Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1)

by Rachel Schurig

  “I’d say that’s fairly accurate,” Posey said, appearing at the table with her own plate of crepes. “There are some on the warming rack for you, Iris. I’d grab them now before these slobs eat everything.”

  I fixed myself a plate of crepes and a cup of hot coffee before joining my cousins at the table. “Where is our venerated grandmother, anyhow?”

  “She wanted to get to Spring Hill early,” Andrew said. “Pops meets with the neurologist this morning, and she wanted to be sure she was there for it.”

  I nodded, feeling a swell of nervousness. According to Mimi, he’d really been improving over the past week. But it was hard to parcel out the real truth from her general optimism.

  “My mom is with her,” Posey said, passing me a plate of fruit.

  “So we’ll get the full story,” Andrew added shrewdly. I nodded, feeling slightly better.

  “So, cuz,” Edward said, leaning toward me across the table. “How are you enjoying your time here on our fine island?”

  “It’s been good,” I replied, surprised by how true that statement was. Between getting to spend so much time with Posey and Mimi and my work at the café, I felt pretty busy—just the way I like it. And then there were the girls from the Libbies, many of who had reached out to me in the days since the meeting. And David, a voice in the back of my head whispered. I frowned.

  Andrew let out a snort. “You should see your grimace. You sure don’t look like it’s been good.”

  “Shut up, Andrew,” I said.

  “I heard you got roped into going to that nutcase gathering,” he continued, ignoring Posey’s grunt of disagreement. “Bet you don’t have anything like that in Chicago.”

  “I don’t think they have anything quite like that anywhere,” I pointed out. “But it was actually pretty fun.”

  Posey beamed at me, but Andrew snorted again. “That’s only because you haven’t seen them perform in the town talent show yet.”

  “There’s a talent show?” I asked, feeling a little like I just got whacked in the chest. Just when the madness of Lilac Bay started to feel almost normal, they have to come up with some other random, ridiculous event.

  “The talent show is fun,” Posey argued. “Tell them, Zane.”

  “I mean”—he swept his arms out a little, looking almost apologetic—“I get to help design costumes. With sequins. What’s not to like?”

  “You’re such a cliché, babe,” Edward said, putting his arm around his boyfriend and kissing the side of his face.

  “Says the man who was listening to Cher in the shower this morning.”

  “Are there any more of these?” Andrew asked, wiping his finger along the edge of his plate to scoop up the remaining powdered sugar.

  “I don’t know, Andy.” Posey’s voice was irritated. “Why don’t you get off your butt and check yourself.” She looked at me, shaking her head. “We really need to do something about the rampant patriarchy in this family.”

  Edward snorted. “Have you met our grandmother? Are you really going to call our family a patriarchy?”

  “She spoils the boys senseless,” Posey argued. “She does the same with Greg. Always pushing more food on you, cleaning up after you. It’s gross.”

  “That’s not patriarchy,” Andrew said sweetly. “She just loves us more.”

  Posey’s eyes flashed as she geared up for the fight. “You are so—”

  But whatever he was, we weren’t destined to find out. At that moment, her cell phone rang. Posey seemed to forget her anger as quickly as it had risen.

  “Bet it’s Paul,” Andrew said, rolling his eyes. I couldn’t help but notice that he said our future cousin-in-law’s name in the same tone Mimi had used the other day.

  “It’s my mother, idiot,” Posey hissed before pulling the phone up to her ear. “Mom? What’s up?”

  I watched as her eyes grew wide, a sick feeling of dread growing in my belly. I vaguely noticed that the boys had fallen silent, a practically unheard of occurrence. But then Posey grinned. “Seriously?”

  “What?” I asked, tugging on her shirt. “What is it?”

  She tilted the phone away from her mouth. “They’re letting him come home!”

  “What?” the four of us chorused.

  She waved her hands dismissively, going back to the phone conversation. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. Wow. That’s really great, Mom. Okay. Yeah. I’ll spread the word. Give him a kiss for us, okay? You, too. Bye.”

