After He Gave Her My Kitchen, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dot's Kitchen

Roz visits Dorothy with a pie and finds her own stove, her cabinets sawed down to fit, and her anniversary bracelet on Dorothy's wrist. Dorothy says Dean measured the room in March, a month before Roz placed the order.

Dorothy lived twenty-five minutes away, in a brick ranch house with a bird feeder and a wreath that said Welcome Home.

I stopped at a farm stand on the way and bought a peach pie so I would have something to hold.

Dorothy opened the door before I knocked.

"Roz!" she said. "I was just about to call you."

She wore a soft grey cardigan, and her blond hair was tucked behind her ears.

She hugged me with both arms.

"I'm so sorry about the mix-up. Dean told me last night. I feel awful."

She said it warmly, and she looked as if she meant it.

On her left wrist, a thin gold bracelet slid down over her knuckles as she let go.

It had a tiny blue stone at the clasp.

I had picked that clasp out of three pages of catalog, a month before our anniversary.

I said nothing about it.

"Come in, come in," Dorothy said. "Ricky, we have a guest."

The house smelled of toast and fresh paint.

The kitchen was at the back, and I saw the stove before I saw anything else.

It was sage green, with brass knobs, exactly the green I had matched to a paint chip on a rainy Tuesday two years ago.

It was beautiful.

That made it worse.

The white oak cabinets ran along the wall, and someone had sawed the tops off the uppers to fit under her lower ceiling.

The cuts were rough. A strip of plain pine had been nailed along the edge to hide them.

There was no island. There was no room for one.

"It doesn't really fit," Dorothy said, following my eyes. "Dean's friend did the install. He said they'd make it work."

"Who measured?"

"Dean did. He came over with a tape."

"When?"

She tipped her head back to think. "March. A Saturday. He said he wanted to surprise me."

I put the pie down on the counter.

"I placed the kitchen order on April ninth," I said.

Dorothy blinked.

"Then I must have the month wrong," she said. "It was a long spring."

Her hand went to the bracelet and turned it once.

"Honestly, Roz, take it all back. I never asked for any of this. Dean said it was already paid for and that you wanted me to have it. For my husband."

"Did he say I wanted that?"

"He said you insisted." Her eyes filled. "I should have called you. I just didn't want to hurt anybody. I never do."

A little boy came into the kitchen, barefoot, holding a sheet of paper.

He was six. He had a missing front tooth and a cowlick standing straight up at the crown of his head.

"Are you the lady who draws houses?" he asked.

"I am," I said.

"Uncle Dean said you'd make me a treehouse if I asked nicely."

I crouched so we were the same height.

"What do you want in it?"

He held up the paper.

It was a tree with a box in it and four stick people on a platform, one with a very tall hat.

"This is the ladder," he said, pointing. "It's too short."

I took the pencil from behind my ear and drew it longer.

"Now it reaches," I said.

"Thank you," Ricky said gravely, and went off to find his dinosaurs.

Dorothy watched him go with her whole face soft.

"He loves Dean," she said. "He's had a hard time without a man around. You understand."

A navy travel mug sat by the sink. It was the kind Dean carried, with a ski resort stamped on the side.

I looked at it and looked away.

"I understand a lot of things," I said.

"Take the kitchen back, Roz. Really. I mean it. Just say the word."

She was crying now, prettily, and she kept her wrist where I could see it.

I looked at the bracelet. She looked at me.

Then Dorothy smiled, small and steady, and she didn't take it off.

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