Cold Marriage, Burning Regret novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Eleanor's Kitchen
Eleanor called before I had finished my coffee, and she did not wait for hello.
"Don't you dare wait until Sunday, Marcella Sherman. Get in a car. I'm making bread."
Her townhouse in Lincoln Park had a front door the color of old pennies.
She opened it herself, in an apron, with flour up to her elbows.
"You've been crying," she said.
"I haven't."
"Then you've been up all night, which is worse. Come in."
The kitchen was the one room in that family I had ever liked.
It had a scarred wooden table, a window full of herbs, and a radio tuned to a station that played only old jazz.
Eleanor pointed at a stool.
I sat.
She put a bowl of dough in front of me and hooked her cane on the back of her own chair.
"Knead," she said. "It's cheaper than a therapist."
I pushed the heel of my hand into the dough.
For a minute neither of us spoke.
"I did not know she was coming," Eleanor said.
"Who?"
"That girl. Lydia. I learned she was in Chicago when I saw her walk in on his arm, and I did not know where to put my face." She slapped a lump of dough onto the board. "I told you to humor him. I've been ashamed of that since the second I said it."
"You were trying to keep the room calm."
"I was seventy-two years old and a coward in a ball gown. It isn't the same thing."
I laughed, once, against my will.
Eleanor smiled at me.
Then it went.
"She says the child is his," she said.
"She told me too."
"And you believe her?"
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