Lending a Paw(19)

“You want me to cook breakfast for seven people?” the shocked inquirer would ask.

“Eight,” Aunt Frances would say. “My niece usually shows up.”

Every summer the niece quickly learned whose cooking was good, whose was awesome, and whose should be avoided at all costs. Since another one of Aunt Frances’s rules was that you ate heartily and complimented the cook no matter what, I’d found it was easier to skip the Saturdays likely to include burned bacon and flat pancakes.

This summer, however, Aunt Frances had hit the breakfast mother lode. Everyone from seventy-year-old Zofia down to twenty-two-year-old Harris seemed to have kitchen skills in abundance. The week before, sixty-five-year-old Leo had wowed us with sour cream and blueberry pancakes accompanied by buttery pecan maple syrup. The week before that, fifty-three-year-old Paulette had us begging for more breakfast burritos.

This particular Saturday, having left Eddie on the houseboat sleeping on the floor in a square of sunshine, I walked through downtown, up the hill overlooking Janay Lake, down a street lined with maple trees, and up the wide steps of the porch that ran across the front of Aunt Frances’s century-old home.

The wooden screen door banged shut behind me. The entry, stairway, and spacious living room were all empty, but laughter drifted in from the kitchen. Wooden floorboards creaked under my weight as I passed through the living room, admiring yet again the pine-paneled walls and ceiling, the end tables and coffee tables built from driftwood, the maps thumbtacked to the walls, and the fieldstone fireplace big enough for cooking a side of beef. It was a room full of calm and ease and I always felt that nothing bad could possibly happen here.

A tall, angular woman appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She smiled. “Thought I heard someone. Good morning, bright eyes. You must have had a long day yesterday with your bookmobile. I thought you’d call and tell me all about it.”

I stood on my tiptoes to kiss her cheek. She’d recently turned sixty, but I’d yet to spy a single wrinkle. “Morning, Aunt Frances.” It was a good time to tell her about the events of yesterday. An ideal time, really, but I couldn’t find the words to start the sad story. After breakfast. I’d be ready by then. “I’ll tell you everything after we eat. Who’s cooking this morning?”

“Dena and Quincy. Everyone else has been banished from the kitchen.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Dena and Quincy? But I thought Harris was being matched up with Dena.”

She sighed. “I know, dear, I know. I’m sure it’ll work out in the end.”

Fine words, but she looked a little concerned. And for good reason: Dena was twenty-five and Quincy had recently hit fifty. My aunt had a secret that I’d sworn on a tall stack of paperback mysteries to never reveal unless doing so would save at least ten lives. Aunt Frances only took boarders who were single and in need of a mate. Her extensive interviewing process, ostensibly to determine compatibility for the unusual environment and living arrangements, was in reality a way for Aunt Frances to start the matchmaking process. None of the boarders ever knew they were being set up, and in her fifteen years of taking in boarders she’d never had a failure.

If a pair she hadn’t intended was forming, all her plans would be toast. “Well, you haven’t missed yet, have you?”

“There’s always a first time,” she muttered.

“You said the same thing last year and that turned out fine by the end of the summer,” I said. “You can’t expect August endings in June. Especially early June. Don’t you always say that building a lasting love is like building Rome? That it can’t be done in a day?”

She hmmed a little, thinking it over. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re so right that I think I’ll stop worrying.” She winked, grinning. “No point in it, anyway.”

It was impossible not to smile back; my aunt had a very contagious grin. “There’s lots of time,” I said.

“Time for what?”

I jumped. Aunt Frances turned to Paulette, the boarder who’d been matched with Quincy, and said, “I was wondering if there was time to have another cup of coffee before breakfast. Do you have any idea what those two are cooking up for us?”

The pleasantly plump, tawny-haired woman scowled. “Nobody tells me anything around here.” She stomped off, her pink flip-flops popping loudly with each stomp.

“Bugger,” Aunt Frances muttered.

“No, it’s good,” I said softly. “Paulette is already in love with Quincy. She’s nuts with jealousy.”