by Ali Standish
By the time I had added the butter to the flour, and then the vinegar, and mixed it together into a dough, the pakoras were simmering on the stove, delicious coils of steam rising from the pan. Caleb had gone to try to play guitar with Jai, and Sammy was helping Uncle Amar with the kadhi—the curry sauce.
“Okay,” I said, wiping my wrist against my hot brow as I consulted the recipe. “Now I have to— Oh no.”
“What is it?” Aunt Clare asked.
I bit my lip. The pie dough was supposed to chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Then it would be in the oven for another hour, and cooling for thirty minutes after that. At this rate, we wouldn’t be eating dessert until midnight. Why hadn’t I read the recipe more carefully? Why didn’t they ever show the chilling part on Baking Battles?
“Nothing,” I said hastily. I had just remembered a trick from the show that might work.
I filled a glass with ice water, then dipped my fingers in before I began shaping the dough into two rounds—one for the bottom of the pie and one for the top. Cold as my fingers were, I could still feel heat rising in my cheeks as I tried to roll the dough. It was supposed to flatten into a perfect quarter-inch-thick circle.
Instead it stuck stubbornly to my hands and to the rolling pin.
Aunt Clare glanced over my shoulder. “Why don’t you try some more flour?” she asked.
But no amount of flour would make the dough lie flat. The harder I tried, the harder it became to roll. Finally Aunt Clare lifted the rolling pin from my hands.
“You haven’t done this before, huh?” she said. Her voice was soft, not angry or annoyed.
I hung my head. “No,” I admitted. “I’ve never made anything before. I just watch a lot of baking shows. They make it look so easy.”
She brushed a bit of dried dough from my nose. “It’s never as easy as it looks. That’s why I don’t bake. Amar’s mother tried once to teach me to make chapatis. It’s not very complicated. But I nearly burned her kitchen down, and I haven’t been allowed in since.”
I smiled, just a little. “I think when you said you wanted to be a baker,” she went on, “I assumed you knew how. But that was silly of me.”
I looked around. The counter was dusted in flour and flecked with butter. Measuring cups and spoons were strewn across it. All I had wanted was to prove that I could do something useful, and instead I had turned the kitchen into a disaster zone.
“I could have told you,” I said. “Now I’ve made a huge mess, and there’s nothing for dessert.”
Aunt Clare twisted her lips in thought. Then her eyes lit up. “Well,” she said, “there is one thing we can try.”
“It’s really good,” I said as I took my second bite of the pakora kadhi. Sammy had made it spicy. But the sauce was creamy and kind of sour, too, and the combination was mouthwateringly delicious.
“It’s my great-grandmother’s recipe,” Uncle Amar said. “She was famous for it.”
“Have you been to India?” Caleb asked Sammy.
“Yeah. Once when I was a baby, and once last summer.”
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t remember anything from the first trip, obviously,” she said. “But I liked the second one. Most of it, anyway. I got to see my dadi—my grandmother—and all these aunties and uncles and a bunch of cousins I didn’t even know I had.”
“They live in Mumbai,” Jai said. “It’s the biggest city in India. Like, way bigger than New York City. But our family is Punjabi. We’re originally from Punjab, this region in northern India.”
I was surprised to hear Jai speak so much. He usually didn’t really talk at the dinner table, unless it was to argue with Sammy.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
Jai and Sammy took turns telling us about their trip, and for a few minutes they seemed to forget how much they liked fighting with each other. They told us about their dadi’s apartment, and how if you went to the roof of her building, you could just see a sliver of sea between the skyscrapers around it. They told us about the busy bazaars their aunties took them to, where Sammy bought a bunch of salwar kameez sets to wear and Jai found a stack of comic books in Punjabi.
“Does your family there speak English?” Caleb asked.
“Yeah. Most people in India speak at least some English,” Jai said. “But there’s also, like, a ton of different Indian languages. Our family speaks Punjabi, but also Hindi and some Marathi, too, because those are more common in Mumbai.”
