15. Maria
Maria
Life is pretty good up here in the mountains. But sometimes I can’t help asking myself, ‘will this last’?
First thing each morning, I fix breakfast. Three times each week, I head down the valley to Coyote Creek Falls for my afternoon bookkeeping sessions with Shane.
On the other days, I potter around the cabin and the main house, doing a little cleaning, helping Papa where I can, and fixing lunch and dinner for everyone.
The boys insist I don’t have to, and that what Sandro does around the place is more than enough to cover any rent for the cabin.
If I’m honest, though, I like doing it. In fact, that’s exactly what I write in my journal.
I don’t often write in it these days. Used to do it all the time.
But tonight I need to make what I’m feeling a permanent part of me.
I sit there, pen poised above paper, waiting for the right words.
Not clever ones. I just want simple ones.
Ones that will record the moment how it really is.
I like getting up before everyone else and hearing the quiet crackle of the stove while the coffee brews.
I like cooking breakfast for Grant, Regan, and Abe, and I like having dinner waiting after they come home tired and dusty from work.
It’s… well, it’s like a normal family. Or at least the closest thing to one I’ve ever really known.
I know I don’t deserve it, but I am so glad that Papa and I have found these three wonderful men. I hope it will last forever.
Yes. That’s how I feel.
Sometimes, after Papa has gone to bed and I hear his soft snoring drifting through the cabin, I creep quietly outside beneath the cold mountain stars in my bathrobe and sandals and slip across to the main house and the warmth of Regan’s embrace.
We make love carefully and quietly, trying not to wake Grant or Abe, and afterward we just lie there together, wrapped up in each other’s warmth beneath the heavy blankets.
Sometimes we whisper softly about little things—the cabin, the future, stories from our childhoods—but mostly we just drift together in comfortable silence until sleep finds us.
It feels nice… the simple sensation of being loved and cared for.
Being held. Protected. His big hands stroking slowly through my hair, or gliding gently across my back.
His lips brushing my neck while he murmurs something right beside my ear, his low voice soft enough to send those delicious little tingles all down my spine whenever he speaks.
Sometimes he falls asleep before I do, and I lie awake listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing, feeling the reassuring warmth and solid weight of him beside me in the bed.
In those moments, with the wind whispering faintly through the trees outside and moonlight spilling pale silver across the room, I let myself pretend this life might somehow last forever.
In the mornings, it’s never a problem since I’m always up first anyway to make breakfast, so nobody catches on to our little secret.
Meantime, Papa grows fitter and stronger by the day.
Honestly, it’s like ten years have fallen away from him since we first arrived here.
He looks healthier now than he did when we pulled up in our battered old Corolla all those days ago.
It feels like months ago already, though really it hasn’t been anywhere near that long.
It’s amazing what clean mountain air, hard work, and regular exercise can do for a man.
Somehow, back in Brooklyn, the old man had quietly given up on life.
Here, though, it’s like he’s been given a second chance.
Every day he’s outside doing something—repairing fencing, clearing ground, or digging over the dirt for the vegetable garden he’s determined to build beside the cabin.
He’s enlisted Abe into his plans, and the two of them spend their evenings hunched over online seed catalogs, debating the relative merits of organic compost versus fish fertilizer, and discussing the yields and flavors of different tomato varieties, both traditional and new.
Half the time I don’t even understand what they’re talking about, but the sight of them together still makes me smile.
Best of all, though, there’s still not a Negroni in sight, nor anything stronger than the bottles of beer the men drink with dinner, and not too many even of those.
Yes, all things considered, life is substantially better for us here than ever it was in Brooklyn. I don’t miss it at all, and despite him living there for well over fifty years, I don’t think Papa does either.
I occasionally wonder about Tony Moretti and what he might be up to.
But we’ve been really careful not to mention our names around town, and of course the Corolla has already gone, and I’d thrown away credit cards and phone when we first left, so there’s really nothing he can do to trace us back here, so far as I can see.
Perhaps he’s dismissed it from his mind.
