The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  Nana and Laverne explained that the tea party had been expanded this year and would include a tea convention at Barchester Hall, one of Cruickshank’s most stately buildings. Vendors, including Galway Fine Teas from Butterhill, run by Sophie’s friend and Auntie Rose’s chief supplier of tea, Rhiannon Galway, would have booths, hand out samples and sell tea.

  Sophie sipped her tea, smiled and said, “Maybe I’ll actually be able to see Jason. We’ve only gotten together once since I’ve been back, and he seemed distracted.”

  “Is something wrong?” Nana asked.

  Sophie played with the smooth handle of her large cup. “I wish I knew. He said it was nothing, but I felt like he didn’t want to worry me because I was . . . well, because I was worried about you, and he knew it.”

  Laverne covered Sophie’s free hand with hers, the strong dark fingers curling protectively around her goddaughter’s. “Ask him; I’m sure if there’s anything wrong he’ll be happy to talk to you about it, now that Rose is better.”

  “You’re right,” Sophie said, squeezing her godmother’s hand with appreciation.

  The phone rang and Sophie jumped up, answered it, but didn’t hear anything except some heavy breathing. “Mrs. Earnshaw, you’ve called out again,” she said, deducing that it was the next-door neighbor and owner of Belle Époque, still playing with her new cell phone. “Mrs. Earnshaw, this is Sophie, next door!” she said, more loudly. “You have to swipe the little phone receiver icon sideways with your finger. Or . . .” The line went dead and she hung up.

  “That Thelma again?” Nana asked.

  “I think so. Either her or a dirty caller breathing in my ear.”

  The two older ladies laughed.

  “Now you scoot on back upstairs,” Laverne said to her partner. “Sophie and I will take care of everything. You get some rest.”

  She looked stubborn for a minute, but Sophie came around the table and enveloped her in a warm hug, then ducked to look directly into her grandmother’s eyes, pushing the fluffy white curls off her forehead. “Please, Nana?” she said, kissing her soft cheek. “You have a follow-up with the doctor tomorrow. If he clears you, you can start working again for an hour or so at a time.”

  She nodded. “All right, then, just to keep you two happy. I’ll go up and read some more Agatha Christie while you two work too hard, as usual. But after tomorrow . . .” She gave them a look, her round face screwed up in a determined frown. “After tomorrow, nothing will keep me out of the tearoom.”

  Chapter 2

  It had been a busy day. After they closed up the tearoom and tidied, Sophie gave Laverne a strong hug at the back door. “I’m so happy to be back!”

  “Good to hear it, honey. I think your grandmother is worried about you giving up that wonderful job you had.”

  “Wonderful job? Ha.” Sophie snorted and released her godmother, staring into her warm, loving, dark eyes. Laverne was considerably taller than Nana, who was a short, round little lady, so she and Sophie were eye to eye. “I only stayed because I was afraid of letting Mom down. Now I know she lied to me and bribed the owner to get me away from Gracious Grove. I’m glad I left Bartleby’s the way I did or I never would have known about that.”

  “Don’t be too mad at your mother,” Laverne said, cupping Sophie’s cheek. “She did what she thought was right.”

  “As always. Too bad it’s what’s right for her, not me. Good night, Laverne.”

  “Good night, honey,” she said, and gave Sophie a hug and kiss on the cheek. She picked up a cotton tote bag full of containers of leftover soup and goodies. “Time to go home and see what trouble my father has gotten into today.”

  “Mr. Hodge is my inspiration. I want to be exactly like him when I’m his age.”

  Laverne chuckled. Her father was well into his nineties, still had an active social life and an occasional girlfriend. “Horace and him are double-dating two sisters in their eighties,” she said, mentioning Horace Brubaker, another nonagenarian member of Rose Freemont’s Silver Spouts teapot collecting group. “I tell them to be careful around those younger women.”

