But I must say, for one who is supposedly grieving, he certainly seemed to be smitten with a certain young lady at the party. Not that anyone would blame him if he couldn’t take his eyes off her-the young lady in question is a beauty, and a personal favorite of mine, and one who has had more than her own share of heartbreak, so they say. Nothing would please me more than to see her meet a nice young man.
So-we shall see what we shall see!
– Grace
Chapter 5
VANESSA was leaning on the counter next to her cash register, writing her shopping list for Thurs day’s bake-a-thon, when it occurred to her that 252 guests times four cookies each equaled one hell of a lot of baking between now and Saturday. She picked up the phone and dialed Mia’s cell.
“I think we should start baking before Thursday,” she said when Mia picked up.
“Who is this and how did you get my number?” Mia asked calmly.
“I’m the person who’s trying to figure out how much lemon glaze we’re going to have to make to glaze all these damned cookies. And have you figured out how many cookies we’re talking about here?”
Before Mia had a chance to respond, Vanessa told her.
“One thousand and eight, that’s how many.”
“Divided by twelve equals… eighty-four dozen,” Mia told her. “So we take the recipe, which makes… let’s see, I think it was-”
“Five dozen. I have the recipe right in front of me.” Vanessa bit her bottom lip. “I don’t trust that to be right, though. It’s only five dozen if you make them exactly the same size as the person who wrote the recipe, and that never seems to work for me.”
“Want to make ninety dozen, just in case?”
There was a long silence, after which both women began to laugh.
“Sure. Ninety dozen! What the hell!” Vanessa tried to make light of the task. “What’s a few dozen more?”
“It won’t take any time at all with both of us baking.”
“Seriously, I think you’re grossly underestimating the amount of time we’re going to need. Today is Tuesday. I’m thinking maybe we start tomorrow and plan to keep on baking right up to the rehearsal dinner, after which we return to our respective kitchens.”
“Maybe we need to do this in teams,” Mia suggested.
“That might work if we could recruit a few more bakers. Can you think of anyone else who could be talked into pitching in?”
“I can probably get Dorsey to make some,” Mia thought aloud. “And my cousin Aidan’s wife, Mara. She loves to bake.”
“What about your friend Annie? Isn’t the matron of honor supposed to help the bride out with all the last-minute details?”
“Yeah, but she’s in New Mexico on a case. We’re holding our breath that she gets back in time to make it to the wedding. Otherwise, you’ll be bumped from bridesmaid to maid of honor.”
“We’ll worry about that on Saturday. Today you need to find out if Annie has a kitchenette in her hotel room. We need all the help we can get.”
“We’ll be okay. I’ll just ask Dorsey and Mara. Between the four of us, we should be fine.”
“Maybe. That breaks it down to”-she tried to mentally compute-“roughly twenty-two dozen cookies each, give or take a dozen or so. And this is going to take a lot of flour, sugar, and butter. I think I’ll call over to the Market Basket while I’m thinking of it to see if I need to make a special order. I doubt they have this much butter on hand.”
“Right about now is when you get to say, ‘You should have gone with the truffles.’ “Mia sighed. “I guess this wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Of course it’s a great idea. You wanted to honor your mother’s memory and we’re going to do exactly that. I just thought I should point out that we should not wait until Thursday to start, and that we were severely understaffed.”
“If we start baking on Wednesday, they’ll be stale by Saturday.”
“No, they won’t. We’ll freeze them and put the glaze on them all on Friday. They’ll be fine.”
“According to the schedule you made up, on Friday we’re supposed to put them in boxes and tie on those pretty ribbons.”
“So we nudge the schedule a little,” Vanessa said to assure herself as much as she assured Mia. “We’ll get them into their little boxes and we’ll get the ribbons tied on and everything will be fine.”
The bell over Bling’s door rang and Vanessa looked up as a woman closed the door behind her.
“I’ll check with Ken at the market and get back to you if there’s a problem. Meantime, think about maybe three cookies per guest. That would eliminate about twenty dozen cookies if my seat-of-the-pants math is right. Gotta run…”
She hung up the phone and replaced the receiver, then moved the phone to one side of the cash register. She smiled at the potential customer.
“Welcome to Bling. May I help you find something, or are you just poking?”
“Just poking,” the woman replied.
“Poke away,” Vanessa told her cheerfully. “Let me know if there’s something you’d like to try on, or if there’s something from one of the cases you’d like a better look at.”
The woman smiled tentatively.
Vanessa watched the customer without appearing to, appraising her unconsciously. The woman appeared to be in her early thirties, her hair colored light brown but not done well. Vanessa suspected that the woman had done her color herself but wasn’t very skilled at it. Her makeup was a little heavier than what she normally saw on the weekday tourists, who tended to be very conservative in their dress and appearance. This woman wore a long sleeved T-shirt with a mock turtleneck, long pants just a hair too tight, and faux-leather shoes that were far from new and probably rubbed her feet uncomfortably. She carried an out-of-season straw bag, and her unpolished fingernails were chewed to the quick. There was an air of hesitancy about her, as if she had just realized that she’d entered a shop where she couldn’t afford to buy anything. Vanessa was no stranger to that sort of uncertainty because she’d felt it so many times before in her old life.
And, she reminded herself, there’d been more than one time in my life when I’d worn shoes very much like hers. I’ll bet hers are just as uncomfortable as mine were.
Vanessa didn’t have to look at her own hands to know that these days, her nails were buffed and polished and kept pretty with a once-a-week appointment with a manicurist, but once upon a time, the sheer stress of her life had caused her to bite her nails down to nothing, and she’d never had time for polish.
The woman walked around the shop, her eyes darting from one item to another, but her fingers never reached out to touch any of the lovely items on display. In the way she hung her head and the wariness in her eyes, Vanessa recognized something else of the woman she herself had been, once upon a time. She’d have bet her entire week’s receipts that if she pulled up the sleeves of the woman’s shirt, she’d find the imprint of angry fingers bruised into her upper arms.
“It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Vanessa said, hoping to put the woman at ease. “I think spring is finally with us for real.”
“Yes. It’s real nice out.”
“Those shorts on the rack right next to you are on sale,” Vanessa pointed out.
The woman paused to look through them. She stopped at a pair of madras plaid, glanced at the price tag, then pretended that she hadn’t blanched when she read the number.
“Are you touristing today?” Vanessa asked.
“What?” The woman frowned. “Oh. Yeah. I’m just here for the day.”
“Where are you from?”