The City Baker's Guide to Country Living

by Louise Miller

  The corners of my lips lifted. “How’s the crust?”

  Martin rubbed at his lip with the back of his hand. “You people are crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

  “What people?”

  “Bakers,” he said as he forked the last piece of pie into his mouth. “I can drive you home after we’re finished.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Are you sure you should drive?”

  “My car’s at the inn anyway. I was thinking I’d walk. Salty needs the exercise.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  I brought my coffee cup and plate to the sink, trying to hide the grin I couldn’t keep from spreading across my face.

  • • •

  Salty ran ahead of us through the open field as we walked toward the sugar bush that separated the inn from the McCracken farm. Patches of Queen Anne’s lace had dried into tight fists. Their stiff edges tickled as I ran my palms gently over their frozen faces. Martin’s hands were jammed into his jacket pockets. We walked beside each other as the afternoon sun warmed the backs of our necks. Martin shortened his stride to keep in time with mine. We walked in silence, listening to the sound of crows cawing to one another as they flew overhead.

  “So how was the lesson?” Martin asked.

  “Great. I can’t believe your dad made that dulcimer. It has a beautiful tone.”

  “I didn’t know he made it until he mentioned it to you.”

  “Seriously? That’s crazy. It’s amazing. Have you played it?” I stole a sideways glance. His hair was in his eyes, as always, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.

  “I fooled around with it when I was a kid, before I took up the fiddle.” He picked a stalk of Queen Anne’s lace as we walked by, tracing the edge of its dried face with his thumb. “So when did he break out the cider?”

  “Right after your mom left to go shopping with Margaret.”

  “What did you two talk about?” Martin’s voice was so low I almost didn’t hear him.

  I smiled up at him. “He told me about him and Dotty courting. I can’t believe how long they’ve known each other.”

  “They all have—Margaret was her maid of honor.”

  “I saw a picture of the wedding party in your hallway. God, she was gorgeous.”

  Martin nodded. “John White is also in that picture—you’d know his kids, they run the grocery store. He married Jane White.”

  “Jane White, Margaret’s nemesis?”

  Martin laughed. “The one and only. Bonnie’s grandfather Burt was my dad’s best man. And Tom’s uncle was the priest who married them.”

  “I’ve never stayed anywhere longer than three years. I can’t imagine spending my entire life with the same people.”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t either.”

  “Is that why you left?” I asked.

  “You sound like my dad.”

  “Why did you leave Guthrie?”

  Martin tossed the flower onto the ground. “One of my brothers got his girlfriend pregnant when they were in high school. He skipped college and went straight to work for my dad. Then my buddy Frank—from the bar—got into the same situation with Bonnie. It just seemed like everyone around me got stuck somehow. Wife, kids, animals, house, farm. I didn’t want to get saddled with a bunch of responsibilities before I had a chance to travel, play music, you know.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, feeling a confusing mix of relating to his not wanting to feel trapped and at the same time burning to know how he felt on all the same subjects now. I stopped walking for a moment and pulled a tattered purple knit cap over my curls. “Henry talked about you. And your brothers. But mostly about you.”

  Martin turned to face me, his lips slightly parted. He looked so vulnerable.

  “He’s worried about you. He wants you to be happy.”

  “He wants me to be here.”

  “Could you be happy here?” I had been asking myself the very same question.

  Martin reached down to pick up a handful of rocks and pitched them one by one into the tree line.

  “My dad is a stubborn old man. He decided how my life should be when I was eleven and hasn’t changed his mind since, no matter what I say or do.”

  “Well, he did tell me he thought you didn’t fit in the city. That you belonged someplace else.”

  “Exactly. Here.”

  I shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, he also gave me a good talking to. That man doesn’t hold back, does he?”

  Martin laughed, his expression softening. “No, when he wants to say something, he says it. I hope he didn’t give you too hard a time.”

  “Oh, no. Just wanted to know what I was doing here and when was I going to settle down.”

  “Then you do know what I mean.”

  I laughed. “You came in the nick of time. I’m not used to having anyone that interested in my future.”

  “That can’t be true.” Martin wound a piece of hay that he had plucked around two fingers.

  “Um. My dad was a day-to-day kind of guy. Not very future oriented. And my mom . . . didn’t exactly take to motherhood. She took off when I was around nine months old. I was raised by my father.”

  “Was that tough?”

  “For him—I can’t imagine being on my own and having a toddler. I mean, I’m thirty-two, and I can barely take care of myself.”

  “Around here you’d be a grandmother by now,” Martin muttered.

  “He was a really good dad. And I had Judy Blume to fill in the gaps.”

  “Deenie?” he asked.

  “Of course, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. And don’t forget Forever.”

  Martin blushed. “I grew up with a lot of cousins.”

  “That must have been nice.”

  “How about you?”

  Until this moment I had never felt so acutely alone. “Nope—both my folks were only children.”

  Martin’s smile slipped, and he was quiet for a minute before asking, “Can I ask how old he was? Your dad?”

