Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  My grandfather was itching to get himself in handcuffs. Again. He and I had something twisted in our DNA with a chromosome that looked like the chrome of handcuffs.

  I appealed to Jordy. “If Prince Arnaud doesn’t attend, the kermis will be ruined. It’s only two weeks away from tomorrow. We need that money to restore the church steeple. Would you deny people their religious freedom? Go against the Constitution?”

  The sheriff removed his aviator sunglasses and then held up a hand to quiet me. He gave me a penetrating look, as if we were in a private bubble. Last summer I had realized Jordy might have intentions concerning me that went beyond mere law enforcement. But he was a gentleman and kept a respectful demeanor. “Ava, and all of you, we don’t have a big enough staff or budget to protect royalty from some nutcase. I was called to look at a knife. Maria’s taking it into the lab. This has to be taken seriously as a possible threat to your visitors. We live in a different world now. It’s my job to be cautious.”

  I muttered, trying to sound respectful, “Jordy, you don’t have the authority to stop a royal visit.” Then doubts set in. “Do you?”

  His hands fiddled with his sunglasses. “I have the authority and responsibility to inform our governor and the royal visitors if I feel we lack the resources to properly protect visitors to our county. I’m sorry if that would end up canceling their visit or harming the kermis.”

  Grandpa piped up again. “I’ll call Arnaud Van Damme and ask him to bring along bodyguards.”

  My grandma said, “Now, Gil, if it’s not wise for Arnaud and Amandine to come, let’s listen to the sheriff.”

  “I’ll find farm lads to protect them,” Grandpa said.

  Jordy slipped his aviators back on. “Bodyguards at their expense would be a good idea. This is the height of the leaf-peeping tourist season and I have my hands full with important things.”

  My grandfather said, “Like what? Too many people stopping at Ava’s market? Could you help us with the traffic tie-up out there on the road before you leave?”

  My father and I winced at Grandpa’s directive, but he was right. The country road was clogged with all the cars leaving and the bus trying to turn around in the driveway.

  My grandmother left us to hoof it back to her sports utility vehicle with her church friends Dotty Klubertanz and Lois Forbes.

  After my father left, I said to Grandpa, “Grandma’s not so excited about her royal relatives.”

  “Honey, I’ve been trying to figure that out. It could be my gift is too big for her. You know how humble we Belgians are. We don’t need fancy stuff in our lives.”

  “She said something like that earlier to me when she was cleaning around the gravestones. But I sense there’s something deeper going on. She’d be relieved if the prince and princess never came.”

  Grandpa caught my hand nearest him and gave it a gentle squeeze. His rough hand sported the accumulation of years of calluses that had weathered a lot of storms, like our ancient oak tree in the middle of our pasture that we could see from where we stood. “Let’s give Sophie plenty of space. Sooner or later we’ll know what’s going on and then we can help.”

  “I’m sorry I found that knife.”

  “You didn’t do anything. The knife was there. You did the right thing by calling the sheriff.”

  Grandpa’s mere touch reassured me. I said, “I’ll give Grandma space. I promise.”

  He laughed. “Thank you. You do have a way of not letting well enough alone.”

  “You calling me stubborn?”

  “I’m calling you a Belgian.”

  “Same thing, Gilpa. And I inherited it from you.”

  Because the sales were so good, I stayed longer than usual. I checked in with my helper at the fudge shop in Fishers’ Harbor, Cody Fjelstad, who was nineteen and busy with college classes. He said he’d be able to stay on for a couple more hours.

  Grandpa and I rang up good sales after the arguing quit. The Rose Garden Fudge sales were neck and neck with Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge. Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture—served at the outdoor picnic tables with fresh whipped cream—was gone within an hour along with Mike’s pinot.

  Grandpa accelerated the speed of money from the wallets by telling everybody about the impending visit by the prince. A couple of tourists from New York said they’d be back in two weeks to see Prince Arnaud. Grandpa told them a Belgian had negotiated the sale of land that created New York City.

