“You should go back to bed and make Kevin come out here to cook breakfast,” Kelley says.
Isabelle laughs. “Eggshell omelettes.”
Busy, busy, busy—far too busy to think about Mitzi. He fills the cream and milk pitchers, and the sugar bowl. He takes out the trash. The Wiltons from room 4 are early risers and Mrs. Wilton helps herself to over half the bacon. She might weigh ninety pounds soaking wet; possibly, she’s bulimic. Kelley puts more bacon on the griddle as Isabelle takes the Wiltons’ omelette orders. Kelley does dishes.
Jennifer comes down to get breakfast for the boys. The boys love bacon. Kelley puts even more bacon on the griddle. He really prefers sausage mornings.
There’s a rush at nine fifteen—three rooms eating at once. Pancakes, omelettes… and the coffee is gone. Kelley brews more coffee. Kevin pops into the kitchen with the baby.
Kelley says, “The coffee is going to be a minute. Do you want me to hold her?”
“I’ve got her,” Kevin says. “You look busy.”
But Kelley is never too busy for Genevieve. At four months, she has learned to hold up her head, which is covered with the softest blond fuzz. She has round blue eyes the color of sapphires; Kelley is not exaggerating. Sometimes, in the mornings, he will stand over her crib and whisper, “Wake up and show me the jewels.” Genevieve has a tiny rosebud mouth and of course those luscious, satiny-soft baby cheeks. He can’t find anything in nature to compare her to except a perfect ripe raspberry, maybe, or a fluffy cumulus cloud. He is smitten with this baby. Everyone is smitten with this baby. She is, quite possibly, the most beloved baby in all the world.
“Let me take her for a second,” Kelley says. “You flip the pancakes.”
“I’ll mess them up,” Kevin warns, but he hands the baby to Kelley and wields the spatula.
“Hello, sweet bug,” Kelley says to Genevieve as he dances her around the kitchen. “I’m going to take her out to say hi to the guests.”
“I’m going to stay here and screw up the pancakes,” Kevin says.
Kelley shows Genevieve off to the couples who are eating; he is a shamelessly proud grandpa. The women all coo and wave and tug on Genevieve’s tiny socked feet, but then Kelley notices Mr. Rooney clutching his empty coffee mug, and Kelley heads back to the kitchen.
He can pour coffee with one hand; he has learned, again, how to do everything one-handed so as not to set Genevieve down. Was he this enamored with Bart? He wonders. Bart had been colicky. He screamed all the time, six or seven hours a day, which sent Mitzi into a frazzled state. She tried everything: she set the baby seat on the clothes dryer, she bundled Bart in his snowsuit and drove him around the island, she put him in the swing and the vibrating chair—nothing would stop the kid from screaming. Mitzi read that colicky babies were supposed to be very intelligent and high-functioning as adults, that was fine to know, but it hadn’t been particularly helpful in the moment.
Kelley remembers that Mitzi went to the health food store and came home with drops that were supposed to magically cure colic. Mitzi had given Bart the drops—and sure enough, he had instantly stopped crying. Kelley had thought, The holistic approach works! He had squeezed Mitzi in congratulations as Bart kicked contentedly in the middle of their bed.
“Well,” Kelley had said, “I think we’ve finally found the cure.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Bart started screaming again. Mitzi had blamed Kelley; she had said he jinxed them.
When Kelley saw Mitzi the night before, his overwhelming feeling was that he missed her. His anger on the one hand and his renewed friendship with Margaret on the other hand—and, of course, his overwhelming anxiety about Bart—had all served to mask Kelley’s hurt, his pain, and his sense of failure that Mitzi had left him. She is his wife. He loves her. He misses all the things they did as a couple: they used to take a canvas bag to the beach, loaded with towels and Mitzi’s New Age reading, and they would carry it between them, each holding a strap. They bought matching leather sandals that both Kevin and Ava declared were “the ugliest shoes in the world,” and even Kelley had to admit, they were sort of ugly, but their ugliness only accented the beauty of Mitzi’s slender ankles and feet. He misses Mitzi’s voice when she wakes up in the morning. He misses the nicknames they used to call certain guests—“Mr. Busy Bee Atmosphere,” and “High-Maintenance Betty.” He misses doing kind things for her—clearing her windshield of snow, bringing her a hot mug of his homemade shrimp bisque—and seeing her face light up. She has, by anyone’s standards, a glorious smile.
The night before, as they sat on Bart’s bed side by side, Kelley had reached for her hand and both of them had squeezed as though their squeezing alone might bring Bart back safely.
And then, Kelley had offered to drive Mitzi back to the Castle. She was drunk, which wasn’t a state he’d seen her in often, and he couldn’t just let her walk. When he’d pulled up in front, she said, “You know, I’m not as happy with George as I thought I’d be.”
Well, he’d be lying if he said that wasn’t gratifying to hear. He had been tempted to kiss his wife good night, but he’d refrained. She is only here for the weekend, he reminds himself. Another day and a half at the most. All he has to do is survive.
He cleans up everything from breakfast. There’s one room that hasn’t come down, which is room 10, Margaret and Drake, so Kelley saves some coffee. He tries not to feel resentful—a gifted surgeon and his ex-wife lounging in bed above his head.
Jennifer and Kevin announce that they’re heading into town with Jaime and the baby. Jennifer asks Kelley to check on the older two boys—but when Kelley pokes his head into their room, they are completely absorbed in their video game.
Isabelle starts working on the rooms. Kelley goes down to the laundry to push through the sheets and towels. Ava comes down to check on him. She looks rumpled and distressed.
“How was your caroling party?” Kelley asks.
“Oh,” she says. “It was fine.” Her tone of voice indicates that it was anything but.
Kelley starts folding the towels, warm from the dryer. “Just fine?” he says.
“Not really fine,” she says. “This woman named Roxanne who teaches at the high school broke her ankle on the cobblestones and she was Med-Flighted to Boston and Scott went with her. And he’s going to miss the party tonight. So it looks like I’m your date.”
“Great!” Kelley says. There had been one second when he’d actually thought of bringing Mitzi as his date. He would like nothing better than to think of George sitting at the hotel alone while Mitzi got all dolled up to go out with Kelley. But going with Ava is a far superior idea.
He can’t believe he even considered taking Mitzi.
Except that he misses Mitzi.
But… she’s only here for the weekend.
And Ava looks less than thrilled at the prospect of attending the party with her dad.
“Don’t look so down,” Kelley says. “I dry-cleaned my tux.”
“It’s not that,” Ava says. “I’m just disappointed that Scott isn’t coming. This woman isn’t even a particularly close friend of his, but she didn’t have anyone else to go with her and Scott volunteered.”
“Ah,” Kelley says.
“And,” Ava says.
“And?”
Ava gnaws her lower lip. “I bumped into Nathaniel last night.”
“Nathaniel?” Kelley says. “Really? I thought he moved.”
“He’s building a house on the Vineyard,” Ava says. “But he’s back.”
“Oh,” Kelley says. “How was it seeing him?”
“Weird,” Ava says. “It was… I don’t know… a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
Kelley nods. He knows exactly how Ava feels.
The rooms are finished by one thirty. Margaret and Drake have headed into town. Kevin returns from town and the baby goes down for a nap. The inn is quiet except for the piped-in carols: “Away in a Manger,” “I Saw Three Ships.”