“Whoa,” said Caleb. “That’s a lot of languages.”
“Can you guys speak any of those?” I asked.
Sammy and Jai shook their heads, and for a second I was worried that I had said something wrong because everyone was quiet.
Then Uncle Amar cleared his throat. “Sammy, maybe after dinner you can show Miranda the salwar kameez sets you brought back,” he said.
Sammy brightened again. “And I’ll teach you to do bhangra—this really fun style of Punjabi dance. Maybe we’ll watch a Bollywood movie, too!”
“I was in a Bollywood film once,” said Uncle Amar, pointing his fork across the table at Caleb and me. “It was right after we moved to Mumbai. The director wanted to make me a star. He was very insistent. But I told him, not me, no thank you. I’m more than just a pretty face with great rhythm, you know. I’ve got brains, I said, and I’m going to use them to help people.”
Jai snorted. “Dadi told me last time she came to visit that you were just an extra,” he said. “She said you only got to be in the movie because a friend who knew the director owed you a favor. And that you were so bad they had to cut the scene you were in.”
“Psh,” Uncle Amar said, flicking his wrist. “You know how your dadi tells stories. You can’t listen to anything she says.”
When dinner was done, Aunt Clare brought over the peach cobbler she had helped me make by pouring the pie filling into the bottom of a baking pan, then covering it with dollops of my sticky dough.
“I thought you were making a pie,” Caleb said as Aunt Clare set the cobbler down.
“We decided cobbler was better for tonight,” she said. “It’s lighter than pie.” She sent me the slightest of winks.
“Wow!” exclaimed Sammy through her first bite. “It’s so good!”
I plunged my fork into my own bowl and speared a bite. The way the cinnamon and peach flavors dissolved on my tongue reminded me of the sunset melting into the sea.
“It is good!” I said.
“It’s excellent,” said Uncle Amar, beaming. “You know, there’s always a pie contest at the August Festival. You should enter this year.”
“Yes! You totally should!” Sammy agreed.
“What’s the August Festival?” I asked.
“It’s this thing we do at the start of August every year,” Caleb said. “It’s to celebrate the anniversary of the town getting founded.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I’m good enough for that.”
Aunt Clare gazed at me from across the table. “Oh yes, you are,” she said.
I suddenly felt a surge of gratitude so strong that I found myself staring down at my plate, blinking back tears.
After Caleb went home, Sammy and I each picked our favorite salwar kameez from her closet and tried it on. They were outfits of loose pants, flowy tops, and a scarf called a dupatta that we slung over our shoulders. Mine was blue and gray, Sammy’s bright pink and green. Then she tried to teach me one of the bhangra dances her cousins had taught her, which involved a lot of bouncing around on the balls of our feet and waving our arms in different motions. I kept bumping into her, though, and after a while we fell onto the bed, laughing.
When she went to brush her teeth, I called Dad. He answered on the first ring.
“Kiddo!” he said brightly. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Hi, Dad,” I said. The sound of his voice made me happy and sad all at once. Dad was the one person in the world I was sure n
ever thought of me as a burden, and I felt a sudden desire to throw my arms around him and squeeze him tight. I settled for Bluey instead. “How’s the case?”
“Oh, it’s fine. I’m in Chicago right now. I’m about to have some pizza for dinner. Don’t worry, though. I wouldn’t dream of getting Hawaiian without you.”
“I made a peach—er—cobbler for dessert tonight,” I said.
“Hey, that’s wonderful!” Dad replied. “I can’t wait to taste some when you get home. Sounds like you’re having a good time, huh?”
I hesitated, staring down at Bluey’s one eye. I was dying to tell Dad about Mr. Taylor and Safira and Slug. “I’m taking sailing lessons,” I blurted instead.
“Wow. That’s a bit—different for you,” he said. “Do you like it?”
“I’m starting to,” I said. “But don’t tell Mom, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
“You got it. I think that’s great, Miranda. I’m really proud of you. I miss you.”
