We sat down at my kitchen table. The same table where Ray and I ate breakfast together for forty years.
Denise asked her questions gently. Had I ever sold food from this house? No. Had I received payment for an Easter dinner? No. Had anybody been given permission to use my address for a business? No.
She wrote it all down. Then she turned her clipboard around so I could read it.
Complaint received April 24. Complainant: Marcy Dolan. Alleges purchase of Easter dinner for 12 from “Loretta’s Kitchen” at the above address, picked up April 21 (ham, potatoes, rolls, deviled eggs). Alleges illness following consumption.
“April twenty-first,” I said slowly. “That’s the day after Easter.”
“Yes.”
“The food was cooked on Easter. In this kitchen. By me.”
“Yes,” Denise said quietly. “I think that’s exactly what happened.” She tapped the page with her pen. “Mrs. Whitcomb, I think somebody sold your Easter dinner.”
I sat very still. Ray’s mother’s old Seth Thomas clock ticked in the hallway. The refrigerator hummed its little off-key hum.
And all at once I understood. The same cold, clear way I used to understand a shortage in the cafeteria ledger.
I turned the flyer over. On the back was a little square of fine print.
“Loretta’s Kitchen is a licensed home-based culinary enterprise. All orders prepared fresh in our family kitchen. Pickup or delivery. Ask about our Mother’s Day Brunch (Sunday, May 11): Ham, quiche, and the famous Coconut Cake. $450 for 12.”
“Our family kitchen,” I read out loud.
“That ring light at your dinner,” Denise said carefully. “I think somebody was filming content. Marcy Dolan says she found this flyer on a community board at the library. She ordered the Easter dinner. Loretta told her to pick it up at this address on Monday morning. Marcy came to your front door, and a woman handed her foil trays.”
“Which woman?”
“She described a tall older woman in a cream pantsuit.”
I closed my eyes.
Loretta. Dropping her coat into my arms.
But I’d been home that Monday morning. Hadn’t I?
Then I remembered. Monday morning I’d driven to the Kroger on Far Hills for steel wool and oven cleaner. I was gone two hours. And Garrett still had a key to my house. For emergencies.
“They sold my dinner,” I said.
“I think they sold it twice,” Denise said. “I think they sold the leftovers to Marcy. And they used the photographs to build a business.” She flipped a page. “Do you know something called Brand Hive Collective?”
“No.”
“Britney Whitcomb is listed as a partner. They’ve been building Loretta’s Kitchen as a content brand. Heirloom recipes. A family kitchen. A grandmother-in-an-apron kind of feeling.”
She hesitated.
“The family kitchen in those photographs is this one.”
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