then, that’s settled. It’s a weight off my mind.” With a contented sigh, she looked out to sea again.
“Just like that?”
She smiled, reached over to lay a hand on his, gently now. “The dog clinched it.”
Even as he laughed, Tricia opened the terrace doors. “If you two can tear yourself away, it’s egg-dyeing time.”
“Let’s get to it. Give me a hand, Eli. I can get down, but I still have trouble getting up.”
He helped her to her feet, then just wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll take good care of it, I promise you. But come home soon.”
“That’s the plan.”
She’d given him a lot to think about, but dyeing Easter eggs with a toddler—not to mention her very competitive fifty-eight-year-old grandfather—made it difficult to think. So Eli just rolled with it. By the time the doorbell chimed, puddles of dye pooled and splattered the newspaper covering the kitchen island.
With the dog at his side, he opened the door for Abra. She stood with the straps of bags over each shoulder and a covered tray in her hands.
“Sorry, I didn’t have enough hands to open it myself.”
He just grinned at her, leaned over the tray to kiss her. “I was about to call you.” He took the tray, angling so she could get by him. “I thought you’d be here before this—but I did, with great effort and canniness—manage to save some eggs for you.”
“Thanks. I just had some things to deal with.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“What could be wrong?” She set the bags aside. “Hello, Barbie. Hello.” Better to hedge, she decided, than dump distressing news on a family party. “Pies take time.”
“Pies?”
“Pies.” She took the tray back, walked with him to the back of the house. “From the sound of it, everyone’s settled in.”
“Like they’ve been here a week.”
“Good or bad?”
“Good. Really good.”
She saw that for herself when they stepped into the kitchen. Everyone was spread around the island. Eggs, colored with varying degrees of skill and creativity, sat nesting in crates. She pumped up her smile, tried to put the horrible day behind her as attention turned to her.
“Happy Easter.” She hurried over to set down the pies, turned immediately to Hester. After wrapping her arms around Hester, she closed her eyes, swayed a little. “It’s so good to see you here. It’s so good to see you.”
“Let me look at you.” Hester drew her back. “I’ve missed you.”
“I need to come visit more often.”
“With your schedule? We’re going to sit down with a glass of wine for you, and a martini for me, and you’re going to fill me in on all the gossip. Because I’m not ashamed to say I’ve missed that, too.”
“You’re nearly up-to-date, but I can dig out a few more tidbits for wine. Rob.” Abra rose on her toes to embrace Eli’s father.
Eli watched her work her way through his family. Hugging came naturally to her, that physical contact, the intimate touch. But seeing her with his family made him realize she was woven through their lives in ways he hadn’t understood.
He’d been . . . apart, he thought now. Had taken himself to the side. For too long.
Within minutes she stood hip to hip with his sister, using a wax crayon to draw a design on an undyed egg, and talking about potential names for the new baby.
His father edged him aside. “While they’re busy finishing up here, take me down and show me this business in the basement.”
It wasn’t the most pleasant of tasks, but it needed to be done. They went down, started through. Rob paused beyond the wine cellar.
He stood, a man who’d passed his height, his build—and the Landon eyes—to his son, his hands in the pockets of khakis.
“In my grandmother’s day, this whole area was filled with jams, jellies, fruits, vegetables. Bins of potatoes, apples. It always smelled like fall to me in here. Your grandmother continued the tradition, though on a smaller scale. But then the days of the endless and elaborate parties faded off.”
“I remember some elaborate parties.”
“Nothing like the generation before,” Rob said as they moved on. “Hundreds of people, and dozens of them who’d stay for days, even weeks during the season. For that, you needed a lot of idle time, a warehouse of food and drink, and a houseful of servants. My father was a businessman. If he had had a religion, it would have been business as opposed to society.”
“I never knew about the servants’ passageways. I just heard about them.”