My chest swelled. “I miss you too, Dad.”
After I hung up, Sammy was too tired to watch a movie, so we got into bed. But once again, I couldn’t sleep. I listened to the muffled sound of Jai talking on the phone for a while before I finally crept out the porch door and up the stairs to the roof.
It was nice up there, with the warm sea breeze rustling through the palm fronds and blowing my hair into tangles. I liked the way it tasted on my tongue as I stared down at the winking lights of the Isle.
The moonlight shimmered over the ocean, and the sky was crammed full of stars. They looked bright beside the white moon, winking like fireflies. Just like the ones Batty and I had caught in our jar. For some reason, they made me think of Mom, and thinking of Mom made me feel sad again. I stood up to go back inside, but as I did, the air went suddenly still. Without the whisper of the palm trees, everything was quiet but the surf.
And then I heard it—the same sound I had heard on the Ferris wheel the night before—coming from the direction of Keeper’s Island. A shrill shriek that threw chills down my spine.
As I stared out at the dark patch in the sea, my breath caught in my throat.
No matter what Caleb said, I knew I wasn’t imagining the sound.
And I definitely wasn’t imagining the orange light that had suddenly blinked to life at the top of the abandoned lighthouse.
20
The next day, I decided not to say anything to Sammy or Caleb about what had happened on the roof. I didn’t want them to think I was making stuff up.
And besides, it felt in some strange way like the island had been calling out to me, trying to tell me something. To send me a message.
But what that message was, I hadn’t the slightest clue.
No way was I going to try to explain that to Caleb and Sammy. They would think I was totally nuts.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Keeper’s Island the next morning, all through our sailing lesson and even as we found ourselves walking back to Mr. Taylor’s house that afternoon. Sammy skipped along, singing, while Caleb followed behind us.
He hadn’t spoken very much that morning, and when I glanced over my shoulder, he was walking with his head down, kicking stray pebbles in his path.
Mr. Taylor opened the door as we climbed the porch stairs, and Slug trotted out. He didn’t bark at us this time. Instead—after getting his cone caught in the doorway again—he went straight to Sammy and rolled over onto his back. She scratched his belly and behind his ears as Caleb and I stepped inside.
“Hi, kids,” Mr. Taylor said. “Come on in. Watch your step.”
He pointed to a bucket filled with gray water that had a mop sticking out of it. The house smelled strongly like lemon.
We looked up as Betsy appeared at the top of the stairs. “Hi, Miranda!” she called. “Hi, Caleb, Sammy! I’ll come down in a few minutes and get you some key lime pie, okay?”
“I’ve never had key lime pie before,” I said. I had only seen it on Baking Battles.
Caleb stared at me like I had just said I’d never been in a car. “You’ve never had key lime pie?”
“They probably don’t have key lime pie where Miranda is from,” Mr. Taylor said. “Which is . . . ?”
“Illinois,” I finished.
“Ah,” he said. “Illinois. Right.”
“Have you been there?” I asked.
He shook his head as I followed him into the living room. Caleb, still looking glum, headed for the library. “It’s hard to sail to Illinois.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “No oceans. Well, there are some lakes. But mostly just corn. And more corn.”
“I’m sure it’s nice in its own way,” Mr. Taylor said. “Most places are. Do you like it there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s home.”
“How did you end up on August Isle this summer? You said your mom had some important job to do?”
“She’s a photographer,” I explained. “She travels all around, kind of like you did, I guess. She’s in Argentina right now. And my dad is working on this big legal case. So they sent me to stay with Sammy and Aunt Clare for the summer.”
He furrowed his brow. “Aunt Clare?”
“Sammy’s mom,” I said. “She’s not really my aunt. I don’t have any aunts or uncles. I only have one set of grandparents, and my grandma just had hip surgery. So there wasn’t anybody else. Aunt Clare is my mom’s friend from when she was a kid. She used to come here in the summers, too.”
