Rose could hear him speak in the way he always spoke on the phone—mechanical, almost robotic. “Hi… Good… No, nothing new has happened.”
Which wasn’t true at all! Aunt Lily had arrived, which was possibly the newest thing that had ever happened in the entire dull history of Calamity Falls.
Rose had the urge to run to the phone and tell her parents all about Aunt Lily, to make sure that she’d done the right thing by letting her into the family business. She told herself she was going to do so, right after this next bite of tart. And then the next bite. And, really, right after she finished cleaning her plate. She just couldn’t stop nibbling on the tart. Not even after Ty hung up and sat down in the backyard again, saying, “Oh, it was just the usual—clean up and go to bed early and blah blah blah.”
Aunt Lily silenced him by raising a forkful of tart toward his mouth. And then they all quieted and ate in silence until every plate and utensil was licked clean and every crumb of the tart was gone, as if it had never been there in the first place.
Every night before bed, the four Bliss children gathered upstairs in the little bathroom with the green floral wallpaper for a sacred ritual they called Brush Time. The foursome huddled around the tiny white porcelain sink in their flannel pajamas and brushed their teeth together.
Ty stumbled around the bathroom in his one pair of blue lacrosse shorts, shirtless, listlessly dragging the bristles over his tongue. Leigh sort of smeared her mouth with toothpaste and then spat. Only Rose brushed her teeth as they were supposed to do: from the gumline to the tips, twice around, inside and out.
Sage sat on the little rocking chair next to the clawfoot tub with his arms folded across his chest, pouting.
“What’s wrong now, Sage?” grumbled Rose as she helped Leigh wipe toothpaste from her lips, nose, and face. But she already knew: He, like the rest of them, was thinking about their “aunt” Lily, who even now was settling into the guest room in the basement.
“Why can’t we show Lily the book? She needs recipes for her show! Then when she gets famous, we can visit her and be famous too!”
Ty spat into the sink with gusto. “I’m with Little Bro on this one. She needs our help. I think she would love … us if we gave it to her.”
Lily’s words rang in Rose’s brain: You have gifts too, Rose… It’s just a matter of what you choose to do with them. She looked down at the whisk-shaped key that hung around her neck. “We can’t do it. I promised.”
“Fine!” shouted Sage. “So just ’cause you’re afraid of Mom and Dad and have to do everything they say, Aunt Lily suffers? Good, kind, wonderful Aunt Lily? Who made us paella and helped out in the bakery all day and made us a special dessert that was better than anything Mom and Dad ever made from that stupid cookbook?”
“But we don’t even know her!” Rose cried. Why was her desire to do the correct and responsible thing always met with frowns from her brothers?
Then Rose thought of something—what if she could help Lily and herself in one fell swoop? What if, instead of showing Lily the book, Rose could copy some of the recipes and practice them right under Lily’s nose? Then, if they still trusted Aunt Lily at the end of the week, they could show her the recipes. That way Rose herself would get to learn a little magic and maybe show her brothers that she wasn’t all rules and business. Then maybe she’d tell her mother about it, years later, over a cup of tea, and her mother would laugh and say, Oh, Rose, what a take-charge kind of person you are! I think you and I should run the bakery together.
Rose beamed at the thought. “I guess it would be all right,” she began, “to just copy a few of the recipes out of the book and learn them ourselves; then we can teach them to her at the end of the week. That way she’ll just think it’s a regular recipe with a few weird ingredients. But she can’t know about the book!”
Sage and Ty nodded, smiling. “Lily’s gonna love this,” Ty said.
“Okay,” Rose said, putting her toothbrush away, and then Leigh’s. “Let’s meet in the back of the fridge tomorrow morning before she wakes up and copy some recipes.”
The brothers Bliss gave each other a high five, then patted Rose on the back. And for the first time in a while, she felt like they had all come from the same parents.
“For the record: I have a bad feeling about this,” Rose said, but Ty and Sage were too busy doing a victory dance to hear. She picked Leigh up in her arms like a baby and plopped her onto her bed. Rose pulled the soft red jersey sheets up to her little sister’s chin and tucked them under. “Do you think I’m making a mistake, Leigh?”
But Leigh was already asleep.
CHAPTER 5
The Cookery Booke
Very early the next morning, Rose tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen, still in her nightgown. She had a tiny bad feeling about this whole plan, but a huge thrilled feeling about using the cookbook and being part of a team with her brothers, so that won out.
The sky outside was a pale gray, and little rivers of rain inched their way down the windows, blurring the lines of the backyard. Rose could barely make out the dark form of Aunt Lily’s motorcycle sitting in the driveway. Leigh was still asleep in her bed, and as Rose crept down the stairs, she had been able to hear Mrs. Carlson snoring mightily. All was quiet from the basement, so it seemed that Lily was asleep as well.
Ty was crammed into the booth, still wearing his blue lacrosse shorts, a white tank top, and a lime-green walkie-talkie headset that he’d gotten for his birthday a few years before.
“Welcome, Rosemary,” he said, motioning for her to sit. “You’re right on schedule.” He pressed a button on the headset and spoke into the microphone. “Cilantro, come in. Come in, Cilantro.”
Rose heard Sage’s voice pumped through Ty’s earpiece. “Cilantro to Bay Leaf, I’m here. Over.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Your code names are just different herbs?”
“Yeah!” he cried, excited. “Bay Leaf to Cilantro, Bay Leaf to Cilantro. Rosemary flying in. Report to the central hub for duty, Cilantro.”
“Why don’t I get a code name?” Rose asked.
“You’re already an herb. What do you think Rosemary means?” Ty said.
“Good point, Thyme,” Rose said.
Sage slid in his tube socks through the saloon doors from the front room onto the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor wearing flannel pajama pants, a black suit jacket, and black sunglasses. Rose thought her brothers looked like spies at a slumber party, and she giggled as Ty handed her a green headset. Sage peered around dramatically and tiptoed over to the booth.
“Here’s the plan,” Ty began. He was momentarily distracted by his reflection in the kitchen window and fixed his hair. Then he continued: “We get in, we copy some recipes, we get out. Simple, clean, no collateral damage. I will read out loud, and Rose will copy down what I’m saying, because she has good handwriting—”
“What about me?” asked Sage.
Rose and Ty glanced at each other. “You will look over my shoulder and make sure I’m pronouncing everything correctly,” Ty offered. Sage nodded, happy to be given a key role.
Rose opened the door of the walk-in refrigerator, and the three spies moved through the dark hallway. Rose could see her breath condensing like frost in the cold air. But then the lightbulb overhead flickered and went dead, leaving them in the dark, unable to tell the eggs from the cheese, one wall from the other.
“This is creepy,” whispered Sage.
Rose felt for the edge of the scratchy green tapestry at the end of the hallway and pulled it back, then ran her hand over the rough wood and iron of the little door until she felt the keyhole. She felt slightly queasy as she turned the delicate prongs of the whisk-shaped key and opened the library.
Purdy had never let her actually see the contents of the recipes in the Bliss Cookery Booke, but now Rose felt that she was entitled, after all the errands and the babysitting, to learn the ancient secrets that were her family inheritance.
&n
bsp; “We have to pick ones that are exciting and actually make things happen,” said Sage, running his finger along the leather of the cover, which was embossed in an intricate filigree pattern that gave it the look of an ancient cathedral door.
Ty shooed Sage away from the book and opened the cover himself.
Rose peered over his shoulder. “Wait!” she said. “There’s the one for the poppy muffins that Mom was making the other morning. Read that one.”
On one side of the page was a picture of a shadowy wooden kitchen. An older woman wearing a bonnet and apron was pulling a tray of puffy muffins from an oven, while a man in a wide-brimmed hat and ornate fur coat cried and beat the ground with his fists.
On the other side was the recipe.
But it wasn’t like a regular recipe, with a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions—it was more like a story.
Ty read the introduction aloud:
Cakes of Red Poppy,
for the Remembrance of Things Lost.
