But what if something went wrong? What if she had a medical emergency? What if someone figured out where she was—someone who did not think kindly of the Preston family?
He almost turned his Porsche around. He could stay the night and make sure everything was okay and then get up and...
Okay, getting up at four to slink out the house wouldn’t help anyone. And she was a grown woman who could navigate New York City by herself. She wasn’t a child or an invalid. She’d be fine.
At least for the night.
Maybe he’d go back out tomorrow night, after work. Just to make sure she was doing all right.
Yeah. He’d do that.
That’s what friends were for.
Five
She was going to bake.
Renee stood in the massive kitchen at Red Oak Hill, surveying the row of copper pots hanging from a pot rack over a massive island in the middle of the kitchen with stools tucked along one side. The countertops were a cool gray granite and the cabinets were cream with an aged patina. A Subzero fridge, better suited to a restaurant than a house with only one person living in it part-time, commanded almost half of a wall.
She didn’t know how to cook. Or bake. No one in her house had cooked growing up. On the few occasions they’d suffered through dinner as a family, either Rosa, the undocumented Guatemalan maid her mother had constantly threatened with deportation, had prepared a meal for them or they’d had food delivered in. Nothing good ever happened at those family dinners. She shuddered at the memories and absently rubbed her leg.
Otherwise, her parents ate out—separately, of course. Breakfast had been cold cereal to be eaten as quickly and quietly as possible before she and Clint made their escape to school because waking her mother up before noon was a surefire way to suffer.
Instead, she had happy memories of boisterous meals with the Lawrence family where everyone bickered and told jokes and only sometimes did she and Chloe switch out sugar for salt or drop peas in Clint and Oliver’s milk. If anyone yelled, they were laughing when they did it and no one ever jabbed silverware into someone else’s legs.
She had afternoon teas with Chloe and Mrs. Lawrence after they’d gone shopping or seen a show or even just because. She had fun afternoons with Mrs. Lawrence teaching her and Chloe how to bake cookies and cakes. Then Renee and Chloe and sometimes even Mrs. Lawrence would eat their creations with a big glass of milk while watching cartoons. Those times were all the more special because...
Because of Mrs. Lawrence. She’d been warm. Loving. There. How many times had Renee dragged her feet when it was time to go home? How many times had she prayed for Mrs. Lawrence to be her mother, the Lawrence family her family? Her and Clint’s. They could’ve been happy there. They had been happy there, all the happier because it was such an escape from home.
Mealwise, not much had changed when she’d married and moved into her own condo with Chet. They’d eaten out most of the time, often separately because Clint was working late or entertaining clients or dating other women, probably. And Renee hadn’t seen the point in cooking just for herself, so she’d gone out with friends. Everything else had been delivered. Cooking wasn’t a priority, not with some of the best restaurants in the world just a short phone call away.
Renee Preston-Willoughby didn’t do anything so menial as prepare food.
That was going to change, starting now. Besides, she was dying for some cookies. Giant gooey chocolate chip cookies, just like she’d made all those years ago with Chloe and Mrs. Lawrence. With ice cream. Did Oliver have ice cream? If he were here, she’d ask him. But she wasn’t going to wait around for someone else to solve her problems. Even if that problem was just ice cream related. She’d check the freezer herself.
Besides, what else was she going to do with her time? She could sit around and feel sorry for herself, but that was self-indulgent in the extreme. In addition to her nap yesterday, she’d had a solid night’s sleep. She’d eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner for the first time in...a while. Last night Oliver had made these amazing burritos that he had had seemingly pulled together out of thin air and there’d been leftovers. Marinated chicken and steak and a corn salsa that was possibly the best thing Renee had eaten in months, plus tortilla chips and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. It wasn’t true cooking, but she’d assembled her own food today and that was a start. A good start.
It helped that, for the first time since her husband’s funeral, food tasted good. Suddenly, she was starving.
She scrolled through Pinterest, looking for a recipe that promised both delicious and easy cookies.
It took a long time to assemble the ingredients. She had no luck tracking down baking soda, but baking powder was close, right? They both had baking in their names, after all. And it said 1 tsp of both baking soda and salt. How much was a tsp? She found a measuring spoon that had a T on it. That must be it.
At least there were chocolate chips. Really, that was all that mattered.
She wished Oliver were here. The peace and quiet of this big mansion out on the countryside was wonderful, but she’d love to share it with him. This morning, she’d walked around the small lake, watching Fred and Wilma as they cut gracefully through the water with two baby swans trailing after them. Oliver had a small