“I see,” said Mr. Taylor, settling on the couch and leaning down to wipe a scuff mark from his wooden clog. “Well, I hope you like it here.”
“You must not have liked it much,” I said, “since you went away for so long. People thought you were dead, you know.”
A gray fog seemed to roll into his eyes. “You can love a place and still need to leave it behind for a while,” he said. “Sometimes you have to leave or you’ll go crazy.”
“Yeah,” I said. Before I could stop myself, I added, “I think that’s how my mom feels sometimes.”
A deep frown settled on his face. “I’m sure she just travels because it’s her job. She probably misses you all the time. She’s probably missing you right now.”
“Maybe,” I said flatly.
I could feel Mr. Taylor’s gaze still on me, and I was relieved when Slug trotted back in, skittering on the hardwood floor, followed by Sammy.
“So,” she said, “where do we start?”
We had the same duties as the day before. Caleb sat by a growing stack of books, some of them small and old, like the first edition of some Italian poetry book Mr. Taylor had found in a bookstall in Paris, and some big and new, like a collection of prints from the Mori Art Museum in Japan.
Sammy worked faster and faster on sorting pictures into albums as the stack of photos grew taller and taller. She only stopped every once in a while to ask Mr. Taylor about a particularly interesting one.
And I sat with his old laptop on my knees, my fingers hovering over the keys, waiting for the next story.
In Finland, it is common for people to have summer cabins in the countryside. I once rented such a cabin—a mökki—on a very small island in a very big lake.
In the mornings, I rowed my boat around the lake. My favorite place to row to was a little cove in the shadow of a steep cliff. From there, I followed a trail that wove between the pine trees and around to the top of the cliff. Here, I would sit and eat my lunch and look out over the lake with its countless tiny islands.
One morning, I arrived to find a man diving in the deep water of the cove. “Ahoy there,” I said. “Have you lost something?”
The man lifted his mask and stared at me, and I saw that he was actually a she. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she spoke English. “I haven’t lost anything,” she said finally. “But I am hoping to find something.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”
Her gaze traveled from me down to the picnic I had prepared. “If you’re willing to
share,” she said, “I’ll tell you.”
A few minutes later, we sat in the dappled sun at the top of the cliff and nibbled at our rice porridge pastries and blueberries.
“There is a story around these parts,” said the diver, “of a woman called Inkeri, who lived here many years ago. She was the eldest daughter of a rich landowner and known for her great beauty, but also her pure heart. Suitors came from miles around to seek Inkeri’s hand in marriage, but she refused them all. She was already in love, you see, with one of the peasants who worked her father’s farm, and they had determined to elope.
“But they were betrayed to Inkeri’s father by another farmworker. When he found out about their plot, her father sent Inkeri’s fiancé away to fight in a distant war. Then he set about finding her a new fiancé, someone rich and respectable like him. Every day, Inkeri came to this very spot to pray that her true love would return and take her away before her father succeeded.
“But her prayers went unanswered, for one day a letter arrived, announcing her beloved’s death on the battlefield. Heartbroken, Inkeri wrote a note to her mother and sisters, telling them that she would rather join her betrothed in death than live and be married to someone she would never love. She called for her sleigh to be prepared, and she drove it straight here. Only this time, instead of stopping to pray, she drove the sleigh over the cliff and into the lake below, which had not yet frozen over.
“At least,” said the diver, glancing wryly at me, “that is one story. But one of Inkeri’s sisters was not convinced. She believed that Inkeri jumped from the sleigh at the last second, faking her own death before escaping far away, somewhere her father could no longer control her fate.”
“So you’re looking for remnants of her sleigh?” I asked.
“Inkeri was my aunt many generations removed,” said the woman. “Around here, people speak of her as ‘poor, heartbroken Inkeri.’ It is up to me to prove Inkeri’s sister right, to search for proof of Inkeri’s courage and cunning. Proof that behind her beauty, there was great strength. If I find a sleigh, but no skeleton, then I will know. Now I have told you why I am here. But why are you?”