The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas

Author:Corinne Demas [Demas, Corinne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Later in Life, Women, Friendship
ISBN: 9781662511905
Google: qCltzwEACAAJ
Amazon: B0BGT5BWL1
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2023-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

XIII

“Enough wine, and any dinner tastes good,” Noah told Cassandra, but he believed his cooking was accomplished enough not to require it. Tomato sauce with a generous addition of oregano for the lamb shanks, and they could imagine they were dining at one of those charming outdoor restaurants in the Plaka, Acropolis in sight. And Cointreau made the pears worthy of dessert status. Cointreau made anything dessert worthy. The cottage might be humble, but the liquor cabinet was well stocked.

Dinner was easy—they slipped back into their Clarion dinner pattern as if they were still there at the table Noah always favored. But how much better to be here, with the sea right beside them and candles on the table that dripped real wax, unlike those little teat-shaped LED things placed inside glass candleholders. Here there was no danger of having to fend off well-meaning Clarion residents like Jennifer, relentlessly trying to corral him into a game of Scrabble, though communal dining in “The Terrace” was temporarily on hold. His only concern at dinner now was the large beast eyeing his lamb shank. Not just large but redolent from the sea, since Cassandra had not hosed him down. (Though for perfectly good reasons: it had gotten late and dark, and the outside faucet didn’t seem to be working yet, and the hose was still packed away in the barn.)

Dinner was relaxed and familiar, but Noah was worried the going-to-bed part of the evening would prove difficult. They had no experience with saying good night in these circumstances, and there was no playbook for “aged man and woman stranded together in romantic cottage.” The possibilities for awkwardnesses were substantial. Possibly infinite.

When they were done eating, they continued sitting at the table for a while. The view towards the sea was just darkness—there were no lighted boats, no distant houses—but you could still sense its presence.

“When I was a kid, my dad would look at the dirty dishes on the table at the end of dinner and say, ‘Maybe if we stare at them long enough, they’ll disappear,’” Cassandra said. “I used to think that was hilarious, but my mother was never amused.” She paused, then added, “My mother was rarely amused.”

“Sounds like a charming marriage.”

“But an enduring one, all the same. Forty-six years. Till death did them part.”

“Should I feel sorry for your father?”

“No, he had me to appreciate all his jokes. And he was a funny man. He always saw the humor in situations. I wonder what he would make of the state of the world now.”

“There’s not much to joke about, is there? Unless you’re into dark humor.”

“I don’t know—I think we’re pretty funny, if you were an outsider looking at us: leaving a cushy senior living community to hang out in a ‘rough’—your word!—cottage by the sea.”

“I fail to see the humor in it. It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”

“If you say so yourself!”

“I do.”

Cassandra stood up and laid her silverware across her plate. “Come, let’s make these disappear.

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