Chapter 25
I n the morning Esther taught Celeste to make bread while the men went to the barn to “fix the machines and do man things.”
“This seems like a terrible way to spend the first morning of your honeymoon,” Celeste noted as Esther bustled around the kitchen, setting out bowls and ingredients. It didn’t escape her notice that she’d been there less than twenty-four hours and it already felt more hers than Celeste’s.
“Of course it’s not. Leo and I spend all our time together. It would feel silly to designate a day where we can’t be with other people, just because we’re married now.” She stopped short and blinked a few times, a bread pan Celeste didn’t know she possessed held aloft. “Oh, my goodness, we’re married now.”
Celeste laughed and Esther snapped to attention, shaking herself out of her trance. “That might take a while to get used to. Anyway, the most important part of bread, and really the only thing you can mess up, is the yeast. It needs to be fresh and still alive in order for the bread to rise. And you don’t want to kill it with water that’s too hot.” She spoke while running the tap with her finger under it until she was satisfied it was the correct temperature. She filled a measuring cup and held it out to Celeste. “Stick your finger in.”
Celeste dutifully complied.
“Notice that it’s warm, but not too warm. If you can’t hold your finger in it for a count of three, it’s too hot.”
“What if it’s too cold?” Celeste asked.
“Better too cold than too hot. From here on out, I’m going to tell you what to do and you’ll do it.”
“Okay,” Celeste said, tone uncertain. She needn’t have worried, though. Esther was a patient teacher who broke everything into simple steps and explained them along the way. In no time she was kneading her newly formed lump of bread dough, her first ever, and it was with a little bit of sadness that she tucked it into a bowl and put a cover on. “I’m going to miss it,” she admitted.
“You’ll see it again soon,” Esther assured her.
They sat at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee and some of the bread Esther had brought between them.
“You’re my first female friend,” Celeste admitted.
“I don’t have many, either,” Esther said.
“Why? You’re perfect.”
“I’m autistic.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “I lack a filter, am unable to read social cues or understand sarcasm. Complex social hierarchies are beyond me. I never fit when they’re established, and they’re always established. People find my plain spoken nature off putting and odd.”
“I don’t. I love it,” Celeste blurted.
“You sound like Leo,” Esther said. She took a sip of coffee and set her mug down. “He told me about you, before we arrived. He said he asked you out a bunch of times.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Leo had a past before we met. It doesn’t affect the now or our future,” Esther said.
Celeste let out a little breath, staring at the dark abyss of her coffee. “I wish everyone felt that way. Other women don’t like me.”
“Because you’re pretty?” Esther guessed.
“No. I guess they probably had good reason. Back in the day I had a well-earned reputation as a man-eater. Men who were taken were sort of my preferred delicacy.”
“Don’t you find it a bid odd when women blame the other woman in that scenario instead of their significant other? If a man is truly committed, he can’t be taken. Personally I’d be more worried about any man who’d let himself be distracted to that degree. Acrasia, a lack of self-control.”
“That’s a good point, and a testament to your maturity as a woman. But also, I was predatory.”
“I can’t help but notice your repeated use of the past tense,” Esther said.
“It’s been a long time. When The Colonel recruited me, I decided to turn over a new leaf.”
“It would seem you have. Look at you, a homeowner and bread maker with money in the bank and a man who, even to someone who is bad at reading context clues, obviously adores you.”
“He doesn’t know me. Not really,” Celeste said.
“Let him.”
Celeste shook her head. “I can’t. You know what’s in my file, and that’s bad enough. If you knew all that’s unwritten…”
“What? Do you think I wouldn’t like you anymore? That I might run away because you’re so unclean I can’t stand to be in the same room with you?”
Celeste didn’t reply, but she swallowed hard.
“Celeste, when I look at you I see probity , integrity and uprightness. Honesty. A woman who spent fifteen years doing an impossible job few people in the world could even contemplate.”
“I appreciate that, so much. And I’m trying hard to believe it. But when you spend the first eighteen years of your life being told the opposite, the competing voices get a little confusing. I haven’t yet figured out a way to drown out the first one. But I’m trying.”
“That’s all any of us can do,” Esther assured her. “Sometimes people are blessed with an amazing family and system of support and sometimes you have to seek it yourself, to make your own community. I fell in the first category. I was sheltered, so Leo was my first exposure to people who were alone in the world. Since then I’ve met a lot more people like you and him, enough to make me realize the people in the second category far outnumber the people in the first. And do you know what’s amazing to me?”
She paused. Celeste shook her head, unable to fathom.
“People who are broken and hurting so often go into the kind of work you and Leo did. They become the helpers—soldiers, policemen, nurses, firefighters, and EMTs. Because they want to help other people like them. Despite everything, despite all the pain, you have these great big hearts, filled with care and compassion, hoping to make the world a better place than the one you sprang from. That’s a miracle. And you do make the world a better place, Celeste. Don’t let yourself believe otherwise. And maybe now that you’ve retired you’ll have time to make the community you never had and always wanted.”
Celeste didn’t know what to say. It was like Esther opened a bottle of healing salve and dumped it all over her wounded pieces. No one had ever said anything so kind and gentle and encouraging to her before. At last she took a shuddering breath and spoke. “If Leo ever becomes stupid enough to let you go, I will literally kill him.”
“Get in line behind this pacifist,” Esther said, tipping her mug to Celeste in a little toast.
Together, they finished their coffee in companionable silence.
B y the time the men returned from the barn, the bread was in the oven and it was time for Esther and Leo to fly home.
“Did you get everything fixed?” Celeste asked.
“Yes, if by ‘fixed’ you mean we gave up immediately and threw rocks at old tin cans instead,” Sam said. “It smells edible in here. What sorcery is this?”
