The Ice Cradle by Mary Ann Winkowski, Maureen Foley Page B

would remain to be seen whether she was still there when I came back; she might drift away out of boredom, as Silas, Henry’s other “imaginary playmate,” had often done. In the meantime, I could explain away any laughter or chattering coming from the room as evidence of Henry’s getting overinvolved with the on-screen hijinks.
    “Don’t go anywhere without telling me,” I warned him.
    “Okay,” he said.
    “I’ll be right in the kitchen.”
    “I
know,”
he responded, flashing me a look that meant,
And now would you please leave?
    Back in the kitchen, the talk was still of Frances. I had assumed that she was Lauren’s cat, and her story the classic tale of a doted-upon feline being supplanted by her owner’s boyfriend and eventual husband. But Frances belonged to Mark, or more accurately, to the house. She had wandered into the kitchen almost two decades ago, a stray kitten, and proceededto make the place her home. She had earned the family’s affection by being a first-rate mouser, and had been sheltered and fed during the colder months by neighbors who stored their snow removal equipment in the Rieglers’ back barn. Every spring, though, when Mark’s family returned to the island, Frances took up residence again in the kitchen.
    “Does she still catch mice?” I asked.
    Mark grinned. “Look at her! What do
you
think?”
    “Oh, she’ll give it a go,” Lauren said, “once in a while, just for old times’ sake. But she’s just too slow. Poor thing.”
    Mark shot his wife a look I couldn’t interpret.
    “This is
not
about Frances,” she said cryptically. “I’m just
nervous.”
    “Lauren believes all the old wives’ tales,” Mark explained.
    “They wouldn’t have lasted for all these centuries if there wasn’t some truth to them!”
    “Oh, come on,” Mark said. “Cats climbing into cradles and sucking the breath out of babies?”
    “Maybe they suffocate them! Who knows?”
    “She’d have to get into the crib first, and that ain’t happenin’,” Mark teased. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll build a little crib top—a crib canopy! And we’ll rig the whole thing up with bells!”
    “What if she gets through the bars of the crib?” Lauren insisted.
    “Fat chance,” said Mark.
    Lauren, who had been experimenting with dessert recipes, offered me a choice: lemon pudding cake, a brownie with or without ice cream, or what she called a “pot de crème.”
    “Or all three!” she said. “I need feedback, I really do. I’m trying to figure out what to put on the menu.”
    I love brownies—I suppose everyone does—but you canget a good brownie any time. I chose the pot de crème, having absolutely no idea what it was, only to be delighted when Lauren produced an antique English teacup in its saucer. It looked like something from which Miss Marple might have taken her afternoon cuppa. In the teacup had been baked an individual serving of a fragrant vanilla custard.
    “Oh my gosh!” I said after the first bite. “This is wonderful!”
    “Thanks,” Lauren said. “In season, we’ll have berries on top. But we’re trying to stay seasonal. And local. I mean, pretty local, given that we live in New England. On an island.”
    “All the more reason,” said Mark. “It’s here and along the shorelines that you can really see the damage.”
    I was so intoxicated by my custard that I must have shot Mark a dumb glance.
Berries? Damage?
    “From erosion,” he clarified. “Parts of Nantucket are losing fifty feet a year. Beaches, houses, just—gone. Some of it’s natural, but not this rate of loss. The land’s just washing away.”
    “Because the polar ice cap’s melting,” I guessed, hoping to redeem myself in Mark’s eyes. I wasn’t a complete moron when it came to global warming. I was familiar with the concept of carbon footprints and with the true costs of flying raspberries halfway around the planet.
    “That and the nature of the storms we’re getting now, which is also a