“That sounds good.”
The instant he was out the door, Alix ran up the stairs to her bedroom. Her suitcases had arrived but she hadn’t unpacked them. And the bags of clothes Izzy had bought for her were on the floor. But it would be too much to change clothes. Too obvious, too eager.
She ran to the bathroom to put on a little mascara and a blot of lipstick. Why was her face so shiny?! She used the pretty compact her mother had given her and toned down her skin.
She got back to the kitchen just as he opened the door. Their eyes met, but Alix turned away, her heart seeming
to flutter. Too soon, she told herself. Too soon after Eric, too soon after meeting this illustrious man, too soon for everything.
He had a paper bag full of exactly what she needed to make hush puppies the way her father had taught her. It was interesting that he had the ingredients in his kitchen. Self-rising cornmeal and self-rising flour weren’t usually to be found in a bachelor’s kitchen.
Without thinking what she was doing, she reached up and pulled a big porcelain bowl out of the cabinet, then took a wooden spoon from a drawer.
“For someone who doesn’t remember when she was four, you do seem to know where things are.”
“I do,” she said. “Izzy said it was creepy so I’ve kept quiet.”
“I’m not easily creeped out,” he said as he handed her an egg.
“Are you sure? What about horror movies? Or ghost stories?”
“Horror movies, especially ones with chain saws, turn me into a whimpering jellyfish, but ghost stories make me laugh.”
Alix was pouring oil into a deep saucepan. “Laugh? Don’t you believe in ghosts?”
“I believe in real ones, not the chain-rattling kind. So tell me what you do remember. Places? Things? People?” He was watching her intently as she mixed the batter.
“Some of all of it, I guess. I remember this kitchen well. I think I used to sit—” She put the bowl down and went to the table with its built-in seat. Beneath it was a drawer and she opened it. Inside was a thick tablet of drawing paper and an old cigar box that she knew was full of crayons. He peered over her shoulder as she lifted the cover of the pad.
The drawings Alix had done as a child were still there—and each one was of a building. Houses, barns, windmills, a rose arbor, a potting shed.
“It looks like I haven’t changed,” she said and turned to look at him. But he had walked away, and his back was to her. Again he was making sure she knew that he wanted nothing to do with her as a lowly student of architecture.
Part of her wanted to say that she knew who he was, but the bigger part didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she knew. If he wanted to think he was anonymous, so be it. She went back to the stove.
“Do you remember any people?” he asked, not looking at her as he put fish in a hot skillet. They were standing quite close together, not touching, but she could feel the warmth of him.
“Mainly just the older woman, who I assume was Miss Kingsley,” Alix said. “And the longer I’m here, the more I seem to remember about her. She and I walked on a beach and I collected shells. Is it possible that I called her Aunt Addy?”
“Probably. It’s what all the younger relatives called her. I did. Was anyone else with you? Not on the beach, but here in the house.”
Alix held her hand above the pot of oil to see if it was hot enough before she began to drop in globs of batter. “Sometimes I …”
“Sometimes you what?”
“I remember hearing a man laugh. A very deep laugh and I liked it.”
“That’s all?”
“Sorry, Mr. Kingsley, but that is all I remember.” She glanced up at him, her eyes asking him to invite her to use his first name, but he didn’t respond. “What about you?”
“No,” he said, then seemed to come out of his trance. “My laugh is high pitched, breaks glass, not deep at all.”
She smiled at his self-deprecation. “I meant, who do you remember? Did you grow up on Nantucket?”
“Yes, but not in this house.”
“Who gets it after my year is up?”