  “Only fifty-three.”

  Martin kicked a rock, sending it flying into the tall grass. “And how old were you?”

  “Sixteen. As of September I’ve officially been on the planet without him longer than I was with him.”

  Martin blew out a breath. “That sucks.”

  “It does. For the first couple of years, all I could think about was how he wouldn’t be there for all of the big life things. He wouldn’t see me graduate from high school, wouldn’t walk me down the aisle. Wouldn’t hold his grandchild.” I shrugged. “I didn’t end up doing any of those things, so I guess it didn’t really matter in the end.”

  “Do you think you didn’t do them because he died?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. For a long time nothing really seemed worth doing if he wasn’t going to be there to share it with.”

  Martin’s mouth tightened, and he turned his face away.

  “Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry.” I stopped and reached for his arm to stop him. “Here I am going on about my dad and—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” I tried to catch his eye but failed. “I was young, and it was sudden. He had a heart attack. It’s really different. Your dad is getting treatment.”

  “Yeah.” Martin turned back to face the hill, and we started to climb. “So you didn’t graduate from high school?”

  “It was a little hard to stay motivated.”

  “How did your mom deal with that?”

  I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets. “She didn’t.”

  Martin stopped for a moment, looking puzzled. “She didn’t come back after your dad died?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then who took care of you?”
<
br />   “I was sixteen. I could drive a car and make my own snacks. Mom said it would be good for me—a ‘growth experience’ I think is how she put it. She was living somewhere at the time where the girls had their first baby by thirteen.”

  “I couldn’t ditch a class without someone seeing me and telling my folks.” Martin looked over at me, his face full of questions. “How did you get by? I mean, did you have to work?”

  “My dad had life insurance. And besides, I was much too busy to hold onto a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What every teenage girl would do with an apartment in the city and no parents.”

  I walked ahead for a minute and then turned to face him. “So tell me what you do with that big stick of yours,” I said, wanting to change the subject.

  Martin coughed. “I’m sorry?”

  “The one you carried into the house, with the stripes.”

  “Oh.” Martin looked relieved. “It’s for measuring the Christmas trees.” He pushed his hair out of his face. “When we were kids, my dad would measure us boys with the stick, then assign us the color that was closest to our height. We had a contest to see who had the most trees our size.” He smiled. “I think that stick was his father’s before him.”

  “I know this will shock a farmer like you,” I said, “but we had a fake tree growing up. I remember sitting at the top of the staircase watching my father smoke and curse while he screwed the branches into the trunk. That was always the first sign of Christmas.”

  Martin laughed. “My dad used to hang strings of lights on the hut where we sold the trees. Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, drinking cider and cursing while he twisted and untwisted all the bulbs.”

  When we reached the top of the hill, Martin sat down on the ground, arms around his knees, his face toward the farm. Salty came bounding out of the woods and lay down next to him. The shadows of the Christmas trees stretched long over the field in the afternoon sun. A host of barn swallows swooped through the sky as if they were stitched together with an invisible thread.

  “This is where I first heard you play, you know.”

  Martin’s face glowed in the orange light. “What do you mean?”

  “The weekend I moved in, Salty and I walked through the woods up to this spot. I heard the fiddle playing. It’s where I picked up that tune.”

  “Oh.” Martin lay down, one arm folded underneath his head. He stretched out his legs. “That must have been my dad playing, not me.”

  “Really?” Their bowing was as similar as their sharp noses.

  “It’s his tune. That’s why it was odd to hear you playing it. He wrote it for my mom.”

  “It’s beautiful.” My eyes teared up suddenly, thinking of Henry carving the hearts into the dulcimer’s soundboard and sanding the wood until it was soft and smooth. I might have escaped the pressures of growing up in a large family, but I suspected that there were some things you could learn only from living with parents whose love was an active, living thing.

  “You know how, growing up, your family’s house always smells the same?” Martin asked.

  “Newsprint, pipe tobacco, and egg rolls. We lived upstairs from a Chinese take-out place.”

  “That’s what hearing that tune is like for me.”

  My hand worked through Salty’s fur, worrying out stickers. “It must have been strange hearing it from my porch.”

  Martin rolled over onto his side. From the corner of my eye I could see that he was studying my face. “We better get going or we won’t make it out of the woods before the sun sets.”

  The forest floor was thick with a golden carpet of spent leaves. We shuffled ankle deep through them as they crunched under our feet, the damp, earthy scent of fresh soil wafting up with every step. The orange light raked across the ground, making it glow as if on fire, and the black trunks stood stark in contrast. There was a peacefulness to being in the woods that made talking unnecessary. Even as it grew darker I felt safe trailing Martin, who looked even more comfortable here than behind his fiddle. Halfway up the carriage path Martin’s steps slowed and then stopped. He reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it gently as he whispered, “Shhh.”

  Martin gently raised our clasped hands to shoulder height and pointed his index finger up into the trees. “Look,” he whispered into my ear. I followed his gaze, distracted by the warmth of his hand and the scent of balsam and woodsmoke that clung to his jacket. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I caught a flash of white stripe. A plump shape emerged against the night sky. A pair of yellow eyes blinked. I gasped. Martin lowered our arms, keeping my hand in his.

  “It’s a great horned owl,” he whispered. “Look at his ears.” Two pointed tufts poked up into the night. We watched the owl until the last lingering light dissolved, leaving us in darkness. The whoosh of wings pushing against the air announced that the owl had moved on to more interesting pursuits.

  Martin squeezed my hand. “We’re not far from your cabin,” he said, his breath soft against my ear, and he tugged me forward. Our footsteps seemed louder in the dark, but I was grateful, hoping the sound was drowning out my racing heartbeat. The carriage path bent in a familiar curve, and the woods opened up to the clearing where my little cabin stood, bathed in light. Salty was waiting on top of the woodpile, tail wagging. Martin led me to the porch but stopped at the bottom step.

  “I could give you a ride,” I offered.

  Martin laughed. “I was taking you home.”

  “It’s dark.” I pointed toward the clearing. A lone star sparkled low in the sky above the tree line.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve been stomping around these woods since I was a kid.”

  I looked toward the trees. I stood beside him for a moment, not wanting to go inside.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked his chest, not daring to look into his face.

  Martin hesitated. “I better not.”

  In the soft porch light I could see his breath escape in a small frosty stream from his rosy lips. I longed to touch his stubble with my fingertips.

  Salty let out a soft woof.

  Martin tightened his grip for a moment before letting go, shoving his hand into his jacket pocket. “Night, Olivia.”

  “Night.” I walked up the porch steps, wondering how I had never noticed how empty a hand could feel by itself. Hugging myself, I turned and watched him melt into the darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  Miss Rawlings. I’ll need you to make several additional desserts to be served at lunch this afternoon. I will be in early this morning to discuss.—M

  I stuck my finger into the croissant dough to see if it was soft enough to roll. It bounced back, releasing a yeasty scent that lingered in the air. Perfect. Taking my rolling pin, I pounded the dough until it covered the entire surface of the workbench.

  “Hey, missy,” Tom said as he walked in carrying a case of buttermilk.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said, pressing the rolling pin into the dough to thin one of the edges. “There’s fresh coffee.”

  I handed him a pear and ginger scone and got back to work, slicing the dough into long strips with the help of a rotary cutter and a yardstick.

  “It’s freezing out there,” he said, holding the cup up to his face to let the steam warm his pink cheeks.

  “I know. I woke up with Salty under the covers with me. I forgot to build the fire up before bed.”

  “You should get an electric heater for that cabin.”

  “I like the woodstove. It smells good.” My mind conjured the woodsy scent of Martin’s jacket.

  “Well, tell me how much you like it in the middle of a February ice storm.” Tom bit into the scone, dropping crumbs onto his quilted flannel shirt. “So, the boys were thinking of getting together next week to go over some new tunes. You in?”

  I rolled my cutter crosswi
se, making perfect little rectangles. “Is there another dance coming up?”

  “New Year’s Eve.”

  The door to the dining room swung open. “Good morning, folks.” Chef Al’s warm, booming voice filled the kitchen.

  “Ha,” I said. “This is a sight I never thought I’d see—I didn’t think you were familiar with this side of seven o’clock.”

  Al wrapped his arms around my shoulders in a sideways hug, leaving behind the faint scent of Old Spice. He was letting his beard come in. It was stark white and threatened to make him look like Santa. “It’s true—if I’m up this early it’s usually because I haven’t gone to bed yet. But Margaret asked me to come in—something about a lunch?” Al pulled off his wool hat and made his way over to the coffee pot.

  “Mystery. Who do you think is coming in? The pope? The president of Talbots? Ooh, maybe it’s that silver fox she waltzed with at the dance.” I squished two batons of dark chocolate into the edge of one of the rectangles of dough and gently rolled it into a tiny loaf.

  Al reached into the box of chocolate.

  “Hands off,” I said, giving him a light slap. “It’s imported and costs a fortune. I’m afraid Margaret won’t reorder when she sees the invoice.”

  “Hear you’re getting into some cheese making,” said Tom to Al. I handed them each a cranberry muffin.

  “Livvy here inspired me. She insists on making everything from scratch.”

  I smiled at him. “Well, we’re chefs, aren’t we? I think everything should be handmade if we have the time.”

  “If you want to get away from the goat’s milk, we could do a trade,” Tom offered. “Fresh cow’s milk for a few wheels of cheddar?” Tom took a long sip of coffee. “Oh, hey, Marty.”

  I spun around. Martin stood in the door of the kitchen, his cheeks flushed from the cold. He was holding a black cardboard instrument case.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” Martin placed the case on the floor, took off his fogged glasses, and wiped the lenses with a white handkerchief. I had never seen him without his glasses on. His face looked unprotected.