  After Laverne left, Sophie hopped upstairs to her grandmother’s apartment on the second floor and found that Nana was napping on the sofa, her book on the floor, with Pearl, her chocolate-point Birman cat, curled up in the crook of her knees. She stood watching her for a long moment, tenderness washing through her, gratitude for her grandmother’s recovery swelling in her heart. Pearl looked up at her and blinked. Sophie put her finger to her lips and shushed the cat, who blinked and curled back up, tail over her eyes. Sophie picked up the book and set it on the coffee table, pulled a crocheted afghan over Nana’s shoulders, then climbed the stairs to her own attic suite on the third floor.

  She checked her phone. Several texts, and one message; Jason asking her to call when she had a moment free. “Hey, what’s up?” She threw herself down on the soft sofa in her living room, eying her shelves of teapots that took up the entire wall, the only one that wasn’t abbreviated by a slanted ceiling.

  “I wondered if you were up for a basketball game at Cruickshank tonight?”

  “Since when are you into basketball?”

  “Since the dean has said that he wants all staff, teaching and otherwise, to support the Cruisers. He’s spent a lot of money on the coach, and he’s trying to soothe the alumni association and Board of Governors. Cruickshank used to have top-notch athletic teams back in the day, and he’s being blamed for letting it slide. I need Dean Asquith on my side.”

  “Jason, I know something’s wrong,” she said, sitting up, reacting to the tension she heard in his voice. “If you were holding back because you knew how worried I was over Nana, she’s fine now. She’s going to the doctor tomorrow and expects to be cleared to start back working. So tell me if something is bugging you.”

  “Yeah. We do need to talk, because it’s all going to blow up in my face and I don’t want you to be shocked.”

  But despite those cryptic words, he wouldn’t tell her more, saying they’d talk that evening, if she’d come out for the basketball game. They arranged where to meet and hung up. Through her open door she heard Nana stirring downstairs, so she descended.

  “Hey, honey,” Nana said as she put the kettle on to boil in her bright galley kitchen. “I’m making tea and a poached egg for dinner.”

  “How about I make breakfast for dinner, some Eggs Bennie, instead?”

  “Would you? Oh, honey, you know how I love your Eggs Benedict.”

  “Well, I’m trying something a little different this time, cutting out some of the butter, so I hope you still like them when I’m done.”

  As Nana drank a cup of tea and read the newspaper, Sophie set to work in the narrow but well-appointed galley kitchen, first making no-cook Hollandaise in a food processor. It turned out tasty and healthy, with avocado and Greek yogurt as the base. It was lemony, silky smooth and delicious. Her trained chef’s spirit recoiled from calling it Hollandaise, but it was lovely and would be a healthy substitute.

  Coming home to her grandmother’s place had made her realize many things, so perhaps the couple of months working at Bartleby’s had been good for her. First, she had missed her grandmother fiercely. Almost as much she had missed Jason, Laverne, her friends and Gracious Grove. And then, with all the butter-drenched food she had been preparing at the restaurant, it was nice to come back to Auntie Rose’s and have some control over what she put into each dish instead of going by Chef’s recipe. Her first target had been the mayonnaise-rich salads, which she had lightened up using Greek yogurt and lower-fat alternatives.

  She had also started producing vegetarian fare, at least one offering per day of soup, sandwich and salad. Nana had stiff competition out there now, though that still wasn’t Belle Époque next door, which got by with frozen and bought goodies more often than not. Down the street a new tearoom had opene
d, owned by Julia Dandridge, Jason’s literature department head at Cruickshank. SereniTea was a combination yoga studio and tearoom, so it didn’t appeal to exactly the same demographic, but Sophie was determined to not let them take a bite out of Auntie Rose’s profits. Healthier, lighter fare at Nana’s tearoom would help compete.

  They ate their Eggs Benedict on trays in Nana’s cozy living room with the news on TV. Sophie fretted about what was bothering Jason.

  “There’s no point in fussing about it when you’ll soon know,” Nana offered. “At least he’s willing to talk about whatever it is.”

