fragrant muffins on a delicate Limoges china plate, along with a slice of cantaloupe and a delicate silver fork. She handed him that plate just as Hypatia passed him a cup of black tea on a matching saucer. Stephen tried to accept both, but the muffin plate wound up in his lap.
Kaylie lurched forward and caught the plate and the muffins. The fork and cantaloupe hit the floor. Aaron laughed, but Ophelia went into paroxysms of apologies and reassurances.
“Oh! Oh, oh, oh! How clumsy of me! Your fruit!” She grabbed a heavy linen napkin, hiked her skirt and gave every evidence of intending to drop to her knees. Kaylie managed to head her off.
“Here, let me.” Placing the muffin plate on the seat of her chair, Kaylie took the napkin from Odelia, bent and swept up both fork and cantaloupe slice, setting them aside on the tray.
“Kaylie to the rescue,” Aaron chortled. “Getting to be a habit, huh, Stevie?”
Stephen winced but made no reply.
Magnolia shoved a plate of muffins, sans fork and fruit, into Aaron’s hands as Hypatia reached once more for the teapot, asking in a strained voice, “Cream or sugar?”
Oblivious to any awkwardness, Aaron took both. Hypatia managed to prepare his tea while shooting daggered glances at Odelia, who returned meekly to her place on the settee.
Magnolia tsked and helped herself to a plate of goodies while Auntie Od bounced numerous regretful looks around the room. Kaylie selected another slice of melon for Stephen, spearing it with a clean fork. She placed it on his plate that way and returned the plate to his lap, within easy reach. She then filled another plate and passed it to Odelia with a sympathetic smile.
Subsiding back into her chair, Kaylie took Stephen’s saucer from him, allowing him to use his good hand to handle his tea. He gave her a slight nod in thanks but failed to meet her gaze as he raised the cup and sipped. A muscle quivered in the corner of his eye, but his face remained expressionless, even as Aaron exclaimed, with a full mouth, over the muffins and slurped his tea. The muffins, Kaylie knew, were delicious, so she offered Stephen the saucer. He placed his teacup on it, and she set both aside as he reached down to take a muffin from the plate on his lap.
“Kaylie, dear, would you like a cup of tea?” Hypatia asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“And muffins?” Magnolia suggested, passing her a fresh napkin.
Considering that she only had two hands, Kaylie declined. “I’ll share with Stephen.”
Stephen smiled at her and bit off a hunk of a muffin. An instant later, bliss relaxed the muscles of his face and widened his eyes. “Mmm.” He chewed and swallowed. “Wow. Even my oma’s gingerbread isn’t this good.”
Kaylie snatched one of the muffins from his plate as the aunties erupted into expressions of delight at Stephen’s praise. The sugar-crisped crust protected the moist insides, rich with golden raisins and pecans. While Kaylie nibbled and Stephen gobbled, the Aunties explained in minute, and often conflicting, detail how Hilda prepared the luscious treat.
The subject quickly exhausted itself, at which point Odelia smiled at Stephen and said, “Perhaps Oma would like Hilda’s recipe.”
“She might,” Stephen replied with a tired smile.
“And who is Oma, dear?” Magnolia asked. “Your cook?”
“My grandmother. Oma is Dutch for grandmother.”
“How lovely!” Odelia exclaimed. “What’s the Dutch word for aunt?”
“Tante.”
“Tante. I like that. Tante Odelia.”
Stephen polished off his second muffin and went to work on the melon, holding the slice suspended on the fork. He put it down without finishing it, and Kaylie noted the signs of fatigue in the droop of his shoulders and eyelids.
She interrupted a chummy discussion between Aaron and the Aunties to say, “I think Stephen should get upstairs now.”
That presented a problem that Kaylie had mulled over off and on for the past two days. Grandpa Hub had depended on Chester to carry him up and down the stairs, but Chester had been a decade younger then, and at ninety-two Grandpa had been little more than skin and bones. Aaron honed in on the issue at once.
“Hey, next time I’ll bring along some of your teammates,” he joked to Stephen. Looking at the aunties, he explained, “The Blades have a couple of Swedes and a Russian who make Stephen look like their baby brother.”
“Maybe Chester and Mr. Doolin can get Stephen up the stairs by turning the chair backward,” Odelia suggested.
Kaylie didn’t see how that would be possible, given the fact