It was in 1518, on the Scottish Isle of Froth, that Lady Gresnil Bliss, wearing a red aprone, did cause the forgetful Lord Fallon O’Lechnod to recall the position of his prized cape. Lord Fallon did say, ‘It were jeweled with rubies and lined with ferret! Missing two weeks at least. It were stolen by my rivals.’ Lady Bliss did bake him these cakes, and Lord Fallon recall’d that he placed the cape at the dining chair of Priest Pierrod two weekes prior and left without collecting it.
“What the heck does any of that mean?” Sage asked.
Ty turned to Sage. “I think it means that our great-great-grand-whatever helped a rich guy remember that he forgot his coat at a dinner party.” Ty read on while Rose furiously scribbled in her marble notebook:
Gresnil Bliss did place two fists of flour pure as snow as snow in the center of the wooden bowl. She cracked one of the chicken’s eggs into the flour, then punctured the golden yolk with the tiniest finger of her LEFT hand while whispering “Oublietto Desoletto” thrice in succession.
Then she did stir an acorn of the black seedes into one fist of the cow’s milk while whispering “Souviendo Reviendo.” She did pour the milk over the flour and stir the iron spoon five times in the way of the clock’s hands. She did sprinkle elephant saliva over the micksture and then blow. She did place one petal of the red poppy in the center of each cake.
It went on like that for a while.
There was a wind from the north. She did rest the cake in the oven HOT as seven flames for the TIME of six songs and then fed it to Lord Fallon O’Lechnod, whose eyes did flash green, and he did recover his cape at the home of Priest Pierrod.
“I didn’t know the recipes were … like that,” Rose said. She looked down at her notes. An acorn of black seeds? As hot as seven flames? For the time of six songs? “I have no idea what any of those measurements mean.”
Rose stared at her brothers with silent desperation.
Ty checked his watch. “It’s seven a.m. Chip will be here soon. We need to hurry. Let’s just get these copied down, and we’ll figure it out later.”
A half hour later, Rose, Sage, and Thyme left the secret storeroom with a word-for-word copy of five recipes to experiment with throughout the week.
When they emerged from the refrigerator, they saw a shimmering purple figure through the blurry window above the nook, moving around the driveway.
“Who is that?” whispered Rose. They cracked opened the backdoor and peeked out.
It was Aunt Lily, clad in a pair of purple sequined pants and a purple tank top. She was tightening a bolt on her motorcycle with a little silver wrench, her short black hair glistening in the rain. “What is she doing up so early?” Rose whispered.
But instead of answering, her brothers bolted out to greet Aunt Lily. Rose stood in the doorway, not wanting to get her nightgown wet. How come her brothers had never bolted to greet her?
Lily dropped the wrench and threw her arms around Ty and Sage. “Men!” she said. “What are you doing up so early! And why are you wearing walkie-talkies?”
Sage and Ty glanced at each other. Sage smiled, but Ty slid his walkie-talkie headset off. “Just playing with Sage,” Ty said. “You know. Kid stuff.”
“Aha!” Lily said. She noticed Rose standing in the doorway, listening. “Rose! Good morning!”
“What are you doing up, Aunt Lily?” Rose asked.
Lily smiled so big that her gums showed. “I can never sleep past seven—so I thought I’d make the morning ingredient run a little easier by taking one of you on Trixie!” She patted the silver horns of her bull-shaped bike. “Who wants to come? Hills are much easier on a motorcycle!”
Sage raised his hand and jumped up and down. “Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!”
Ty stayed cool as a cucumber, even though Rose knew he was dying to go.
Lily handed Sage a black helmet. Sage jumped two feet in the air, strapped the helmet beneath his chin, and hopped onto the back of the bike. “You’ll be next,” Lily said, winking at Ty.
“Yeah, definitely. Cool,” Ty said, then sauntered back toward the kitchen. “’Scuse me, mi hermana,” he said. Rose wouldn’t budge from the door frame. “What’s your problem, Sis?”
She leaned in and looked her older brother right in his brilliant gray eyes. “Something bugs me about Aunt Lily. Why would she get up that early just to work on her motorcycle in the rain? And why did she come to settle a family feud from two hundred years ago during the one week ever that our parents happen to be out of town?”