  She hung up the phone, her eyes alight with excitement. “He’s going to be released on Friday!”

  “I don’t believe it!” I cried. “I had no idea he was doing that well!”

  “Mimi kept saying,” Andrew said, shaking his head. “But I thought that was just her being… you know. Mimi.”

  “This is nuts,” Edward said, grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe he’ll actually be back.”

  A sharp little pain wiggled its way into my excitement at the news. It was really touching to see my cousins so thrilled at the prospect of Pops coming home. But it also stung, just a little. Because he was such a part of their lives. And not in the vague, distant way he was a part of my life. But in the everyday, see-him-all-the-time, vital component way. They saw my grandparents on a weekly, if not daily basis. Andrew and Edward had worked at Rose’s for years, all the way through high school. Pops had been their first boss. They’d had countless family dinners here at Lilac Ridge. It was their home.

  “You okay?” Posey asked, nudging me with her shoulder.

  “I’m great!” I told myself to concentrate on the good news—Pops got to leave the hospital and come back to the home he loved so much. His own bed and, let’s face it, kitchen. My grandmother.

  “Oh my God,” Posey suddenly said, clapping her hands together. “Their anniversary is Saturday! This is like, the best timing ever.” She turned her sparkling eyes to each of us. “We should totally do something special for them!”

  I kind of expected the boys to roll their eyes, to write her enthusiasm off as yet another Posey-ism. But I underestimated them—or maybe I underestimated their regard for our grandparents. Because they each sat up a little straighter, grinning. “Totally,” Andrew said. “Good idea, Pose,” Edward added, Zane nodding beside him.

  Suddenly, an idea hit me like a blow to the chest. I actually gasped out loud, sounding much more like Posey than myself. “I know!”

  “What?” they all chorused.

  In truth, it had been bouncing around in the back of my mind since the moment I arrived, a little half-formed daydream. “We should reopen Rose’s,” I said. “Just for one night,” I added quickly. “Just for them. We can get the dining room all cleaned up, bring a table down from storage. Do something with the lights.”

  No one said anything for a long moment. “I don’t know, Iris,” Zane finally said, his voice gentle. “It seems like that would be an awful lot of work. Have you been inside lately? The place is pretty run down.”

  “Well, yeah,” I agreed. “But we could do it. I mean, this is what I do, you guys. I develop properties. And our grandparents have a gorgeous property, just sitting there empty.”

  “And you want us to… redevelop it,” Andrew asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Yes. For one night. For their anniversary.” I looked at each of their faces. Andrew and Edward still seemed pretty skeptical, but Zane’s face had turned thoughtful. And Posey was nodding, a slight smile on her lips.

  “Look, it will be a lot of work to get it cleaned up,” I acknowledged. But with the four of us—”

  “And my lazy brother,” Posey added.

  I grinned at her. “With all of us helping, I know we can do it.” I pointed at Zane. “We have the best dining room manager on the island. If anyone can get that room looking pretty again, it’s Zane.”

  “You are very lucky to have me,” he agreed, smiling.

  “Okay, Iris,” Edward said, leaning across the table. “I’m not opposed to the work it would take to get the p
lace looking good. But you seem to be forgetting one important thing.”

  “A pretty essential thing, actually,” Andrew added, and I struggled not to scowl at them. I hated when they did that freaky twin mind-reading thing.

  “What?”

  “The best part about Rose’s wasn’t how nice the dining room was,” Edward said.

  “It was the food,” Andrew agreed.

  “And in case you haven’t noticed, none of us can cook anything like Pops can.”

  I sat back in my chair, grinning. “Leave that to me. I have someone in mind.”

  They let Pops come home on Friday. By that time, we had nearly transformed the dusty, long-neglected lower dining room at Rose’s. I would have rather used the second floor, with its views of the lake, but a quick inspection had shown the paneling to be suffering from water damage. It would take weeks to replace it all.