  “But why didn’t he tell me sooner? He knows he can talk to me, right? I feel like leaving when I did messed things up between us again.” The Bartleby’s restaurant offer had come in August just as she and Jason were beginning to get closer. It was a jarring reminder of the first time when they were teens; her mother had talked her into breaking up with Jason before taking her back for her last year of high school. Their breakup had been teary, painful and the effects long lasting.

  “This time you had a talk with him, though, and didn’t break up.” She handed her plate and teacup to her granddaughter and folded the TV table.

  “You can’t break up when you’re not really going together,” Sophie said gloomily, stacking the dirty dishes, carrying them into the kitchen, putting them in Nana’s sink and squirting liquid detergent over them. She washed, and her grandmother dried.

  “But you’re both adults now, and he understands that your career is important to you.” Nana, her face lined with worry, eyed Sophie. “Which I am concerned about, too. I don’t want you to stay here to look after me. You don’t have to work at Bartleby’s, you know; you could get a job at any restaurant in New York City. You should be doing what you love.”

  This was the moment Sophie had been hoping for. She turned and hugged her grandmother, keeping her soapy hands away from Nana’s soft chenille robe. “I am doing what I love. Auntie Rose’s gives me everything I need. And I get to do it with you, and my friends, and Jason nearby. I don’t need to prove anything anymore. It’s not that my drive is gone, it’s just . . . shifted gears.”

  “Okay, I guess I have to accept that,” Nana said. “But honey, I don’t want you to be mad at your mother. She was doing what she thought right.”

  “You and Laverne sound like you’re reading from the same playbook,” Sophie said lightly, kissing the top of her grandmother’s fluffy head. “Trouble is, Adrian implied there were more instances of Mom messing in my life, stuff I don’t know about. I hope it isn’t anything to do with In Fashion failing. I’d never forgive her.”

  “She would never do anything to hurt you.”

  “I know she wouldn’t do it purposely to hurt me, but she and I have such different ideas of what would make me happy . . . I just don’t know. Anyway, I’m so glad to be back here. And tonight, I’ve got a date for a basketball game!”

  Nana was quite ready for bed. Sophie had found a complete set of Murder, She Wrote on DVD for her grandmother’s birthday, and Rose was budgeting out one episode per night. Sophie left her happily curled up in bed with Pearl on her lap and Jessica Fletcher on her TV.

  A frosty chill was creeping through the Finger Lakes region now that October was half-gone. Gracious Grove was set on a hillside that eventually descended to Seneca Lake. Wind swept down through the village, scattering colored leaves. Sophie dressed in skinny jeans tucked into tan Uggs, a jean jacket over a long-sleeved T-shirt with a brightly colored crocheted scarf—made with love by Laverne—wound around her neck. She was happy to have the Jetta, and took off as dusk crept over the town, heading to Cruickshank College, an old and venerable institution of higher learning about ten miles out of Gracious Grove. It still surprised her that Jason Murphy, teen love of her life and sporty boat-piloting boyfriend of fourteen summers ago, had become a college professor, spouting Blake and Milton and working on his PhD in literature with some incomprehensible (to Sophie) dissertation topic.

  By the time she got to Cruickshank College, the sky was indigo, with just the last pinky golden rays illuminating the horizon beyond the lovely old towered main building. There were other buildings scattered around the hundred or so acres of the campus, like the red and gold autumn leaves that now littered the grassy commons. Apart from the main building, which was the administrative heart of the institution, there were dorms, two modern facilities, one for the arts and one for the sciences, as well as a lab, parking structure, convention facility called Barchester Hall and a couple of other buildings. She pulled around back and into the parking lot of the largest of the other buildings, a long low redbrick structure with an arched roof, named the Saul Spenser Arena after the college’s most famous alumnus and supporter, an industrialist in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Jason had told her to meet him in the lobby.

