The Last Evening

Mara had put a bowl of plums on the table and forgotten to buy anything else for dessert. She looked at the bowl when I arrived, looked at me and said, “This is what happens when I plan an evening without a plan.”

“We have plums.”

“And potatoes.”

“An extravagance.”

She had made a pie with lentils and onions. The potatoes were for the top. I helped mash them while she read the recipe from a card with flour on one corner. We disagreed about how much mustard it meant by a spoonful and used half of either estimate. The pie came out too brown at the edges and good in the middle. We ate the brown edges first, by choice.

I had arrived with a question about how often to call from Northmere. I kept putting it aside because asking sounded like trying to make a schedule for the…