by Morgana Best
Thyme gave me a grin and leaned over to rest her chin on her hands. “I was only joking, but we’re getting off topic. You are going to be a great cook. I would bet on it.”
“Nice of you to say.”
“Nope.” Thyme shook her head. “Not just saying. Knowing. After all, you have people to help you learn now. It’s a huge difference from reading stuff on the web.”
“Teach me, Master Yoda,” I said, giving a playful bow of homage. I wished I had Thyme’s confidence, but at the moment I’d settle for her good company.
“Ha, I’m just here to help you get your start,” Thyme said. “You’ll do great. Trust me on this.”
“Any hints how?” I couldn’t help but sigh at the thought of it.
“First off, every ingredient has its place in the recipe. Eggs bind. Yeast makes it fluff. Sugar sweetens. The list goes on. Same for the tools. Everything is there for its own reason. Trust the recipe and you won’t go wrong.”
I suppressed a sigh. “If only it were that easy.” If it were as easy as following instructions, I would have nailed it long ago.
“It is. Well it isn’t. But it is.” Thyme bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. “It’s not so much mimicking the words, as feeling it.”
Okay, that was about as clear as mud.
Thyme must have realized it by the look on her face. “Okay, um, it isn’t just mixing eggs and flour for example.” Thyme waved her hands helplessly as she tried to find the words. “It’s feeling the mix get smooth while you stir it. It’s sensing that exact moment it changes from powder and goo into batter. Things they just can’t teach someone on a recipe card.”
It was all sounding horribly complicated to me. “But how does anyone ever learn such a thing?”
“Trial and error,” Thyme said matter of factly. “Lots of trial and error. And love. Love is the secret ingredient.”
“Love?” I raised my eyebrows. We had gone from a serious lesson to some sickening sweet cliché from those cooking shows that Brad had made me watch.
Thyme smiled. “Your aunt always said it was her secret weapon. When you make something with love, you have a completely different energy. You’re more alert. You see small details. Time passes differently. It’s totally different from making something out of obligation.”
I thought that over. Had I tried to cook for Brad because I loved him at the time? Or because I felt like it was expected of me? At the time I had thought it was one and the same. I didn’t even really know if this whole ‘love’ thing made sense to me now.
“But how do you love cooking for a complete stranger?” I asked, looking back over at the cake shop. Even if I bought into the whole ‘love makes the recipe perfect’ thing, how did that fit with dealing with customers?
I thought back on my work at the Complaints Department, where I was cursed at and lectured by customers over the company’s flaws as if I were the one directly responsible. Customers yelled at me if their demands were not met immediately. I thought of the apartment where the landlord kicked me out as soon as I set the place on fire, and how Brad abandoned me because I gave him food poisoning.
“To tell the truth, I’m not sure. That was your aunt’s talent.” Thyme gave me an apologetic half-shrug. “She baked with her emotions, and it showed in her cakes. That’s really all I know. As to how she channeled that love into her work—well, you’ll have to find your own way there.”
I threw up my hands. “Great!”
“You’ll be fine. You’ll just need to—oh, finally. It’s a good thing this wasn’t a serious fire. You’d be less a shop.” Thyme nodded to the fire truck as it finally swung into the street.
I smiled and stood up beside her. While I did not relish letting the fire department see my burned cake, I was glad for a distraction from the conversation.
“You guys take the scenic route?” Thyme asked pleasantly.
One of the men hopped out of the truck and made his way over, while the others went straight for the kitchen. “Sorry, ladies. We had to take the long way due to the high school parade taking up the main street.”
“Oh, yeah.” Thyme bonked herself on the forehead. “I saw it in the news feed. I completely forgot about it. Guess this wasn’t the best day for a cooking lesson. Sorry, guys.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“I haven’t ever been called out here before,” the man commented as he removed his hat to get a better look at the window. “Is everyone all right?”
I felt my heart leap in my chest as his deep brown eyes met mine. This was the hot guy I had met at the funeral.
