Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“Oh, shut up, Nancy,” Marina says wearily, refilling Walt’s wineglass. “Our appearance on your show got you more views than you’ve had all year, and you’re obviously loving it. You’re welcome.”
“I don’t remember thanking you for anything,” Nancy snipes.
Marina laughs. “You never thank anyone. You’re just as entitled as you were in high school.”
“Well, you’re just as short as you were in high school,” Nancy retorts, looking Marina up and down. I sigh and reach for my glass of wine.
A shrill beep joins the commotion. Heads turn to Mayor Bradley, who presses a button on his watch to silence it. “Well.” He breaks into his first genuine smile of the night and rises from the table. “I’ve got to go.”
“No!” The word leaves my mouth like a reflex, making the table go silent.
I set my wineglass down hard enough that the wine nearly sloshes onto the tablecloth.
Everyone is staring at me, in what feels like the first time I’ve gotten their attention all night.
“I invited you all here to have dinner, talk to Mayor Bradley, and hear about the apple festival’s VIP package,” I say.
“We have had dinner, you have talked to Mayor Bradley, but no one has let me get a word in about our goddamn VIP package. You will stay seated, you will eat dessert, and you will listen to me talk about the benefits of being a fucking VIP.”
Our guests look down at their plates, remorse on their faces.
“Sorry,” Mayor Bradley mumbles, sinking back into his seat.
“I’m sorry, too,” says Meg sullenly.
Sera gives a stifled sneeze into her napkin.
“I only use a mix for sponge cake,” Tim clarifies in a whisper.
We sit in awkward silence while Marina and Randy clear the table and bring out plates of apple galette topped with vanilla ice cream.
“Looks good,” Elise says. “What is it?”
“Honey-Mustard apple galette,” I say. “It’s disgusting.”
Her smile withers.
After yesterday’s chaos of the leaking ceiling, dealing with the plumber, running around to home decor shops, and decorating Marina’s house late into the night, I never got a chance to pick up non-mustard apples, nor did I have time to figure out how to make Bertram’s apple abomination taste good.
Instead, this morning I dutifully sliced the Honey Mustard apples, coated them in cinnamon and sugar, folded pie crusts around them, and threw them in the oven to let the fates take it from there.
They’d baked like regular apples. Their juices bubbled and caramelized, and there was a smell almost like apple pie permeating the house when I’d pulled them from the oven. Almost . It smelled like apple pie with a little…something else.
I planned on bullshitting something about the creativity of Greenstead’s farmers when I served it tonight.
I was going to steal Bertram’s speech from the tasting and say this galette perfectly encapsulated Greenstead’s history.
But I can’t be bothered to do that now. Tonight, they get a mustardy apple dessert with no context.
Our guests suffer their way through the galette. Their faces are pained, but they don’t complain. I try a bite, hoping I’ve somehow found a way to make the apples taste good, but it tastes as unpleasant as I’d feared, sweet and savory clashing together in discord.
“The crust is delicious,” Meg says politely. Like everyone else, she’s eating around the filling.
“It’s store-bought,” I mutter.
“Beautifully presented,” Jaclyn chimes in.
“Nice bake on it.” Tim taps the crust with his fork. “Perfectly browned. That takes skill.”
My anger melts a little, watching them bend over backward to find something to compliment about this terrible dessert. “Thank you. I have zero skill, though.”
“Oh, take a compliment,” Tim says.
“That’s Lettie’s problem,” Walt adds. “Try to compliment her fudge and she starts telling you every single little thing that’s wrong with it.”
“Lettie?” I ask. “From Lettie’s Confections?” It’s strange to hear her spoken about in the present tense. Since she retired, I’ve only thought of Lettie as existing in the past, a memory of a time when the apple festival thrived and Marina and I had an unbreakable bond.
“That’s her,” Walt says. “I usually drop by and see her around Christmas when I visit my sister in Tampa. Lettie always sends me home with a mountain of fudge and refuses to hear a single good word about it.”
I smile at the image of Lettie loading down Walt with candy. “I loved her caramel apples.” Several murmurs of agreement ring out.
“Well, don’t tell her that when you see her.”
I have to mentally replay his words to make sure I’ve heard him right. “What?”
“She’s coming to the festival.” Walt pauses, bite of crust halfway to his mouth, when he sees my mystified expression. “Just to visit, not to sell anything like she used to. We were talking on the phone the other week and she was excited to hear the festival was coming back. She said to thank you.”
A warmth floats through me, starting at my heart and radiating outward.
As the creator of the caramel apple that marks our festival tradition, Lettie has loomed larger than life in Marina’s and my minds.
She’s a goddess, a conjurer of sugar-spun miracles, and she’s coming all the way from Florida to attend our festival.
If I can summon Lettie back to Greenstead without even knowing it, I can surely sell a few folks on the VIP package. Even if tonight’s dinner party isn’t going according to plan, everyone’s still here, wincing their way through a galette. I can still turn this around.
“Ready to hear about our VIP offering?” I ask.
I talk in-depth about the VIP package, and our guests nod, listen, and even ask questions (except for Nancy, who scrolls through her phone the entire time).
When I finish my spiel and ask who would like to purchase one, nearly all of the vendors agree.
Mayor Bradley even writes out a check to make a personal donation for the festival.
I’m certain it’s only because they’re ashamed of their behavior tonight, but guilt-induced purchases are fine by me.
One by one, our guests take their departure.
Mayor Bradley is first out the door, but he isn’t actively sprinting away, which I choose to take as a compliment.
Even Nancy is more civilized than usual, telling us dinner was delicious.
More shocking, she finds some semblance of manners and apologizes for showing up unannounced.
“I was really hoping to get that interview with Mayor Bradley,” she explains. “Ratings aren’t what they used to be. I needed a Hail Mary.”
“You haven’t tried vomiting on air?” I ask.
Nancy gives a baffled chuckle, and I’m just as confused, really. I don’t know why I’m joking with her when she’s been such a nightmare. It has to be post-dinner-party relief.
“Maybe for sweeps,” she jokes. And I laugh, and I don’t know what’s happening. I tell her to have a good night, and I sort of mean it.
When we close the door on our last guest, it’s just Marina, Randy, and me standing in the foyer, staring at the front door in a daze.
“That was fun,” Marina deadpans.
An exhausted laugh escapes me. “Thank you for letting me use your house,” I say. “I’m sorry about…all of it.”
Marina gives me a tired smile. “That’s okay. It seems like it was worth it?”
“I think so.”
I’ll still have to chase people down on Monday to make good on what they promised tonight, but if everyone who agreed to buy a VIP package stays true to their word, we’ll have a good chunk of money to make up for what we lost from Ryser.
Not all of it—not quite enough. But enough to eke our way forward and hope I can figure out a plan for coming up with the rest.
And soon.