Chapter 14: The Blue Tin

Sylvia came at four that afternoon, without calling first.

Iris met her in the front hall and did not offer to take her coat.

"I heard Odette was unwell," Sylvia said, and held up a gift bag. "I brought something to settle her."

In the bag was a new blue tin with a gold lid.

Iris wanted to knock it out of her hand.

Instead she said, "She's in the parlor."

Odette sat in her wingback chair under a plaid blanket, looking small and gray.

Her right hand lay in her lap.

Her left held the cane.

It was a performance, and a good one, and Iris loved her for it.

"Sylvia," Odette said, in a thin old voice. "How kind."

"Oh, you poor dear." Sylvia bent and kissed her cheek. "Those hands. It's the nerves, I'm sure. All this scandal."

"I'm sure."

Sylvia set the tin on the side table and lifted the kettle that Iris had left on the tray.

She poured with a steady hand, and Iris watched the steam rise from a delicate white cup.

"Chamomile," Sylvia said. "My own blend, the way Benton liked it."

She placed the cup in Odette's good hand.

Odette looked at it for a while.

"Drink it with me," she said. "You've always said it's the best tea in Boston."

"I couldn't. My stomach."

"One sip, Sylvia. For an old woman."

"Odette, really, you know I'm not well in the afternoons."

Sylvia's smile did not move, but her eyes did.

They went to Iris, and to Dane, who stood by the window with his arms folded, and back to the cup.

Odette leaned over, slowly, to the fern on the stand beside her chair.

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