“Rachel, have you met my wife?” Isak swung again and called to a woman standing in front of the precious kilim sofa and talking to its sole occupant. “Shasta?”
Shasta Karlsen smiled as her Art Deco frame—draped in a glittering sage green cocktail dress—ambled our way.
“Shasta, this is Rachel Stowe-Gilroy,” Isak said, gesturing at me with his orange juice.
Her smile broadened as she took my extended hand. “Congratulations on your marriage, Rachel.”
In her mid-thirties, Shasta had been blessed with straight white teeth, dark hair, large brown eyes, perfect skin, and a model’s body. They served her well, and she moved like a woman who knew it.
“I’ve just been talking to Taylor,” she quickly added, “and golly gee whiz, we’re in for some fun. Happy New Year, all.”
“Who’s Taylor?” I asked.
“Dalton Taylor. The guy on the couch by the windows.”
“The kilim sofa?”
“Gorgeous sofa, right? Yeah, that’s him. A man who has far better things to do than to eat brunch with a load of philistines.”
“He said that?”
“He didn’t have to. It oozed from his pores.”
Isak leaned in, lowering his voice. “He’s a snob, and at sixty he’s made being a curmudgeon an art. He’ll be hell when he hits seventy.”
“Half the paintings on Clay and Mary’s walls are by him,” Shasta said. “Proof that there’s no accounting for taste. Sorry, Isak.”
I heard metal on glass. Clay Blackwell had returned to the living room and was fork-gonging his mimosa glass to gather the guests. “Brunch is served in the sunroom.”
Gilroy laid a hand on his stomach. “I smell bacon. No cream puffs, but loads of bacon.”
Isak was puzzled. “I never would’ve guessed you’re a cream puff man.”
“I’ve come to love them. For about a year and a month now.”
I hid a smile. A year and a month. Late November, year before last, when he’d kissed me in a brewing snowstorm outside an assisted living home. A somewhat peculiar but beautiful start to our relationship.
The January sun was brilliant in the clear blue sky, and reflecting off yesterday’s snow, it blanched the sunroom with light. Clay spread his arm out, presenting a long pine table in the middle of the room, then made a gesture I took to mean Sit anywhere you want.
The table was decorated with a white runner, which was graced with three mercury glass vases packed with white roses, boxwood twigs, and sprigs of fresh-scented evergreen. It was simple and lovely, and it spoke of winter’s beauty and the promise of new beginnings. I wasn’t the type to make resolutions, but New Year’s Day had always been special in my eyes. It signaled a fresh start and an adieu to the disappointments of the old year.
I sat next to Gilroy, now every bit as ravenous as he as I eyed platters of chocolate croissants, plates of bacon, bowls of fruit, and a mountain of scrambled eggs in a jade green tureen.
Dalton Taylor smiled politely and sat on my other side.
As much as being sociable with strangers went against my grain, Gilroy and I had agreed to venture outside our small circle of friends now that we were married. The idea was to make more friends, married ones, though in reality we were content with the friends we had, single and married.
But we’d agreed to go forth like explorers once a month. It was a reasonable goal.
“Brunch with the Blackwells scratches January off the calendar,” Gilroy had said.
“All right,” I’d replied, “as long as there’s nothing else until February.”
We were reluctant explorers.
With a mystery writer’s eye, not to mention the eye of someone who was still pondering Mary’s cryptic note, I took in the faces around the table. I still didn’t know who half the guests were.
Mary was studiously avoiding me. In her mid-forties, she was behaving like a furtive teenager. Clay strutted briefly about the room, taking great pride in the table and the food before sitting next to his wife. Isak and Shasta Karlsen were whispering like kids, Shasta smiling all the while with those brilliant teeth of hers, shining like sunlight on snow.
Dalton was inspecting his fork, holding it ridiculously close to his face. Finding it wanting, he buffed it with his cloth napkin. Across from me, Laura Patchett eyed Dalton with a look of disapproval and then turned that disapproving eye on a large painting to her left. She was in her late fifties, I thought, with a round face, tousled gray hair, and barely-there eyebrows.
Gilroy asked me for my plate, dropped a scoop of scrambled eggs on it, and handed it back. “Heads up, bacon coming.”
“I forgot the coffee.” Clay bounded from his chair, fetched a carafe from the kitchen, and on his return began to fill our cups, starting with a spiky-haired man in his early thirties sitting next to Laura.
I watched him, watched Mary, spooned some fruit onto my plate, watched him again.
The spiky one caught me looking. “Aren’t you Rachel Stowe, the mystery writer?” he asked.
“I meant to introduce you,” Clay said. “Rachel, this is Brodie Keegan, news editor at the Juniper Grove Post.”
“You work with Mary, then,” I said.
Finally Mary looked me in the eyes.
“Different departments, but yeah,” Brodie said.
I looked back to Brodie. “How long have you been at the Post?”
