, her head resting on Trevor’s arm.

Hester was apparently still down in Connor’s apartment. At one point, when Sophie and Trevor passed in the kitchen, Sophie whispered, “Maybe they’re making mad, passionate love.”

Trevor whispered back, “I’m glad someone is.”

Sophie quirked her mouth in a grin that made Trevor’s stomach flip.

In the late afternoon, Trevor had to make a run to the store for invalid nourishment: ginger ale, chicken noodle soup, graham crackers, frozen fruit ices, and Instant Cream of Wheat, which Leo was craving. He stopped at Sayle’s Seafood to buy three seafood dinners: clam chowder, fried cod, amazing French fries, and coleslaw. With the children sick, Sophie wasn’t in the mood for cooking, and Trevor snatched any opportunity to eat Sayle’s dinners.

By the time he got home, he found Lacey and Leo standing at the card table in the family room, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

“Hey, I thought you guys were sick.”

“I feel better, Daddy,” Leo told him carelessly.

“Me, too,” Lacey added.

From the depths of the sofa, Jonah grumbled, “I don’t. But I’ve stopped puking.”

Sophie stuffed clean towels into the dryer and slammed the door. “What smells so good?”

Trevor held up the bags of seafood, already stained with grease. “Comfort food for the adults.”

“French fries!” Leo yelled, running into the kitchen.

“No French fries for you,” Trevor said. “You’ve been sick. You’re having chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. Graham crackers for dessert.” He set about heating the soup for Leo and Lacey while Sophie set up TV trays in the family room for the children. Sophie set the table in the dining room for three, and poured herself and Trevor a glass of wine.

“Honestly? I don’t know what to do,” Sophie said. “Should I go down to Connor’s and drag my mother up here for dinner?”

Trevor laughed. “From what I’ve seen of your mother, I wouldn’t mess with her.”

“All right then, let’s eat. Everyone else is settled, and I’m starving. I don’t think I got lunch today.”

They sat at the table, munching the batter-fried cod, moaning with pleasure. Sophie said, “Sometimes I think my dream meal is Sayle’s French fries and a glass of Prosecco.”

“Sometimes I think my dream meal is you alone in—”

Sophie interrupted. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. My mother will walk in the door and read your mind.”

Trevor fixed Sophie with a look. “I doubt it.”

Sophie snorted. “You think my mother doesn’t know about sex? She’s a doctor.”

“I’m not thinking about sex,” Trevor told Sophie. That was kind of a lie, because anytime Sophie even entered the room he was thinking about sex, but it was also the truth because he was so happy right now, with all three kids in the family room and Sophie here at the table with him in shorts and a baggy T-shirt, her shaggy hair pushed back behind her ears, no makeup, no pretense, all honesty, all real. “I’m thinking about love.”

Sophie said, “Oh.”

“I don’t want to be impetuous.” Trevor wiped his hands on his napkin and leaned his elbows on the table. “I’ve been impetuous, and regretted it—well, not completely, because I have Leo. I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to seem impulsive, rash—young. I know I’m younger than you are, but I can’t change that. But I don’t think it matters. You and I seem to—
fit.
Our kids fit. It’s been that way since we first walked in the door. We’ve got something special here, not just you and me, but
absolutely you and me,
and then the kids, too. I don’t want to lose it. I want to make love with you, but that’s not all I want, and I want you to know that.”

Sophie slowly began, “When we all get back to Boston—”

“When we all get back to Boston, it will be horrible!” Trevor said. “I’ll miss you. Leo will miss your kids.
I’ll
miss your kids.” He pressed on, leaning forward in his urgency. “Here’s what I want to do. I want to buy a house in the suburbs so Leo has a backyard to play in. Our apartment is too cramped, too full of sad memories. I want to buy a nice big house in your suburb, right next door to you, across the street, something.”

Sophie smiled. “Trevor, I’m not even divorced yet.”

“Yeah, but you will be. And when you are, you and the kids can move in with me and Leo. I’ll buy a house that’s big enough—”

Sophie leaned back in her chair, imagining. “Or you and Leo can move in with me and the kids. Our house is big enough, although Zack designed it, and frankly, it’s never been my kind of house. Gosh, you’ll have to deal with Zack.”