  I endured more jokes about wearing glass slippers to a ball, but I didn’t mind. The cash register’s steady ding was music to dance to in any kind of shoe.

  * * *

  My brain returned to thinking about Fontana and the knife as I pulled to a stop in front of my rental cabin on Duck Marsh Street in Fishers’ Harbor around four o’clock that Saturday. While glancing across the street at my grandparents’ cabin, I saw that Grandma’s SUV was there. It was unfortunate she’d been caught up in the mess.

  I was vexed by Fontana’s sneaky behavior and her open and almost desperate flirtations with Jonas and Cherry, though I recalled Cherry was seemingly telling her no about something. She was probably trying to get him to hold some special event at her roadside market. The great sales happening before her eyes at my market likely created jealousy.

  I had barely stepped from my yellow Chevy pickup truck in front of my log cabin when Lucky Harbor planted paws firmly on my sooty front. My weariness evaporated.

  The American water spaniel was a brown, curly-haired dog invented in Wisconsin that looked like a short golden retriever that had gotten an old-fashioned permanent. His eyes held golden flecks that could soak up the sun and mesmerize me. Lucky Harbor had wandered into my fudge shop last May as a puppy. Cody named him Harbor because of our location. But when my ex-husband showed up later to claim the runaway puppy, we learned the dog’s given name was Lucky. I had assumed Dillon had named the dog after his famous bad habit of gambling. Instead Dillon had kicked the habit and felt himself lucky to be starting over with his life. That sentiment unlocked something soft toward Dillon again inside my heart. I, too, was lucky to start over in Fishers’ Harbor. So all of us now called the hunting dog two names: Lucky Harbor.

  “What’s all the excitement?” I asked the dog.

  He plunked his butt on my lawn.

  “You want fudge, don’t you?” Chocolate wasn’t good for dogs, so I never gave him fudge. I had learned that every time customers said “fudge” they said it with such exuberance that the tone excited the dog. Now my pockets were always filled with tiny Goldfish crackers to use as “fudge” for Lucky Harbor.

  I tossed a handful of crackers into the air. His teeth clacked as he snatched most of the crackers. He snuffled about in the blades of grass for the two he’d missed.

  On his collar I noticed a floatable key holder—an orange plastic tube about three inches long. I smiled. Dillon had taken to sending me messages in it this summer.

  I unscrewed the key holder, then pulled out the paper. It read I miss you.

  I got a pen from my truck, and wrote on the note I’ll be right up.

  With the note in the key holder on his collar again, Lucky Harbor took off toward Main Street, a block and a half away. He veered right, streaking in a brown blur up the steep hill to the Blue Heron Inn.

  The inn stood on a bluff overlooking the marshy cove at the end of my three-block street as well as the harbor and a good portion of our quaint downtown. By the holidays, I planned to move into the inn permanently. Lucky Harbor paused at the top of the hill to peer back at me. His tail wagged. He wanted me to follow.

  A thrill tickled my insides. After such a strange day, I couldn’t wait to fall into Dillon’s strong arms.

  After I entered the Blue Heron Inn, Dillon wrapped me against his bare chest and ignited an instant fire with his lips on mine.

  He smelled of fresh wood shavings and the pine scent that always spun off his saw blades when he was working on the gazebo out back. My lungs filled with his manly es
sence.

  “I needed this,” I muttered.

  “I needed you,” he whispered in my ear.

  We parted to look into each other’s brown eyes. His eyes were the color of the deepest, darkest chocolate fudge in my shop. He was six feet four inches tall, which gave him enough height over me that I could fully appreciate his dreamy eyelashes and strong chin.

  His bare chest and six-pack stomach sported a bronze tan from summer, begging my hands to explore. My breathing was ragged. I pressed my hands on his pectoral muscles and nuzzled his neck.

  A guttural, wild growl emanated from him and then he took me to the floor.

  Giggling, we rolled about on the giant floral rug in the reception hall of the historic inn. The chandelier above sparkled like stars winking down at us.

