The Long Quiche Goodbye

by Avery Aames

  As I took my seat, Meredith handed me the list. In addition to the scavenger hunt, she’d written down sack races, tag football, and Frisbee contests. Over fifty people had been invited.

  “Oh, I almost forgot the main reason I came to see you,” Meredith said, her mouth half-full. A tiny moan of gourmet delight followed her words. “I want you to serve fondue at the party.”

  I gulped. Fondue is not your typical buffet item. It’s lovely for an intimate group of six or eight, but fifty or more? On a day’s notice? Oh, my.

  “I want lots of different kinds of fondues.” Meredith ticked her fingers. “A cow’s milk, a goat’s milk, and a sheep’s milk.”

  “Sheep’s milk cheese doesn’t really melt well.”

  “Sure, you know best. Anyway, it’ll fit into the party’s theme. Lost and Fondue. Get it? We’re finding a new college.” She giggled, tickled with her cleverness. “And I want Matthew to put on a wine tasting.”

  My cousin, a former sommelier, was my partner in The Cheese Shop and Meredith’s flame.

  “I know it’s last minute, but please say yes. Please?”

  How could I say no in the face of her excitement? I nodded.

  Meredith leaped to her feet. “Yippee. Let’s have platters of cheese, too. You have to include that Humboldt Fog and, hmmm, that rosemary-crusted sheep’s cheese.”

  “Mitica Romao?”

  “That’s it. And that Red Hawk from the Cowgirl Creamery. I made an open-faced salmon melt, like you suggested. Major yum!”

  Red Hawk cheese was one of my all-time favorites. It had a buttery flavor and the smoothness of a Camembert. The closer to room temperature it was served, the better. That was true for any cheese.

  “Did I tell you that I’ve invited my niece and her art class from Ohio State University to commemorate the event?”

  The last time I’d seen Quinn, I was her babysitter.

  “I told you she’s studying fine arts, didn’t I? She’s part of this tight-knit group that hopes to go on to the Sorbonne or to the Pasadena Art College of Design or the Pratt Institute. They’re coming to paint pictures of the winery before it becomes a college. Sort of like a Degas gathering. I’ve gotten them some press. Isn’t that cool?” Meredith polished off her breakfast, swigged some water, then rose from her chair. “I can’t wait to tell my brother you said yes. You remember Freddy, don’t you?”

  I warmed all over, remembering my first kiss with Freddy on stage, behind the curtain, in the Providence Elementary auditorium. He was eight, I was seven. He lips had tasted like peanut butter.

  “I always thought the two of you would have hooked up.”

  When Freddy was a senior, he had asked some other junior to the prom. I’d cried for days.

  “You and he would have been terrific. You both have so much energy, and you’re kindhearted, and—” Meredith’s voice caught ever so slightly. “Did I tell you he adores the Food Network and classic films and juicy mysteries, just like you?”

  She had. Many times.

  “But now you’re with Jordan, and I’m so happy for you.”

  Over the past few months, I’d been dating Jordan Pace, one of our local cheese makers, a man with the good looks of a movie star, the voice of a crooner, and the edginess of a gambler. Except in his case, he liked to keep his past—not his cards—close to his chest.

  Meredith glanced at her watch. “Gotta go. Quiche?”

  I packaged a pie in a gold box, tied it with strands of raffia, and handed it to her.

  Seconds after she departed, Rebecca, my twenty-two-year-old assistant, trotted in dressed in a yellow raincoat and matching knee-high boots. She smacked the heels of her boots on the rug by the front door to rid them of water, then hurried to the back of the shop.

  “Morning, boss.” She whipped off her coat and hung it on a peg at the rear of the shop. Beneath, she wore a yellow crocheted sweaterdress that fit her coltish frame perfectly and looked suspiciously new. I kept myself from commenting on her spending habits. She didn’t need a mother hen. She set straight to work, unwrapping cheeses and laying them on the cutting board. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Lovely,” I lied. An inch of rain in less than twenty-four hours wasn’t my idea of beautiful, just sloppy. A foot of snow and a snowball fight with Matthew’s twin girls—now, that would be fun.

  As if reading my mind, she said, “How are the twins?”

  “Super.”

  In the course of the past year, I had fallen head over heels for my preteen nieces. At the insistence of my grandparents, I had taken my cousin and his girls into my home when Matthew’s wife abandoned him for a cushier life with Mumsie and dear old Dad back in their cottage in England. Cottage, ha! A twelve-acre estate complete with a bowling alley and a dressage ring. So far, having the four of us live under one roof was working out just fine. If only I could stop the girls from sliding down the white oak banister of my old Victorian. Even beneath their frail weight, it creaked. I worried for their safety but pushed the angst aside. In many ways, children are like cheese, I reminded myself. Wrap them too tightly with protective wrap, and they’ll suffocate.

