“This tastes like Barton’s,” she said softly.
“Does it?” Claire kept her voice light and casual, as if she hadn’t spent hours making sure that cake was right.
“Claire, you called Susie to ask for the recipe?”
“She wouldn’t give it to me. Family secret or some such nonsense.”
“What did you do?”
“I might have spent three weekends recreating it from memory. I don’t know if I can pay my light bill this month because I spent all the money on flour.”
Nina stared at her and then looked down at the cake. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and laughed. But then the laugh turned into something else, something wet and raw.
“David used to bring me a slice every Friday. He’d stop on his way home from the office and get one slice, not the whole cake, just the one slice because he said that was the perfect amount, and it made it more special.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Y’all, I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” Harper said. Her voice was tender and fierce at the same time in a way that only Harper could accomplish.
“He was a good man,” Claire said. “He deserves to be talked about.”
It was true, and it needed to be said out loud.
“He was the best.” Nina picked up her fork and took another bite. “Man, he would have loved this. He would have eaten three slices and blamed it on the dog. And you know he would have been right here in the middle of this birthday party, even if we had said it was a ladies’ night.”
“You don’t have a dog,” Harper said, obviously not getting the point at all.
“That never stopped him.”
They laughed, all three of them. The kind of laughter that has tears hiding behind it.
Outside, the Beaufort evening was doing what Beaufort evenings do, turning the sky pink and gold over the river and sending crickets onstage for their nightly performance.
Claire had lived here for twenty-four years, and she still had never tired of it. Some nights, the beauty of the place made her ache. The same way a song could remind you of someone you missed.
“Should we move to the porch?” Claire asked.
Harper grabbed the wine, and Nina took the cake. Claire grabbed three forks, because she knew these women well enough to know that nobody was going to bother with plates. They would share that cake as they’d done in college.
They settled into the chairs on Claire’s screened porch, the marsh stretching out dark beyond the yard. The air was thick with salt and pluff mud, and the last heat of the day was finally letting go. Somewhere out on the water, she could hear a boat engine humming. Closer, a frog was making its opinions known.
For a few minutes, none of them spoke.
They just sat there, these three women turning fifty years old, drinking wine, listening to the Lowcountry breathe.
“Can I say something?” Claire finally asked.
The funny thing was, her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She hadn’t meant to speak at all.
“Always,” Nina said.
Claire looked out at the marsh.
“I spent four solid hours getting ready for tonight. I changed the color of those napkins four times. I baked a cake from a recipe that doesn’t exist so that it would taste like a bakery that closed months ago.” She paused a moment. “And the most exciting thing Greg said to me today was that the Braves game started at seven.”
Harper was quiet. So was Nina.
The frog was not quiet, but the frog really was not part of the conversation.
“I’m fifty years old,” Claire said, “and I don’t know who I am without a to-do list.”
