Comfort Food Read Free Page B

way while she seasoned and sampled in the kitchen.
    And then she saw it: seven stones and one feather.
    That’s what Sabrina had placed on the center of the polished rosewood table.
    “What do you think, Mom?” asked the thirteen-year-old, brushing her glossy black bangs out of her eyes as she gestured to a lineup of polished river rocks arranged by size and a random piece of gray fluff that looked, at a distance, more similar to dryer lint than to something that once winged through the sky.
    Gus Simpson had chewed her lip as she pondered her younger daughter’s contribution that day and cast her eyes down the length of her table, covered with her good ivory linen place mats, clean and crisp, her collection of qualitychina—the artistically mismatched pieces of creamware she’d collected at estate sales and flea markets and the occasional full-price purchase at a department store—and the genuine crystal goblets and glasses she’d brought back from Ireland years ago. Red, white, water. They’d cost more than three months’ worth of mortgage when she’d made the splurge and Gus felt both guilty and exhilarated every time she saw them. Every mouthful—even plain old tap water—tasted better, too.
    The Ireland trip had been her last vacation with Christopher, a romantic trip without the girls and filled with night after night in which they turned in early, eager to be alone. They’d laughed as they steered awkwardly around the jaw-droppingly beautiful coast, neither of them quite comfortable drivinga stick shift on the other side of the road. But they’d managed it just fine, thank you very much. This made the accident all the more incomprehensible:Christopher had driven the Hutchison Parkway every day. Every single day. And then he made a mistake. That’s what happened when you let your guard down.
    Gus Simpson kept a vigilant watch: she knew that every moment, every detail mattered. Even the table setting.
    The just-polished silver had gleamed as it lay on the linen tablecloth; the sixteen settings had been her great-grandmother’s. Every clan has its own version of mythmaking—the hard winter everyone barely survived, the long and impossible transatlantic voyage from the Old World—and Gus’s family had their own, of course. It was The Quest for Fine Things. And so the silver service (much more ornate than current fashion) had been purchased,at great sacrifice, as a setting a year from Tiffany & Co. and used only for the big three—Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving—in later generations.Sometimes, the story went, a spoon was all that could be afforded, the knives and forks left waiting for a fatter year. And so the set had made its way—though not without causing tension within the family—from mother to oldest daughter to daughter’s daughter and finally to Gus, where the flatwarehad been put to more cutting and eating than ever before. No doubt her grandmothers would have thought it frivolous the way Gus delighted in her good plates and knives, and frowned upon their frequent use. Save, save, save it for later. That had been their motto. Tuck away the good to use only when you really need it. The thing was, Gus always felt as if she really needed it.
    Though the night Alan Holt came to dinner, surely, even her grandmotherswould have approved Gus setting such a grand table, all ready for the gorgeous meal simmering and roasting away in the kitchen. Cream of asparagus soup. Rack of lamb with herb jus. Gently roasted baby potatoes. Fresh, crusty bread she’d made from scratch, using a wet brick in her oven to generate steam (thanks to the advice of Julia Child in a well-worn copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 2 ). All followed by a rich, buttery financière with homemade raspberry sorbet.
    She’d wanted the meal to be delicious. Homey. Welcoming. After all, it wasn’t every day that the president of the CookingChannel came over for Sunday dinner and the prospect of a different future