Read Online Leaving Haven by Kathleen McCleary - Free Book Online

wine to trace a pale ruby-colored path down, bending his head to follow the same path with his tongue . . .
    But of course Chessy couldn’t be expected to understand Georgia’s incredible physical attraction to John. To Chessy, John was nothing more than an interloper—the extra place mat at the Thanksgiving dinner table; the guy who rode shotgun in the car when Georgia was home, relegating Chessy to the backseat; the distraction whose ready laugh and intent gaze stole the attentions of Georgia, of Polly, of their father.
    Chessy’s stint as a hostess at Bing’s hadn’t helped much, either. John, at Georgia’s urging, had hired Chessy to be hostess one summer when she was home from college. Chessy had found the computerized reservation system impossible and had taken to scribbling down reservations on napkins and the backs of receipts and business cards, leading to total confusion every evening as people arrived for their tables. Even worse, one evening when a picky diner had complained about his tagliatelle al ragù di piccione, saying there was too much sherry vinegar in the ragù, Chessy, in her best theatrical voice, had informed the customer that he wouldn’t know sherry vinegar from piss. John had fired her on the spot, and been fairly annoyed with her ever since.
    â€œShe’s nineteen,” Georgia had said, in Chessy’s defense.
    â€œRight,” John had said. “Old enough to know better. This is Bing’s, not some motorcycle bar.”
    â€œShe was probably thinking of that expression, you know, ‘full of piss and vinegar,’ and it just came out.”
    â€œI don’t care. It shouldn’t have come out in my restaurant,” John had said.
    So now she had to figure out a way to convince John to try in vitro once more, with a donor egg from her “screwball sister,” as John referred to Chessy. Then she had to convince Chessy to donate an egg, or ten or twenty. Ay yi yi.
    I T WAS ALMOST midnight by the time Georgia finished brushing a delicate whorl of gold leaf down the center of the last of the eighteen fondant peacock feathers. She placed the feather down on the wax paper lining the big tray and breathed a sigh of relief. She covered the tray with a film of plastic wrap and slipped it into the fridge in the basement, then walked up the stairs, thinking about John.
    John had been a little quiet lately, which was odd because he was not the type to brood. Most of the time John was fully engaged in whatever he was doing, whether it was sautéing scallops or searching the Internet for a first edition of Ma Gastronomie or hitting a tennis ball— thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack —against the back wall of the garage. He was in a good mood ninety percent of the time, and when he wasn’t in a good mood he got over it faster than anyone Georgia had ever known.
    But last month he had muttered something one day about how ironic it was that the restaurant would be the only thing he’d created that would carry on his name, if it lasted that long. She’d found a bottle of Doo Gro Stimulating Hair Growth Oil stuffed at the back of the cabinet under the bathroom sink, which was funny because John had the teeniest bald spot at the very back of his head and had never really cared about his appearance. Georgia assumed it was some kind of midlife ennui; John was forty-seven this year, the creases at the corner of his eyes deeper, his dark hair shot through with silver.
    She found him in bed, the computer on his lap, watching reruns of some cooking show with a loud chef who kept repeating, “ And now for the pièce de résistance,” which was such a clichéd thing for a chef to say that Georgia couldn’t believe it wasn’t a joke.
    â€œHey,” she said, coming to stand at the foot of the bed.
    â€œHey.” He didn’t look up.
    Georgia reached up behind her neck to unhook the tiny clasp of her