  Dillon rolled to a stop, with him over me, cradling me under him. “You’re overdressed,” he murmured, a gleam in his wild eyes.

  Then a big slurping tongue alongside my cheek made me go, “Ugh.”

  Dillon said, “Lucky, bad timing.”

  I rolled out from under Dillon, then got up off the floor. “He’s reminding us to keep our promise to ourselves. Sex only on Wednesdays.”

  Dillon rose to his feet. “I don’t need a watchdog. I’m a grown man.”

  “Think of him as our guardian angel,” I said, rearranging my clothes back into proper order. “We promised to date like real people and not let sex be the only thing that attracts us to each other.”

  He gave me a petulant, steamy look.

  I almost caved. “If we’re going to make it as a couple, we have to control our impulses sometimes. What if Cody had walked in on us? Or my grandma? Or your mother? They’re always popping in.”

  “Darn, but do you always have to be right?” He winked.

  “With this, yes.”

  Dillon conceded by combing through his shoulder-length hair as he caught his breath. He’d let his hair grow longer over the summer, and it gave him a wilderness persona that was new. I’d married him before at a time in his life when he was trying to be just the opposite—as polished as the casinos in Vegas, where we’d been married.

  Dillon pulled on a black-and-white-plaid flannel shirt, and then a red sweatshirt over it. September late afternoons and evenings grew chilly.

  Dillon picked up a toolbox. “How was your day?”

  I always melted at that question. How was your day? So simple, yet it defined “love,” I felt. It showed he cared. We’d promised in our new pact to always ask each other how our day had gone.

  When we first met back in college in Madison, he’d talked mostly about his schedule of gigs as a standup comedian. I was in awe of him. We eloped. A month later in Las Vegas I found out he’d dated other women pretty seriously—even married another woman in one of those crazy one-night stands that are supposed to be annulled the next day. After being accused of bigamy, he got the mess cleaned up, even spending a few days in jail rather than having his parents bail him out.

  I realized that everything I’d done—including eloping—had been done for him, not me or “us.” Sure, I had tremendous fun. But that’s all it was. I hadn’t taken responsibility for “us” or “me.” I hadn’t spoken up. Now I was making up for that, though Pauline and the sheriff didn’t much like that sometimes.

  In our pact to date the old-fashioned way, Dillon and I said Wednesdays would be our day for “fooling around.” We had to practice impulse control because the lack of restraint had been the bane of our existence when we first married. Today was Saturday. I was regretting our rule.

  He checked the tools in his box.

  I petted Lucky Harbor. “My day was weird,” I began.

  “So was mine, but let me show you the good news first.”

  “Meaning there’s bad news?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “You, too?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  * * *

  Outside, under the canopy of the towering cedars and maples, the beautiful bones of a new gazebo nestled amid the lawn. It overlooked the Lake Michigan bay and our harbor.

  The gazebo’s roof was mere plywood, but it looked ready for shingles. Eight corner posts held up the roof. One cornice was in place, its loveliness lifting a window in my heart. Dillon had cut a pattern into the pine plank depicting a mother duck and her ducklings trailing from one post to the next.

  “What do you think?” Dillon asked, putting down his toolbox.

  “Enchanting.”

  “Hold that thought while I show you the bad news.”

  When we went back inside, he surprised me by scooping me up at the bottom of the staircase in the foyer. Somehow he loped up the powder blue carpet of the staircase with ease. He put me down in front of the second room to the left. It was a mess of plaster, piles of old wooden laths—and a huge hole on the outer wall. I could see the cedars outside.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “There’s no insulation in this outside wall and some of the lapped boards on the outside are rotted in places. I’m going to have to check the entire upstairs for insulation. And make sure the wiring is up to code.”

  “Maybe the bank will let Grandpa and me add a little to our mortgage.”

  “It’s not the money I’m worried about. It’s the time. I don’t think the prince and princess can stay here.”

  My mouth went dry. “They have to stay here. They expressly said they wanted to. This inn is historic and is now in our family.”

