Free It's a Crime by Jacqueline Carey Page B

may not have the stomach for it later.”
    Pat wondered if he was serious.
    “We could make it all,” she suggested. “Julia, Eula Mae, the works.”
    “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do. And there’s no reason to stop. Paella! I want Yorkshire pudding, too, so we’ll have to have a roast. And fresh vegetables, lots of them. They will be scarce inside, I’m sure.”
    “Do you want to invite anyone else?” asked Pat.
    Frank lay down, full length, on the bed. “The only person who will talk to me is the person who got me into this in the first place,” he said.
    “Who’s that?” asked Pat, puzzled. He couldn’t mean Neil, not after Neil had told him to leave him alone.
    “Ellen Kloda,” said Frank.
    “Oh,” said Pat. “That’s right, the memo.”
    Frank closed his eyes. “You know she cried when I called her.”
    “Look,” said Pat. “Why don’t we give Oliver a try?” She could not really believe he was avoiding them. The three used to socialize a lot, considering they were grown-ups. They’d had dinner every month or so. Oliver exuded charm. “Why don’t we just see what he says?”
    “I have left a dozen messages for that man,” said Frank without opening his eyes. “Do you think maybe his dialing finger is broken?”
    “Well,” said Pat. “Stranger things have happened.”
    “Right,” said Frank.
    “What matters is that your family is going to be gathered around you,” said Pat, deciding on the spot that she’d better get Rose to come back from college. They were the ones who’d bought her that lime green VW Bug. Let her put it to good use.
    By Monday evening the dogs had been banished to the basement, and every surface of the kitchen was covered with Cuisinarts, nesting bowls, cutting boards, colanders, and food of every texture and color. On the island alone were veal chops dredged in flour, strips of red, yellow, and green peppers, oysters in their brine, tomato halves inverted on a rack, a small bowl of freshly baked and processed bread crumbs, bunches of watercress, arugula, and parsley—and more, always more.
    Pat tried to write down the various cooking times on a pad of paper by the phone, but when she asked Frank how long the paella would take, he said, “Who knows?” So she abandoned the idea of coordinating the dishes and simply carted them whenever they were finished to the huge trestle table in the dining room.
    Ruby, who’d been shaking up her brain on the rides at Six Flags (she really was fearless), eventually showed up, saying, “Where’s Rose?”
    She was late, but Pat didn’t care. “She’ll be here soon.”
    Ruby’s black eyes slid silently over the heaps of food.
    Frank carried a crock of soup from the kitchen. “You’ve got to taste this,” he said, his voice overloud for the room.
    Pat dipped her spoon and made exaggerated slurping noises. (She didn’t know when he’d added soup to the mix.)
    “Tasty, isn’t it,” he bellowed. “A mob boss couldn’t have a better send-off.”
    “Oh, Frank,” said Pat, feeling the dishes to see which were still warm.
    Rose at last showed up with a backseat full of impatiens that her class had just finished experimenting on.
    “Isn’t that nice,” said Pat, although what she was going to do with a load of supermarket flowers like impatiens, she did not know. Maybe she could think of some experiments of her own.
    The four of them sat as they always had, at the center of the very long dining room table. Frank and Pat were on one side, and Rose and Ruby on the other.
    “How’s school?” Pat asked Rose.
    “Fine,” said Rose, who used to be as chatty in her own way as Pat.
    “You like your classes this semester?”
    “Yes.”
    “The teachers are nice?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s wrong with her?” demanded Frank. The words were somewhat loose, because of his drinking.
    “Are you still getting along with your roommate?” asked Pat.
    “Mom.”
    “For some reason my roommates