“Of course I’m going to have to deal with Zack,” Trevor said. “He’s your children’s father, and I’ll just have to man up and be cooperative.”

“You’ve really thought about all this.” Sophie’s eyes were wide with wonder.

“It’s all I can think about. We’ll be leaving soon, it’s almost September, and hasn’t this been great—” Trevor held out his arms, gesturing to the entire house— “all of us here together?”

“Yes, it has been great. It’s been an enormous surprise.” Sophie toyed with a French fry, dipping it into the cup of catsup and chewing it pensively. “That we’ve all gotten along so well, I mean. But Trevor, we’ve been on vacation. Certainly I haven’t been dealing with reality. When we get back to Boston, I’ve got to get the kids ready for school, and go through some kind of grisly divorce proceedings with Zack, and I need to find a way to make money. Zack will pay child support, of course, but I don’t know how much, and I’ll need to work somehow. Finances have never—”

“You’ll teach piano,” Trevor announced.

Sophie sort of bounced. “What?”

“You’ll teach piano. Plus, I’ll bet you could get a lot of other gigs. School musicals. Local theater productions always need accompanists. Private students.”

Sophie sat speechless.

Trevor continued in a sensible tone, “Sophie, you know you’ll get half of your and Zack’s assets when you get divorced. I don’t know how much that is, but maybe you’ll get the house, plus he’ll pay child support. When we get married, you won’t have to worry about money. I do pretty well with my business—okay, I do very well with my business. We can—”

“Trevor, slow down.” Sophie held up her hand. “We’ve known each other less than three months.”

“But we’ve lived together, with kids and friends and tantrums and vomit—I’d say that gives us about a year’s worth in the familiarity bank.”

Sophie looked across the table at him, her face glowing, amused, bowled over, and suddenly mischievous. “Well, there is one problem.”

“What’s that?”

She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes, coyly. “We don’t know if we’re compatible in, um, bed.”

Trevor wanted to leap over the table and ravish her right then and there. He restrained himself. “Okay, you’re right—we definitely need to test that out, and as soon as possible.”

“But how?” Sophie asked, waving her hands in the air. “With three children and my mother in the house?”

Frantic, Trevor suggested, “When your mother returns, you and I can leave the kids with her and drive somewhere, the beach, a hotel—”

“Trevor. We can’t leave sick children.”

“They’re not that sick, and your mother’s a
doctor.
”

“Still, we’re their parents.”

“You’re killing me.”

“I’m killing me, too.”

“When does your mother leave?” Trevor asked, as the kitchen door opened and Hester stepped into the room.

“Mom! Hi!” Sophie jumped, so guilty her voice was overly cheerful. “Trevor got a fish dinner for you. We didn’t know when you were returning. Is Connor okay? What have you been doing? Would you like a glass of wine?”

Hester pulled out a chair and sank into it. “I would be grateful for a glass of wine. I’ve eaten with Connor.”

Trevor rose. “I’ll get the wine.”

“So, how is Connor?” Sophie asked. She suspected her mother had already had one glass of wine because her cheeks were rosy.

“Connor Swenson is a healthy male with all the sense of a flea. It took me a while to get him to talk about it, because no male likes to admit
weaknesses—thank
you, Trevor.” Hester accepted the glass of merlot and sipped it.

“And?” Sophie prompted.

“He has an open sore on his foot that won’t heal. He’s had it for several weeks. Has he seen a doctor? Of course not. He’s a man. He’s tried to treat it himself. He’s used antibiotics and Band-Aids. He’s left it open to the air. It’s getting worse, so he doesn’t go for walks and of course he doesn’t do all the physical labor he used to do when he had the farm, and he’s depressed because his wife died. He doesn’t eat well. He eats too much sugar. I suspect he has diabetes.”

“Diabetes,” Sophie echoed.

“I called a friend up at Mass General. I’m taking Connor up there tomorrow for blood tests and treatment for his foot.”