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“Grandma must have appreciated that.” Sophie gestured around the kitchen, where Grandma Agatha had probably cooked thousands of meals.
“She didn’t think about it,” Katrina said. “It was expected that women wanted to be wives and mothers back then. Who knows? Maybe if I’d been born a few decades later, I would have wanted to be something else.”
“Like what?” Sophie dug deeper. She and her mother had never opened themselves up like this.
“Who knows?” Katrina didn’t take the bait.
The doorbell rang, and Katrina sped off to grab the sandwiches. Sophie remained at the kitchen table, watching the snow fall daintily across the dead grass lining the beach. Katrina returned, bringing a wave of roast beef, onions, Italian sausage, and cheese with her, and Sophie’s mouth watered.
“That was one thing about you,” Katrina remembered as they unfurled their sandwiches from their wrappers. “You were never a picky eater, not like Ida. She was worried about every animal and sometimes cried at the dinner table. I had never seen anything like it. She was a vegetarian for decades.”
“I think she still is. Sometimes.” Sophie took a large bite of her sandwich and chewed, overwhelmed with the fresh vegetables and the spicy sausage.
Katrina put down her sandwich. “I know that.”
Katrina obviously hadn’t known Ida was still a vegetarian. Sophie could hear it in her voice. But she needed to pretend toknow—for reasons far too complex for Sophie to approach right here. And Sophie had to play along.
“I know! Yeah. Ida’s great for sticking to vegetarianism like that. But I would never give up this sandwich,” Sophie said, trying to make a joke.
Katrina picked back up her sandwich and smiled. A bit of mustard dropped down from the bottom. “You know, honey,” she began.
Sophie’s heartbeat intensified. She was terrified her mother was about to say something horrible.
Instead, Katrina said, “I think it’s really sweet you’ve spent so much time at the hospital.”
Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. “Grandma means a lot to me.”
Katrina’s eyes glinted. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed, watching the snow. “We’ll have to get a wheelchair for her,” she said. “For the wedding.”
Sophie’s heart seized. She fought every urge to throw her sandwich down and wrap her arms around her mother.
“We were thinking early April,” Sophie offered softly.
“Soon.”
Sophie wanted to say, “Not soon enough.” She wanted to shout her love for Patrick across the bluffs and over the rooftops. She wanted it to echo across the Sound.
Instead, she said in a meek voice, “I’ve never loved anyone like Patrick.”
And her mother said, “I like the way he looks at you. It seems like he loves you a lot.”
After that, Katrina returned her attention fully to her sandwich, as though that was all the kindness she could offer Sophie today. But Sophie’s chest was warm and fluttery. It was the first time her mother had shown any affection for Patrick.It was the first admission that Sophie was actually going to get married soon.
We all have to start somewhere, Sophie told herself.We all have to find ways to heal.
Chapter Ten
Twenty-Two Years Ago
It was autumn in New York City. Trees burst with oranges, reds, and yellows just as bright as the taxi cabs that whipped along the streets, and pigeons waddled through parks, their eyes puny and round. Katrina and Agatha walked around Madison Square Park and found a bench in a sunbeam, where they unfurled their bagel sandwiches from a paper bag and feasted.
Agatha was sixty-three years old. This was her first trip to the city, and it was clear from her surly, distrustful glances at passersby that she wasn’t too sure about it yet. Katrina did her best to distract her.
“There are so many delicious smells here, don’t you think?” Katrina was asking. “I mean, we could eat at a different place for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and never run out of new options.”
“There are plenty of disgusting smells, too,” Agatha reminded Katrina, taking a bite of her cream cheese and lox bagel. “Back in Nantucket, all we know is the sea and the sand. And that’s about enough for me.”
Katrina tried to smile and focus on the positives. She was forty-three years old, an empty nester, on a trip to the city with her mother. They planned to see Norm in his final Broadway production before heading out to Hollywood to “make something of himself,” or so he put it. This fascinated Katrina. Wasn’t he already “something” here in New York? Wasn’t Broadway enough?
