Raspberry Sherbet Kisses by Ellyn Bache

Author:Ellyn Bache
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Zee sets the table in the dining room because of the heat, though she cooks the chicken outside on the grill. She prepares everything else in the noisy air-conditioned kitchen, including the squash casserole from Jamene’s oversupply of summer crooknecks. She hopes Alex will forgive her for the casserole. It’s only a side dish. There’s also coleslaw, baked beans and fruit salad for him to choose from. It’s a picnic meal, even though she’s serving it inside on good dishes.

For the first time in ages, the dining room won’t feel empty. As tenants, Alex and Leona Richie are almost always there, of course, but tonight, when Jamene and Joey and Kent and LilyRose arrive, there will be seven of them altogether. Zee loves having a crowd in her dining room. She loves her dining room, period. She loves the solid feel of the huge mahogany table that once belonged to Cy’s grandmother, a big clunky thing with oversized clawed feet. She feels the same way about the massive cherry settee Zee’s great aunt handed down. The chairs come from all over, from Aunt Rose and Cy’s cousin Melba and two or three others. She had them all upholstered in the same plum-colored fabric so they’d look like they belong together, but they don’t. Some have curved legs and some straight, and the backs of the chairs aren’t all the same height. She doesn’t know what styles they are. She doesn’t know the first thing about furniture styles. But she loves each one of her fourteen chairs, as if each were a priceless, one-of-a-kind antique—which, for all she knows, maybe it is. The dishes and glasses are mismatched, too, though to Zee’s way of thinking, when they are placed on a tablecloth for a festive meal, they have a kind of symmetry. Some came from relatives she never knew, dead before she was born, and others from Cy’s side of the family or from her own distant aunts and cousins she didn’t see often enough to put a face with a name. Zee loves that each of these people left her something, even though they might not have known at the time she’d end up with it. Just the fact that they cared enough to hand down their furniture means a lot to her, and in an odd way, she feels it means something to them, too. Whenever Zee seats more than six people in her dining room, she feels like all the ancestors are looking on with approval, down through the generations further than anyone can remember.

Aside from seeing everyone in her favorite surroundings, the best thing about this particular evening is LilyRose’s being in such a good mood from start to finish. She comes in showered and fresh, in cropped white slacks and a stretchy purple top that sets off the little bit of sunburn she got on her face this morning in the garden. She’s pretty from head to toe, her hair shiny the way it gets

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