Nana had looked younger, like she did when he was a kid, and she was wearing her favorite slippers and an apron over a cotton dress. He also remembered the powerful sensation he’d experienced watching them, one that had made his insides swell up like a balloon. It had been so long since he’d felt something that strong in real life, so the best he could equate it to were peace and contentment. Like everything was exactly as it should be.
Ida showing up with her pie and her wrinkles and her old-person manners must have stirred the dream into conscious thought. Kurt rarely remembered any dreams. The ones that stuck tended to wake him in a cold sweat and were nothing to reminisce over. He hoped time out of the service would change this.
“This kitchen,” Ida said, shaking her head and smiling. “It stood out as much when they had it installed as it does now. The first time I saw it was in the early sixties. They’d only been in the house a few years. Back then, I lived in my childhood home of Connecticut with my husband and two sons. With Sabrina having settled so far away, she and I were only able to see each other every few years.
“When she and her husband bought the house in the late fifties, it needed considerable plumbing and electrical repair, and the kitchen needed a complete revamping. It was already half a century old then. Since the work was completed, little about the house has changed. Sabrina replaced the stove and refrigerator again in the late seventies with the models here now. She had to pay an arm and leg to keep the vintage look because hardly anyone was making it then.”
Kelsey, who’d brewed a fresh pot of coffee to go with the pie, carried a steaming mug to Ida. Not wanting Kelsey to feel as if she needed to serve him, Kurt got up to pour his own cup.
“We have milk but no sugar,” Kelsey told Ida. “No creamer either. Sorry. We’re still getting things up and running.”
“A splash of milk will be fine. And I understand. At this house’s age and after a full year with no inhabitants, there’s likely to be a bigger-than-average to-do list. And to be fair, the house hasn’t had the care it deserves the last several years. After Sabrina’s husband passed, she spent more time next door with me than she did here. Fewer memories, you understand.”
“I can only imagine,” Kelsey said. “If your sister was from Connecticut like you, how did she end up in St. Louis? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I don’t. Jeremy Raven, her husband, led her here. He was raised in this very house, in fact. His parents died when he was young, and the house was sold. Through the grace of an aunt, Jeremy went to medical school at Cambridge. He and Sabrina met in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town in southwest England, while he was on break from the university. And theirs was quite the meeting. At Weston, at low tide, the water recedes about a mile offshore. It’s something to see. Everywhere you look, boats are trapped in the sand.
“My sister had traveled there by train and was walking alone at low tide looking for seashells when she got stuck out in the mudflats. Jeremy was on the beach with friends, celebrating the end of another term. He ran out and attempted to save her, and ended up stuck himself. They were thrown a rope, thankfully, and pulled from the mud as the tide was rushing in.”
“Wow. That’s both very fortunate and wonderfully romantic at the same time,” Kelsey said. She met Kurt’s gaze, and her cheeks flushed pink.
“She sounds brave to have traveled on her own like that, especially for a woman back in the 1950s,” he said, surprised by an urge to run his hand down Kelsey’s back.
Ida let out a soft humph. “Brave she was. In her younger years, she was a bit of a black sheep, at least in my parents’ eyes. Her way of doing things tended to be a touch unconventional. They never could see eye to eye. Our father was a minister, so maybe it’s no surprise. After one particularly big argument, Sabrina left home in a fury and made for Europe. She was just seventeen. It caused such a scandal in my hometown! She lived like a gypsy for nearly two years, sending me postcard after postcard from one city to the next before she and Jeremy met. She claimed if it hadn’t been for his complete devotion to her, she’d never have settled down.
“Jeremy was six years her senior and ready for a grown-up’s life by the time he earned his medical degree. To my entire family’s surprise, Sabrina allowed Jeremy to make her his wife and bring her to St. Louis. They lived in a small apartment in Soulard, but Jeremy bought back his childhood home the first chance he got. And, obviously, they lived out the rest of their lives here.”
“Wow,” Kelsey said, closing her hands over her mug. “That’s really cool. I had no idea.”
Ida smiled as she finished cutting the pie into slices. She transferred the slices to chipped and faded blue-flowered serving plates that had belonged to her sister. “I always thought this colorful kitchen was Sabrina’s way of stating that she wasn’t going to tame down entirely.”
Kurt eyed the bright-yellow countertops and light-blue cabinets with a new appreciation. He wondered what Ida thought of her sister leaving this home and its contents to the shelter. Personal things like paperwork and pictures had been cleared out, but so much remained. He also wondered what Ida thought of all the crates of dogs filling up the house. She’d been polite but quiet during the tour. But