  Dillon squatted down near a wall. “Some of this wiring is a fire hazard. I already asked the fire chief to stop by and he concurred.”

  Dillon was a trained civil engineer, usually working on things like streets, roads, and bridge construction and repair. His family also ran a construction company. He was expert on construction codes. In addition, he’d recently joined the Fishers’ Harbor Volunteer Fire Department and was in training, along with my young fudge shop helper, Cody.

  “Isn’t there any way we can get this done in two weeks?”

  Still down on the floor, Dillon shook his head. “It’s meticulous work. You can’t go out and hire just anybody.”

  “And I guess I can’t afford them anyway. What if I helped?”

  Dillon’s dark eyes took on a knowing look. “You already have too much on your plate.” He got up to give me a hug.

  We went back downstairs.

  “I’ll just have to make a batch of fudge and conjure a solution.”

  Whenever I had troubles, I escaped into fudge making to help me think. Because making fudge required focus, it acted like meditation.

  Dillon said, “Let me buy you a burger and fried cheese curds from the Troubled Trout. You brought me lunch yesterday, so I owe you.”

  With all the events of the day, I’d forgotten to eat. The fried cheese curds at the Troubled Trout were renowned. The curds came from my parents’ creamery. They were rolled in dough and then deep-fried.

  We set off to walk the few blocks to the bar at the other end of Main Street.

  With Lucky Harbor on a leash, we sauntered along until I was startled by a sign in the window of our town’s bookstore, the Wise Owl. It was going out of business and everything was on sale.

  “This can’t be. Milton Hendrickson’s retiring? Grandpa never said a thing. We have to go in and find out what’s going on.”

  We left Lucky Harbor outside, his leash hooked over a small gateway post that marked the few steps of flower-lined walkway to the bookshop door.

  The store was aptly named because Milton looked like an owl. He wore eyeglasses that sported round, dark frames. The only remaining white hair he had stood out in a tuft on each side of his head, much like a horned owl’s feathers.

  Milton was in the back shuffling through old maps and documents. His bookstore was filled with a variety of objects in addition to books. He had at least a dozen old globes, and wooden chests on the floor filled with undecipherable old tools. The place smelled of the pleasant musk of an
attic and old books.

  “Mr. Hendrickson,” I called out. He was hard of hearing and refused to wear a hearing aid. “Are you really retiring?”

  “Oh, hello, Ava.” He turned too fast, his shaky hands fumbling and dropping the stack of documents. The papers—all yellowed—skated around us on the dark wood floor. We helped him pick them up.

  I handed back my stack. “Is anybody taking over the shop for you?”

  “Some gal by the name of Jane Goodland is coming tomorrow afternoon. Driving over from Green Bay.”

  “That’s good, then. We need a bookstore.”

  “Oh dear. I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He exhaled a withering breath. “She said she was looking for office space. She’s a lawyer.”

  “Oh no. This has to stay a bookstore.” Memories were bubbling inside me. “This is where we stopped with Grandma and Grandpa every Christmas to buy books from you. What will I do for Christmas now?”

  He gave me a quirky grin. “Maybe reread those old books?”

  I had to laugh. “Maybe you’re right. It’s been a while since I dug out my childhood books.” An idea popped into my head. “Do you still have picture books and early readers?”

  “Around the corner, near the floor. All half price.”

  I found them and scooped them up, taking them to the register. I explained to Dillon, “For Pauline. She has a baker’s dozen of kindergartners this year and she’s always in search of Christmas gifts. This year they’ll all get a book, and of course my fudge.”

  Dillon’s arms were full of what looked like old maps, architectural renderings of the outsides of buildings, and blueprints.

  I asked, “Did you find something interesting?”

  He laughed. “I’m hoping to find the blueprints for the Blue Heron Inn. It might help us solve the wiring issue.”

  I liked the sound of “us.”

  We took our bags of purchases, got takeout from the bar, and then ate our burgers and fried cheese curds on the dock in front of Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer.