The Late Bloomers' Club Read online

From over Charlie’s shoulder I peeked through the window into the dining room at the line of tourists gathered at the door. “It’s going to be a busy one.”

  Fern’s hand appeared in the window, fingers heavy with rings, waving a chit. Charlie took it wordlessly from her and turned up the grill. The shepherd’s pie lay untouched on his prep table.

  “Granby change his mind?” I asked, pulling my hair back into a fresh ponytail.

  “Got a call. Didn’t even finish his eggs.”

  Two more tickets appeared in the window. I pushed through the swinging door, grabbed a stack of plastic-coated menus, and got to work.

  * * *

  The Victoria Hotel hasn’t been a hotel since the 1950s. In its heyday, at the turn of the last century, it was a magnet for the guests who flocked to the northern mountain towns in search of fresh air and what were thought to be the healing waters of nearby Lake Willoughby. The hotel closed after the owner was arrested for hiring someone to give very thorough massages, and sat empty and decaying until one of the developers in the White family bought it and turned it into apartments.

  I moved in a couple of years ago, after my marriage crumbled. I had always assumed I’d grow old in the little farmhouse I had lived in my whole life—but there was a lien on the estate to pay off the nursing home we put my father in once his dementia progressed, and neither I nor my sister, Kit, had the money to settle the debt. In the end it came down to selling the diner or the house—and since the diner had been my one and only career, and the farmhouse we had grown up in was built for a family and not a single woman, the decision seemed clear. We sold the house and paid off the nursing home. I gave Kit everything that was left, including the proceeds of the sale of all the antique furniture our mom had loved, dad’s baseball card collection, and everything in the barn, with the agreement that the diner would be mine. The decision suited us both—Kit had the money to fund her next art project and I got to keep the diner that was both my home and my livelihood. But I did everything I could to avoid driving down Hunger Mountain Road. I didn’t want to see what the new owners had done to my mother’s kitchen garden.

  My apartment was nice enough: there was a kitchenette that I used only to boil water for tea, a bathroom with a porcelain tub, a small bedroom, and a living room with floor-to-ceiling, curved windows, their original opalescent glass still in place. That time of year, in the early evening, the room took on a rosy hue that reminded me of the inner petals of pink peonies. I liked the fact that you could tell what month it was by the color and angle of the light.

  I had just changed from my work uniform—knee-length black skirt, light blue Miss Guthrie T-shirt, short white socks under an ugly pair of black sneakers—and into my favorite pair of denim overalls when I heard a knock at the door.

  “It’s open,” I called, assuming it was one of the neighbors. Someone always needed something: a smoke detector battery replaced or help changing their cat’s litter box. As the youngest tenant of the Victoria Hotel, it fell on me to take care of these little tasks when my neighbors’ sons or daughters weren’t around to help.

  “Hey.” Sean LaPlante, cabinetmaker, know-it-all, Guthrie’s newest town council member, and my ex-husband, walked into the living room like he was surveying his estate and immediately began to pace the parameter, opening windows. “How can you breathe in here?”

  The first thing I did when Sean and I split was drive the two hours to the Macy’s in Burlington to buy a bottle of perfume. It smelled heavy, like church—vetiver and myrrh. The second thing I did was plant petunias in my flower boxes. Lavender-scented laundry detergent came next, followed by tangerine dish soap. Sean was scent sensitive—anything with fragrance gave him a migraine—and I had been living a hypoallergenic, unscented existence up until the divorce. Afterward, whenever I found myself ruminating over some dumb thing he said or did, I spritzed myself. It always made me feel a little better.

  “You should have called first,” I said, snuffing out the stick of nag champa I had burning on the mantel. “What’s up?”

  It wasn’t that unusual for Sean to drop by. We had had a cordial split, and it had been coming on for years. Sean and I had been together since we first kissed while slow dancing to “Lady in Red” at our freshman semiformal, and had gotten married at twenty. We were already growing apart when we were hit by ten years of endless stress—his mom’s depression, my father’s Alzheimer’s, his dad losing the furniture business, which also meant Sean losing his job, me putting my dad in the nursing home, his brother’s son dying in a motorcycle accident. And then there were my infertility problems. I asked him for a separation the morning after my dad’s funeral. I think he was relieved—he packed his things and moved out the next day.

  Sean banged on one of the windows with his palm, then lifted and lowered it until it moved smoothly. Satisfied that I had proper ventilation, he flopped down on the couch. “Did you hear about Mrs. Johnson?”

  “Peggy?” My stomach dropped a couple inches. The image of Freckles, alone in the trees behind the diner, filled my mind. “What about her?”

  “There was an accident, Nora. She died.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” I said. Peggy Johnson, Peggy the cake lady, was a fixture in Guthrie. She was like everyone’s third grandmother. Peggy was an excellent baker, and if there was an occasion to celebrate, it would include one of Peggy’s creations. Baby showers, birthday parties, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, wedding anniversaries—it was unusual for more than a week to go by between slices of one of Peggy’s cakes. “What happened?”

  “Her car hit that big white oak over on Pudding Hill. Word is she had a heart attack while driving. Didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Poor lady.” I tucked my arms into the bib of my overalls and hugged my waist. “She’ll be missed.”

  “I’m going to miss her lemon chiffon. God, she was good. Remember our wedding cake?”

  Our wedding cake had been a simple one—just two tiers, a tender vanilla sponge so soft you could slice it with a spoon, filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market. It was the best cake I had ever tasted.

  Sean stretched his arm across the back of the couch, making it impossible for me to sit without touching him. He always took up too much room. I grabbed one of the wooden stools from the kitchen and sat down. “I’m so sorry to hear about Mrs. Johnson, Sean, I really am, but why stop by? You could have just called.” I cared about Peggy as much as the next Guthrie resident, but it’s not like we were so close that I needed to be consoled in person. I was quickly growing annoyed that Sean was in my apartment.

  Sean leaned forward, his brown curls falling into his face. He was my age, but he still looked boyish and he knew it. “Here’s the thing. I was having a beer over at the Black Bear, and I overheard Granby talking with—what’s the name of that guy who works in town records?”

  “She lets you go out drinking?” The she I was referring to was the new girlfriend, the one he had hooked up with two weeks after we split.

  “You know the guy—one of the Burke cousins?”

  “You really should know this, now that you are a council member. Jason Burke, he graduated with our class.” Our graduation class was only seventy-five students, but Sean has a selective memory. Like how he didn’t remember we were only separated and not yet divorced when he hooked up with Margot—his intern—a petite woman from New York City. She had left a lucrative career in PR to learn how to make furniture the old way, before power tools. She always smelled like Obsession by Calvin Klein, but apparently that didn’t trigger Sean’s migraines.

  “He did? Wait, did he play baseball?”

  “You overheard Granby and Jason Burke . . .”

  Sean looked smug. Like most residents of Guthrie, he loved to know the dirt. “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “Don’t you need to get home?”

  “I have time
. Beer? Wine? Whiskey?”

  “Isn’t she waiting for a lesson on mortise joints from the master craftsman?”

  “Nora,” Sean said in a deflated tone.

  My ability to take the wind out of Sean’s sails was as much a part of why our marriage failed as anything Sean ever did. I felt bad, but I couldn’t help myself. Yes, it was my idea to separate, and yes, I had given up my right to have an opinion about what he was doing with his time and with whom, but two weeks. As soon as they were seen picking out eggplants together in the White Market I started getting pitying looks from the customers at the diner.

  I let my voice soften. “What did you overhear?”

  “Mrs. Johnson had a will.”

  “I would hope so. She has a lot of land. I’m glad she—I don’t know.” I stood and went into the kitchen to open a bottle of cold beer and split it into two glasses. I had been about to say that I was glad she had made her wishes known since she didn’t have a spouse to rely on to take care of things. Peggy had never married. I think it’s why she liked to bake so much—it gave her a chance to get out and be a part of other people’s families and celebrations. “Did it mention who would inherit Freckles? I think I saw him behind the diner. He must have been in the car with Peggy. Now he’s out wandering around alone.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What about the funeral? I hope she made arrangements. Remember last year when Gert Brown passed, and that cousin from California insisted on having her cremated and shipped to him?”

  “First time Gert left Vermont.”

  A shiver ran through me. “I wonder who she left it to? I don’t think I ever saw her with family. Maybe she donated her estate to the dog warden? I hope it’s not summer people. It’s too pretty a house to let sit nine months out of the year. Who did she spend Christmas with anyway?”

  Sean drank the beer in one swallow. “You.”

  “Now, you of all people know I work Christmas morning.” Sean hated that I served breakfast Christmas morning and pushed me to close the diner every year, but then where would the plow drivers and the loggers without family go? I couldn’t leave them out in the cold. Besides, we did pretty good business that day. The waitresses never complained about the tips.

  “No, you, Nora. Granby and Burke were saying they thought Peggy had mentioned she was leaving her estate to you.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense.” I rocked back and forth from heel to toe, staring down at my worn-out pair of red Keds. My right big toe was poking through a hole in the canvas. “She was our neighbor, but we barely spent any time with her. Why would she leave us anything?” Peggy and my family had had a friendly, wave across the yard, drop off a box of fudge at Christmas, trade stalks of rhubarb for some apples kind of relationship, but not a close one. She always kept to herself.

  Sean shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess she didn’t have anyone else to give it to?”

  I felt a wave of sadness wash over me. If I had known that we meant that much to her, or that she had so few people in her life, I would have had her over to play crazy eights or something. Peggy was kind. I hated the thought that she didn’t have people.

  Sean stood up and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “I see what you are doing there. She wasn’t your responsibility.”

  “I should have been more neighborly.” I let myself lean into Sean for just a second. I’ve always liked his soft, wood-shavings scent. Sean had been my only sweetheart. The boy I lost my virginity to. His body was as familiar to me as the oxblood Naugahyde that covered the stools along the diner counter. I may not have been married to him anymore, but that didn’t make me know him any less, or feel any less comfortable around him. When I felt him toy with the strap of my overalls, I twisted out of his embrace. “Well, thanks for telling me. I would rather know before the peanut gallery arrives tomorrow.”

  “Anytime. You should probably give Kit a call.”

  “Kit? Why?”

  “It’s half hers. At least that’s what I heard. Peggy left her estate to you and Kit. If it’s true, you’ll have some decisions to make.”

  “Right.” I took a deep breath. Calling my little sister required mental preparation. Kit, a filmmaker, screenwriter, and actress by trade, thrived on drama, on set and off. My phone calls with her were usually followed by several glasses of wine and a nap.

  “How long has it been?”

  Kit hadn’t been home since our dad’s funeral. It would be two years in September. “It’s been awhile.”

  “She must have been home for the holidays,” Sean said, “right?”

  “Right,” I lied. Without Dad to make her feel guilty, and without the traditions that the house held—the balsam fir in the front hall by the staircase, the stockings that mom had embroidered hanging over the fireplace—there wasn’t anything pulling Kit to come home. I didn’t want Sean to know I had spent the past couple of Christmas afternoons in the back of the Miss Guthrie, long after the door had been locked and the basket-weave tile floor had been swept, watching Miracle on 34th Street alone in the kitchen on the little television we kept in back, eating pistachio nuts until my fingertips were red with dye and my belly ached. It was bad enough that I had to imagine him pulling my chair at the LaPlante table out for the intern, as if it had never been anyone else’s.

  Sean looked around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. “You doing okay here, Nora? All the lights working? Water pressure good?”

  The bathroom faucet leaked steadily, and one of the windows in my bedroom had been painted shut, but the last thing I wanted was to ask Sean LaPlante for help. I put my hand on his elbow and led him to the door. “Nothing the landlord can’t fix.”

  “Need help hanging any pictures? It looks like you just moved in. Why don’t you put up some of your paintings?”

  Sean was talking about the paintings I did when we were younger, back when I thought I would still have the chance to go to art school, even if it was just a low-residency program. When I moved from our family house into this apartment, my old canvases and paints—untouched and collecting dust after years of neglect—I left behind. That was just something else that Sean wouldn’t understand. I decided to spare myself the conversation.

  “’Night, Sean.”

  Sean kissed the top of my head, like he used to. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  * * *

  The next day was my day off. I’ll sometimes go into the diner for breakfast even when I’m not working—I’ve never been much of a cook and it seemed silly to stock a refrigerator full of food for just one person when I owned a restaurant—but I wasn’t prepared to respond to all the questions about Peggy so I stayed home. And besides, if anything important came up, Fern would fill me in. Peggy’s lawyer had called early in the morning and confirmed everything Sean had overheard. He also let me know that Peggy had expressed that she didn’t want a funeral or a graveside service, just to be buried quietly next to her parents in the town cemetery, and that all arrangements had already been made with the hospital and the funeral home. I put him in touch with Jack Hickey, our family lawyer, who said he would meet with the estate attorney and get back to me in a week or so. But I didn’t need things to be official to make a trip to the feed store while I was running errands, to pick up a fifty-pound bag of dog kibble. Inheritance or no inheritance, Freckles needed to be fed.

  I drove up Pudding Hill, kicking up rocks, a dark, rich field covered in rows of lettuce sprouts to my left, scruffy pine woods to my right, trying to gather my memories of Peggy. She never came into the diner except to drop off a cake. She was always friendly, but a little shy. She wasn’t in the habit of pausing to share a bit of gossip, even though I’m sure she heard plenty. Most of my memories of Peggy were of her off in the distance, hanging laundry on the clothesline in her backyard or on her porch calling out to one of her dogs. I stopped when I came to the whit
e oak, wincing at the bald patches where the fender had torn off the bark. It was the oldest tree in Guthrie, said to be here over a century. I hoped that the accident hadn’t done too much damage. The grass beneath the tree looked scorched, and the leftover bits of windshield glinted in the sun. It was just a few minutes away from her place. She had been so close to home.

  Peggy lived at the end of Hunger Mountain Road, past the little farmhouse where Kit and I grew up, in a small, dark red Victorian surrounded by a post-and-rail fence recently repainted a glossy white. I pulled into her driveway that led straight up to her front steps, opening and closing my car door quietly, not wanting to startle Freckles if he was close by. I walked around the exterior of the house, looking for signs of the dog, but the house was surrounded by a thicket of vines and sharp-bladed grasses, which made walking nearly impossible. It looked as if no one had mowed since Peggy had broken her leg some years back. I set the bag of kibble on the front porch, then picked up the mail in the mailbox at the end of her walkway. Not sure what I would find, I braced myself for chaos and turned the doorknob of the front door, but when I stepped inside I was greeted by a well-kept home. The floors had recently been swept. A woven wool blanket was folded squarely and draped over a leather armchair in the sitting room. A fluffy, fleece-lined dog bed lay next to the wood-burning stove. In the kitchen there wasn’t a single dirty dish, and the sink itself was wiped down and clean. The walls were lined ceiling to floor with metal cake molds in every shape and size you could imagine—lambs and trucks, rainbows and hearts. I recognized Minnie Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants. Two vanilla sheet cakes sat on wire cooling racks on the kitchen counter. I opened the refrigerator. It was crammed with pounds of butter and dozens of eggs. Tubs of sour cream were nestled between cartons of pasteurized egg whites. I made a mental note to come by and empty the fridge before the perishables spoiled. Maybe the food pantry could make good use of its contents.