Chapter 9: Sunday Dinner

Ingrid Gorski lived in a brownstone on Astor Street, and she cooked her own pot roast.

I hadn't expected that.

I'd expected a butler, a long table and someone to take my coat and my dignity.

Instead there was a round oak table in the kitchen and a bottle of red already open.

Ingrid wore an apron with a smear of flour on the pocket.

"Sit," Ingrid said.

"You're the first Gorski wife who has asked what the gravy was made of."

"I wanted to know if it was your recipe."

"Of course it's mine.

"My mother-in-law's was awful."

Lucas sat across from me with his tie off and his sleeves rolled.

He kept looking at me.

All I'd done was pass the carrots.

"Mrs. Gorski," I said.

"Ingrid.

"If you call me Mrs. Gorski again, I'll look behind me for my mother-in-law."

Lucas choked on his wine.

"Ingrid," I said.

"Thank you for the chair at city hall."

"I came for him.

"I stayed for you."

She cut her roast with great precision.

"Tell me about your mother."

I told her about Joan Dombrowski.

I told her how my mother hummed when she counted towels.

I told her she could tell from the bedsheets alone whether a guest was married.

Ingrid laughed so hard she had to put down her fork.

"She worked in hotels," she said.

"Where?"

"Fourteen years at the Lakeview in the Dells."

Ingrid stopped laughing.

She didn't stop all at once.

It went out of her face.

"The Lakeview," she said slowly.

"I bought it five years ago.

"Lucas insisted."

I looked at Lucas.

"It was a good property," he said.

"It was a terrible property," his grandmother said.

"The pipes were from 1962."

"They're new pipes now."

"It cost forty million dollars to give a man his hobby."

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