  She joined the few early-bird attendees, devoted fans who entered through the glass double doors. Many wore the school’s colors, royal blue and silver. The entry lobby was a hardwood-floored cavernous section with huge glass arched windows over the doors, letting in some of the golden sunset light. She found Jason standing with several of her friends. “What a great surprise!” she said, as she hugged Jason hello and turned to face Cissy Peterson; Cissy’s boyfriend, Wally Bowman, a deputy on the local police force; as well as Dana Saunders and her boyfriend, Detective Eli Hodge (Laverne’s nephew) from the Butterhill PD. Everyone was better dressed than she was, especially for a basketball game. “What gives? I feel underdressed.”

  Dana gave Jason a look. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  He shrugged. “I forgot.”

  “Tell me what?” Sophie had an ominous sense she wasn’t going to like what followed.

  “We’re attending a reception before the game for the new coach and his wife and some of the other staff, as well as our star point guard, Mac MacAlister,” he said, his face blank of expression. Jason was thirty-one, lean, with longish straight brown hair. He had grown up, of course, in the years since he and Sophie went together, and was more serious, with long-term ambitions Sophie only barely grasped.

  “A reception. And I’m in jeans and Uggs.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh well, what can I do now?”

  “Wow, you are way more chill than I would be,” Dana said. She, of course, was flawless, in caramel-colored dress slacks, a burnt orange leather jacket and high-heeled leather boots. “Especially considering.”

  “Considering what?” Sophie asked.

  “Considering Jason’s in serious trouble,” Wally said.

  Cissy, dressed in a conservative wool skirt, boots and a sweater, nodded. “Serious trouble.”

  “What kind of serious trouble?” She glanced around the group and over at Jason, who shook his head, looking irritated at his friends.

  “Don’t look at me,” Eli said. He put his arm around Dana and hugged her close. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

  “I told you everything; you don’t listen,” she teased, smacking his bicep.

  “How can I listen when I look into those eyes?”

  Argh, they are just too cute, Sophie thought.

  “I’ll tell you, Soph, but right now, I have to go over and meet Dean Asquith,” Jason said. His expression was tense, and he visibly squared his shoulders before heading over to a group including a tall regal-looking man and woman, as well as Julia Dandridge, the head of the English literature department, and her husband, Nuñez Ortega, a local property developer.

  She watched him walk over to the group, then turned back to her friends. “Great. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it with Jason, but how crappy is this? I get to meet the dean looking like I’m schlepping to Wegmans on a Saturday morning, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”

  Dana eyed her critically. “Yes, there is.”

  Eli, a tall, dark and handsome fellow, looked on with a
bemused smile as Dana proceeded to order Sophie around, swapping her fashionable boots for Sophie’s Uggs, and her leather coat for Sophie’s jean jacket. She took the string of pearls from Cissy’s neck and hung it around Sophie’s, then stood back and looked her up and down. “Better. We can’t do anything about your jeans, but you at least look moderately chic and put together.”

  “Those are my grandmother’s pearls!” Cissy complained, clutching at her naked neck.

  “Then we know they came from the dollar store. Thelma Mae Earnshaw never spent more than a buck for anything in her life,” Dana said. “Stop whining; you’ll get them back.”

  Eli chuckled and hugged Dana to his side. She gazed up at him with adoration.

  Jason returned to the group of friends. “They’re opening up the reception room. We’d better go.”

  Wally took Cissy’s arm. “Jase, maybe it would be better if we skipped the reception, and just you and Sophie go. Unless you really want us there we’ll just be a distraction; you’ll be busy with the others anyway.”

  Jason nodded. “You have a point.” He included the others in a glance. “Thanks, guys, I really appreciate you showing up early like this, but Wally’s right. You may as well just enjoy the game.”

  “And besides,” Dana said with a sniff, “Now I’m the one who’s underdressed!”

  “You coming, Soph?” Jason asked, pointing toward the reception room off the lobby, where some of the college staff was already headed.

  “I’ll follow you in a sec,” she said, and he smiled, then turned and headed across the lobby.

  “We’d better go and get our seats,” Wally said.

  “But you . . . you go and mingle with Jason and the other professor types,” Dana said, giving Sophie a little shove. “Make a good impression.”