It wasn’t until Sunday morning that he tackled the kitchen cupboards. He tossed out stale cookies, crackers, cereal, and whatever else looked old and tired. He filled the cartons with things the food bank could use, and set aside bars of baking chocolate and cans of nuts to give to Madge. She was a good cook, but no match for Evelyn, especially when it came to pies. No one made a pie like Evelyn. Apple, peach, cherry — the fruit almost didn’t matter — it was the warm, flaky, buttery crust that melted in your mouth and made you ask for more.
Thinking about it brought on a painful recollection of the day he and Phil had finished a golf game and were sitting over beers — maybe three years ago.
“Say, Larry, Madge’s birthday is next week. I’d like to give her something special — something she wants, and can’t buy. What would it take for Evelyn to give me her pie recipe?”
He remembered his surprise. “What do you mean, what would it take? Just ask her.”
Phil’s face reddened. “Madge tried that. Evelyn refused. She says it’s a family secret.”
Larry guessed he must have laughed, a shaky cover for his embarrassment. “I don’t understand those kinds of secrets,” he said awkwardly, wincing inside.
He found himself wondering once again how Evelyn could have done that to someone like Madge.
He finished sorting through the food cupboards and turned to the closet next to the refrigerator. It was lined with shelves, crowded with cookbooks. On the middle shelf, right out in front, was a bright blue recipe box, the kind that fit three-by-five index cards. The pie recipe still on his mind, he wondered if this was Evelyn’s secret file. He reached for it eagerly and took it to the breakfast room and sat down. In the brighter light he saw the pale blue card taped to the lid. Evelyn’s handwriting leapt up at him. For Larry only — Destroy on my death. Evelyn
He stared at the date she had written below her name. It was the day she died. He reeled back as though he had been punched.
He closed his eyes, struggling to understand. She’d left him no note of farewell, no explanation for why she had taken her life, yet she left him instructions about the disposition of her recipes. Why the hell hadn’t she destroyed them herself!
Angrily, he grabbed the file. He would start with A. What would he find — Apple Pie, Apple Strudel, Apple Tart? And behind B — Brownies? And when he finally got to P? Would he find Pie Crust, a family secret...?
He looked at the first card and got a second jolt. A hot current of disbelief ran through him, jangling every nerve. His hands were trembling as he turned to the second card and then the third. His heart was doing strange flips as he moved through the alphabet, through the eastern seaboard cities where he had traveled over the years.
ALBANY — Cheryl
BOSTON — Judy
CHARLESTON — Darlene
His head was throbbing and his mouth was dry when he came to P.
PROVIDENCE — Hadley
He clutched the side of the table and then brought his hands up to his face and covered his eyes, but there was no blotting out what he had seen — the cities in capital letters, the women’s names in lower case, and their addresses, all written in Evelyn’s careful, slanted script. She had known about them all.
For a long time he sat like a child hiding behind his hands. He felt publicly disrobed.
He wouldn’t have cared about all the others, but Hadley had been different. Discreet was the word they had used. They had talked it over and agreed he would never call her from his office or from home. He always called from a pay phone and never with a credit card. All hotel and restaurant bills he paid for in cash.
Their phone arrangement was simple, but secure. When she answered, he would say, “Mrs. Noble?” If she laughed he would know the coast was clear. Otherwise, he would hang up and call at another time.
His hands dropped from his face and he stared out into the garden. Shifting clouds had obscured the sun, bringing on a premature darkness that turned the windows into mirrors. At every angle, he faced the reflected image of his sagging shoulders.
He had no idea how many women there had been before Hadley. A few were just one-night stands, others went on for a while. He thought of the energy it had taken to court and persuade, to set things up, cover his tracks, and have everything go off without a hitch. All that, and Evelyn had known. How had she found out about Hadley?
A clock in the living room chimed. In an hour he was due at the Wilsons’. If only he could call them and say something important had come up, or that he wasn’t feeling well; but he couldn’t do that to them, nor would they buy it. It would only bring on questions that would be impossible to answer.
He began to wonder just how much Madge knew. He was aware that women shared confidences in the way men did not. Had Evelyn talked about his out-of-town activities? And what about Evelyn’s affair with Aztek? Surely Madge must have known about that. How quickly he had accepted that as fact. Well, it was pretty plain. And it explained a lot — Evelyn’s rage when he’d put down Aztek’s art, the flower arrangements she designed for all his shows. Had she been in love with him, or had it just been a frolic? How long had it gone on?
He found the Wilsons where he expected they would be on a warm summer evening, settled into chairs on the patio beside their rambling stone house. Phil served drinks and Madge brought out a plate of spiced shrimp. Whenever he got together with them, which was often, Madge made a point of mentioning Evelyn, cautiously and only in passing. Sometimes he wondered whose grief she was tending, his or her own.
He had to be careful tonight. There was a lot on his mind and he wasn’t sure just how much he wanted to say, if anything at all.
As she passed him the shrimp, Madge asked him about Mrs. Brody.
“She was terrific,” he answered honestly, seizing the neutral topic. “Helpful, like you said. She got me started on cleaning out. She suggested I hire an estate-sales agent when I’m ready.”
They discussed that for a while and then drifted on to other things — the proposed widening of a road alongside the library, the golf tournament scheduled for the fall. Just as darkness began to fall they moved inside to the screened porch where Madge had dinner ready — poached salmon with a dill sauce, potato salad, and fresh asparagus. They drank a lot of wine.
“I’ve a surprise for you two,” she said when she rose to clear the table. “For dessert — I’ve made one of Evelyn’s pies.” He had been playing with the stem of his wine glass, which Phil had just refilled, and almost tipped it over. “You have Evelyn’s pie recipe?” Disbelief roughened his voice.
“I’d given up trying to pry it out of her, then last year she just gave it to me, but she made me swear I wouldn’t tell.”
Larry forced a smile; the false promise of the blue file had been too bruising to leave him with any interest in Evelyn’s recipe secrets. Yet he was glad Madge had the pie recipe. She’d wanted it for so long. Surprisingly, it made him feel a little better about Evelyn. Even so, there was a knot in his stomach when Madge appeared with the pie.
It was lightly dusted with powdered sugar, attractively centered on a fluted glass plate. He could tell from the fragrance that drifted toward him, it was warm, the way Evelyn had always served it. Madge cut generous slices for each of them, and then waited expectantly. Larry took the first forkful and felt the mingling of fruit and flaky crust spread across his tongue and slide smoothly down his throat. “Wonderful,” he exclaimed with a prolonged, exaggerated sigh.