The Body in the Boudoir by Katherine Hall Page Page A

tray of saucisson en brioche she’d been carrying at that wedding or, Howard’s contribution, the way Tom had held her when they’d danced together.
    â€œYou’re supposed to give me a list,” Emma said. “And it’s not a Jack and Jill shower. She doesn’t like those. Only women.”
    â€œShe should be a wedding planner. How often does she do this?”
    â€œOh, this is the first. My ex’s sister gave me one”—Emma’s divorce had possibly been the quickest, and most dramatic, in New York state history—“not Poppy and certainly not Lucy.”
    Lucy was Emma’s older sister, and there were adult women who still shuddered at the name when they cast their memories back to the merciless bullying they’d endured as teens at Lucy’s hands. She’d had an uncanny ability to ferret out one’s weak spots, which Faith believed was not due to a curse from an evil witch at birth but because Lucy was an evil witch herself at birth. She had a sudden thought.
    â€œWe won’t have to have Lucy, will we?”
    â€œNo, Poppy’s rather off her now after, well, all that business.”
    Lucy had blamed Emma herself for almost becoming one of Manhattan’s last 1989 murder statistics and, what was worse, casting off a “one of us” mate for what Lucy viewed as merely an odd peccadillo or two. Others, particularly the police, thought not.
    â€œAnd of course you can’t cater it yourself. She’s going to make her popovers and the cook will do the rest.”
    Poppy had learned to make popovers as a bride—“One did those kinds of things in the fifties before dear Betty wrote her book”—and there was no mystique about them. They were delicious. She’d taught Emma and Faith during a sleepover at the Morris’s Upper East Side town house when they were in elementary school. She’d taught them how to make s’mores on another occasion, and there Poppy’s culinary expertise had ground to a halt.
    â€œSo I’ll tell her you’re beside yourself with joy or whatever else you want me to say and will give her a list soon?”
    â€œLook at her. She’s overflowing with joy,” Josie said. “Me, too.”
    Faith smiled obediently—after all, it was dear of Poppy to want to do this. Francesca was smiling, too, although her smile was the puzzled, What Are These People All About? kind.
    â€œWon’t your house already have one, a doccia ? Why is Emma’s mama giving you a shower?”
    F aith was seated in a large club chair in what Poppy called her Garden Room, a sizable solarium on the top floor of the house. She may have burned a bra or two, but when it came to interior decorating, Poppy was a traditionalist, strictly Sister Parish and Mario Buatta. The living room, dining room, and library on the main floor were straight from the set of Brideshead Revisited . Here the Colefax and Fowler chintzes were less formal—flowered trellises, some exotic birds with bright plumage—but the food had been set out on a Hepplewhite sideboard. The fabled popovers had been filled with a creamy mixture of asparagus and ham, a nice change from chicken. There was a green salad with pears, walnuts, and Gorgonzola. A basket of plain popovers, piping hot, was constantly replenished, as was the butter and an assortment of jams ranging from savory to sweet set out in Poppy’s Royal Crown Derby next to them. They were drinking a fruity champagne punch, and whether it was the alcohol or the occasion that was producing the merriment, Faith couldn’t say. She could say that she was enjoying herself very much, however.
    The list had easily risen to twenty-four and then some. Besides Faith, Hope, Jane Sibley and her mother, Eleanor Lennox, Aunt Chat—Charity Sibley—several other relatives, Josie, Francesca, and Amanda from work, Poppy, Emma, and Dalton and college friends,