Chapter 28
By early evening, the night before the event, everything that can be done is done. I’ve triple-checked the timeline and checklists. With so many people involved, every task has been accounted for. So Friday evening is a time to unwind and have fun.
Brady and I head to the festival grounds in town. Katrine, Johanna, and Nora took Hannah earlier to enjoy face-painting, games, and carnival rides, and Alice is also there, selling her jam at the artisanal booths.
Brady and I hold hands as we walk through the gazebo park in the middle of town.
A band plays folksy, polka-style music across the clearing—near large white tents, where festivalgoers lounge at long tables enjoying beer and wine, cheese, sausages, and pretzels; others mill about, chatting.
There’s an air of relaxation and joy to the whole scene.
I almost don’t recognize Hannah when she flits over. She’s transformed—thanks to the high school girls running the face-painting booth—into a sequined butterfly, her hair adorned by a crown of yellow and white flowers, matching ribbons cascading down her back.
Brady and I naturally drop hands when we see her. It still feels too soon.
“Mom, can we have a sleepover tonight?” Hannah asks, before I can even comment on her festive new look. “In the attic?”
Nora, Johanna, and Katrine stand beside her, their eyes wide with anticipation.
I consider tomorrow’s timeline, which requires a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed start. “Do you think you’ll get a good night’s sleep up there?”
“To be honest, I don’t think we’ll sleep well anywhere,” Nora explains.
“We’re too excited about tomorrow,” Johanna adds.
“It was a long week,” Katrine says. “We want to go back to the house and order pizza and just kind of, what do you call it? Veg?”
“We need to decompress,” Hannah adds as if on cue.
I try not to smirk at my almost six-year-old daughter using the word decompress. She pronounces every syllable, as if she memorized the word for a school play.
I consider the benefit of having Hannah upstairs with the girls tonight.
It will give me time and space to gear myself up for tomorrow.
We were planning to sleep in the same room tonight; my room is already cleaned—new sheets on the bed—in preparation for Ruth Rivers’s arrival tomorrow afternoon.
But to be honest, I might sleep better without Hannah in the room.
“Did you check with Alice?” I ask.
“She said it’s fine, but we had to ask you,” Katrine replies.
“Sounds like fun,” I say.
The girls share smiles. “Come on, ladies,” Katrine commands, leading her crew back to the parking lot.
“Bye, Mom,” Hannah says, throwing her arms around me and hugging me harder than expected.
“Have the best time, honey,” I say in a half whisper, then let her go, watching the ribbons fly behind her as she catches up to the others.
“What kind of pizza do you want?” I hear Katrine ask as they walk away.
I hear Hannah answer “Pepperoni” with true conviction.
“She’s having the best night of her life,” I say to Brady.
“And what about you?” he asks.
I smile. “The night’s not over yet.”
That evening, after soaking in the festival and talking until our throats hurt, we decide to go to bed early.
Alice has already called it a night, and Hannah and the Scandinavian Trio are tucked in the attic with enough cookies and popcorn to last until morning.
Brady and I walk upstairs holding hands, and again pause outside his bedroom.
He kisses me as we lean against the door frame, pressing me with his body.
He pauses to look at me, then lets his knuckles graze my cheek.
“Have I told you how amazing you are?” he asks, his face mere inches from mine.
“No, tell me.”
“You really knocked this out of the park. This whole event.”
“Well, don’t speak too soon. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“But it will, and it’s all because of you.”
I shake my head. “Me? More like we. All of us. I haven’t done this alone.”
“But you’re the heart. You know that, right?”
“I am?”
He nods. “It’s you at the center of this. The energy. You’re what keeps all of this moving. We each do our part, but you hold the vision, the dream.”
I run my fingers along his beard, just as he grazed my cheek. I get lost in his brown eyes. I feel a double-edged pit in my stomach, a simultaneous ache for him and a fear of needing him too much.
Brady presses his nose to mine, our lips an inch apart. So close, I can taste his breath.
“I’m falling in love with you, Maggie,” he says. “No. Let me correct that. I love you.”
His words surprise, exhilarate, and frighten me, all at once. I want to get fully swept up in this moment. The words I love you too rest on the tip of my tongue. And yet, I stop right at the edge of that cliff. It’s like a threshold I want desperately to cross, but hesitate, afraid of free-falling.
Instead, I hold his gaze.
We should go to bed, I think. Get a good night’s sleep. We should focus on tomorrow.
But instead, I take his hand and lead him into his bedroom.
My eyes pop open, and while my mind seems sharp and alert, for a moment, I question where I am. And then it comes back to me. Brady’s room.
I feel the warmth of his body beside me, the heaviness of his arm over me.
I forgot how good it feels to wake up in a man’s arms, and I lie there enjoying the weight of him.
I can see from the nightstand clock that it’s 3:15 a.m., too early to get up for the day.
And yet, it feels like my brain has already gotten its morning dose of caffeine.
I’ve overlooked a detail. About today, about the dinner.
That must be it, I think, because there’s my nagging intuition—how you feel if you forget to blow out a candle or close a garage door—and I rack my brain.
What have I ignored? We’ve painstakingly planned, organized, and prepped for this event.
We’ve run through it all—Brady, me, the whole event team—over and over again.
And then it hits me, the reason I woke so abruptly.
I’ve been so busy working remotely, planning the dinner, playing sous-chef to Brady, and watching over Hannah, that I avoided an inevitable truth. After today, after the dinner, I’m supposed to go back home to Eastridge.
Back to my old life. Leave St. John’s Ferry. Leave Alice.
Leave Brady.
This season will soon be over. So while today is a glorious day, it’s also bittersweet. When the camp and the dinner end, this new lifestyle ceases too. Like Cinderella’s coach, I turn back into a pumpkin.
I can’t fall asleep again, so I stealthily lift Brady’s arm to slip out of bed. I pad my way to the kitchen to make a cup of Alice’s chamomile tea.
I’m going to miss this kitchen.
I think back to all I’ve enjoyed in this space—making the rhubarb scones, meeting Brady for the first time, sitting at the kitchen table having heart-to-hearts with Alice.
Fika with the Trio, preparing Brady’s birthday dinner, making breakfast sandwiches for his students.
It seems like a lifetime of memories crammed into the span of a month.
Suddenly, I’m overcome with doubt. What if we don’t make enough money to keep the farm? What if Alice loses this legacy?
This farmhouse, this kitchen, has been a haven for so many—for Rose and her family, for the boarders of the Women’s Land Army, for Alice, for me and Hannah, Brady and the Trio. It’s been a source of strength, a foundation.
In planning this event, we included gourmet, locally sourced, and Scandinavian food, as well as early summer bounty.
But we have nothing on the menu to honor Rose, her legacy, the role she played during a very difficult time for our country.
While men were fighting overseas, the women were here giving their best, pushing themselves physically and mentally to help win the war.
I think back to the recipes from the attic, the dishes that aimed to satiate Americans despite hardship and rations.
Unfortunately, I’ve only sorted through half the box.
Once I found the ledger, and started the application for the National Register, I neglected sorting them, organizing them into a book for Alice.
I vow to go back into that box, once the dinner is over, and finish the job before I leave.
For now, I decide to pull one recipe out and replicate it for the farm-to-table event.
Coincidentally, it’s one that Rose adjusted to serve a crowd, once upon a time.
If we want this event to be a success, and if we want to honor the past, truly respect American farms and farmhouses, I can’t think of a better dessert:
Lucy’s Victory Cake.