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“It’s a good thing you met me when you did,” he said. “Your cholesterol will thank me later. Restaurant food is filled with salt and preservatives. It’s hard to eat out and eat healthy.”
“Says the man whose aunt owns the most popular restaurant in town,” she retorted.
He grinned and flipped the veggies in the pan with a flick of his wrist. “The Lampstand is farm to table. Everything is fresh. It’s the exception to the rule. You’re not a vegetarian are you?”
“No, I’m a carnivore,” she said.
He added the meat to the pan and then he went to mix up his special sauce and slice the bread.
“Raven said your mom was on Broadway,” she said to fill the silence.
“A long time ago,” Colt said. “My brothers and I grew up listening to show tunes. Used to drive my dad crazy. We’d be doing chores around the ranch and break into a chorus of Sweeney Todd. He always told us if we were going to sing while we worked we could at least have the decency to learn some Creedence Clearwater Revival or Rolling Stones. But somehow the show tunes stuck.”
“You’ve got good memories of your childhood and parents,” she said, watching him closely.
The way she said it sounded almost accusatory in tone, but he kept his voice light.
“Great memories,” he said. “My parents are a solid unit. It was love at first sight for them and they’ve never looked back. They put down roots here just like my grandparents and great-grandparents, and they raised us all to believe if we worked hard enough we could accomplish whatever dreams we had. I take it you experienced something of the opposite. Are your parents still alive?”
He got out plates and arranged the bread before adding the sautéed vegetables and meat, and then he spooned the sauce on top.
“As far as I know,” she said, accepting the plate and a bottle of water. “I’m not sure they’d tell me if something did happen to one of them. We don’t communicate often.”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“I saw my father about six years ago,” she said. “We happened to be in London at the same time. I was on a book tour and he was there for business, and we saw each other in the lobby of our hotel. We had no idea we were staying in the same place. He was with his mistress, of course, so that was fun.”
He felt a pang to his heart for the little girl who’d grown up with parents like that.
“And your mother?”
“Three years ago. The was an article about my marriage in the New York Times and it gave her a bit of status, so she called me up and we had tea at The Ritz. She’d called the newspaper ahead of time so there were reporters taking photos during our visit. It was a very short visit, and I got stuck with the check.”
“They sound like lovely people,” Colt said dryly.
She laughed, much to his surprise. “Lovely they are not. Selfish and self-absorbed, yes. They care about money and status and what makes them feel good. Which is why they’ve kept the sham of their marriage all these years, but have always had various lovers.”
“Writing was how you escaped?” he asked, knowing intuitively that it was true.
“Always,” she said, finishing half of her sandwich. “Even as a young child I was writing stories about a prince who’d come rescue the poor orphan girl and then they’d live happily ever after. I went to an all-girls boarding school with very fierce nuns, so you can imagine how well those stories went over.”
He chuckled, easily imagining her with ink-stained fingers clutching a diary, while using that sharp wit of hers on a bunch of nuns.
“I’m sure you were a delightful student,” he said.
“Not in the slightest,” she said, the sadness on her face replaced with the first real smile he’d seen. “I was a terrible student. I hated school. But I love learning. I don’t even know if that makes sense. But I think it’s what makes me such a good writer. I can research for days. I love history and I love learning about people and studying different crafts. I just didn’t like learning the things that seemed unessential—like calculus and chemistry. I have yet to use either on trips to the grocery store or while investing in my retirement account.”
“So did you successfully keep your stories from the nuns?” Colt asked, watching as Chewy unfolded himself from the couch and padded over to them now that the food was done. He was tall enough to reach the top of the island and he laid his head inches from Zoe’s plate and the second half of her sandwich.
“Not at all,” she said. “I spent a lot of time in detention. But then I went off to college and tasted my first freedom from my parents and the nuns, and I got to write whatever stories I wanted without consequence.”
“Did you study creative writing or literature?”
“God, no,” she said, giving in and handing Chewy the rest of the sandwich. He took it delicately and then wolfed it down in one bite. “Chewy, we’ve talked about this. You have to chew your food. You’ll get a stomachache again.”
Chewy whined and then licked a stray bell pepper that had gotten caught in his beard so it disappeared into his mouth. And then he went and lay back on the couch.
“I was an art major,” Zoe said.
