Henry put a hand to his mouth, in case she’d recently learned to read lips. “She’s serving calf’s-liver pudding with anchovy sauce. It comes with a cup of souse’s soup, made with sauerkraut.” He paused for a moment while he crossed his eyes and then pointed to his plate. “This dish is stuffed cabbage and it’s not half bad.”

“Got it,” I said.

He paused to study me. “How are you doing? I haven’t seen you for days.”

“Go on with your dinner. Let me grab a glass of wine and I’ll fill you in.”

“I can wait,” he said.

By the time I reached the bar, Rosie had disappeared and William had poured me a glass of bad wine. I said, “Thanks. Would you ask Rosie if I could have the stuffed cabbage? It looks fabulous.”

“Sure thing.”

I returned to the table, wineglass in hand. Moments later Rosie appeared with my dinner plate. Henry and I spent the next five minutes in companionable silence while we ate. When it comes to food, neither of us fools around. As a reward for cleaning our plates, Rosie brought us each a slice of chocolate-poppy seed torte that reduced us to a state of moaning satisfaction.

Henry said, “Now, tell me what’s going on. When you walked in, your expression was so dark I didn’t dare ask. Is the misery about family or work?”

“Work.”

“So skip that and bring me up to date on the family saga.”

“I can’t remember what was going on when we last spoke. Did I tell you I had dinner here with Tasha? This was a week ago.”

“News to me.”

“Wow, you really are behind.”

“Matters not,” he said mildly. “What’d she want?”

“Nothing. Surprise, surprise. She handed over a batch of letters she came across when she was cleaning out Grandfather Kinsey’s files. Some were letters Grand wrote to Aunt Gin and some she sent me. I haven’t read all of them. I mostly skipped around, but I picked up enough to know she was doing her best to maneuver Aunt Gin into surrendering custody. You can imagine how well that went down. Aunt Gin apparently read the first and sent the rest back unopened. Grand retaliated by hiring a private detective to spy on us.” I paused, correcting myself. “Well, ‘retaliated’ might be too strong a word. She wanted proof that Gin wasn’t a fit guardian.”

“By fair means or foul?”

“That’s about it. Her hunch was that Aunt Gin was gay and she figured if she could prove it, she’d have enough leverage to bring her to heel. Didn’t work out that way.”

“This was all in the letters? I can’t believe she’d spell it out.”