Molly placed a hand on the sleeve of Angie’s new chiffon gown. “Winnie will outlive us all.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Angie said, smiling. “Have you seen our husbands?” She would have liked a glass of champagne since cocktails didn’t appeal to her. But champagne wouldn’t be served until after dinner, when the toasts began.
“I think they’re in the library, talking business. You know how it is when Marcus Applebee comes to town.”
Sam, Can, and Marcus would be talking about the mines and percentages that had made them all rich, and the myriad other business interests that had elevated riches to wealth.
Angie and Molly moved to the stone railing to watch the croquet game. The smell of spring flowers drifted from large marble urns that Angie and Sam had bought in Greece last year.
“Twenty years ago, did you ever imagine that one day we’d be living in huge houses with a staff of servants?” She smiled at Molly, who wore a short skirt and had taken to smoking pink cigarettes clasped in the end of a long cigarette holder. Molly’s short silver bob was, amazingly, coming into fashion. Angie hadn’t cut her own hair yet, but she was considering it. “Do you ever think about the Willow Creek days?”
“More often than I like to admit. Those were hard times and good times.”
Speaking with quiet fondness, they reminded each other of the sounds and smells of those long-ago summer evenings on Carr Street. They remembered an oilcloth spread with diamonds, little girls running through sheets drying on the line, and the distant boom of dynamite in the hills. Remembered pennies counted into jars above a stove, and sharing chipped mugs of coffee sugared with hope. Remembered flames leaping in the night.
“Gramma, I’m hungry.”
Angie smiled down at a toddler with gray eyes and wheat-colored hair. Lucy’s youngest. Kneeling she straightened a tiny silk tie. “We’ll eat soon. In the meantime, maybe Gramma Molly will give you a cheese puff.”
“I hate to part with a cheese puff,” Molly said, as if she resisted the idea. “But since it’s you . . .”
Angie always knew when Sam entered a room. Her heart lifted as if a missing piece had found its way back to her. Turning, she gazed down the terrace, and saw him in the archway, smiling at her.
Gray streaked his temples now, but she thought the gray hair made him look distinguished and suited him. The tailored three-piece suit didn’t. At least not in her opinion. She liked best those rare days when he donned his denims and flannel and a tool belt and joined one of the Holland Construction, Inc. crews that had helped to build Denver wider and higher. Keeping his hand in, he called it.
When he came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, she leaned back against his chest, loving the solid feel of his body. “Which anniversary are we celebrating tonight? The twentieth or the thirtieth?” he asked, nuzzling her ear.
“The twentieth. You know I don’t count the first ten years.”
They stood together, swaying slightly, looking down the terrace to where Daisy sat with a group of young mothers. As if she felt them watching, she turned her golden head, shifted the baby in her arms, and blew them a kiss. Later, when the dancing began, Angie would watch Daisy and Richard twirl across the ballroom and tears would gather at the back of her eyes. For an instant ghostly voices would singsong in her ear. “Gimp along, gimp along, here comes Miss Limp-Along.”
“Mother, are we ever going to eat? Miles is getting whiny, and Gramma Molly is stuffing hors d’oeuvres into Charles. He won’t eat a bite of dinner.” Flushed from playing croquet, Lucy threw herself into a chair and pressed a handkerchief to her forehead. She’d been the first among her friends to crop her hair, and every year her hemline climbed with the fashion. If it hadn’t been so, Angie would have been secretly disappointed.
Suddenly Lucy grinned up at them. “You two are a disgrace, hugging and touching every time you pass each other, gazing at each other with moony eyes.”
Angie laughed. “Moony eyes?”
“Of course you’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember.” She jumped to her feet and kissed them both. “If you’re sure we’re about to eat, Mother, I’ll round up my boys and see to some hand-washing.”
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Angie murmured, watching Lucy stop to say something to Daisy. “Our daughters.”
Sam turned her in his arms. “Not as beautiful as their mother.” For twenty years she’d had an errant strand of hair that would not stay put. And for twenty years, Sam had been tucking it behind her ear. “You know,” Sam said, giving her a certain well-loved look. “I was thinking.”