  But a private dining room on the lower level had been cleaned—hours of sweeping, dusting, mopping, and scrubbing. And that was just to get the place clean enough to bring in polish for the wood paneling. Andrew polished and polished the mahogany until it gleamed. Or it would have, if the lights weren’t giving us such a hard time. The bulbs were all burned out, naturally, but even after they’d been replaced, half the sconces didn’t work and the grand chandelier was flickering weakly. So we’d had to bring in an electrician—a real one, from the mainland, not Jerry who it turned out had a side job as something of a handyman on the island.

  Once the lighting was figured out and the place was clean enough for Zane’s exacting standards, we brought furniture down from storage on the third floor. The tables and chairs were in good shape once we got them polished up. But moths had gotten into the linens, which had been brought back from France by my grandmother forty years ago. Posey had bawled the day we found those holey tablecloths, but that may have been as much to do with how exhausted she was, working at the school all day, pulling her shifts at the café, and spending her free time at Rose’s.

  I couldn’t help but notice that Paul never came by to help. The tone Mimi and Andrew had used when saying his name was making more sense to me.

  Then there was the piano. There had always been live music at Rose’s, and it seemed impossible to reopen, even for a night, without it. But that required bringing in a piano tuner, also from the mainland. As I soon learned, northern Michigan’s piano-tuning needs greatly outpaced their supply of tuners. In the end, I had to bring someone up from all the way down in Grand Rapids. Not cheap. But I was happy to pull the money from my savings. After all, I was saving a bundle living here instead of expensive Chicago.

  The hardest part of the entire endeavor was keeping it a surprise. Ever since they’d announced that Pops could come home on Friday, Mimi had been spending every day on the mainland, wanting to make sure she knew his care procedures backward and forward. Of course, a nurse would be visiting the house daily, and he’d be getting his outpatient physical and occupational therapy several times a week right here on the island. But if anyone thought Mimi was going to sit back and leave the next phase of his recovery to the professionals, they obviously didn’t know my grandmother.

  Even with Mimi out of the way during the day, the secret had nearly been ruined several times. She was suspicious of all the time I was spending away from home in the evenings, the only time most of my cousins could help, since they had normal jobs and all. And a suspicious Mimi is a dangerous Mimi. The woman practically defined the word tenacious. Somehow, I managed to assuage her suspicions with a series of excuses. I was taking a dance class at Sherry’s studio (the bad-permed Libbies member owned a dance studio, along with her salon, since apparently, no one on this island could be employed in a singular capacity). I pretended to help Posey and Paul repaint their dining room. I even told her I was letting Aunt Deen show me how to make fudge. I wasn’t sure she bought my excuses, particularly the fudge thing which was, admittedly, not at all my forte. I’d been known to burn boxed mac and cheese. But she was tired from her long days at Spring Hill and let it slide.

  Keeping it from Posey’s and the twins’ parents was difficult, as well. We kept the brown paper over the windows at the restaurant until the last possible minute, but neighbors were starting to notice the noise we were making, as well as the lights that were suddenly blazing behind the papered glass.

  Luckily, the kitchen required no renovation. Since the restaurant closed, my grandparents, and more recently David, had kept the kitchen running, making the sandwiches, baked goods, and fudge for the café.

  Speaking of David… “How’s it going?” I asked on Saturday afternoon, trying to peer over his shoulder at whatever was simmering on the Viking range.

  “Iris.” There was a warning note in his voice. The same note I’d heard the last few times I asked, come to think of it.

  “I just wanted to make sure you don’t need anything.”

  He stirred whatever was in the pan before turning to me. “You’re making me nervous,” he said, the familiar scowl back on his face. It was funny, that scowl didn’t make me feel half as self-conscious now.

  “Why?” I asked, a shot of panic running through me. “Is something wrong?”

  “No!” He was clearly reaching the end of his patience with me. He turned to take the pan off the heat before he faced me again. “Look, cooking for twenty people is never a simple thing, okay?”

