A Good Batch
Chapter twenty-six
Margot saw Lou’s text at nine forty-five and headed for the kitchen before she finished reading it.
Kitchen. Need two more hands. Promo deadline.
She found him at the prep island surrounded by three sheet pans of cooled sugar cookies and an industrial-sized piping bag that looked like it required upper-body strength and a building permit.
“Elaine wants promo photos for the gala press release by eleven. Decorated cookies. Christmas-themed. ‘Showcasing resort hospitality.’” He blew out a tired breath. “I need them done in an hour. I’ve got one hand.”
“What happened to your hand?” She eyed his bandaged right hand.
“Mixer incident. It’s fine. The burn is small.” He held up his right palm. “I can pipe but I can’t hold the pan still and pipe at the same time.”
She washed her hands. “What do I do?”
“Hold the pan. Don’t talk. And if somebody shows up, act like you know what you’re doing.”
Someone showed up four minutes later. Evan, with a screwdriver tucked behind his ear, stopped in the kitchen doorway at the sight of Lou’s piping setup and the cookies and Margot in an apron she’d found on the hook by the sink.
Lou pointed at him. “Good. You’re helping.”
“I’m fixing the pantry shelf.”
“The shelf can wait. You have two working hands. Put them to work here.”
Evan looked at the cookies. Looked at Margot. She shrugged. He came in and washed his hands.
Lou directed them with calm precision and the occasional blunt correction.
“You’re piping, not painting a fence. Less pressure. You’re flooding the surface, not drawing a line.” He watched Evan’s first attempt at a Christmas tree. “Better. See how the green fills the edges? That’s what you want.”
“I work with ropes,” Evan said. “Not frosting.”
“Rope, frosting, same principle. Even tension. Consistent pull. The medium changes, the physics don’t.” Lou moved to the next pan. “Margot, hold that steady. You’re letting the pan drift and the line is following you.”
She pressed her palm flat on the metal and the pan stopped moving. Evan’s piping hand tracked steadily across the star cookie and the red icing settled into a clean, even coat.
“There,” Lou said. “When you work together it’s better.”
Margot didn’t look at Evan, sensed him looking at her.
They fell into a rhythm. She held and steadied while he piped. Lou moved between the pans, adding detail work, gold sugar on the tree tips, silver on the stars. The kitchen smelled like butter and vanilla and the green icing that had gotten on Margot’s cuff somewhere around cookie number twelve.
“How did you get into baking?” she asked Lou.
“My grandmother. She baked every Sunday. I’d sit on the counter and she’d let me add ingredients. Never measured. Just knew.” He set down his piping bag and flexed his bandaged hand carefully. “That’s what I’ve spent twenty-five years trying to get back to. Knowing without measuring.”
“Do you get there?”
“Occasionally.” He smiled. “On a good batch. You know when it’s right.”
“I always measure,” Margot said.
“I know you do.” Lou tilted his head toward the cookies. “But you’ve been holding that pan without thinking about it for twenty minutes. Just feeling where it needs to be. That’s not measurement.”
She looked at her hand on the pan. He was right. She’d stopped consciously adjusting and started just holding.
Beside her, Evan made a noise that might have been a laugh, very quiet, pressed back before it fully formed.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.” He finished the last tree on the pan and set the piping bag down. “He’s right, that’s all.”
“About the measuring.”
“About the knowing without measuring.” He looked at the row of finished cookies, red and green and silver and gold, lined up on the cooling rack.
“You knew this expo was in trouble before you had data for it. You knew Caleb was worth watching before we had evidence. You knew something was wrong with the power backup before I explained why.”
He handed her the last unpipped star. “You measure because it makes you feel safer. But the knowing is already there.”
The kitchen was quiet for a moment except for the hum of the refrigerators and the low tick of the cooling oven.
Lou picked up his piping bag and moved to the far end of the prep island.
“I have to check on the ganache in the walk-in. Two minutes.” He disappeared into the walk-in cooler, which was either true or the most deliberate exit she’d ever witnessed from a man who’d been doing this long enough to know exactly what he was doing.
The kitchen was suddenly very small.
Margot set the star cookie on the rack and pressed her thumb against the icing to test the set. It left a mark. Still soft.
“He’s not coming back for two minutes,” Evan said.
“No.”
“I need to tell you something.”
She turned. He was leaning against the prep island, arms loose at his sides, the screwdriver still tucked behind his ear.
“When I asked you to meet me at the dock shed that first morning. With the glass shard. I told myself it was about the investigation. Finding whoever took the ornaments.” He paused. “It wasn’t only that.”
The refrigerators hummed. The walk-in door stayed closed.
“I know,” she said.
“I wanted a reason to see you again. Before the expo ended and you went back to Raleigh and I ran out of reasons.” He looked at the cookies instead of her. “I’ve been out of practice with this. All of it. I don’t know that I’m doing it right.”
“You’ve been doing it fine. Better than fine.”
He looked up. The kitchen light was unflattering, and she had icing on her cuff and her hair was moist from the humidity. She looked nothing like someone who had things under control.
And for the first time in two years, she was all right with that.
“When the expo ends,” she started.
“I know.” He said it before she finished. Not dismissing it. Holding it. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”
“It doesn’t have to be an ending.”
“No.” He looked at her. “It doesn’t.”
The walk-in door opened. Lou emerged with a bowl of ganache, took in the two of them standing on opposite sides of the prep island in the overly careful way of people who had just said something and not yet decided what to do with it, and set the ganache down without comment.
He picked up his piping bag. “The last twelve need silver on the points.”
Margot handed Evan the piping bag. He took it and went back to the cookies. She held the pan steady.
Lou watched them work in the easy rhythm they’d fallen into without discussing it. He piped a small star onto a finished cookie, assessed it, and nodded. “That is a good batch.”