Page 64 of Henhouse
“Yes, you’re taking your trash duties very seriously.”
“Trying to help where I can.”
“I’m grateful. It’s usually my job. Circumstance of getting the separate apartment.” She waved to the carriage house behind them and Theo nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might split other chores besides the cooking. He wondered now who did the property taxes, who was in charge of the scant lawn out front, who cleaned out the gutters. He knew theycouldhandle such things but he wondered if they wanted to. He also wondered what things were like when Effie’s grandfather was still alive. It had been awhile, from what she’d told him, but as an outsider he could still pinpoint the Herman-sized holes left behind. Mostly in the way Dorothea moved through the home.
His face must have scrunched into something like discomfort because Ellen placed a hand on his shoulder. “Take a breath. We don’t all bite.”
Theo’s shoulders slackened and he let out a soft chuckle. It caughtin his throat when Ellen’s eyes turned steely. “Unless provoked.”
He nodded firmly. She left him on the sidewalk utterly convinced that Effie was the golden child they’d all go to the ends of the earth to protect.
Theo had heard rumblings from Effie about the calamitous dinner that occurred with Louisa and Ellen’s dad, but he had thought the tense atmosphere she described to be an exaggeration. He realized, now being the one occupying the hot seat, that she hadn’t given itenoughcredence.Perhaps he shouldn’t have insisted on coming for dinner.
The tension was thick enough to form a noose and hang by, something Theo considered with every word he uttered. In truth, it wasn’tallof them. It emanated in its strongest waves from Pamela and Tibby. Tibby, he assumed, because he associated with the man who refused to take her daughter back—something he guessed she was privy to if only because he had heard she tried to come to Ed’s aid. Not Theo’s though. Not tonight.No wonder Effie had avoided them at the book launch.
Louisa offered her own bit of calculating assessment, but it was far lighter than her mother’s and took on a shade of envy more than anything else. Then there was Ellen, who wasn’t exactly grilling him along with everyone else but wasn’t helping him either. Effie’s pinched, unhappy expression told Theo she had expected more from her big sister. Time slogged forward as he answered one of many questions hurled at him that snuck through Effie, Hope, Dorothea, and Bea’s conversational defenses.
“They divorced when I was sixteen. My dad lives in Boston with my stepmother. My mom moved into a camper van and travels. Myolder sister lives in San Diego, my brother lives in Boulder, and my younger sister is still in college in Texas. No brothers- or sisters-in-law, no nieces or nephews, and my one cousin is some kind of recluse who studies fungus in the world’s rainforests. My grandparents on my dad’s side moved back to Germany in their retirement. My mom’s parents are both deceased. And my aunt and uncle—the reasons my cousin became a recluse—keep well to themselves somewhere in Gorham, New Hampshire. So, the only person I consider family that lives near enough to see regularly is Schilling—Brayden.” Hope received his apologetic glance with grace before he turned his attention back on Pamela. “Detailed enough?”
“Satisfactory.” Pamela grinned over the lip of her wineglass.
“Though counting a manlike thatas family surely demonstrates a poor judge of character.”
“Mother,” Hope seethed. Theo would stake his life on it that Hope had tried and failed to defend Schilling to her mother.
“If you mean kind, loyal, sensitive, and goofy as hell, then yes, he islike that. And my judge of character is impeccable. Which is how I know not to take you insulting my family to heart, Tibby, because I can tell you’re better than all that.”
He was playing with fire. A bomb really, but he’d be damned if was just going to sit here and take it. She softened at his earnestness, which was nothing short of a miracle in his eyes. Then again, he always had been a good judge of character.
But Theo had a feeling things were still getting started. The squeeze of Effie’s hand on his thigh all but confirmed it. He was thankful she sat on his right, left-handed as he was. Theo made a show of reaching down to hold Effie’s hand his fork still held in his left. A perhaps too-bold smirk on his lips as he refused to blink first in his staring contest with Pamela. She blinked first, but he still wished he could join the kids in retiring early for the night.
“You haven’t said anything about my character, Theodore.”
“Theo. And you’re a harder read. Strong-willed though, which is likely where Effie gets it from.” He said it like a compliment and meant it as one.
“You’re not so hard to read, despite your attempts at playing mysterious and suave,” Louisa chimed in.
Theo’s hackles rose in defense of whatever Louisa thought to spit from her twisted lips next. “I have a few friends that thought you were quite intriguing.” She looked to Effie, and Theo sensed that misguided sense of protection lurking in the background. “I’m sorry, Effie, but you need to know what he’s like.”
“Louisa, cut it out. You’re projecting.” The bowl of pasta and basket of fresh rolls could have baked anew under the burn of Effie’s glower. She turned to Dorothea to try to strike up a different line of conversation, but Louisa interrupted.
“Do the names Daphne, Mallory, Claire, and Hannah mean anything to you?”
Theo shut his eyes and did his best to release the desire to storm out, make a scene, and let his anger talk first. Instead, he took a deep breath. His response dammed behind his teeth as Pamela added, “Or Nicole, Beth, and Lily.”
Theo couldn’t believe they were making the seven women they had found, somehow by degrees of separation, into something to be ashamed of. He clocked the nudge Louisa landed in Ellen’s side.
“No. I’m out,” she whispered, an apology somewhere in the pityinglook she cast at Effie.
“Sounds to me like you have quite the trail of broken hearts behind you, Theo,” Pamela mused. Tibby had the good sense to butt out of it, while Hope looked like she might be silently hexing them all. Theo only wished he’d practiced such witchcraft so he could help.
“Leave the poor man alone, look at him! Of course he’s had a few dalliances,” Beatrice chirped. “You all are ruining Italian night for me.”
“I agree, let’s get to know him for Effie’s sake,” Dorothea said with every ounce of authority her seventy-some-odd years had earned her.
“That’s all we’re doing,” Louisa said blandly. “Getting to know the man who we discovered, without much effort, is a bit of a slut.”
“Did you just call me a slut?” Louisa shrugged innocently. “First of all, seven women does not a slut make—”
