The bell on the reception desk — an actual handbell, set next to a spice-scented candle of caramel-colored wax in a squat canning jar — brought the proprietor and innkeeper, Fern Iredale, out of the kitchen. Fern was about sixty, solidly built, strong and broad but not tall, with short salt-and-pepper hair and a relentlessly upbeat manner. She appeared wearing a yellow apron tied over a work shirt, khakis, and moccasins. Rebecca remembered her first visit, and how five minutes chatting with Fern at check-in had completely deionized her urban cynicism. It turned out Fern was a fan of “strong women” thrillers. She had made Rebecca promise that if she ever came near Gilchrist again, she would spend another night or two at the inn and Fern would organize a reading in town. And Fern was so warm and dear that Rebecca could not let her down. There were worse things she could do for herself than enjoy a weekend of Fern’s mothering.
A carton of paperbacks sat behind the desk, ready for the next evening’s event. Fern checked her in, then proudly led Rebecca around to the back of the house via the enclosed farmer’s porch. A painted sign above the communal bookshelves read, “Take a book. Leave a book.” On a small stand on the highest shelf was an autographed, plastic-sleeved hardcover copy of Last Words, with a handwritten sign below it reading, “... Except This One.”
Dinner was an adventure. Vermont cheddar-cheese soup, homemade oatmeal-maple bread, cob-smoked maple ham, potato pie, and maple-butternut squash, with not a green vegetable in sight. Apple cider was the beverage, apple berry the dessert. Guests sat family style at one long table in a room of latticed windows looking out on the night and the trickling snow. Rebecca noted that the sage-green floral wallpaper matched the fabric of the seat cushions, the tablecloths, and the linen.
Fern hovered over dinner, a body in perpetual motion, returning again and again from the kitchen with platters of food. Later, dishes of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food would follow them into the parlor, as well as Granny Smith apple wedges dusted with nutmeg and cinnamon. Also “sugar-on-snow” was a local treat — maple syrup boiled and poured over a bowl of freshly fallen snow. And coffee, tea, and homemade oatmeal-maple cookies.
The other guests were generally pleasant. Normally Rebecca resisted groups. Anytime strangers are brought together in a closed social system — a doctor’s waiting room, an airplane, a checkout line — a sort of existential jury is formed. Judgments are passed from stranger to stranger, if only silently, and any action taken by one within the group becomes collusive. If at a large dinner one person is inexcusably rude to the waiter, then by association the entire table is held responsible for his bad manners. Naturally, Rebecca’s mind carried this to extreme “lifeboat” scenarios. Who in the group would be the first to crack? Who would betray the others for his or her own gain? Who would hoard the drinking water? Who would emerge as the leader? Especially since her divorce, Rebecca had a hard time surrendering to anything that was beyond her complete control.
Fern, a platter of ham on her arm, posed an icebreaker — “What was the best meal you’ve ever eaten?” — and Rebecca enjoyed what the responses told her about the others.
First there was Terry, a bonds analyst from Fort Hill, New Jersey, who was in Gilchrist to research the prison-bond offering as a model for other towns pursuing similar projects. He wore a blazer to dinner, his buttery hair still damp from a shower. He was boorish about his job, eager to impress, but at least he kept the conversation going. His favorite meal was a luncheon he had attended in London, where he had been seated two tables away from the CEO of Sun Microsoft Systems.
Mr. Hodgkins was a gentleman in his late-fifties, polite and well-groomed without being particularly handsome. He had the air of a man of travel, a seen-it-all self-possession that made him difficult for Rebecca to read. His hair was graying and fading off the top and sides of his head, his eyebrows were wiry, his eyes cool blue. There was a whiff of money and manner, which Terry in particular deferred to, sensing a soul mate, but Hodgkins would give nothing away. Evidently, he had been at the inn for a few days already; perhaps he was looking for retirement property in the region. He declined both wine and dessert and retired to his room immediately after dinner. His favorite meal, he said with a fond smile, was a lamb dish at Maxim’s in Paris, “With a lady friend — but that was twenty years ago.”
Mia, a social worker, was from the Montreal area, traveling on vacation with her young husband, Robert. They both seemed younger than their twenty-four years. This was their first night in the United States and, in contrast to Hodgkins, the couple possessed an abundance of youth but clearly little cash, reminding Rebecca of her hungry years with Jeb. Robert was slender and goofy with a honking laugh, while Mia, when not enthusiastically defending the poor, was shy and quiet, the fabric of her black turtleneck stretched from her pulling the front fold up over her pale lips. They were a couple one looks at and wonders how they ever got together, and yet is greatly relieved they did. Mia’s favorite meal was a picnic the two of them had once shared in the middle of a soccer field on one of their first dates, cold chicken and pasta under the stars. After some deliberation Robert agreed, although he also liked Mia’s beef stew. The couple withdrew to a cushioned deacon’s bench after dinner to play Yahtzee, a game Rebecca hadn’t even known still existed.
Dr. Rosen was a tall, thin, sandy-haired podiatrist from Boston. He looked natty in a blue cardigan sweater, corduroy trousers, and tan loafers, sitting in an easy chair after dinner with a copy of Yankee magazine open on his knee; his attention was split between the game of Yahtzee to his left and a Jeopardy! match to his right. Dr. Rosen smiled with self-satisfaction when he knew the Jeopardy! answer, and switched his attention to the dicing game when he did not. He was content to monitor the matches rather than play, and to his credit meddled in neither. He could not think of a favorite meal but pledged to come up with one before the end of the evening. He wore a wedding band, although it was clear — to Rebecca at least — that the woman he was traveling with — a short, young, thick-waisted salon blond named Darla — was not his wife. Her favorite meal was “a cruise to the Bahamas — the entire cruise was just one big meal!” A small gem linked to a delicate gold strand around her wrist was a constant source of distraction. It took very little deducing to figure out that Darla and Dr. Rosen were in the early stages of a May-December extramarital affair.
Bert and Rita Noonan, a married couple near Dr. Rosen’s age, were visiting northern Vermont for a weekend of antiquing and cross-country skiing. They were florists from Connecticut, having left control of their small chain of stores in the capable hands of their eldest daughter. Bert and Rita were very much a team — so much so that they were nearly one person, Bert-and-Rita, two heads thinking as one. In the parlor; each opened a different newspaper and read articles to the other over decaf tea. Their favorite meal was a salmon dish served at Canyon Ranch, a spa in the Berkshires they visited twice a year. They were eerily fit and friendly, these semiretirees in casual slacks and half-glasses, like forty-year-olds suffering from a mysterious aging disease.