Ty pushed Rose’s arm out of the way. “You’re imagining things, Rose. You’re just jealous that you don’t have a motorcycle, and that you’re not six feet tall and gorgeous.” Rose was still too young to be gorgeous, but the words stung anyway: She already knew that she didn’t really possess the makings of future gorgeousness. She certainly didn’t need Ty to remind her.
“I’m going to change into something more presentable,” Ty announced as he shuffled up the stairs.
Rose sighed. I probably am just jealous, she thought—jealous of Aunt Lily’s magnificent laugh and magnificent clothes and magnificent life.
She dragged her feet through the dark of the walk-in refrigerator once more and pulled back the tapestry. She jiggled the handle of the library door again, just to make sure it was locked.
Then, as she was closing the door of the walk-in, she saw a small dot shimmering on the floor. She bent down to get a closer look.
It was a purple sequin, the kind that were sewn all over Aunt Lily’s pants.
Lily had been in the refrigerator that morning.
CHAPTER 6
Recipe the First: Love Muffins
An hour later, Rose threw open the door to Ty and Sage’s room, sending the VISITING HOURS sign cascading from the door. Ty was just pulling back the white sheet that divided the room.
“Can’t you read? Does it look like three p.m. to you?” He dug through a pile of socks and T-shirts and pulled out a pair of wrinkled khakis.
“Not now, Ty!” Rose cried. “Look what I just found in the fridge!” She held the purple sequin on the tip of her finger like a ladybug and shoved it under Ty’s nose.
“So?” he yawned.
“So, Aunt Lily was eavesdropping. While we were copying the recipes! I told you there was something fishy about her!”
Ty scoffed. “Did it ever occur to you, mi hermana, that she just wanted milk for her coffee, and that we happen to keep our milk in our refrigerator, like every other family in this country?” He laid the khakis over his bedspread and tried to smooth out the creases with his palm.
“Coffee?” Rose repeated quietly. “Was she drinking coffee?”
“Totally,” Ty said. He stood up. “Look, she even left the mug in the drive.”
Rose peered out the little white portal at the head of Ty’s bed and into the backyard. Nestled in the pebbles of the driveway was a forlorn mug of brown liquid.
“Maybe,” Rose said. Then she tucked the sequin into the back pocket o
f her khakis, just in case Lily really was fishy and she needed to prove it later to the police.
“You’re a baker, Rose,” Ty said, “not a detective.”
“Fine,” Rose pouted. “Let’s bake, then.” She laid her marble notebook out on the floor while Ty pulled on the khakis over his lacrosse shorts. “The recipe for love muffins doesn’t seem so bad. Here.” She pointed to the heading on the recipe:
Muffins of Green Squash. To Dissolve Love’s Various Impediments
“Green squash?” Ty gagged.
“Another name for zucchini,” Rose said. Then she read out loud what she’d copied:
It was in 1718 in the British country town of Gosling’s Wake that Sir Jasper Bliss brought together two most unfortunate souls, the widower James Corinthian and dressmaker Petra Biddlebumme, who were too sad and too shy, respectively, to leap into the glorious fire of love. Jasper made a special delivery of these squash muffins to each one’s house, then waited a safe distance from the dressmaking shop of Petra Biddlebumme. Two hours past the delivery of the muffins, widower James Corinthian ran to the door of Petra Biddlebumme, who asked him in for tea. They were married one month thence.
“Awww,” Ty said sarcastically. “It’s like an ancient version of Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle.”
“You’re right,” Rose said. “You know what we should do to test out the recipe? Bake two of these muffins, give them to Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle when they come in today, then see if they fall in love!”
Ty got a look on his face like he just bit into a lemon. “Can’t we get two attractive people together?”
Rose groaned. “You would say that. Listen, the man wears a frog sweatshirt. At this point, magic is his only hope. Do we have everything for the recipe?”
Ty read the recipe itself out loud:
Sir Jasper Bliss did grate one large green squash while chanting the names of the lonely customers thrice. Sir Jasper did pass through a metal sieve one fist of flour and one fist of sugar. Sir Jasper did drizzle two acorns of the finest distilled Tahitian vanilla over the flour. Then he did fold within the batter one egg of the Masked Lovebird, Agapornis personata, which Sir Jasper did acquire from a mystic who had collected them from the primordial forests of Madagascar.
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