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When Wes finally came back inside with an armload of snowy oak, the coffee was perking in the kitchen and the two women were sitting side by side at the dining table with their heads together, like conspirators, and they both stopped talking the moment he walked in.
He knelt at the hearth and fed the fire, taking far longer about it than was necessary. His cheek still felt warm where she had kissed it. His mother had not mentioned the thumbs-up. He was not going to mention it either. He was not, if he could help it, going to mention anything ever again.
The pies came out. There was Delia's brandied apple, its lattice browned to the color of a good violin, and there was his mother's pumpkin, which she had made from the same recipe for thirty-one years, and there was a bowl of whipped cream his mother had beaten by hand because the electric mixer, she said, made it taste nervous. Barbara cut Delia's pie first, as a courtesy, and took a bite, and closed her eyes, and was silent for so long that Wes started to worry.
"Butter," she said at last, opening her eyes.
"Butter," said Delia.
"Frank's mother used lard," said Barbara. "I never told her it was wrong. I regret that now. Wesley, she's right about the butter."
"I never said anything about lard," said Wes, who had argued in favor of lard for eleven miles.
"Now," said his mother, settling back with her coffee cup in both hands and the fire turning her pearls pink. "I want to hear it properly. The laundromat. In Paris. From the beginning, and don't leave anything out. Wesley never tells me anything, Delia. He wrote me one postcard that whole spring. It had the Sacré-Cœur on the front and on the back it said, *Paris is nice. It rains a lot. Love, W.* Six months in Europe and that is what I got."