Chapter 14
"Try this."
Irma set a small plate in front of me. On it was a triangular scone, golden on top and pale on its broken side where she'd split it for presentation. The scone was studded with tiny dark flecks throughout the crumb.
"New recipe?" I asked.
"I've been working on it for days now. Cream scones. But there's a twist you might like, being Claire's neighbor and all."
"Claire?" I asked curiously.
She nodded and leaned on the counter with both forearms. The bakery was quiet, the morning rush over, the lunch rush not yet begun. I'd come in for some bread and maybe a donut or two.
"I take Claire's black tea and I steep it in the heavy cream the night before," Irma explained.
"Low and slow, in the refrigerator, twelve hours.
Then I strain out the leaves and use that cream in the dough.
So the tea flavor gets into the fat, and the fat carries it through the whole scone when it bakes.
You don't get a tea taste sitting on top. You get it everywhere."
I picked up the scone and bit into it.
"Well?"
"Irma, this is delicious."
"You think so? You're not just being polite?"
"The tea comes through, but it doesn't take over. It just... deepens everything."
"That's exactly what I was going for." She straightened up, pleased. "I'm going to talk to Claire about getting a regular supply. Could be good for both of us. She grows it, I bake with it. Doesn't get more local than that."
"I bet she'd love that."
Irma filled a mug with coffee and slid it to me across the counter. Strong and black, just the way I liked it.
"So. Have you heard about Aimee and Danny Marsh?"
I looked up from the scone. Irma's face was arranged in careful neutrality, but her eyes were sharper, reading me.
"What about them?"
"They're back together. High school sweethearts, you know. Danny divorced now, and Aimee... well."
She let the sentence trail, leaving space for me to fill it with whatever reaction I was going to have.
"Oh, right. Aimee talked to me about that. Pretty great story, isn't it? Reuniting after all these years."
"She told you?"
"She did. I'm really happy for her," I said, and meant it. "I haven't met Danny, but if Aimee likes him, he must be an okay guy."
"He's running the marine supply out on Route 101. Good man. Quiet. They were inseparable in high school, then life happened the way it does."
"I'm glad they found their way back to each other. Aimee deserves someone who makes her happy."
Irma studied me for another half-second, then whatever she was looking for she apparently found, because her shoulders relaxed a fraction.
"She does deserve happiness," Irma agreed. "I hope they build something good together."
"Me too."
The moment passed. Irma wiped the counter with a blue cloth, which was what she did when she was switching between topics.
"I hear you've got solar panels for your cabin now. And that Abner Flint helped you put them up?"
"I do and he did. Abner designed the whole system, actually. The man knows more about electrical engineering than anyone I've met."
"Abner Flint." She said his name the way people in town always said it, with a mixture of wariness and wonder, as if discussing a creature from local mythology. "He comes to town sometimes. Wears a big pistol on his hip. Never causes trouble but... Well, people say all kinds of things about him."
"People say all kinds of things about a lot of folks."
"That's true." She folded the cloth into a neat square. "Did you find him as unique as others do?"
"He's intense," I laughed. "But he's not what people make him out to be. He's smart, he's principled, and he helped me when I needed it. That's what I know about Abner Flint."
"Good," Irma nodded slowly, as if I'd confirmed her own impressions.
"I've always known Abner to be a solid fellow.
But small towns do that, don't they? Turn someone a little different into a legend, then treat the legend like it's the person.
The rumors fill in where the knowing leaves off.
Easier than walking up that mountain and finding out for yourself. "
She said it simply, without lecturing, the observation of a woman who had watched her town do this for decades.
"You're right, Irma. Abner Flint is a very solid fellow." I grinned. "Although I personally wouldn't go up the mountain to his place uninvited. Just saying."
"Yes. That's probably wise."
She went to refill my coffee again, and that's when I noticed the way she moved from the counter, the stiffness in her right leg, the careful way she distributed her weight. I peeked over the counter and saw Irma was wearing a brace on her right leg.
"What happened to your knee?"
She glanced down at it as if she'd forgotten it was there.
"Oh that. I twisted it two days ago. I was pulling a full sheet tray of sugar cookies out of the bottom oven and my foot caught the mat. Went sideways."
"That sounds painful."
"It was colorful. I said some words my mother would not have appreciated." She set the coffeepot back on the burner. "I'm not as limber as I was twenty years ago. No use complaining, these ovens don't care about that."
The way she said it was light, but I knew the reality underneath was not.
Irma ran this bakery alone. She was here every morning, mixing and shaping and baking and frosting and selling and cleaning.
She did it six days a week while the rest of Port Chasten was still sleeping.
I looked at her hands on the counter. They were strong hands, but the joints were swollen at the base of each finger.
"Is there anything I can do?"
She waved the offer away.
"You're sweet, Thomas. What I need is another pair of hands in here four or five mornings a week. Someone who can learn the routine and handle the front when I'm in the back." She smiled. "If you know anyone looking for work, send them my way."
The thought arrived fully formed, the way solutions sometimes do when the pieces have been lying around waiting to be assembled.
Grace.
The way her hands moved when she worked in a kitchen, confident and practiced, the muscle memory of a childhood spent cooking. Her motel job was gone and she needed work. Plus she came to this bakery all the time.
"Do you know Grace Kim? Comes in here fairly often. Pretty Asian girl, lots of tattoos."
Irma didn't hesitate. "Short hair? Drives that old Toyota?"
"That's her."
"Sure, I know her. She's always friendly. Buys sourdough and those chocolate cake donuts. Seems like a pleasant girl."
"Grace is looking for work. And she has restaurant experience. Grew up in her parents' kitchen."
"Oh?" Irma's eyebrows lifted with genuine interest. "How do you know her?"
I paused. Grace's living situation was hers to share or not share. I wasn't going to tell Irma she was sleeping in her RAV4 on my property.
"She cooks and cleans for me sometimes," I said, which was true. "She's a hard worker. Reliable. Shows up when she says she will and does what needs doing."
Irma was watching me with the practiced eye of a woman who knew when someone was holding back on her.
"Anything else I should know?"
I thought about Grace. Her laugh, her energy, her profanity.
"She has kind of a salty vocabulary."
"Thomas, I spent forty years married to a commercial fisherman. I can handle salty vocabulary." She crossed her arms. "Can she handle getting a full tray of sugar cookies out of the oven without dropping them on the floor?"
"I believe she can."
"If you're willing to vouch for her, I'll bring her on."
The weight settled on me. Vouching for someone was a specific thing, especially in a small town like this. It meant attaching your reputation to theirs.
Grace was twenty-four, living out of her car, running from violence, carrying a past she parceled out in fragments.
She was also one of the most genuine people I'd met on this peninsula. I'd watched her pack tea for twelve hours without complaining. I'd eaten food she made with care and skill. I'd seen her sit and listen to conversations and offer thoughtful, if profane, insights.
"I do vouch for her," I said.
"Good enough for me. Have her come in tomorrow? I will let her work a trial run and see if she's a fit. Four-thirty AM, sharp. I don't wait for people."
"She used to work overnight shifts at the motel outside of Port Chasten. Four-thirty AM won't be a problem."
"We'll see."
Irma reached under the counter and brought out a small paper bag. She put the remaining scone in it and folded the top over twice.
"Take that with you. If you see her, tell Claire I'll be calling her about the tea."
I left the bakery with the paper bag and the quiet satisfaction of having connected two needs that fit together. Grace needed work, Irma needed hands. And Claire's tea was ending up in scones sold on the main street of Port Chasten. Small threads weaving into something.
The morning air outside was warm and salt-tinged, and Port Chasten's two blocks of storefronts looked welcoming in the morning light. I walked to my truck feeling good about the way things were coming together.
The pond was rippled by the wind. I sat on the bank with Scout beside me, both of us in the shade of the willows on the south side.
The afternoon sun came through the canopy in broken shafts that moved across the water when the breeze stirred.
Dragonflies worked the surface and the air smelled of warm grass and mud and the faint sweetness of twinflower blooming in the understory.
Scout had her boots off and her bare feet in the grass. Her hair was loose, her blonde strands glimmering in the sunshine. She was telling me about a book she'd been reading, a collection of Wendell Berry essays Abner had found at the Port Chasten library sale many years ago.
"He says the mind that is not baffled is not employed. I keep turning that over. Berry's good at sentences that work on you for days. Father says Berry is the only living American worth quoting."
"That sounds like Abner."