Page 71 of The Treasure House

“What a life she had, though, eh?” Gary said gently. “Summers here her whole life long, even till the end, with all her favorite people around her. She wasn’t one for apple pie, though, was she? Lemon chiffon, from memory.”

“No, that was Marly,” Elton corrected softly. “Sylvie loved apple pie—she always made me cover the trees so the birds wouldn’t eat the apples, and we came back during leaf peeping season to harvest them every year.”

“And now here we are, still harvesting them,” Flo marveled, her eyes glued to Gary, who was dripping vinegary water into the bowl of floury butter. “And still making apple pie.”

“Here we are,” Elton agreed. “That’s the way this life works. There are always apples to harvest.”

“Except on our trees,” Flo told him. “The birds ate almost all of our crabapples.”

“Next year I’ll loan you a net.”

Next year. Elton’s words cast a spell, and suddenly I could see us through a dozen flickering falls, harvesting apples and making pies, falling into a homely, enduring pattern, just like Elton and his wife. It made me feel warmed through.

While the pie crust fired in the oven, Flo went to check on her kittens. They had a bed now and a litter tray, and a bunch of toys Flo had found around the house—balls and bits of yarn.

“You’ve got a cat count?” Gary said as he noticed the chalkboard Flo had propped up on the counter.

“Both real and porcelain now,” I said with a sigh. We were at thirty-nine cat figurines and seven and a half actual cats. The half was Debussy, who didn’t technically live with us but was around enough to count for something.

Today he came in through the back door with Doris and Jake, who were carrying pumpkins and a couple of bottles of wine. Debussy went straight to the rag rug in front of the cold range and set himself to bathing.

“I thought Flo might like to make jack-o’-lanterns,” Doris huffed, dropping her pumpkin on the table.

“Smells good in here,” Jake said, as he put his pumpkin down too.

“Apple pie is a home smell,” Gary told me with a wink, as he gave Doris a wet kiss.

“What was that for?” she asked suspiciously.

“We were talking about Sylvie,” Elton explained. “It’s made him appreciate you more.”

“Ah, Sylvie.” Doris made a sad face. “I miss her. Who else would talk celebrity gossip with me? This one here”—she patted Gary’s round belly—“doesn’t even know what a Kardashian is.”

“I know what a Kardashian is,” Gary scoffed. “One of them broke the internet with her butt. You’d have to be dead to have missed that.”

“Gary! There’s a child present,” Doris scolded him.

“Sorry, Flo.”

“That’s okay, I wasn’t listening. I was trying to teach Cheeseball how to stand up on his hind legs. Velveeta can do it, so I told him he can do it too.”

Jake let out a long-suffering sigh at the kittens’ ignominious names.

“I hope no one minds a pizza delivery for dinner,” I apologized to them all. I only had the counter oven, and it was full of pie.

“No one ever minds pizza,” Flo exclaimed.

“And at least you have the honor of eating pizza in our dining room,” I told them all as I pulled down wineglasses.

They made oohing and ahhing noises as I took them through to the front rooms, which I appreciated. Now that Alan and I had sold the excess furniture, I’d been able to haul a lot of the junk out to the tent. The dining room had been emptied out except for the furniture I was keeping and the stacks of paintings, which I’d left against the wall behind the door.

I’d kept the dining table, which Alan had told me was solid oak in the French farmhouse style. Not in mint condition, but that was fine with me, as I’d be too scared to use it if it were. The chairs were also oak, according to Alan, ladder-backed with battered seafoam-blue upholstery seats.

“Oh, pet, look at the job you’ve done!” Doris was beaming at me. “It looks amazing.”

“It looks empty, that’s all,” Flo told her. “It’s pretty plain. I think we should paint the room a bright color. Like pink.”

“We’re not painting it pink.”