  I nodded. We’d invited the entire family, as well as David, of course, and a few of our grandparents’ closest friends. We knew they’d prefer to share their happy night with the people they loved. It was their way.

  “And your grandfather’s recipes…” David shook his head, running his hands through his hair.

  “Do they make sense?” I asked, still feeling a little panicky. “Can you read them?” We’d worked so hard this week, but the twins had been right. None of it would matter much if the food wasn’t right.

  “They make perfect sense,” he practically snarled. “They’re just complicated.”

  “Oh.”

  “I haven’t done this kind of cooking in a long time,” he admitted, sounding a little scared himself. “And your grandfather…” He shook his head. “He’s a legend, Iris. He was classically trained, in France, with some of the best chefs in the world. He could have worked anywhere. He was…” David shook his head again, seemingly at a loss.

  “He was amazing,” I supplied.

  “He really was,” he said, his voice soft. “It’s just… It’s a lot of pressure, doing his recipes justice. Knowing he’s going to be eating what I prepare!”

  “I had no idea you looked up to him so much.”

  David looked uncomfortable. “I worked here, you know. Senior year.”

  “I didn’t know that.” It made me feel a little strange, that he had worked here with my family after I left.

  “Your grandfather was an excellent teacher,” he murmured, his eyes unfocused. I got the sense he was deep in some memory I had no part in. “He’s the reason I became a chef.”

  “Hey.” I might not understand exactly how good my grandfather had been, from a chef’s perspective, but if there was one thing I got, it was the pressure that came with wanting to impress your mentor. “You’re doing an amazing job, David. I know it will be fantastic.”

  He shook his head a little, his eyes focusing on my face, lips starting to turn up in a smile. “You do know that you’ve never tasted my cooking.”

  “I’ve tasted your sandwiches.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  I nodded. “No. But I really don’t see how someone can care as much about the food as you clearly do and not be successful.” I had a sudden image of my grandfather puttering around the kitchen back at the house. “Food is all about love,” I quoted, remembering him saying those same words dozens of times. I looked up and realized David was watching my face closely, and immediately felt embarrassed. “That’s what he used to say, anyhow,” I said quickly, hoping he didn’t notice my bl
ush.

  “I remember,” he said. We stood like that for a long moment, my grandfather’s words echoing in the space between us. Finally, David cleared his throat. “Love or not, there won’t be any food if I don’t get back to this,” he pointed out. “So leave me alone, will you?” But he smiled when he said it, and I found myself grinning back, looking up into those grey eyes. You could get lost in eyes like that, I thought vaguely, the room seeming to melt away around me—

  Until the quiet of the kitchen was interrupted rather abruptly by a shout of dismay from the dining room. “Oh God.” I groaned, giving myself a mental shake. “I better see what’s going on.”

  I hurried down the staff hallway from the kitchen, freezing the moment I set foot in the doorway to the dining room.

  Edward was standing there, stock still, completely covered in some white substance.

  The entire room was covered in a white substance. At his feet was the culprit, an industrial size bag of flour, now empty.

  “It just exploded,” he wailed.

  “Because you dropped it,” Andrew shouted back.

  “Why were you even carrying it?” Posey asked.

  “David asked me to bring some over from the café store room. For the gravy!”

  “Fifty pounds?” Andrew asked.

  “It was the only bag I could find!”

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Posey moaned. “Look at the chairs! Look at the table! Fudge sticks!”

  “Can you not with the preschool cursing, Posey?” Andrew snarled.

  “Look at the walls,” Greg grumbled. “It’s everywhere.”

  “My walls,” Andrew practically moaned. “Do you know how long I spent polishing that paneling?”

  I tried to push down my rising panic, unable to find a single encouraging word. “We can fix this,” Posey said, but her voice wobbled. Even Zane, normally so controlled and together, was looking around the room like it was hopeless.

  “We have two hours,” Greg said, dusting a smattering of flour from his arm. “Two hours! We were supposed to be setting the table and lighting the candles. Now we have to clean this, too? There’s no way.”