Page 70 of The Treasure House

Flo had become a regular visitor around town. She ran errands to the store for me and went to the library to donate books from our house and stopped by the café and the hardware store just to say hi. I was sure she was scoring snacks everywhere she went.

“I could have shown you how to whip cream,” Gary Laughton told Flo when he found out about Colleen and the cream. He sounded a little hurt. He was wearing an apron Flo had dug out for him. It was a 1960s floral affair in lurid colors. It weirdly suited him. Gary was balding and rosy, with big eyebrows that made me think of bunting.

“Yeah, well, the cream is just an excuse, Gary,” Flo whispered, her voice carrying across the kitchen to where I was sorting a drawer. “Colleen gets lonely.”

Gary’s bunting eyebrows shot up. “She does? Colleen doesn’t strike me as the lonely type.”

“Lonely types never do,” Flo said sagely. “Like Mom here. She seems perfectly normal, don’t you think? But she’s not. She’s actually a very lonely person.”

“Flo!” I felt myself turning bright red.

“What! You are.” Flo leaned into Gary. “She is,” she whispered, in the same carrying voice.

I stood there in shock. She thought I was lonely?

“Well, now, I think everyone has their lonely times,” Elton said quietly, pausing from peeling his apples. He gave me a kind look and I blushed even harder. Great. Now everyone thought I was weird and lonely.

“After Sylvie left me, I thought I’d just about die of loneliness,” Elton sighed.

“Your wife left you?” Flo turned away from her lesson on how to make pastry and gave Elton her full attention.

He smiled at her. “Not in the way you’re thinking. She got early-onset dementia. It started with a little memory loss, but she was in her forties, so she thought it was just the Change.”

“The Change?” Flo perked up and I knew she’d be thinking of werewolves or shapeshifters.

“Perimenopause,” I told her.

“What’s that?”

“A conversation for a whole other day.” We both turned back to Elton.

“First my Sylvie forgot how to tell time. And she was different, angrier. By the time she was fifty, she wasn’t herself anymore. She withdrew, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t quite recognize people. Even me.”

“Wow, that sucks,” Flo said, sitting down next to him.

“Yes, it really does.”

“What was she like before she lost it?”

“Flo!” I really needed to teach her some manners, I thought, my ears burning. “Before she got sick,” I corrected.

“No, it’s okay,” Elton said, and he was smothering a smile. “It’s an apt description.”

No, it’s not, I mouthed at Flo. She rolled her eyes.

He resumed his peeling. “And to answer your question, Sylvie was pure sunshine, Flo.”

“Yes, she was,” Gary Laughton agreed heartily. “Now, Flo, watch this part. Most people use a food processor for this, but an old-fashioned pie needs to be made the old-fashioned way.”

Reluctantly, Flo left Elton’s side and went to watch Gary rub butter and flour together through his fingers.

“I remember the summer Sylvie brought you to Oxeye, Elton,” Gary said with a puttering little laugh. “You were so smitten, she could have told you to jump off the cliffs and you would have.”

“I sure would have. And I would have died a happy man doing it.”

I listened to the two of them reminisce as they taught Florence how to bake a pie. They painted a picture of a cheerful, optimistic girl who liked pink roses and going to the movies, Elvis Presley and summers by the sea.

“She was happy with a simple life, was Sylvie,” Elton said, his voice warm. “And it was so heartbreaking that it happened to her after she’d watched it take her Aunt Lori.” He shook his head. “They were so close. They understood each other. In a family of big personalities, they were the quiet ones. It was hard on Sylvie, watching Lorraine suffer, and it must have crossed her mind that she had the same thing. I hate the thought of it. Her knowing—” His voice cracked, and he stopped talking.