“Umm, yes. Yes. I just set a cake on fire, but it’s all under control now,” I said. Oh no, I had just admitted that I burned a cake. How incompetent did that sound? Why did I open my mouth?
Craig smiled in amusement. “Well, it can’t be any worse than when Angelica started this store decades ago. My grandfather told me that when she heard you use a torch to do meringue she borrowed one from a welding shop.”
I didn’t know what the difference in torches was, but based on his grin and Thyme’s wide-eyed alarmed giggle, I assumed it ran along the lines of ‘overkill’.
“My aunt burned cakes?” I asked.
“And half the wall,” he said. “A table too, if my grandfather was correct. In the end, she made the best cakes. It’s good to see her legacy is going to live on.”
“See? Trial and error. Lots of error.” Thyme laughed and elbowed me.
I laughed, too. I was glad to see that Craig was okay with me setting a cake on fire.
“Oh, welcome to Bayberry Creek. I can’t remember if I said that when we first met.” Craig didn’t take his eyes off mine. What amazing eyes. “I’m glad to see this place is okay,” he continued. “I’ll check it out, just to be on the safe side.”
“Thanks.” I smiled at him. “Thyme says we need the report for insurance.”
Thyme raised her eyebrows at me and then put her hands behind her back with a mischievous smile. “Well, I’m going to go check on progress with the kitchen. Amelia, how about you tell him what happened?” Thyme leaned in to whisper to me, “And find out his favorite flavor.”
Chapter 10
I had invited Thyme, Ruprecht, his granddaughter, Mint, and my next-door neighbor, Camino, over for dinner. It wasn’t my idea; it was Thyme’s. She said it was the only way I could get my confidence. She suggested I make something simple. Duh! I knew that much.
I decided to make baked vegetables. I stood in the kitchen, my eyes closed, my hands on the counter. “You can do this,” I chanted over and over.
I opened my eyes, and got to work. For the first ten minutes or so everything was going great. Of course, the first ten minutes were the easiest, chopping up the vegetables. From there it got a little harder, and as I had dreaded, I began to feel like I wasn’t doing it right. I had partly boiled the potatoes first, as the article on the net had said that they take longer to cook than other vegetables. Had I boiled them for too long? Were they supposed to break apart?
I was beginning to sweat, though it wasn’t only due to the oven being cranked to four fifty. I was starting to feel the panic. I wanted to do well. I owned a cake store, after all.
Now my new friends were going to come over, and I was surely going to mess it all up. I forced myself to think logically. What was the worst that could happen? That thought calmed me down somewhat. So what if I messed up dinner? Thyme wouldn’t be mad, and Ruprecht wouldn’t ridicule me with cruel words, not like my ex had. If dinner was ruined, they would all laugh.
I had just put the chopped up pumpkin into the oven when the doorbell rang. I wiped my hands on a towel hanging on the handle of the oven and went to answer it. Ruprecht and Mint stood before me, a smile on their faces. “House-warming gift,” Ruprecht said, holding out a box of rather nice antique silverware. “I had it at the shop, and I thought it would look lovely here with you.”
“Wow, thanks so much,” I said, taking the box.
&nb
sp; “I didn’t bring anything, only this bottle of chardonnay,” a cheerful voice said from behind Ruprecht. Thyme was making her way up the front walk. She had a huge bag in one hand and bottle of wine in the other.
“Thanks,” I said with a laugh. “Come on in. Camino should be here soon. Let me check on the veggies, and I’ll be right back.”
I hurried into the kitchen and anxiously peered into the oven. To my relief, nothing was burned yet. It appeared to be roasting to plan.
I returned to the living room with a tray of wine glasses. I was almost at the living room door when I heard Camino’s voice. Oh, good, she had arrived. The next words I heard made me stop in my tracks.
“Yes, I saw him, parked down the street in his car,” Camino said.
“Are you sure it was him?” Ruprecht asked.
“Positive. What would he want with Amelia?”
From behind me, Willow meowed loudly. I was afraid he would give away my position, and I felt bad for eavesdropping, so I walked into the room.
Everyone stopped talking abruptly and stared at me. You could cut the tension with a knife. “What were you all talking about?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Thyme and Mint said in unison, and then they exchanged glances. I saw a red flush travel up Thyme’s face.
“Great, wine glasses,” Camino said, in what seemed to me to be an obvious attempt to divert me. “Do you have red? I’m partial to Merlot.”
“Sure,” I said, and took everyone’s orders.
“So you found Angelica’s wine supply?” Camino asked me, her eyes narrowing as if the answer was of importance to her.
“Yes,” I said.
“You didn’t have any trouble finding it? You’ve found your way around the house okay?” she asked, and Ruprecht shot her what to me looked like a warning look. This was getting stranger and stranger.
“You look somewhat stressed,” Ruprecht said, as he accepted his glass from me. “I hope you aren’t going to too much trouble for us.”
“No, no trouble at all,” I assured him. “Just way out of my league.”
“You? Out of your league in the kitchen?” Thyme teased me. “I never would have guessed.”
“Very funny,” I said. “When the rest of us are eating a delicious meal, and you’ve been sent to a timeout with no dinner, don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m actually really looking forward to it,” Thyme said. “I’m proud of you for taking on something head on. I hope it goes well.”
“So far, so good,” I said hopefully.
Half an hour later, I was in the kitchen staring at some blackened vegetables burned to a crisp, and potatoes which had somehow turned to mush in the exact same oven. I felt like I wanted to cry. How had this happened?
I turned and went to the dining room, where Ruprecht, Thyme, Mint, and Camino sat at the table.
“I guess we can order a pizza,” I said, trying to smile, but feeling horrible.
Thyme stood up. “It’s okay. Besides, I did bring something.”
Thyme opened her large bag that was sitting on the table and pulled out another bag, this one white. “Veggie burgers,” she said, and then she laughed. “Just in case.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I had messed up dinner, just the way I had thought I would, but no one was mad. It was funny, silly, and Thyme had thought ahead to save the day, but in a way that didn’t make me feel an inch tall. The five of us laughed as I sat down at the table.
“No faith in me, huh?” I joked.
“I have a lot of faith in you,” Thyme said. “I just knew your oven would be on the fritz.”
“Yeah, that’s what it was,” I said for a joke. “Sure, the oven was messed up.”
“You can’t trust old things,” Ruprecht said. “Like me. I’m liable to break down at any moment too.”
We all laughed. And so we spent the evening eating burgers from a local fast food joint, and laughing and telling stories. Ruprecht had a lot of life to share, and the rest of us listened to him speak with rapt attention.
And then the talk turned to my aunt. They had all known her well. I hadn’t known my aunt at all, and listening to stories about her made me smile. By the time they had finished speaking about her, my cheeks hurt from smiling. “She sounds amazing,” I said.
“She was,” Thyme said, and the old man next to her nodded.
“It seems to run in the family,” Ruprecht added. “We’re so glad you’re here, dear.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Would anyone like coffee?”
“I’ll take a cup,” Ruprecht said.
“Me too,” Thyme said. “You need any help?”
I burst out laughing. “Trust me. Running the coffee maker is one thing I can do in the kitchen.”
Ten minutes later, I set steaming mugs in front of everyone. “Let’s sit out front,” I suggested, and we all went outside. There were a few white wicker chairs out there, and we pulled them from their spot against the wall and set them up.
The night was warm with a clear sky and an almost full moon. A soft breeze blew and the nearby trees rustled pleasantly.
“I don’t even miss home,” I said.
Thyme smiled at me. “This is home for you now.”
I nodded. “It’s just weird, to spend so much time in one place, and then to leave it and realize it was never the right place for you,” I said. “And then you find somewhere and you just feel like, well, I don’t know, like how I feel about this place.”
