If Bread Could Rise to the Occasion

by Paige Shelton

  “Well, it looks like we might have enough excitement without a ghost this time,” I said to no one, or to whomever might be listening.

  All remained quiet and undisturbed, but that rarely lasted very long in Broken Rope, Missouri.

  Chapter 2

  “No, I have my acceptance letter. It’s in my suitcase,” Freddie protested.

  He’d cleaned up pretty well. Gram made him take off his cologne-stained shirt so she could run it under water and wash out the stink. She hung it over a shelf in the kitchen and lent him a Broken Rope T-shirt. It was bright pink with blue lettering that said, I GOT HUNG UP BY A BROKEN ROPE IN MISSOURI across the front. Neither she nor I could remember why we had a box of them in the back room, but the shirt had been a better option than an apron.

  “The suitcase that’s out front and scented with cologne?” Gram said.

  “Yes, that one,” Freddie said with a small shrug. We were in the kitchen part of the school again and it had taken both Gram and I some effort to pull Freddie’s attention away from the shiny appliances and get him to focus on our questions.

  “Let’s go get it,” I said.

  “Sure,” Freddie said as he turned and led the way. He moved slowly because he was still focused on the heavily outfitted kitchen. I could see only the back of his curly-haired head moving, but I was certain his eyes were dancing over the butcher blocks, the gas stoves, the shelves of pots and pans . . . everything. Basically, he was behaving like most of our students. He probably couldn’t wait to get his hands on some of the utensils and cook or bake something in the ovens.

  A sense of regret started to build in my gut. Gram and I both knew that Freddie O’Bannon wasn’t set to be a student at her cooking school. Either a strange mistake had occurred or we were being scammed. Though I couldn’t, offhand, understand what was the expected end result of such a scam. How in the world could it even be a scam? Why would anyone pretend they were a student?

  And if someone wanted to be a student so badly, why didn’t they just apply? As I followed Freddie’s moving head and Gram’s short gray-haired one, the thought occurred to me that maybe Freddie was actually someone who had applied. Maybe he’d used a different name and maybe we had rejected him because something on his application seemed off. Gram’s a big believer in the fact that people can and do change, and a few of our students have had criminal records, though nothing too scary.

  I wasn’t frightened of Freddie, but by the time we made it out the front doors and to the suitcase, the regret I’d felt had become lined with a thin layer of suspicion.

  Freddie crouched down and reached into a side pocket of the suitcase. He pulled out a single sheet of paper and held it toward Gram. I stepped next to her as she took it.

  “I’m afraid it’s been damaged, though,” Freddie said. “But you can see it’s your letterhead and Missouri Anna’s signature. Right there at the bottom. Look.”

  The piece of paper had become a victim of the spilled cologne. But he was right, the letterhead at the top of the page was most definitely a picture of the long white building that used to be a church, then a bingo parlor, and was now the cooking school. Underneath the building, it said: Gram’s Country Cooking School. Broken Rope, Missouri. It was a simple logo, but there was no doubt that it was our bona fide insignia.

  The entire middle section of the sheet of paper was a mess of cologne-scented ink. At the bottom, though, there was a signature, and it did say, Sincerely, Missouri Anna Winston, but it was impossible to know if it had been Gram who signed the words. They were legible but warped and blurred by the cologne.

  “Do you remember what the letter said?” Gram said.

  “Of course,” Freddie said. “‘Dear Mr. O’Bannon. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Gram’s Country Cooking School for the term beginning this fall. We expect you to arrive ready to learn the delicious ways of simple country cooking by August twenty-seventh. If you need assistance in finding lodging, please contact me or my granddaughter, Isabelle. We look forward to seeing you soon. Sincerely, Missouri Anna Winston.’”

  He’d recited the letter perfectly. It wasn’t a long correspondence, but still, the fact that he’d memorized it so well must have meant something. That suspicious layer that had appeared made me ponder that perhaps Freddie had found a copy of our acceptance letter and made one to match it, memorizing it as he copied. Or, perhaps he was really someone else, pretending to be Freddie.

  But it was probably most likely that Gram and I had made a huge mistake, the origin of which neither of us could pin down. I doubted that both of us could have such a lapse in memory, but anything was possible.

  “I hate to be rude, Freddie, but Betts and I need to discuss this again. Would you excuse us for a minute?”

  “Certainly,” Freddie said, but I heard the hesitation in his voice. I was sure Gram did, too.

  Marching back inside the reception area was both uncomfortable and definitely rude, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “I don’t understand, Betts. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “Not at all. I don’t remember his name. It occurred to me that he might be someone we rejected and he’s changed his name, but even I admit that’s farfetched.”

  “What should we do? He’s got an acceptance letter. I think that’s what it is at least.”

  “We’ve never had sixteen students, but I guess I don’t see how it would be much of a problem. We’ll see if he’s prepared to make the first tuition payment.”

  Gram bit at her bottom lip again.

  The process, the thought, the sometimes upset stomachs and headaches we went through as we chose a group of students were components of a “whole” that felt almost sacred. It was thrilling to tell someone yes, sometimes heartbreaking to tell someone no. The emotional roller coaster we rode was significant and in a way important, if only to us. Because if we’d gone through the emotions, if we’d ridden that coaster, then we’d done our jobs to the best of our abilities. We’d given all our applicants fair consideration and we’d made the best possible decision for everyone involved.

  And now we had Freddie. Per both of our memories, he hadn’t figured into the process. Discussing how he might fit in with the other students or whether sixteen was an unlucky number seemed like a total waste of time, though. Either we were going to welcome him and deal with the results or we were going to send him away.

  We’d let him keep the T-shirt, though.

  Gram sighed. “I don’t think we have any choice, Betts. I haven’t considered the legal ramifications of our word against his soggy letter but I don’t want to call Verna.” Verna was our local attorney-at-all-type-of-law. “Bottom line, I think we’d be somehow wrong to turn him away.”

  “I guess I do, too,” I said.

  I didn’t continue to vocalize my thoughts, but something was strange about Freddie; his behavior wasn’t totally right. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly was wrong, though. Maybe it was more me than him anyway. I hadn’t been much for suspicion before the ghosts came into my life, and though they hadn’t caused any real harm, my attitude had changed. Of course, when reality as we know it alters even a little bit, a few attitude changes here and there are to be expected.

  “This is what we’ll do. We’ll ask for references, see if he pays,” Gram said. “We’ll have to tell him we weren’t expecting him, and since the mistake must somehow be ours, we’ll let him stay but he has to supply those references. We’ll check them, and if we find anything wonky, we’ll throw him out on his keister.”

  I smiled.

  “Well, we won’t mention the keister part,” she added, but she smiled, too, halfway at least.

  “I like that plan,” I said.

  Since we were in the front part of the school with no open windows, we couldn’t really feel the gust of wind. But we heard it blow through the cemetery and over the roof. It also rattled the front glass doors, opening one just enough to allow some scented air to enter.

 
; Once we both caught the scent, it was as if we went up on point, just like any good hunting dog, so we could sniff more deeply.

  “Wait, is that bread?” I said.

  Gram looked at me, her eyes suddenly big and then shiny with tears. She blinked them away quickly and then cleared her throat.

  “Gram?”

  “Yes, I do believe that’s bread.”

  “And you know who this ghost is?”

  “I know exactly.”

  The last ghostly scent we’d encountered had been lavender. At first, Gram hadn’t remembered who brought the lavender scent with them. And, of the two ghosts I’d already gotten to know, neither had made Gram tear up enough to make her want to hide her reaction from me. According to her, they were mostly nuisances.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I suppose you’ll know soon enough anyway. It’s Gent Cylas,” Gram said with a sigh.

  “Gent Cylas? I don’t know that name. What’s he famous for?”

  Gram thought a good thirty seconds before she answered.

  “Breaking my heart, time and time again,” she said before she turned and pushed her way out the front doors of the school.

  “Oh,” I responded a long few beats after she was gone. Gent wasn’t my grandfather’s name, but I knew that Gram had been “a handsome woman” and “though a spitfire, considered a good catch.” I often rolled my eyes at those old-fashioned sexist descriptions, but a part of me always enjoyed hearing about her popularity no matter how it was described.

  Visions of dashing movie star men from her time like Clark Gable and Cary Grant played in my mind. What would this man look like? I’d never even heard the name Gent Cylas before, and I suddenly couldn’t wait to meet him.

  “Oh,” I said again, this time with eager curiosity, and then followed her trail out of the school.

  Chapter 3

  Gram hadn’t gone far. She stood at the bottom of the two short steps outside the front doors. She had her hands on her hips and inspected the scene. I stood next to her and did the same.

  Freddie O’Bannon, with his beautiful green eyes and bright pink shirt, sat on the ground next to his stinky suitcase. He smiled and waved hopefully. I smiled back, but I wasn’t sure whether to deal with him first or with the young man leaning on the school’s front sign.

  If the person I saw was indeed Gent Cylas, he wasn’t dashing as much as he was adorable. His ghostly form, forever frozen in time at his age of death, was probably about seventeen years old. He wore the same sort of getup as Jerome had worn: long tan pants, thin linen shirt. He didn’t wear a cowboy hat, though, and he had no shoes. His bare feet were long, narrow, and curiously obvious.

  Gent was tall and trim but seemed solid and strong. His shoulders were wide and confident even as he leaned. His brown hair was shaggy in that Beatles way, and his smile could probably break the heart of every teenage girl in the general vicinity if only they could see him. Charisma’s one of those difficult things to define, but there was no doubt that his ghost was overflowing with the stuff.

  “Missouri Anna Winston, the prettiest thing about Missouri,” he said, and then he smiled his killer smile. And then he bowed.

  Yep, lots of charisma.

  Gram nodded his direction. It would not only be rude to speak to the ghost in front of Freddie, it would be weird and potentially frightening. Of course, maybe Freddie would leave if we scared him. I gave the idea serious thought but only for an instant.

  “Listen, Freddie,” I said as I stepped away from Gram and toward him, “we think we made a mistake, but we’re willing to work with you. You’re welcome to stay . . .”

  “Oh, good!” he said as he stood.

  “But, we need your first tuition payment and some references. We like personal, but we’ll take professional, too. If we find anything questionable, we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “You won’t find anything questionable, but I don’t understand. Don’t you have my application?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Then how did I get the acceptance letter?”

  “We’re asking ourselves the same question,” I said.

  “I’m confused.”

  “Us, too,” I said. As I looked at the hurt that crossed his face, I realized that my suspicion had caused me to completely disregard his feelings, which was callous and unlike me. If he had truly applied to the school, had been accepted, and Gram and I had each lost a block of memory, we were not treating him like we should. I decided that we should consider him the student he thought he was until we could prove otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty. I hadn’t forgotten everything from my brief and incomplete time in law school.

  “Welcome to Broken Rope, Freddie. Welcome to Gram’s Country Cooking School. We’re very glad to have you here,” I said.

  “Thank you.” His emerald eyes lit brightly. “I’m happy to be here.”

  “Come on inside. I’ll set you up with a phone and a computer. You can gather, or regather, your references. The other students should be here shortly.” I glanced at my watch. Very shortly. “We’ll welcome you again with everyone else.”

  “Thank you,” he repeated, still with utter enthusiasm.

  I eyed Gent and then Gram as I escorted Freddie into the school. Gent seemed surprised that I was looking at him. He didn’t know yet that he and I would be able to communicate, but I hoped the glance told them both I’d be right back out to get the story, or stories, that went with his life.

  I had Freddie set up in record time before I hurried back outside, only to be sadly disappointed. Gram sat on the small stoop in front of the doors.

  “Oh, he’ll be back,” she said as she peered up at me and used her hand to shade the sun from her eyes.

  I sat next to her and looked around the cemetery. There wasn’t a ghost or tourist to be seen. The August day was almost as perfect as a Southern Missouri day could get. The humidity that was thick and stifling only a week earlier seemed to have disappeared, but that was probably just a tease. It could come back any second and with a late-summer vengeance that always made me wonder if my hair would ever be able to un-frizz. It usually did by the end of September, mostly at least.

  The Ozarks, the large body of water that contributed to the thick humidity, weren’t far from Broken Rope, but I hadn’t had a lake adventure this summer. I’d been busy, with murders, ghosts, student selection, and becoming reacquainted with my high school boyfriend, who, through some sort of bump in the time-space continuum, was now a Broken Rope police officer as well as my new boyfriend.

  It had been a good summer, productive and adventurous, but in less than half an hour it would be over and we’d be back into the swing of the school year. I wasn’t sad about my missing lake adventure, and even though I was excited about the upcoming nine months, a small wave of seasons-changing melancholy surprised me.

  “He didn’t have any shoes on,” I said. “Why?”

  Gram shrugged. “We’ve never been able to figure that one out.”

  I paused but only briefly. “Want to tell me how he broke your heart, Gram?”

  She smiled. “That was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it?” She swiped something off her jeans-clad knee. “Well, it’s also true, but not in the romantic sense. We were friends, best friends, in fact. We both grew up out in the country.”

  She nodded the direction her family’s cabin in the woods had been located. It was long gone by the time I was born, but from what I’d heard, it had been as ramshackle as any cabin could be. Gram’s family had been poor and marred by their own Broken Rope tragic deaths, giving them more than their fair share of struggles.

  “We were country hillbillies, Betts, but it sure made for a great childhood. Imagine being able to run wild through the woods, climb every tree in sight just because it was there, find and watch wild animals, run through clear streams that weren’t polluted with what they’re polluted with today.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “Oh, it was.” Gra
m glanced toward the cabin’s location again but then shook off the past and looked at me. “Gent and I were some of those wild children. We played together all the time. We did everything—we even helped each other with chores so we could go back into the woods and climb another tree or—oh, remind me to tell you about the moonshine apparatus we came upon. No time today, but it’s a good story. Anyway, when Gent was ten, his family moved into Broken Rope to work at the bakery.”

  “The Kennington Bakery?” I said.

  The old building was still standing in a residential part of Broken Rope, right off the main boardwalk and behind the courthouse. It was a three-story brick behemoth with large windows up and down its sides. The windows had been broken as the result of passersby who couldn’t resist throwing a rock or two just to see if they could hit their targets. It wasn’t a tourist stop, though, and there was no way to turn it into one. It had become dangerous and was headed for eventual demolition, though it wasn’t a high-priority project. Even Jake, my best friend and the town’s self-appointed historical archivist, who hated to see old things demolished, wasn’t doing anything to fight for the building.

  The bakery had been founded and owned by two gentlemen who had an idea for a cakelike pastry with a cream filling. They thought their idea was sweet, delicious, and destined to become a nationwide favorite. They were right; their Puff Pocket became a snack that grocery stores throughout the country stocked and sold. Customers devoured it.

  “One and the same,” Gram said. “Gent left and I didn’t have a close playmate any longer. I still remember the sense of abandonment I felt, and how lonely I was.” Gram smiled again. “I was a kid and didn’t understand how that, of course, would pass.”