“And who arranged that?” Isabella returned coolly and Fiona, floating beside her, nodded in invisible agreement because, especially for Annie, that was underhanded.
Though, Fiona was curious to know what there was to explain and why Isabella wouldn’t let Annie or Fergus do it.
Annie had the good manners to blush.
“I want all the people I love to get along,” she said quietly and Fiona lost her pique.
So did Isabella.
Even so, Isabella walked around the cart to her friend and grabbed Annie’s hand. “First, I think you know why I’ve never explained or let you explain.”
“I know why,” Annie returned. “I just don’t agree.”
“I don’t either,” Mikey put in.
Fiona floated closer.
“I know you both don’t agree,” Isabella replied. “But I believe, deeply, it’s better this way and I’ll ask, again, that you respect my wishes.”
Neither Mikey nor Annie looked happy about this but they didn’t respond.
Isabella continued, “And, I’m sorry Annie, but Prentice doesn’t have to like me. He doesn’t even have to get along with me. He has to put up with for me for one week. Then, sweetie, I’m gone. Don’t put this pressure on him, he’s got enough on his plate. Just let me...” Isabella stopped, her eyes got big, her usually remote face filled with pleasure, making her beauty radiant as it had been the day before when she’d smiled at Fergus then she practically did a small jump in her high-heeled, fancy, posh, brown boots and cried, “I’ve got it!”
Fiona stared, even Isabella’s soft voice had raised with excitement.
“Got what?” Mikey asked, staring at her avidly, a small grin on his lips. The look on his face and the attention he was giving his friend told Fiona he didn’t often see her like this and he was intent on enjoying it on the rare occasions she showed it.
But Isabella had raced back to the handle on the shopping cart and was pushing it with renewed vim and vigor, like she had a new lease on life.
“The food for the kids and Prentice won’t be from me,” she announced, her eyes searching the shelves, her hands reaching for a variety of biscuits and she studied them. “The sundaes won’t even be from me. I’ll tell Prentice that Annie went shopping with me and I’ll tell him Annie bought it.” She stopped studying the biscuits and looked gleefully at the stunned Annie and Mikey. “He’ll never know!” When she finished, she was almost shouting.
It was so perfect, Fiona nearly laughed.
Instead she shouted as loud (which was silent) as she could, Chocolate fingers and custard creams!
“Chocolate fingers and custard creams,” Isabella murmured, Fiona just stopped herself from doing a happy, floaty cartwheel that somehow, on some plane, Isabella Austin Evangelista could hear her and Isabella put down the biscuits she had and reached for Jason and Sally’s favorites. “And ginger snaps for Prentice,” she whispered.
Fiona closed her ghostly eyes.
She remembered Prentice loved ginger snaps.
Fiona wanted to hate her but what woman who carried around pictures of a man she had to love with all her heart in a secret compartment of her luggage and wore his ring hidden around her neck and remembered for twenty years that he liked ginger snaps could be hated?
Not to mention that Fiona had caught her opening her door so she could hear the morning pandemonium in the great room.
Really?
Even his dead ghost wife who seriously wanted to think she was a deceitful bitch couldn’t hate her.
And anyway, she was finding excuses to put food in the house and giving Fiona’s children peas.
Fiona, too, had to put up with Isabella Evangahlala (Fiona cracked up every time Sally called her that) for a week and if she put good food in her children’s bellies and lime marmalade in the cupboard and ginger snaps in the cookie jar, she figured that would be a lot easier to do.
Clotted cream ice cream! Fiona screamed
Isabella shoved the cart forward, mumbling, “Clotted cream ice cream.”
* * * * *
Isabella
Isabella was in her rooms in Prentice’s house when she heard Prentice and the kids come home.
She’d been there for a few hours, feigning jetlag after they’d dropped off the food and went back into town to do some shopping.
However, shopping in the village became not so fun when Isabella ran into a dozen people she knew and most of them acted like they didn’t see her, the others like they didn’t know her and one stared at her like she was singlehandedly responsible for famine in Africa.
Even though Annie had set aside that day to spend with her and Mikey before the onslaught of celebrations, both her friends saw the villagers’ behavior and they didn’t demur when Isabella lied and said she needed to rest.
Being in Prentice’s house without Prentice and the children and with time on her hands meant Isabella did something she knew she shouldn’t.
But she couldn’t help it.
She’d given herself a tour of his house.
Annie had told her that Prentice had left the firm he’d worked for five years ago and started his own. He had five employees and enough work that it was steady, busy and his family was comfortable.
He’d also designed this house.
And it was extraordinary.
The great room with its huge wall of windows, the large, rectangular gleaming dining table at the foot of the stairs, state-of-the-art kitchen with stainless steel appliances and an enormous American refrigerator was, in itself, phenomenal. The blond wood, open-backed (and sided) wide stairwell, the steps that seemed (because they were) suspended in midair was unusual and amazing. The upper floor fed off the side into the cliff that rose beside of the house, four bedrooms (one which was a playroom-slash-music room) and a full bath with the kids’ rooms having their own jack and jill bathroom. The master suite (which Isabella very quickly dashed through even though she really, really shouldn’t have) had a sitting room, bedroom, walk-in closet and bathroom with sunken tub.
Isabella noted that Fiona’s clothes and belongings were no longer in the room and, even though that made her heart contract, she was glad that Prentice had moved beyond what she suspected was a very difficult stage of the grieving process.
On her side of the house there was a study (obviously Prentice’s), a television room with a big, comfy sectional couch (there was no TV in the great room, or any other room in the house for that matter), a half bath, a large storage area and a mudroom-slash-laundry room.