Chapter One:
I’d vowed to myself that I’d keep Frank in hesitant mode for a while, because you see, as Old Mother used to tell me: Stability isn’t achieved by someone just telling you the quicksand is solid enough to walk on.
Yet, as the days passed by and each of them saw Frank’s handsome face digging into the meatloaf or roast, the green beans or turnip greens, the mashed potatoes or sweet yams, and gravy or whatever else was on the menu for the evening, it was hard to resist his shy, yet steady smile.
Sometimes, Frank even helped out in the meal preparation. Mrs. Penn, who insisted that I call her Martha, often sat in a chair watching and advising me on my cooking, something I was always grateful for because she was a proficient cook.
But sometimes, especially when Frank came in and asked what he could do to help, Martha hobbled out of the room and made her way into the living room where two little boys would be playing on the carpet, usually assembling towered castles.
Willow, the small gray kitten with a couple of white patches, who happened to be my familiar, would always curl up in Martha’s lap, purring steadily as the two of them watched the boys’ make believe.
That evening Martha’s admirer, Doctor Stevens, who she called Ben, was joining us for the meal. He was getting to be a regular, too. He was a kindly older gentleman with a bad reputation for flirtation, or so I’d been told, but anyone with eyes in their head could see that he was in love with Martha.
I think he had been all his life, despite the fact that she’d married someone else. Martha was a widow, so it was fine that Doctor Stevens was courting her, even if Martha held her nose in the air and acted like she had no interest in him.
I peeked in at the cornbread and pulled it out of the oven. As usual, Frank was in the way, but at least he was alert enough to dodge away from the hand holding the hot loaf pan.
“You could have warned me, darling,” Frank said.
I had long ago ceased asking him to stop giving me such love tags. He ignored my demand most of the time, only pausing if criticized to say, “Did I say that? Whoops.”
The cornbread permeated the air satisfactorily enough for two little boys to come running into the dining room. “I bet dinner’s ready,” Francis said. “I can smell the cornbread.”
“Yeah, and the butter. I like honey butter on my cornbread,” the younger boy said.
That had been Frank’s chore, the blending together of the fresh flower honey with the softened butter we got straight from our dairy delivery. Frank had to make sure that no dead bees had been left inside the honey before he blended it. That had happened before.
I heard someone knocking at the door, and Frank started to go answer it, but Martha called out, “Come in, you old buzzard.”
Wasn’t love sweet? I chuckled as I carried things to the table and asked the boys if their hands were clean.
Before either of them could respond, Martha called out. “I inspected them, Shama. Don’t be worrying about that.”
In a minute, we were all sitting at the table, napkins posed in our laps, eager to dig in. But before we’d even filled our plates, Dr. Stevens opened his mouth and said, “I got a letter from your daughter today, Martha. She says that she’s arriving this Wednesday.