Ruprecht nodded in agreement. “We all feel like we belong here. Some of us are weirder than the others,” he added, making a show of pointing to Thyme, which made us laugh. “But we all belong. In a way, I think this town attracts people like us, people who don’t fit in other places, even if they don’t know it. People who are special.”
“I don’t think I’m special at all,” I said with a shrug. “Weird, perhaps.”
“Of course you are,” Ruprecht said with a twinkle in his eye. “Special, not weird, I mean.”
After everyone finished their coffee, they all said their goodbyes, and I was left alone once more. I thought about what Ruprecht had said. It was such a small, throwaway line, but the way he had said it made me feel something. I didn’t know what.
I could feel something coming, something big, and it would change me. I had never felt like that before, but now I felt something. I did feel special, for the first time. I hadn’t felt special before, but now, in the new town and the new house, I did.
I went to bed after I cleaned up the burger wrappers left in the dining room. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling as I drifted off to sleep, finally closing my eyes. I thought about what Ruprecht had said, until my dreams overtook me. I dreamed of doing things, things I had never done before, things I hadn’t been able to do. In one dream, I told off my ex-boyfriend, loudly, with anger. In another, I cooked a beautiful meal. And in the next dream, I was alone in a room. An angry shadow loomed over me and wanted to hurt me, but I wouldn’t let it. I held up a hand and light burst forth from my fingertips, and there were no more shadows. The dreams went on, and I slept well.
Chapter 11
I opened my eyes, and it took me a moment to place where I was. Actually, I couldn’t quite place where I was. I was lying on a couch instead of my bed. There were two windows along one wall. The flowing white curtains hung loosely and blocked a good amount of the sunshine that was trying to squeeze through the window, leaving nothing but long rectangles of yellow which fell across the floor and the far wall.
I was in my new home. I knew this, but I wasn’t in my bedroom. In fact, as I sat up on the dusty couch and looked around, I was pretty sure I had never seen the room in which I had awoken at all.
That didn’t make sense. There were no real hidden rooms in houses, were there? That was just in movies, and cartoons where an animated dog solved mysteries with his human friends.
Apart from the couch, the room was mostly empty, except for a white wicker stand near the door. On the
stand was a large bowl, something decorative, ceramic and white with blue lines. I moved from the couch and went to the bowl, expecting to find something in it, but I was disappointed. It was empty.
I reached for the rounded handle of the door next to the wicker stand, and for one wild moment I was worried that it would be locked. I would be stuck in this strange room, a room in my home that I was pretty sure hadn’t been there when I had gone to sleep. But no, the door handle turned easily, and I pulled open the door to reveal the familiar hallway.
My heart was pounding and my forehead was sweaty. I stepped into the hall. Yes, it was indeed my hall. What a relief! My bedroom was down at the end of the hall, the bathroom with the old fashioned bathtub with clawed feet to the left of that. I turned and looked into the room in which I had awoken. It was still there. I had thought that maybe I would turn and see nothing but the wall, with the white and yellow wallpaper with the roses that ran along the top border.
But no, there it was, the couch along the far wall, the windows, the sunlight, the bowl on the wicker stand. I reached forward and pulled the door shut with a slam.
I didn’t know what to think; I only knew that I was frightened. I hurried down the hallway into my bedroom. To my utter relief, this room was normal. The bed, my clothes, my cell phone on the nightstand next to where I had laid my head, all looked normal.
I went back to the room in which I had woken up, and it was still there. I had never seen this room before. How had I missed it? I hurried down the hallway and flung open the library door. It was a bedroom. I ran up and down the hallway, flinging open all the doors, but there was no library to be found. I sunk to the floor, a wave of nausea overcoming me. I sat there for a few moments, my head in my hands. What was going on? Was I still dreaming? I pinched myself. “Ouch!” I said aloud, and Willow and Hawthorn walked over to inspect me.
One thing was for certain, I was too shaken to go to work. I went to my phone and called Thyme. “Would you mind going in today without me? Just for a bit? Something’s come up,” I said.
“Are you okay?” Thyme’s voice was filled with concern. “Did something happen?”