Forgotten it, and moved on. But there’s a part of me that feels Tony Moretti isn’t the type to forgive and forget.
If anything, he strikes me more as the brooding, vengeful type.
The type who holds grudges. The kind of man for whom dignity is everything, and who never lets something he considers to be a slight go unanswered.
But perhaps I’m wrong about him.
I hope I am.
On this particular afternoon, I haven’t needed to go into town for Bookkeeping, and I’m on top of all the domestic chores.
I decide to do some baking. It’s been a long time since I did any.
I must have been what… fifteen? In high school, anyway.
I remember the domestic science classes, and mostly the stuff we did in them was as dull as it’s possible to get.
But one class, we had a supply teacher who actually seemed to give a damn, and she taught us how to make cupcakes.
I remember how proudly I’d taken the plastic tub carefully filled with twelve, glorious cupcakes home to show Papa.
How much I’d enjoyed watching him bite into one, seeing his expression change from merely going through the motions in order to please his daughter to genuine surprise, and then real enjoyment.
That had felt good, as had gorging myself on three of them, one straight after the other, so that I hadn’t wanted dinner that evening.
Yes—that’s what I will do. I will make cupcakes as a treat for the men!
“Okay, now what do I need?” I mutter to myself, as I look around the kitchen.
I start opening cupboards, and peering onto shelves, looking for the ingredients I’ll require, making sure I’ve got everything I need.
I don’t want to get half way and then find there’s an essential item missing that means I cannot complete the task after all.
“Flour, baking powder, butter, milk, eggs. Excellent.” That seems like a good start.
With those things I can definitely make something.
With a little more searching, I conclude we’ve plenty of regular sugar, but no confectioner’s sugar—the powdered stuff.
Oh well, these cupcakes might have to be a little gritty in their texture. No big deal.
“Now… what else?”
I scan the kitchen, assembling the items on the big kitchen table as I come across them. Mixing bowl, wooden spoon, measuring cups… all are here. Perfect. But then I remember that I need cupcake trays. There is no way on Earth these boys are going to own cupcake trays or paper liners.
“But… they might have a muffin tin…”
Sure enough, squeezed into a cupboard in the far corner, underneath a whole heap of pots and pans of various shapes and sizes, I find two battered old muffin tins that will do perfectly.
“Wonderful!”
The only thing I cannot find is vanilla extract. I consider this for a while, before it occurs to me that cupcakes don’t have to be vanilla flavored. All the men like coffee, and there’s always plenty of coffee leftover from the morning’s brew.
“Problem solved. I’ll do coffee cupcakes.”
I slip a blue-and-white striped apron over my head, and tie the strings at my waist. I set the oven to three hundred and fifty degrees, and leave it to get hot whilst I make the batter.
Forty minutes or so later, I am smiling happily as I take two, delicious-smelling trays of coffee cupcakes out of the oven. No cooling rack, but I improvise with a wire oven rack propped up on each corner by a sardine tin borrowed from the food cupboard.
Whilst the cupcakes cool down, I make the frosting. The lack of powdered sugar is really noticeable, leaving the frosting with a distinct grittiness to its texture, but what the hell, if they taste as good as they smell, I feel confident we’ll manage to eat them anyway.
Finally finished, I stand back to admire my work. A little rustic looking, maybe. Not absolutely even in size or perfectly circular in shape. But… not bad for a girl who hasn’t baked in thirteen years. Not bad at all.
Now… what will the men think?
Regan is out with the tow truck, rescuing a little old lady somewhere on the other side of the county. Papa went with him, partially to keep him company, and also because he wanted to see a little more of the surrounding countryside.
Abel’s taken Regan’s F-150 and gone into town.
He’s buying timber to make raised beds for the vegetable garden.
So that just leaves Grant. Last I saw of him, he was in the office, sorting through payment records.
I put three cupcakes on a clean plate, and step out into the hall, heading to the office.
I tap briefly on the door, open it and step inside, smiling, plate in hand.