idiot. No. That would have been the end of it.
Elisabeth and Andrew’s marriage was nothing like theirs. Andrew was sensitive. In both senses of the word. There were so many things she couldn’t say. Her people only had two speeds: contentedness and sledgehammer. Elisabeth had never learned how to argue without chipping off a piece of the other person. She didn’t want to do that to Andrew. So sometimes she kept things from him, things she only told Nomi or Violet, or both.
I’m worried about Sam, she typed.
I told you the young ones are a nightmare, Nomi replied. They have no fear. The girl I have on the weekends comes late, and walks in with coffee from Blue Bottle, as if to point out that she could have arrived on time if she wanted to. Then she can’t be bothered to throw the cup away. Leaves it on my kitchen table when she goes.
Ha, Elisabeth wrote. But wait, no. I meant I’m worried about Sam’s relationship. She told me tonight that her boyfriend is 33. He’s way too old for her. Oh, and they’re sort of engaged.
A long moment followed, in which she conjured up the face Nomi was making.
Finally, Elisabeth wrote, What?
Nomi replied: I didn’t even know Angela was married for the first three months she worked for us. Be careful. She’s not your friend, she’s your employee.
I know! Elisabeth wrote back. Of course.
8
Sam
THE NEXT THREE SUNDAYS in a row, Sam went to Elisabeth’s house for dinner.
When Elisabeth invited her, Sam had felt a fluttering. It reminded her of the first and only time her middle school crush said her name out loud, in the course of asking to borrow a pencil.
“I bet it’s a trick to get you to babysit for free,” Isabella said.
But each time, Gilbert was in bed when she arrived. If he cried out and she stood to get him, Elisabeth would say, “You’re not on the clock, Sam. You’re our guest,” before leaving the room to tend to the baby herself.
There was music playing whenever Sam got there, something she wouldn’t think to listen to, and yet it was just right—the Beach Boys or Patsy Cline or Otis Redding. When Sam got back to the dorm, she’d play that album over and over for the rest of the week.
It was only the three of them, but they made it special. Place mats and tea candles on the dining room table, small silver bowls of kale chips and Brazil nuts set out on the kitchen island. Simple fresh-cut flowers; like white tulips or yellow roses, with no filler. The flowers would still be there when Sam came to work the next day, but they’d be gone before they had a chance to wilt or turn the water all swampy, as had happened the one time Clive sent her an arrangement.
Sam couldn’t recall her parents ever hosting a dinner party. Only big family gatherings, with sandwich platters and a Crock-Pot full of her mother’s meatballs. Her relatives sat all over the house, wherever they could find a spot. They ate off paper plates, with paper napkins in colors coordinated to the occasion.
Her parents threw a neighborhood cookout once or twice a summer, with too much food—afterward, the family ate burnt hot dogs and steak and macaroni salad for a week. At home, entertaining guests was about filling bellies and making sure the house was presentable: the toilets flushed, the toys put away.
Sam wondered how Andrew and Elisabeth managed to make everything perfect. The house was spotless, but she never saw them clean. When she rang the doorbell on a Sunday, they had usually just gotten back from taking a long walk or a drive to the antique shops in Grantville. It almost seemed as if they’d forgotten she was coming but were glad to see her and fully prepared to host on zero notice. She couldn’t imagine them frantic, screaming at each other five minutes before she arrived to get in the shower already or hide the pile of laundry on the stairs.
Andrew did the cooking. Sam and Elisabeth sat at the counter, drinking wine that was probably ten times nicer than anything Sam drank in the normal course of things, though she couldn’t tell the difference. Their red-wine glasses were stemless. White, Andrew said, required a stem. It bothered him when a restaurant got this backward, as white wine in a stemless glass was inappropriately warmed by the hands of the person drinking