  I tied a brown apron over my chinos and gold-striped sweater and joined Rebecca at the cheese counter.

  “Did I see Meredith leaving the shop?” she asked.

  I brought her up to speed about Meredith’s plan to convert the winery into a college.

  “Ooooh.” Rebecca began refacing the surfaces of the cheeses with a fine-edged knife while I arranged the prepared cheeses in the display case. “I heard there’s buried treasure there.”

  “Rumors.” I blew a loose strand of hair off my face.

  “Have you ever been inside?”

  “Not on your life.” Back in high school, Meredith and a group of daring souls had stolen in, but I’d chickened out. I’d had no desire to skulk through cobwebbed rooms or socialize with the rodents that had to have taken over the place.

  “You know, on CSI: New York, there was this story about—”

  The grape-leaf-shaped chimes over the front door jingled, and Grandmère chugged inside, wagging her gnarled finger. “Where is your grandfather?”

  She strode to the back of the shop, the flaps of her raincoat furling open and revealing a bright pink sweater and patchwork skirt. I smiled. My grandmother might be in her seventies, but she still had the style of a hip gypsy and the energy of a locomotive going downhill with no brakes.

  She peeked into the kitchen and into the walk-in refrigerator. “I need him at the theater.”

  “What’s the play you’re doing this spring, Mrs. Bessette?” Rebecca asked.

  “A new playwright’s work: No Exit with Poe.” My grandmother gave a dramatic flourish of her hand. “Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, as interpreted by the characters of Garcin, Estelle, and Inez.”

  “That makes no sense,” I said.

  “Why?” Rebecca asked. Before leaving her Amish community and moving to Providence, Rebecca had never been to the theater. Now, she was an empty vessel eager to be filled with knowledge. In addition to being a TV mystery junky, she read a play a week.

  I said, “Because No Exit is an absurdist play about three people in hell who probe each other’s painful memories. It has nothing to do with Poe.”

  Grandmère sidled up to me and tapped my nose with her fingertip. “That is where you’re wrong. I intend to focus on Sartre’s main theme, the suffering of being, as seen through the poetry of Poe. We’ll get rave reviews, mark my words.” She scuttled to the wine annex and looked inside. “Where is your grandfather?”

  “Not here.”

  “He said he was going for a cup of coffee at the diner, but I know him. He can’t resist coming to The Cheese Shop. Oh, Etienne!” she called in a singsong manner.

  She was right. My grandfather loved spending time here. He may have retired, but he needed to breathe the pungent air inside Fromagerie Bessette on a daily basis or he’d die.

  “He’s hiding, non?” Gra
ndmère returned to my side and peered cynically into my eyes, like a snake charmer who was being conned by the snake.

  “Oh, please,” I sniffed. “You think I’m abetting him?

  Maybe he’s taking a little stroll. You know how self-conscious he’s become about the few pounds he’s gained since his retirement.” My grandfather loved to sneak slices of cheese from the tasting platters we set on the marble countertop. “Look, there he is.” I pointed. Pépère was exiting the Country Kitchen across the street. “And you’ll notice he’s not headed this way.”

  Grandmère muttered something in French, chastising herself for not believing the love of her life, and I smiled. Theirs was the kind of relationship I craved, aged like a fine cheese.

  “Charlotte,” Rebecca said. “Did you tell your grandmother about Meredith’s fund-raiser? And that she wants local actors to perform?”

  I cocked my head. Exactly when did she think I’d had time to do that?

  “At the abandoned winery,” Rebecca added.

  Color drained from my grandmother’s face. “Not at Ziegler’s. No, no, no!”

  I flinched at the panic in her tone. She wasn’t one to buy into rumors. “Why not?” I asked, unable to mask my concern.

  She didn’t answer.

  A shiver coursed through me. “Grandmère?”

  She shook her head. “I must fly.” She petted my cheek. “Au revoir, chérie.”

  As she scurried out, I turned the sign in the front window to open. Customers bustled inside. Many sampled cheeses, while others came to hang out and chat. With the flurry of activity, the feeling of foreboding vanished. An hour later, I thought nothing in the world could go wrong.

  Was I ever mistaken.

  The door burst open, a gust of cool air invaded the shop, and in bounded Sylvie, Matthew’s ex-wife.

  With her you-owe-me attitude, enhanced lips, and augmented breasts, Sylvie, as Grandmère would say, was all huff and fluff. She adjusted a gargantuan leather tote over the shoulder of her faux ocelot coat—at least I hoped it was faux—flipped her acid-white hair off her shoulders, and in a shrill English accent that would make Anglophiles cringe, shouted, “Where are my babies?”