The Journey Home (18 page)

Then she reached for him again.

He brought their fish into the dining area of his apartment, vowing once more to get a real table as soon as the money started coming in again. The folding table was fine when he was eating alone, especially since he took most of his meals on the couch anyway, but it just wouldn't do for Jan.

She'd poured wine and was already seated when he came in. “Pucker up,” he said as he put the dish in front of her.

“If you insist,” she said, pulling him toward her and offering him one of her soft, liquid kisses. Warren never failed to marvel at how Jan's kisses at once warmed and braced him. He thought he'd been finished with new romantic experiences as he headed toward forty, but he was thrilled to discover that he was utterly wrong.

“‘Pucker Up' is the name of the fish,” he said, kissing her again.

She gave him the kind of lascivious smile he'd
never seen from her at Treetops. “I'm sure it is. Does that mean tomorrow you'll be making ‘Lay Me Gently on the Carpet Stew?'”

“I can work with that,” he said, his mind reeling, though not with cooking ideas.

She kissed him, and then reached around him for her fork. “The food is going to get cold.”

“Did I mention that it was very tasty at room temperature?”

She gave him a playful push toward his chair. He watched her take her first bite and tilt her head toward him appreciatively, the only compliment he ever needed.

Warren took a forkful of couscous. “Danny called today. He wants me to start on Tuesday rather than Thursday next week. He's thinking two weeks of training and then he'll get me on the line.”

Two weeks earlier, the son of one of the residents at Treetops had called Warren from out of the blue. He'd smelled Warren's cooking when he'd come to visit his father and had inquired of the staff why it stopped. When he learned that Warren's mother had died and that Warren was looking for work, he offered Warren the opportunity to become a line cook at one of his restaurants. Warren's first reaction was that he was a corporate guy, not a restaurant guy. However, it only took another fifteen seconds of conversation for him to acknowledge that he'd never felt as much meaning from his work as he'd felt these past few months in the kitchen. His mother had always said that cooking for strangers would be different for her than
cooking for relatives and friends. Warren was sure that he'd feel some of that difference, but not enough to make him reticent to pursue it.

“Oh, and I heard from the culinary academy. A new program starts in six weeks.”

“So you're going to do it?”

“Danny said he'll work with me. He thinks cooking school is a great idea. He hinted that it was going to be essential if I were ever to graduate from chopping vegetables in one of his kitchens.”

Jan took his hand and brought it to her lips. “Quite the whirlwind, huh?”

Warren sat back in his chair, trying to absorb it all. He had a new career and a new mission. Most importantly, he had a woman in his life who'd given him the most soul-stirring reason to come home he'd ever had.

The thought made him laugh out loud.

Don wanted the Pucker-Up Fish again. She'd made it for him the second day here, but he was so persuasive, and she'd never been able to deny him anything, especially when it came to food. She hoped she didn't bore the others. They were going to have an eternity of meals together. If they had to have the same thing every couple of weeks, they might get a little tired of it.

The first few days here had her head spinning. Reuniting with her sisters Maggie and Rachel, her sister-in-law Carmela, her brother-in-law Sal, her
dear neighbor Ralph, and all the others in that oversized house they all shared. Getting accustomed to her new body, which was really a version of her old body from decades ago. It seemed that when you were here you became an age you particularly loved. Antoinette had started in her early twenties, but Don was in his early forties and the age difference was a bit awkward, even under the circumstances. By the time they'd gone to bed that first night, though, she'd moved up to her late twenties and he'd come down to his mid-thirties. Of course, when they got into bed that night, they were ageless. Time meant nothing when they were wrapped together. It had always been that way and Antoinette knew it would always continue to be that way.

Antoinette still had faint memories of the body she'd left behind, the one that failed to respond to her commands and that housed a mind that had lost its keenness. Those memories were fading, though. It was difficult to hold on to such thoughts when you felt as spry and sharp as she felt.

She finished putting the fish on a platter and spooning sauce over it. There would be fourteen for dinner tonight. There had never been less than eight and there had been as many as twenty-four when they invited others from the neighborhood. It turned out that, unlike Billy, everyone else in the house had known exactly where they were all along. They could have explained as much to Don when he got there, but they knew even before he woke up that he had to come back for her before he could ever settle. Antoinette and Carmela took turns making the
main dishes, with the other providing the sides. Carmela had tended to be a little competitive with her in the past, but here she was very generous. Perhaps that was one of the additional blessings of this place.

The others were in the middle of some kind of boisterous conversation when Antoinette came out of the kitchen. She brought the platter over to Don and Billy to allow them to serve themselves first before putting the rest on the table. This generated jovial protests of favoritism from the others, but Antoinette just smiled and acknowledged that she was very definitely playing favorites.

