Chapter Six
“My goodness,” Mom says as I come puffing into the kitchen. She points at the sink, indicating I should wash my hands before doing anything else. She can’t afford to get any sicker than she already is.
“What the heck happened?” Emery asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, I don’t,” I scoff. “I just rushed back to take over.”
“Dahlia, you don’t have to do this alone,” Mom says, leaning a hip heavily against the counter. “Did you get some honey?”
“Yep, and I didn’t even eat any,” I say, before remembering the drip I licked. I set my prized frame in front of her. “You really don’t need to help me. I promise I can do it on my own.”
“I know you can, but it’s also OK to ask for help.” Mom emphasizes this with raised brows, knowing I have a hard time doing that. If I mess things up on my own, I only disappoint myself.
“Mom,” I say, desperate to sway the conversation away from me, “did Grandma ever use honey to sweeten the sour cherries instead of sugar?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“I figure, with the honey we’ll have once it’s all ready to harvest, it might be worth a try. I can use the frames that are ready for now.” I squirt soap in my hands and breathe in the lemony basil and sweet mint on the windowsill.
“Go for it.” Mom gives me a reassuring but weak smile. She’s wearing down.
“I’m done,” Emery blurts, pitting a bright red Montmorency.
She throws the cherry in the bowl like she’s flicking a bug off her skin, and the juice bleeds down her arm.
Her face scrunches in disgust and she rushes to the sink, bumping her hip against mine.
She turns the faucet towards her and twists the knob to cold.
I hold my sudsy hands over the sink and watch her in disbelief.
“Why is this stuff so damn sticky?” she complains, scratching at her juice-streaked arms. “No wonder Grandma never thought I was good in the kitchen. I can’t stand this.”
I pull the faucet back in my direction and turn it to warm again. “I don’t know why you bothered helping if you were going to act like this about it. And maybe if you used warm water, like I was doing…”
“Like I was doing,” she mocks. “You sound like Dad.”
My stomach sinks. The last thing I want to do is sound like him. I turn to Mom, searching for hurt in her expression, but she’s pretending to ignore us while she moves jars to be sanitized closer to the stove.
Emery and I have always sparred. The verbal abuse we dished out growing up was epic, but no scar runs deeper than the choice she made to live with Dad instead of Mom.
At the time of the divorce, I was ten and she was twelve.
Promises of living in his giant house with a big screen in her bedroom, top-of-the-line skis and a weekly spending allowance were enough to convince her she didn’t need to see us very often.
Even now, eight years later, I can’t forget the grief it caused Mom.
I look in vain through every drawer for a fresh hand towel. My anger towards Emery burns hot, but I don’t want to argue. So I bite the insides of my cheeks and replace my negative thought with a positive one.
Dad’s old truck will be ready for me this weekend.
He gifted it to me when I graduated, but it needed a few repairs first. He’s had it since he was in college; his dad gave it to him and now he’s giving it to me.
Emery got a brand-new Range Rover Velar when she was sixteen, though she crashed it into a lamppost right before she came home from college. It’s still getting fixed.
Dad’s truck is sentimental to him. I’m surprised, but also grateful, that he’s giving it to me – especially now. The markets are every Thursday. Tomorrow I’ll use Mom’s car, but for the market next week I’ll be able to pack the truck’s bed full of cases of cherries.
I smile and accidentally fling water into Emery’s face as I shake my hands dry. “Oops, sorry,” I laugh.
“You know what, Dahlia—” Her nostrils flare.
“Stop,” Mom interrupts in a measured tone before I can tell Emery how selfish and spoiled she is.
“Sorry, Mom,” I say, ashamed. “Please be done for the day. I’ll finish up.”
“I do need to rest.” She sighs and tosses Emery a towel from Grandma’s embroidered collection.
Emery wipes her hands on it and turns to leave.
“I’m going out,” she says. At the door she delivers one last blow.
“I don’t understand why you think this ranch is so great, Dahlia.
Grandpa didn’t leave you with a gift; he left you with a burden.
Look at this place.” She kicks the doorframe. “It’s a dump.”
Mom closes her eyes and purses her lips in frustration.
I almost refrain but can’t help myself. “It has more character than you’ll ever have!” I say loudly. “You’ll never understand because you’ve never had to work hard for anything in your entire life.”
Mom tosses the tongs aggressively into the pot. It startles me. “Wake me in an hour?” she says, deflated.
“Of course, Mom.” I wave her towards her room. “I’m sorry. Go rest.”
I head to my room to change into something cooler before starting the stove.
My covers are in a ball at the end of the bed, and my pillow is lying on the dirty floor.
Emery’s visiting, and she stole my bed – the bottom bunk.
I protested, but ended up sleeping on the couch.
I refuse to sleep on the top bunk. I’ve had a fear of falling for as long as I can remember.
Mom said as a kid I would scream bloody murder if she put me up on playground equipment, and I clawed at Dad’s neck if he put me on his shoulders.
I peel my jeans off and use them to wipe prickly sweat off my inner thighs. Denim was a bad idea today. Something lands with a thunk on the wood-plank floor.
I bend to pick up the bronze horse. Something about it makes me smile. So, instead of placing it on my dresser like I’d planned, I bring it with me as I wade through Emery’s clothes to find my shorts. I finally find them in the corner of the closet, rumpled.
So… I write to Lani after pulling on my shorts.
Yesss? Cowboy?
I switch to sending her a voice note. “Still no. But inside the desk there were super old letters and newspaper articles. Guess what? There were girls who lived here named Daisy and Dottie who rode broncs! Some neighbour dude named Earl too, who proposed to Daisy. He was legit trying to marry her just to join their ranches, by the sound of it. There was an empty ring box.”
Crazy. I’d rather be cleaning out that barn than cleaning camera lenses! How’s the whole paying off the debt thing going?
“Um…” I say into the phone. “Well, so far, my plan is to sell as many cherries and jars of honey as possible, like Grandma and Grandpa did. Also, I found out there’s an antiques auction at the art gallery every six months, so my back-up plan is to sell valuable stuff from the ranch there, like the desk maybe.
It’s risky, though… The next auction is at the end of November, literally one week before our debt is due. ”
Lani messages back: Hmm. Seriously?
Yeah??
Not to lecture, but you should crunch some numbers. Dad loves you. I’m sure he’d be happy to help. Lani’s dad is an accountant and taught her money-management skills. As for me, I have no clue.
You think?
Always. Call or text him.
To harvest the honey from the frame, I cut all the comb off using the sharpest knife I can find.
I let it fall into a plastic tub, cut it into cubes, and then get to squishing – my least favourite part, and the job Grandpa always made me do.
I squish it using a fork and find it’s not as hard as it used to be.
After pouring it into a strainer fitted over the honey bucket, I start putting sweet cherries into cartons because I need to wait a couple of hours for the honey to strain.
When the cardboard flats are filled with cartons of sweet cherries, I climb down into the root cellar and rest them on the cold dirt floor, then check the honey. It’s not done, but there’s plenty to start bottling the sour cherries.
In Grandma’s old recipe book, I find her instructions. I fill the stock pot with the pitted cherries and add the same amount of honey as Grandma called for sugar. When the mixture is set, the jars filled and cooled, I put them in the root cellar too, stacking them carefully on the wooden shelves.
I lick the thick red gel off the wooden spoon and my mouth waters. It’s so tasty that I get a spatula and scrape all the leftover out of the pot and eat that too. I dance and hum around the kitchen as I clean up, wishing I hadn’t bottled it all.
Fingers crossed my customers will love it as much as I do.