What Henry’s load had been, though, I didn’t know. The only personal things I knew about him were his book choices, that he was a widower, and that none of his children lived in the state. Also that he tended to avoid conversation, most often preferring grunting and shaking his head whenever those could pass as communication.
I sighed, thinking about the exquisite maple syrup that Henry had given Julia and me the last time he was on the bookmobile. “Phyllis said he’d been out at his sugar shack.” I put my hand on Eddie’s warm back to feel his quiet reverberations. “He’d finished boiling sap and was cleaning up.”
Last year I’d ventured out to a state park to watch a maple syrup cooking demonstration. Add maple sap to a large pan over a fire, boil, add more sap, boil. Add more firewood, add more sap. Repeat until the liquid turned into maple syrup, which was when it reached just above two hundred and nineteen degrees.
I’d happened to mention my park trip to Henry, and over the next few months, he’d dribbled out a lot of maple syrup–making information. For example, I now knew the large commercial operations had complicated systems of tubes that ran from the trees to large storage vats and fancy machines that processed the sap into syrup. I knew that Henry was old-school—no surprise there—and hauled his sap from the trees in buckets. I also knew that he cooked his sap in a massive and ancient pan that he’d inherited from his father, and I knew that he sorted his firewood by age and that he considered firewood stacking to be a fine art.
“Poor Henry,” I whispered, pulling Eddie close to my chest and hugging him tight. For a change, instead of struggling to get away, my cat let me snuggle him close.
And never stopped purring.
• • •
The next day, I risked life and limb by venturing into the restaurant owned and run by my best friend. Kristen Jurek was, physically, my complete opposite. Tall, where I was efficient. Blond and straight hair to my black and curly. She also had the easy grace of the natural athlete, while I had to practice the simplest activity over and over again before I got the hang of it, and she was so used to the admiring stares of men that she didn’t even notice them. If a man stared at me, my first reaction was to wonder what food was stuck in my teeth.
I banged on the back door of the Three Seasons, using the same triple-knock pattern I’d used since we met, the summer we were twelve. We’d encountered each other on Chilson’s city beach and, over cones of mint chocolate chip ice cream, had started a friendship that had endured time, distance, and even living in the same town seven months out of the year. Kristen closed down her restaurant just before winter—hence the restaurant’s name—and spent the snowy months in Key West, tending bar on the weekends and doing as little as possible during the week.
She’d recently returned to Chilson and had immediately jumped into restaurant-readying preparations. For most people, the weeks before the summer season were a time of happy anticipation. Not for Kristen.
“Hey,” I called, shutting the door behind me. “Are you here?”
A metallic crash, following by a sailor-quality curse, was answer enough.
Smiling, I picked my way around stacks of boxes and went straight to the kitchen, where a deeply tanned Kristen, with her hands on her hips, was staring at a large pan on one of the many gas burners. “I hate that pan,” she said. “I’ve always hated it.”
“Then get rid of it,” I said, pulling a stool up to the work counter crowded with cooking and serving items, half of which I couldn’t identify.
“Can’t. Paid way too much money for the dang thing.”
I could see how that would be a problem. “Has Scruffy touched it?” I asked. “Sell it on eBay, saying that it was used by the producer of Trock’s Troubles.”
Scruffy was Kristen’s current love interest. He was indeed the producer of Trock’s Troubles, a long-running cooking television show hosted by Trock Farrand that was occasionally filmed in Chilson because Trock owned a house in town. Scruffy was also Trock’s son and the tidiest person I’d ever met. This was a man who ironed creases into his jeans. Who always carried a handkerchief. Who never had a hair out of place and always knew the right thing to say.
Kristen adjusted the burner’s heat and glared at the pan. “No, but it could be arranged. He’s flying in next week.”
“That will be nice.” I took a linen napkin off the top of a huge pile and tried to fold it into a pirate hat. “Have they scheduled you?”
The Three Seasons had been short-listed to appear on the show last year and had eventually risen to the top. Kristen had tried to pull out, saying it wouldn’t look right to other area restaurateurs since she was dating the producer, but the avuncular Trock had blustered at her for being an idiot and had ignored her request.
“Yes,” she said morosely.
“Hey, that’s great!” I waved the napkin over my head the way I’d heard people did towels at sporting events. “Awesome, even. Why aren’t you more excited?”
With a whisk, she poked at the contents of the pan. “Because it’s set for a July filming. And an October airing.”
Her moroseness suddenly made sense. “Oh.” From the Fourth of July to mid-August, tourists and summer residents flooded the region in numbers so large that many locals didn’t venture downtown at all. Having a TV crew in the restaurant during peak season would make things worse in ways I couldn’t comprehend. And timing the show to be aired in October, right before the restaurant closed, was about as stupid as timing could get.
“Scruffy can’t rearrange something?” I asked.
Kristen shook her head, causing her long blond ponytail to flip back and forth. “Prior and future commitments, blah, blah, blah.”
The television world was a mystery to me, and the more I learned about it, the more I was glad I’d become a librarian. “Well, I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
Kristen made a hmmphing noise, reached for a spoon, dipped it into the pan, and tasted whatever was in there. “God, that’s awful,” she said, squinching her facial features into something a five-year-old would have been proud of. “Want to try?”
“After that advertisement, how could I not?” I accepted the spoonful she held out. “What is it?” I sniffed the whitish sauce. Dark flecks that I assumed were intentional floated around.
“Bechamel.”
“What’s that?”
“White sauce.”
I rolled my eyes and tasted. It was a glorious burst of rich buttery flavor, heightened by the flavors of whatever herbs she’d tossed in. “This is awful?”
“You are the worst taster ever.” She turned off the burner and poured the sauce down a sink. “Couldn’t you tell that there were too many competing flavors?”
“Tasted fine.”
“Why do I even try to educate you?”
I grinned. “Because while you enjoy pain, the recovery time from this is far shorter than if you banged your head against the wall.”
“And involves exactly the same amount of reward.” She filled the pan with warm water and went to the refrigerator. “However, you are to be rewarded for being the person who can keep me sane even after I’ve failed at that stupid sauce ten times in a row.” She thumped two small white dishes on the counter. “Here. Eat.”
“I get to eat both of them?” The thought made me start to salivate. Eating Kristen’s crème brûlée was the closest I might ever get to heaven.
“Do you want to help me perfect the summer’s signature dish, which will be topped by the new Three Seasons bechamel sauce?”
“Not really.”
“Then you only get one.” She took out two spoons. “Eat and be grateful for what you’ve been given.”
Five minutes of silence ensued. When both dishes were empty, Kristen sighed. “Okay, I feel better now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Took you long enough.”