Forever's Embrace (Forever In Luck Series Book 2)

by J. Darling

  Setting her on her feet, Nik, stood behind her and held onto her arms. “This is the original creamery from when our ancestors settled here and began making cheese. It’s been outfitted with modern day conveniences, but the old world craftsmanship and décor has remained. This room is a tasting room of sorts. It’s where we have lunch. The women in the family have always worked in the creamery, and never had time to go to the house to make lunch, so for generations, this is where we’ve eaten lunches of cheese, bread, smoked meats, milk, and so on.

  Jules looked up at him. “Come to think of it, you guys don’t come to the house and have lunch. I never really thought about it. This place is phenomenal. Gosh, by the looks of that table, your family must’ve been quite large. It must hold twenty people.”

  Nik laughed. “Family and a few farm hands.”

  Staring at one long wall, she couldn’t get over all the awards. “Please, help me to the wall.” Walking over carefully, she perused the awards and triumphs of the Albrecht family. “This is stunning, absolutely stunning.” Turning to look at the opposite side of the room, she saw a long carved bar and counter area, a large sink, a six burner old fashioned stove, and an industrial sized refrigerator door to a walk in cooler. There was another set of swinging doors, too. “What’s behind those doors?” she asked.

  “That’s the creamery, the place where we made our butter and cheese.”

  Oh God, she had to see this. She had to, and she knew it was going to be nothing short of momentous. “I, I, I need to see, please.” Slowly walking her up to the doors, Nik stopped and flipped some switches on the wall, and Jules could see lights turn on through the cracks around the doors. Stepping through the doors, she let out a strangled scream. Overwhelmed, she fell back against Nik.

  “Whoa, you alright?” Nik asked in alarm, taking a firm grip of her arms.

  “Yes,” she choked out, distracted by the sights all around. “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming? Pinch me, would you please.”

  Nik really laughed at that. “You’re the who likes to pinch people, not me, and you’re being silly, give me the barn over the creamery any old day.”

  Jules shook her head, as she looked at several long vats for making large batches of cheese, and then cheese presses of all different sizes and quantities hanging on the walls, then row after row of old world butter molds with cute little designs in them stacked on shelves. All manner of equipment was present, some very old and some new, all dying to be used. A long industrial sink area was on one side of the room, and on the other, a long counter with large writing on the wall above it. She stared at the writing. It was Norwegian, poorly written, but Norwegian nonetheless. “I thought your family was Danish.”

  “Primarily, but we have some Norwegian and German too,” he answered.

  Looking up at Nik, she asked, “Can I stay here and look around for a while?”

  “Sure, let’s go over to that pillar, you can hold onto it while I go get your walker.”

  Several hours and one nap later, Jules sat having lunch with the guys in the tasting room. She loved that name, the tasting room. Admiring the long dining table with its old world craftsmanship, she couldn’t help but think that generations of Albrecht’s had sat in this very room, at this very table, creating a life for themselves, and as she glanced to the wall of awards, a legacy. Amazing!

  “You’re mind looks like it’s working pretty hard there, tootsie,” Karl Albrecht commented.

  Jules smiled widely. She loved being called tootsie by Linnie’s dad. Sometimes he shortened it to just toots, but no matter, she loved it because it made her feel like a real member of the family. “It is!” she exclaimed. “I love this place. Before today, I didn’t even know it existed, but I could spend hours here.”

  Not sure if she should continue, but unable to contain her curiosity, she went on. “Ahh, Jake, never brought me here. He mentioned that at one time he was going to be a cheesemaker, but then things, ahh, well, happened and it didn’t work out. If it wouldn’t be too much of an intrusion, would you be willing to give me a little history, and tell me the whole story.”

  Karl took a drink of his milk, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and sat back in his chair. “Sure. I was an only child, and I inherited this farm from my father, who was to share it with his brother, my uncle. My uncle joined World War II and was killed, so that left it all to my dad. Mom and dad wanted lots of children, but they only got me, and I wasn’t interested in making cheese or butter. I helped here and there, but never paid much attention to the ins and outs.

  “When I met and married Katherine, we called her Katie by the way, it was with the understanding that she’d learn that part of the business from my mother, Britta, and she did. Because of a lack of education over the years, our family’s cheesemaking trade and recipes have been handed down from generation to generation by memory, and with each generation we’ve lost bits and pieces along the way. With Katie’s death, we lost it all, well mostly, as she didn’t have time to teach Jake what she knew before passing on. So, we had no choice but to close it down.”

  How tragic, Jules’s heart cried for the loss. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry for your family’s loss.”

  Karl nodded in acknowledgement. “The decision to shut down was a hard one, and although Jake said he understood, that he didn’t bring you here tells me much. He had big dreams of getting his master’s mark for several of the cheeses we made, and for carrying on our family’s tradition.”

  “What’s a master’s mark?” she asked.

  “An assurance to consumers that they’re getting the best and highest quality of cheese made. It’s a rigorous program, and there’s only one in all of the United States, and its located right here in Wisconsin. The rest are in Europe. Once you’ve been certified as an expert in the cheese you’ve chosen to study, you can put your mark on that cheese once you’ve made it. You must complete the program for each cheese you want a mark in, for a limit of two at a time, and you must have ten years’ worth of experience making cheese before you can apply. In addition, Wisconsin is the only state in the country that requires cheesemakers to be licensed. Another assurance to consumers that they’re getting top quality cheese. Jake had just gotten his cheesemaker’s license when Katie died.”

  Amazing, she thought. How had she never known this? She’d learned something new today.

  “We still have people calling, looking for what we once made. Quark, or Kesella as you call it, being one of the requested items, the herbed and flavored butters, then there was Fynbo, Cream Harvarti, and Danbo to name a few more. That’s why we all behaved the way we did that day you made breakfast. I’m sorry about that by the way, it’s just that you were doing and describing things that have been lost to us. And please, don’t take Jake’s reaction to your working at the bakery to mean anything bad, it just hit too close to home, and reminded him of the opportunity he’d had and lost. ”

  What was it Jake had said that day? “There’s more going on than you know…” Hmmm, it was all starting to make some sense now. “You said you lost it all with Katie’s death, then you back tracked. Do you have some information?”

  Karl nodded with a frown, then shook his head. “Well, there’s what Jake knows from having learned from Katie, and then we have an old, old book. A diary of sorts, we think, its well over a hundred years old. Gosh, I guess it’s more accurate to say it’s closer to two hundred years old by now. Anyways, no one knows what it says really, and we won’t let it out of the family because we’re fairly certain it contains our family’s cheese and butter making secrets. We’ve tried to decipher it, but without much luck.”

  Oh my, her heart leapt to life. This was right up her alley. She had to see this, she just had to. She wanted a crack at this. “Might you trust me? Would you let me see it?”

  Karl looked to Kris and Nik. The three of them staring at one another, unspoken messages passing back and forth. Then Kris stood up and left the room.

  Karl turned back t
o her. “Kris will be right back with the book.”

  Glancing towards the creamery, she asked, “Do you know what’s written on the wall and pillars?”

  “Only that which is written in English.”

  Kris returned with the book and brought it to her, setting it on the table. Opening to the first page, she looked it over, then turned, and turned, and turned, page, after page, after page, skipping through the tome. It was a large book, broken up by recipes, along with recommended variations, feed suggestions for milk quality, then information on ripening the various cheeses they made. There was even a section on problems and troubleshooting. The person who’d written this had put some time into it, she thought. Going back to the first page she read aloud,

  “Kære familie, heri er mit forsøg på at holde tilbage vores familie 's fremtid. Mine beklagelser er, at jeg ved ikke hvordan man stave. Heri, er i Albrecht tradition, vores smør og ost indskrifter. Med kærlighed, Nana Silva, eighteen twenty-four.”

  Then she translated in English.

  “Dear Family,

  Herein is my attempt to hold forth our family's future. My regrets are that I know not how to spell. Contained herein, in Albrecht tradition, are our butter and cheese inscriptions.

  With love, Nana Silva, eighteen twenty-four.”

  Looking up to the shocked faces of Jake’s dad and brothers, she said, “I can read this, and it’s all here. She’s right about her spelling and grammar, I can see many errors throughout, but it’s a workable piece. The Danish language is similar to Norwegian and Swedish, both of which I speak. I also see some German reflected here, but I’m not fluent in German. It will take a little investigation, but I can translate this for you if you like.”

  “But…it’s like gibberish,” Kris threw out in disbelief, “things like three hog sheds for twenty cloves. It’s impossible to figure out.”

  Jules tried not to laugh, but she did smile. “How much of this have you translated?”

  Nik snorted. “Like nothing,” he said, with frustration. “We got one of those electronic translators, and we used the computer some too, but what we could figure out was weird stuff like Kris said.”

  She looked down as she chuckled, not wanting to insult their efforts. “Her spelling and grammar is what’s throwing things off, and I imagine by today’s standards, it would seem like gibberish. But you need to take into consideration the context in which this was written. We can assume from Nana Silva’s writing of eighteen twenty-four that that was the date of documentation. But what we don’t know is, how old she was at the time. Maybe a young women born in the eighteen hundreds, but more likely an older woman born in the later half of the seventeen hundreds with the use of the term Nana. And as such, she was writing what she’d learned from family born in the early seventeen hundreds.

  “At the time, old world weights and measure dating back to the Middle Ages were in use, and it was complicated by variations within regions and communities. It wasn’t until the mid-eighteen hundreds that the English unit began to take hold, and attempts were made to regulate a wide and diverse measuring system.”

  “How do you know all this?” Karl asked.

  “The study of weights and measures, old and new, was part of my pharmaceutical degree. I had to do all that, just so I could say I knew how to count and convert drams, minims, grains, and scruples.” Stopping to close the book, she continued. “Luckily, your ancestors wrote notes on the pillars and wall in the creamery, identifying their means of converting and measuring.”

  Looking at Kris, she said, “She meant hogshead by the way, not hog shed. So…” Jules stopped and tapped her finger to her temple. “Let me think. If my memory serves correctly, one hogshead was equivalent to about sixty gallons. In Kris’s example, three hogsheads would be roughly one hundred eighty gallons of milk I presume, and a clove was something like…seven or eight pounds of wool or cheese. I think. Multiply that by twenty would mean, one hundred eighty gallons of milk to get around one hundred sixty pounds of cheese, give or take, as I did round to the nearest whole number? Does that sound about right?”

  Oh, there was that look, like she’d just grown horns and a tail. “Stop looking at me like that! My brain just does that kind of stuff, knows and thinks things no one else would.”

  They all burst out laughing. Jake’s dad stood and came over to her, giving her a big hug. “There’s a place for you here, tootsie, if you want it. It’s in this book and through those doors. But whatever you decide, know you’ll always be considered family. Please translate the book, we’d be much obliged if you did.”

  *****

  Packed and on the road, Jake was glad to be done. It’d been six and a half weeks since the accident, and he’d been gone close to six of them. He hated to admit it, but he was downright homesick. It was a good thing he’d dropped from the vet tech program, because he’d never have made it being gone so long. This had been a once in a lifetime opportunity though, and he’d learned much during his time in Albany. Way more than if he’d gone through the vet tech program, so he was pleased with that.

  Fortunately for him, he’d been so busy living at the farm and working sixteen hour days, he hadn’t had much time to dwell on things, and he’d been negligent in calling his family and telling them where he was or what he was doing. He’d checked his phone though, figuring they’d call if there was a problem.

  Pulling into Monroe, he looked for the tavern Mickie had told him about. Finding it, he was quickly drawn in by the old world charm. Baumgartner’s Cheese Store and Tavern. Getting out, he headed inside, and was immediately taken back. This was his dream, to make and sell his family’s cheese, and they were doing it all right here, and then some. Stepping from the store to the adjacent tavern, he found a seat at the bar and studied the old style menu. It all looked good, but he was going for the Rueben sandwich. He wished Jules was here with him, wished she could see this. She’d love it, he thought, he just knew she would.

  After placing his order, he pulled out his phone and looked over the messages Nate had sent since he’d been gone. Not a whole lot there, just simple updates…out of hospital…in rehab…getting better…discharged to home…home therapy…working hard…doing alright. He hadn’t answered back or asked questions, because the only way he could handle being away from her was through total withdrawal.

  Shaking his head, he tried his best to stop thinking of her, and had to laugh at himself because it was hopeless. Man, his heart ached. Pulling up the images on his phone, he looked at the pictures Linnie had taken of his chest the day of the accident. He loved these images, but he could kick himself for not having more. He really should’ve taken some pictures of Jules, but he hadn’t. His food arrived and he began to eat.

  I should’ve taken a picture of her on the day of Linnie’s wedding, he thought, and another with her hair down. Smiling, he thought of how she’d behaved that day at the ice house, after having touched the fish, then laughed out loud because the memory was hilarious. Then he thought of her and the chopsticks, and how she’d reassured him that he wouldn’t go hungry.

  Why hadn’t he saved the chopsticks? She’d saved the fish they’d caught. He should’ve saved the chopsticks. Why hadn’t he had her draw a picture just for him? Why hadn’t he saved the text messages from her? Why, why, why? You’d think he’d have learned his lesson after having lost his mother. There was no going back and getting any of those things. He wished he had something of hers, something tangible, something he could touch, but all he had were memories, and the lingering feeling of her tears on his fingers as he’d caught them and brushed them away.

  Looking at the bill, he reached for his wallet and realized it wasn’t in his pants pocket. Huh, he could have sworn he put it there. Maybe his coat pocket, no, wait, something was in the breast pocket? Yep, there it was, thank goodness. Weird, he couldn’t remember putting it there. He hated this pocket, it being on the small side and all. Struggling, he couldn’t get his wallet out. Pushing his hand in the l
ittle pouch, he froze. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. He knew for a fact that Jules had been holding onto it when he’d walked from her hospital room, because he’d put it in her hand. He felt a tremor flow through his body as he pulled out the polished piece of Baltic Amber. Jūratė tears, cried for her one true love.

  “Word of advice, son, don’t give up. Things worth having are worth fighting for.”

  He had to go to her. He had to find her. He wasn’t waiting one more day for her to contact him. He’d be at her house in about two hours. Linnie’d said she was supposed to be in Connecticut come the third week of February, so he needed to hurry. Paying his bill, he grabbed his stuff and left in a rush. He had her address, and had looked up the way to her house some time ago, so he’d find it from memory.

  I’m going to find her, he vowed, even if it means going to Connecticut. I don’t care if she’s confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, I don’t. I want her, and always have. We can still have a life together, it’ll just be a little different than most, and so what, I don’t care, it’ll simply be our normal.

  A little over two hours later, Jake pulled up in front of Jules’s house, his breathing becoming shaky when he saw the for sale sign in the yard. Getting out of his truck, he started up the sidewalk when the front door opened and a woman he didn’t know walked out, locking the door. She stopped short when she turned and saw him.

  “Hello. If you’d like to see the house, we’ll be having an open house on Sunday.”

  Jake nodded. “Ahhh, yeah.”

  “Could I offer you my card? I’m the agent listing this residence.”

  Jake reached up and ran his hand over his head, then took a deep breath. “No, ahhh, I won’t be in town come Sunday.”

  “Now then? I guess I could show you the house now if you’d like. It’s a bit messy, the movers having just dropped off boxes and packing material.”

  Snapping his head up, Jake jumped at the opportunity. “Please, if you’d be so kind. The mess is no bother.”