“I have made bread,” Celeste announced.
“You are very talented,” Sam replied, tugging the hem of her shirt.
“She is,” Esther agreed. “My star pupil, for certain.”
“Also your first and only?” Celeste guessed.
“Don’t get caught up in the details,” Esther replied, snaking her arm through Leo’s. He gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her head.
“Is it weird how much I’m going to miss you guys? Can’t you come live here? Communes are coming back in style, I think,” Celeste said.
“Our boss is weirdly picky about us actually showing up to work. But Montana is freaking fantastic. How about if we come back sometime?” Leo suggested.
“Anytime. My door is always open. Literally, apparently, because Sam stumbled through it in the middle of the night,” Celeste said, snaking her arm through Sam’s, unconsciously mimicking Esther’s pose.
“In my defense, I’m really good at breaking into places. Criminally so,” Sam said.
“La, la, la,” Leo said, mashing his palms over his ears.
“You should come to DC to visit us,” Esther said. “Especially because we’re going to be living in the same house now.”
“At long last,” Leo said, giving her another squeeze. “Also, I second the invitation.”
“We’ll keep it in mind,” Sam answered for them, as if they really were a couple. He held out his hand for Leo to shake and then Celeste hugged both of them goodbye. They followed them to their car, remaining on the porch as they loaded up.
Esther paused with her hand on the door and faced Celeste. “Next time I see you, you’re going to be effulgent .”
“What’s that one?” Celeste asked.
“Look it up,” Esther replied.
“That’s how you know you’ve breached the inner sanctum, when she starts making you do the work yourself,” Leo said. With a final wave, they got in the car and drove away.
Celeste pulled out her phone and looked up the word. Effulgent: shining forth brilliantly, radiant. “Why can’t Esther be my mom?” she said, tucking her phone away.
“Because she’s many years younger than you?” Sam guessed.
“The use of the word ‘many’ in this case is extraneous and hurtful,” Celeste replied.
He picked her up and gave her a squeeze. “Sorry. Also, I missed you.”
“We’ve only been apart a couple of hours,” she said.
“But it hasn’t been the same. Don’t get me wrong, I liked having Esther and Leo here, post-interrogation, but I also liked it when it was Sam and Celeste time.”
“Sam and Celeste time makes it sound like we’re a seventies jazz lounge duo,” she said.
“Not to brag, but I can actually play the triangle and the recorder, in case you’d like to learn to back me up on ‘Hot Cross Buns’ and take the show on the road.”
“We should probably wait until you’re no longer being hunted by all the people who want to kill you,” she said.
“That’s a good point. We’ll have plenty of time to practice.”
“Maybe years and years,” she said.
He sucked a sharp breath. “I kind of like the sound of that, more and more. Also, I want to kiss you very much. I’m having lip withdrawal. It might deadly.”
“Probably best not to take chances,” Celeste agreed. She angled her face upward, startling when the oven timer beeped loudly.
“Is that the kissing alarm?” Sam asked, taking a step back as he set her down.
“It’s my bread.”
“Your bread,” Sam said, following close on her heels as they hurried to the kitchen. He hovered nearby, making appropriate noises of awe when she pulled a perfect loaf from the oven.
“It’s so pretty,” Celeste whispered. She couldn’t believe she had actually made bread. Esther pretty much instructed her on a molecular level, but still. She made food, completely from scratch like a real person.
“Are…are we allowed to eat it?” Sam asked as they continued to stand still and stare at it for several long moments. “You’re not going to scream and snatch it out of my hands and tell me I’m eating your baby or anything, are you?”
“Yes, but I do that with all bread, not just the ones I’ve made,” she clarified.
“Oh, that makes it normal then,” he said.
“We can eat it, but it’s hot. We should probably let it cool.”
“If only we could think of some way to pass the time. Think, man, think,” he said as he removed the oven mitts she was still inadvertently wearing.
“A walk? Like the three bears.”
“I’m more interested in what Mama Bear and Papa Bear might have gotten up to on their own without the baby,” he said, putting his hand on her belt loop and using it to tug her close.
“I didn’t think it was possible to make a children’s story inappropriate, but congratulations on your accomplishment,” she said.
“It’s all in the tone,” he said. “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Anything. Tell me anything and also everything about Celeste.”
“Oh,” she said, spirits dimming. The morning had been so good. The last thing she wanted to do now was talk about herself.
“Start with something small and easy.”
“Nothing is easy,” she said.
“What’s your favorite food?” he prompted.
“This bread I just made,” she said.
A smile tugged at his lips. “Don’t try to use your adorability to distract me. What’s your favorite color?”
“Gunmetal gray,” she said.
He snorted. “Your favorite color is coincidentally the color of your gun?”
“It goes with everything,” she said.
“You’re hopeless,” he said, but he was smiling.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said, standing on her toes so her lips brushed his. He gave up talking and gave in to the kiss, tugging her impossibly closer, one hand pressed against the small of her back, flattening her against him. The sound of tires on gravel once again registered, breaking them apart.
“Someone’s here,” she said.
“You know, for an orchard in the middle of nowhere, you get a lot of intruders,” Sam said.
“Tell me about it,” she replied, tapping his chest.
“Hey, I was here first. I have break-in dibs on the proprietor.”
“If only I had a nickel for every time someone claimed break-in dibs on me,” she said, shaking her head.
“How many nickels would you have?” he asked curiously. “You’ve never actually told me your dating history. Or anything else. Hint, hint.”
She ignored him and withdrew her gun. “You can’t take out your gun every time someone asks you a personal question,” he said.
“Watch me,” she said and opened the front door.