She sat between her husband and son. Don immediately gave her the comical fish-face kiss he always offered when she made this dish for him. Billy kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“I didn't know food could taste like this, Mom.”

“You
did
,” Antoinette said. “You just forgot.”

Billy took another huge bite of the fish before loading his plate with Carmela's potatoes and vegetables. “I'm glad I'm remembering now. I can't believe what I've been missing. Are you going to be naming more dishes after me?”

Two nights before, Antoinette had created her first new meal since she got here. She called it “Billy's All-My-Tomorrows Pork Chops.” The day she came home from the hospital after her baby had died, she'd seen a bowl of rotten pears she'd planned to cook and puree for him before he got sick and their world turned upside down. He'd always loved pureed pears. For the first dish she ever named for her first
son, she sautéed pears in butter, finished them with a little brown sugar and brandy, and served them over grilled pork chops. Billy ate three chops and she could swear that the smile he wore when he took his first bite was the same smile he'd worn when he'd played in his high chair while she cooked. She had to excuse herself for a moment after that.

“I'm working on a new idea now,” she said.

Billy gave her another of his grins and then concentrated on his food. Antoinette caught up with the conversation around the table, something about a new department store that had popped up downtown overnight. The magic of this place continued to dazzle her. Billy was taking Don and her on a car ride tomorrow to explore more of it. There was so much to discover. And so much to embrace.

Antoinette prayed that Warren was doing well. As her clarity of mind returned, she realized what the last year of her life had been like. Warren had been unbelievably good to her and she'd made things so much harder for him than she would have wanted. She loved that he tried to cook for her. Antoinette also found it fascinating that he'd taken to cooking for the nurse, Jan – a very pretty, very nice woman – when she could no longer eat. Antoinette had overheard their conversations, though she couldn't comment on them. They seemed to have quite a spark, though it wasn't obvious whether Warren noticed this. He'd never been the best with women. Something told her Warren was going to get it right this time, though.

Some day, he'd grace this table. Maybe both of
them would. Not for a long time, though, she hoped. They had so much more of their journey left before they came home.

Each of my novels has had a strong source of inspiration. This has never been truer than with
The Journey Home
. My parents' marriage was always something that dazzled me. They made up a seamless whole together. They entertained and regaled one another, supported one another through tragedy, and always seemed to want to be together. It was simply impossible to think of one without the other. My father was the only man my mother ever dated and she proclaimed this proudly. My father actually had a thing for my mother's sister before he met my mother. My aunt showed absolutely no interest in his affections, which my father considered the luckiest break of his life, as it led him to her very cute younger sibling.

When my father died, the emptiness my mother felt was un-fillable. As Antoinette does in this novel, she went to an assisted living facility where she found entertainment and companionship (along with all the tasteless butter cookies she could eat). However, she never spent a day after my father died when she didn't wish she could be with him instead. As
Alzheimer's took its toll, she still spoke about him with clarity. And when she got very sick toward the end of her life, she told my sisters and me about conversations she was having with my dad where he told her he was waiting for her. We all knew exactly where those conversations were leading. They struck me when my mother first told me about them and they led me to write
The Journey Home
.

My next novel will also have a family theme, though this one will be broader. Titled
Leaves
, it is my first attempt to write a series. The setting for
Leaves
is the imaginary Connecticut River Valley town of Oldham, CT. Oldham is representative of the many cozy-but-sophisticated towns that dot the Connecticut River. These towns have the feel of small places where everyone knows everyone else, but, with New York to the south and Boston to the north, have a distinct urbane sensibility. I make regular trips to these towns because I find them both quaint and stimulating. In the fall, they are also uniquely beautiful. As it turns out, a combination of climatic features along with a rich variation in vegetation leads to an explosion of color as the temperatures cool that many consider to be the most vibrant in the world.

The novel follows the Gold family from the beginning of October until the end of the month. The Golds have been pillars in Oldham for decades and the inn that their parents ran, the Sugar Maple Inn, has been a draw for visitors all over the country. However, with the death of the elder Golds, the siblings have decided to sell the place. A new owner – a syndicate that owns a collection of inns all over the
country – will take over on November 1, after one last Halloween party, an event the Golds have hosted for Oldham for as long as anyone can remember. Leaves follows the Gold siblings, Anthony, Corrina, Deborah, Maxwell, and Maria as they navigate through the final days of the inn and deal with the various challenges in their lives – romantic, interpersonal, professional, and communal. Holding together as a family is tougher now than it was when their parents were alive, and their commitment to each other will be tested strongly over the course of this story. Complicating it all is a series of “hauntings” that touch each of the Gold siblings, though the message of these benign interventions remain a mystery for a long time.

Leaves
is the first novel about the Gold family and Oldham. My intention is to follow it with a new one every year. Here's the prologue that will appear in the novel: