Love in a Nutshell

“That’s all right. I’ll ring up Bunny and ask her to bring something appropriate,” Mom said. “In the meantime, your father and I can pretend we’re snowbound and stay indoors. It could be very romantic.”

Kate put her muscles to work, helping her dad haul the luggage. In the time it took them to get everything inside, Stella had fallen asleep on her mom’s lap.

Kate’s mother sat on the flowery sofa, stroking Stella. “Your dog’s a charmer, Kate. What do you think I should get her for Christmas?”

“Anything in cashmere would probably do.”

Her mother laughed. “Well, naturally. She is an Appleton female. And how about you?”

“I… uh… Let me get back to you on that one.” Kate couldn’t think of the last time her mother had gotten her anything other than a gift card. Of course, she also couldn’t recall when she’d gotten her mother anything other than a silk scarf. “Why don’t you two get settled in, and I’ll get dinner on the table?”

Half an hour later, after her parents had their cocktails in hand, tilsget dinnehe family sat down to Kate’s fake boeuf bourguignon. The onions tasted weird even to Kate, but no one mentioned them. In fact, her dad said that stew made the perfect meal when snowed in. Never mind that they weren’t really snowed in, and that Kate had started the stew hours before their arrival.

Toward the end of the meal, Kate’s dad stuck an old Johnny Mathis album on the stereo. “Katie, the house looks just great. Better than I remember. I really think you could make your plan to turn this place into a B &B work.”

He turned to Kate’s mom. “Remember seeing Johnny perform that winter in Lake Tahoe?”

The two of them shared a smile and clasped hands on the tabletop. Kate pushed around the onions in her stew, not wanting to break into their moment.

“Kate, if you’ll excuse us, your mother and I need to have this dance. And don’t worry about clearing the table. We’ll do that… later.”

“Sure,” Kate said. “I’ll just go take care of some stuff in my room.” She didn’t feel like telling them right now about Matt and his plans to turn the house into a restaurant.

She listened to her parents laugh through the walls of her room. If this was to be a nightly event while playing snowed-in, Kate was going to need more chips and chocolate in her stash. For crying out loud. These people were her parents.

***

ACCORDING TO Kate’s clock, it was now ten at night. It felt more like three in the morning. Kate was bored out of her mind. The music downstairs was still going strong, though her parents had moved on to Frank Sinatra.

For lack of anything else to do, Kate dumped her purse onto the dresser and began to sort through the bag’s contents. A cleaning might make it weigh less than a ton. Kate pulled out her wallet, makeup bag, and the notepad she carried to write “to do” lists that she could then ignore. At the purse’s bottom, in a nest of pennies and market receipts, lay the letter from her mom that she’d tucked away and never finished reading.

“Now’s as good a time as any.”

Kate settled on the bed. Because she’d already heard a fresh update on all nieces and nephews during dinner, she fast-forwarded past the opening chat and the bit where her mom wished that Kate would have gotten a business degree.

But there’s no remaking the past. Your road won’t be as easy as mine, her mother wrote. Still, I know you’re up to the challenge. Yes, you’ve been struggling, and it was obvious to both your father and me how much it upset you to ask us for help. But we were happy to give it, darling. And though it’s not kind to say, neither your father nor I were especially fond of Richard. He tended to try to build himself up at your expense. You’ll be a happier woman without him.

“You’ve got that right,” Kate said.

=”0nstairs

I think in many ways, I envy you, Kate. You have a spirit I didn’t have at your age. Oh, I had my moments, but you have me beat. You also have the determination to weather the tough times. I’m not so sure I would have had your sort of grit. I am very proud of you. I need to tell you that more often, and you need to begin believing it. Then we’ll rule the world.

Kate smiled. Maybe she could imagine her mother dancing on tabletops, after all. And maybe she had been wrong about her parents all these years. It wasn’t that they thought she couldn’t do anything, it was that they thought she could do everything.

***

A WHILE before midnight, Matt sat alone at his closed bar nursing a tall glass of water. Since Kate had moved out, his universe had been totally jacked up. He’d even been feeling sorry for himself, which was a new and unpleasant sensation.

When the cuckoo clock over the bar struck twelve, Matt planned to get the hell over this. Somehow. And in the meantime, he’d watch the clock’s minute hand move.

A sharp rapping sounded on the taproom window, pulling Matt’s attention from the clock. Lizzie stood at the glass in her police officer’s uniform, flashlight in hand.

Matt pointed her toward the front entrance.

“What are you doing here?”

“My promised late-night rounds,” she said. “The bigger question is, what are you still doing here?”

“Waiting for midnight.”

“Why? Are you going to turn into the guy version of Cinderella or something?” She grinned. “Kate mentioned your shoe fixation.”

“More like I was hoping to turn back into myself.”

“I didn’t know you weren’t yourself. I mean, you skipped last Friday’s fund-raiser and everything,” Lizzie said.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, Kate moved out, and I wanted to enjoy my new peace and quiet, but Chuck really misses her.”

“He’s really stuck on Kate, huh?”

“This isn’t the kind of stuff we talk about,” he said. “It feels wrong.”

She gave him a crooked smile. “It’s just that ‘Chuck’ doesn’t generally have relationship problems, and I don’t generally have relationships.”

“Good point,” he said.

Lizzie sat down on a barstool next to Matt. “So why did Kate move out?”

Matt was surprised by the question. Kate and Lizzie had grown pretty close.

“You mean she hasn’t talked to you?”

“Not in the past few days.”

“She found out her parents were coming in for Thanksgiving, and she kind of freaked out. Apparently, they don’t believe in sleeping in a guy’s guest bedroom before you’re married.”

“Interesting,” Lizzie said. “And in more ways than one. Kate slept in the guest bedroom?”

“Don’t let it get around. My false reputation is at stake.”

“As if I would. And no one would believe me, anyway. But, really, so what if she moved home? Things have been calm here, and she’ll be safe.”

“Well, I’m also about to foreclose on her childhood home and destroy her dreams so I can expand my evil empire.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I’m a police officer and I’m a woman. That makes me a big snoop. I also know you made arrangements with Kate’s contractor to secretly pay him yourself and have him reimburse you once he gets the money from her. Does she really believe a contractor would ever wait for his money?”