Lost and Fondue

by Avery Aames

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

  “Super.”

  In the course of the past year, I had fallen head over heels for my young nieces—who weren’t really my nieces, if the truth be told. Matthew was my cousin, which would make the girls my cousins once removed, or something convoluted like that. But Matthew was like a brother to me, so I’d settled on calling the twins my nieces the day they were born, and no one seemed unhappy with the arrangement. At the insistence of my grandparents, I had taken Matthew and the twins 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 twins from sliding down the white oak banister of my old Victorian home. Even beneath their frail weight, the banister creaked. I worried for their safety but pushed the angst aside. In many ways, children are like cheese. 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 request to change the fund-raiser menu as well as her plan to add mariachis for entertainment.

  “Do you know what I heard?” Rebecca began facing 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 at the winery.”

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

  “Have you ever been inside?”

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

  Rebecca said, “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 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 junkie, 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, chérie. The playwright is focusing 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 in the shop. 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?” Grandmère 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 that Meredith wants local actors to be mariachis at the fund-raiser?”

  I cocked my head. Exactly when in the last few minutes did she think I’d had time to do that?

  Color drained from my grandmother’s face. “No, no, no!”

  I flinched at the panic in her tone. “Why not?” I asked, unable to mask my concern.

  She didn’t answer.

  A shiver coursed through me. When Meredith first suggested the idea of converting the college, my grandmother suffered the same reaction, but she’d never explained why. Not one to buy into rumors, I had let the matter drop. “Is it the music?”

  “It matters not. It . . .” Her voice trailed off. She petted my cheek. “I must fly. Au revoir.”

  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 believed 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?

  CHAPTER 2

  Without a care, Sylvie swiped droplets of water off her coat onto The Cheese Shop floor and stomped toward me. “I want my girls now. You can’t keep me away. You have no right. They’re mine. Mine, I tell you. Give them to me. Do you hear me?”

  Loud and clear. I bridled at her demanding tone. Not because her entrance had scared off half of my customers or because her ranting had frightened the rest of them so much that they’d retreated to the edges of the shop, but because her girls were no longer hers. She had abandoned them.

  “Sylvie.” I didn’t attempt to hug her. “Why don’t we go in the other room?” I did offer a hand to guide her. It was the diplomatic thing to do, and the wine annex was empty of patrons.

  She wrinkled her refurbished ski-tipped nose as if she’d detected some horrid odor. “I want my babies, Charlotte. They aren’t at your house. I thought they might be here because it’s so early.”

  “They’re at school.” I kept my voice cool, although I felt anything but.

  “They are not. It’s Saturday.”

  “They’ve got pottery classes.”

  “Fine. I’ll fetch them.”

  I gripped her elbow to stop her, pinching hard with my thumb. So much for diplomacy.

  She wrenched free and, out of nowhere, burst into tears. Crocodile tears. She flung herself into my arms and cried like a baby. Reluctantly, I patted her back.

  “I made a mistake. A huge mistake,” she blubbered. Her tears soaked through my sweater. After a long moment, she pushed herself away and wiped streaks of mascara from beneath her eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  I smoothed the hair cupping my neck. Did I?
Did it matter?

  “Let’s talk about it,” I said.

  Giving Rebecca an over-the-shoulder what can you do? glance, I guided Sylvie through the brick arches leading to the wine annex and settled her at one of the tables nestled by the bay window. Rags, my adorable Ragdoll cat who’d dared to sneak from the office to see what I was up to, sprinted to the wine bar and crouched beneath one of the stools, ears perked.

  Sylvie shrugged off her ocelot coat to reveal a silver lamé sweater so tight that it made her ample breasts look like pyramids. To complete the outlandish ensemble, she wore gold spandex pants tucked into matching gold ankle boots. I bit back a comment. Taste had never been one of Sylvie’s strong suits.

  “I was overwhelmed and so young when I had the girls,” Sylvie said.

  She’d had the twins at the age of thirty-four. Hardly young.

  “Do they miss me?” Sylvie twirled her hand in a circle. “Of course they do.” She rifled through her tote bag, pulled out a wadded-up tissue, and blew her nose—a big honking sound.

  I searched for the most tactful way to make her leave town. “Look, Sylvie, the girls are happy now. They’ve gotten over your abandoning them.”

  “Abandoning? Is that what you told them I did?”

  “You didn’t call. You didn’t write.”

  “I was soul-searching. I’ve been seeing a therapist.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Just because Sylvie had met with a therapist didn’t mean she’d reaped the benefits of therapy. “Amy and Clair wanted their mother, and you—”

  “Oh, can it.” Sylvie’s tears dried up faster than rainfall in a desert. Her face turned hard. She grabbed her coat and bounded from the table. “I don’t need your permission to see them.”

  I sprinted after her, ready to tie her up if need be. I kept heavy twine in the storage room, and I was a master at knots. I’d macraméd a fishnet to get my Girl Scout badge when other girls had only made plant hangers. I caught up with Sylvie by the archway and spun her around.

  “Release me.” She batted my arm. The crown of her diamond ring stung like a you-know-what. “I’d expected the teary act would work with someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?” I sputtered.

  “Weak.”

  “What?” My voice spiked.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Actually, I didn’t. I was not weak. I was considerate. There was a big difference.

  “I’m going to see them, Charlotte.” She thrust a wellsharpened fingernail at me. “Whether you and Matthew like it or not.”

  “What won’t I like?” Matthew shuffled into the annex carrying a box of wine and came to a halt. He gaped at his ex.

  “Hello, love.” Sylvie sashayed up to him and traced her finger along his strong jaw, then dragged her finger down his neck and arm. “So lovely to see you. You’ve been working out.”

  I gulped. She was good. Matthew looked transfixed. Like a siren, Sylvie was pulling him in with her honey-toned voice.

  “I’ve missed you so much.” Sylvie pried the box of wine from his grasp and set it on the wine counter. “Come sit, and let’s catch up.”

  As she waltzed him toward the mosaic tables, Matthew pulled free. “Stop it, Sylvie!” He backed up two feet and glowered at her. Gone was his boyish demeanor. No longer was he a puppy with a gangly lope.

  I breathed easier. A year ago, when Matthew was vulnerable, he might have caved to her wiles. But not now. Not when he had Meredith for support. Not when the girls had turned an emotional corner.

  “But lover—”

  “Stop it, I said!” Matthew’s words came out firm, commanding. “Why are you here?”

  “Don’t get cheeky with me, Matthew.” Sylvie cocked a hip and streaked her tongue across her lips, making yet another attempt to lure him into her web. Matthew remained tense. “I’m here because I’m taking my girlie-girls ice skating at the Harvest Moon Ranch.”

  Not many people booked weddings at the Harvest Moon during the winter and early spring, so the owners had turned their old red barn into a skating arena, fitted with an artificial ice surface.

  “You’re doing no such thing,” Matthew snapped.

  “The girls love skating.”

  “And you hate it. Your parents put you up to this, didn’t they?”

  “Tosh!” Sylvie thrust her chin upward. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. In fact, I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.” She strutted around him, marched through the main shop, and out the front door.

  Matthew charged after her. “Now, you listen to me, Sylvie—”

  The chimes over the front door jingled, and then the door slammed.

  Seconds later, a shriek sliced the air. Female. From the street.

  A current of fear shimmied down my back. I tore to the sidewalk and stood beneath the awning, protected from the rain. A blast of cool air hit my face. While peering for signs of Matthew and Sylvie, I spotted two young men in swimsuits and a bikini-clad young woman bounding down the street. All wore flip-flops. All were armed with water balloons. The young woman, whom I recognized as Meredith’s niece Quinn, screamed—the sound matching the shriek that I believed had come from Sylvie. I breathed a sigh of relief that Matthew and Sylvie weren’t exchanging blows, though I shivered at the sight of the students. What were they thinking, being out in the cold in such skimpy outfits?

  Rain-wet red hair clung to Quinn’s pretty face as she dashed toward the tallest of the young men. “I’m going to kill you, Harker,” she yelled, raising her second balloon.

  With his rippling muscles and surfer-dude blond hair, Harker looked like he should have been named Adonis. According to Meredith, Harker had more talent in his pinky than the rest of the artists put together. His fellow balloon thrower was Harker’s polar opposite, dark-haired and lean. A third young man, zipper-thin with hunched shoulders and baggy trunks hanging low on his hips, towed a Radio Flyer wagon filled with latex ammunition and a pile of something covered with a tarp. Give the guy a hump and he’d look as miserable as Quasimodo.

  “Goose, goose, duck!” Quinn hurled the balloon.

  “Missed, babe!” Harker laughed.

  “Missed me, too,” said the dark-haired young man.

  Harker bolted to the wagon, snatched more balloons, and flung one of his missiles at Quinn. It splat near her feet. She squealed with delight.

  “Okay, gang, that’s enough.” Freddy Vance, Meredith’s brother, flew out of the Country Kitchen across the street. “Did you hear me?” He hustled between parked cars and clapped his hands. From a distance, he appeared the same as he had in high school, compact and energized. A star gymnast. “Enough, I said.” He waved his arms overhead. His orange slicker, which was just this side of Day-Glo, made him look like a crossing guard on fire. “Let’s not scare off the nice folk of Providence. Show some respect. Quinn, where are your clothes? Do not tell me you left them at the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “They’re in the wagon,” Quinn said.

  “Put them on,” Freddy ordered. “All of you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Harker waved him off.

  Freddy charged Harker and nabbed him by the shoulder. He must have pinched hard, because Harker instantly acquiesced. He jogged to the Radio Flyer wagon, reached beneath the tarp, and pulled out dry clothes. After donning them over his wet swimsuit, the other students did the same.

  Rebecca exited The Cheese Shop and joined me under the awning. Plumes of her warm breath fogged up the cold air. “Are they the artists?”

  I nodded.

  “Hey, Charlotte!” Freddy strolled toward me wearing that familiar wry grin. “I leave the kids alone for one minute, and see what they do? Mind if we warm up inside your shop and grab a bite to eat? I heard it’s the place to hang out.”

  Rebecca elbowed me. I got her drift. We didn’t actually serve meals, and I didn’t want to compete with the Country Kitchen on a regular basis, but who was I to say no to a little extra business during a slow season?

/>   “Be our guests.”

  Freddy gave me a quick squeeze and a rain-soaked kiss. “Gang, inside.” He pushed open the front door and allowed his flock to pass beneath his arm. Quinn, who had covered her teensy bikini with a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and hiking boots, pulled up the rear. Before entering, she gave me a fierce hug. I could feel the dampness from her wet swimsuit seeping through the cotton.

  Freddy lingered by the open door. “So you own The Cheese Shop. Wow! I always knew you had a bright future. And you’re a knockout. Meredith said you were, but who could believe Sis? Say cheese!” He scooted inside.

  Shaking off the chill that was cutting into my bones, I followed him and moved behind the counter. “What’ll it be, everyone?”

  Rags weaved figure eights around my ankles. I nudged him with my toe, and he got the message. Everything was fine. He could retreat to the office and nap.

  Before one of the students called out an order, the front door opened yet again, and a statuesque woman in her late twenties flounced in. “Fredddddddddy?” She reminded me of a luscious Italian diva, with lungs that could blast out a pitchperfect aria. “It’s as cold as a polar bear’s nose out there.” She approached the cheese counter, nestled beside Freddy, and assessed me with open amusement.

  I considered checking a mirror to make sure I didn’t have something caught in my teeth but fought the urge.

  “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Winona Westerton.”

  “Winona’s a potential donor for the college,” Freddy said.

  “More than potential, darlin’. I’ve already given a hundred”—she paused for effect—“thousand.”

  Exactly what did she do that she could afford to give so much money to a boutique college?

  Winona gave me a sly, bordering on disdainful look. If she wasn’t careful, she and Prudence Hart, Providence’s new self-appointed society goddess, would have to duel it out for Witch of the Midwest.

  Freddy said, “Everyone, let’s order breakfast before we paint.”

  “We’re going to paint in this weather?” Quinn said.

  “Of course we are,” Harker chimed in. “It’s ideal impressionist lighting outside.”