by Maggie Marr
“It wasn’t just her mistake, Mom—”
“Tyler.” His mother’s tone hardened. “She had an affair—”
Every muscle in his body tightened with the word. “Mom.” He pulled air deep into his lungs. “Our marriage”—he shook his head—“it wasn’t right. We weren’t right for a long time before she was with someone else. I just… Mom, I didn’t see it and I don’t ever want to fail like that again.”
Mom was right. He’d wanted the same type of relationship he’d witnessed between his parents. How lucky he’d been to have that kind of security as a child. How lucky his parents had been to find each other. You didn’t get everything in life, and he had surrendered to the idea that a marriage like his parents’ marriage wasn’t going to be part of his life. But he did have a great family and an amazing daughter. He had more than most people.
“Coffee?” his mom asked.
Tyler shook his head. “I’ve got the meeting at the Grande tomorrow morning. I want to go through my notes and the ideas I have for their new addition. Then get some sleep.”
“I’ll bring Charlotte around eleven. Want to join us for lunch?”
“Sounds like a plan. She’s super excited.” He walked toward his bedroom door. “Don’t forget the princess doll tomorrow. Charlotte wants to show the Christmas castle to her doll.”
“I’m pretty certain Charlotte wouldn’t let me forget.”
“Night, Mom.” Tyler opened the door to his room.
“Good night.” There was a tiny tremble in her voice.
Tyler pretended the emotion wasn’t there, that his mother wasn’t worried about him, and closed his bedroom door.
Chapter Three
Five a.m. was early and cold. The plows had cleared the roads, but big ever-growing drifts lined the streets of Powder Springs. Brinn curved along the two-lane highway toward the outskirts of town and the base of Thunder Ridge Mountain where the Grande Hotel had sat for closing in on one hundred and twenty-five years. A favorite of tourists, the giant white building with a wraparound porch sat high on a plateau. The back patios opened out onto the ski slopes, and guests of the Grande could walk out the back doors, gear up, and slip down the smooth hill to the quad lift at the foot of Thunder Ridge.
The hotel was decked out in its holiday finery. White lights lined every edge of the hotel and glittered in the early-morning darkness. Wreaths hung from the front doors and a giant Christmas tree decorated the outside of the hotel. Brinn pulled around to the side of the hotel to the parking lot beside the service entrance that led to the kitchen.
She opened the back door to the Grande Hotel’s kitchen. Bright light shot out of the back door and warm air blasted her nearly frozen cheeks. Knives thumped on cutting boards. The earthy scent of fresh chopped vegetables and the rich smells of cooking meat wafted around her. A kitchen felt like home, whether a small apartment kitchen with a hot plate or giant industrial kitchen with speed racks and stainless steel. She was always in the right place when she entered a kitchen.
Food was life. Food was family and friends and celebration. To be a part of those events gave her life meaning and pleasure. In this kitchen, great cooks mixed, chopped, sautéed, baked, stirred, whipped, and created brilliant concoctions that caused people to smile. Food warmed not only a person’s belly but also their soul. Memories were created around a table. From the moment of birth until the day of your death, every celebration had food. Food, bread, the kitchen, the table, they were the heartbeat of life.
The Grande’s kitchen bustled with activity. Prep cooks chopped, washed, and set up for the hundreds of meals they would serve over the next twenty-four hours. Brinn wore her black-and-white checkered pants and kitchen whites with Bea & Barbara’s Bakery logo embroidered over her heart. She passed the prep area and said hello to all the line cooks she knew.
“Hey, Brinn!” Chef Edgar called from behind the line. He ducked his head so she could see him between the stainless steel shelves where the cooks placed the dishes once they were ready for the expeditor to send them out of the kitchen.
“Hi, Edgar.”
“Try this.” He plated a piece of meat. Brinn’s stomach growled at the aroma. He pushed the plate toward her through the open space, and she grabbed a fork from the tray of utensils on the counter. Edgar walked from behind the line, wiping his hands on his apron.
Brinn sniffed. The jus lined the plate around the edges of the meat. “Smells amazing.” She cut into the piece of beef with her fork, the meat so tender she didn’t even need a knife. She put a bite in her mouth and closed her eyes. What spices had he placed on the meat? What flavors grabbed her interest?
“Riley’s rub. Garlic. A touch of… is that chili pepper and… cinnamon?”
“Nice palate you got there. You like?”
“Like?” Brinn took another bite of the meat, this time keeping her eyes open. “More like love. This is phenomenal.”
“Limited beef from right here in Powder Springs. Grass fed. We’ve got about two hundred pounds.”
“That’s not much.”
“Thinking a Christmas Eve special. You and your family still coming this year?”
“Of course.”
Christmas Eve dinner at the Grande was a Bartoli family tradition. Once the bakery closed on Christmas Eve, the Bartolis went home, cleaned up, had dinner at the Grande, and then made their way to Midnight Mass. As a little girl, Brinn held fast every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve to the knowledge that she would not only get gifts from Santa on Christmas Eve, but she would also get her parents back from the holiday rush at the bakery. During the Christmas season, she and her sister went days without seeing Ma and Pop because they were so busy filling orders at the bakery. During the month of December, Nonna had always made the parental absence bearable for both the Bartoli girls.
“Deborah and her family coming in from Boulder?” Edgar asked.
“They get here two days before Christmas.”
“And Nonna?”
“Are you kidding? She wouldn’t miss Christmas Eve at the Grande. Maybe you can save about nine of these for the Bartoli family?” Brinn wiped her mouth with a napkin, which she then tossed toward a laundry bag at the far end of the line.
“You got it. You’re the first person I tried it out on. I know if you like it, everyone will.” He flashed her a quick smile. “You’ve always had a great palate. Too bad you became a baker.” He cocked his eyebrow and rolled back on his heels.
“I do believe, Edgar, that I’ve actually seen times when you were very thankful I became a baker. Remember the weekend you and your wife came to San Francisco and I made you that buttercream hazelnut torte?”
Edgar clasped his heart. “Oh my God, Brinn, that torte is to die for.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Don’t tell Hans, but that’s still the best dessert I’ve had in my entire life.”
Brinn nodded. The torte was a family recipe passed down from Nonna’s grandmother to the women in the family.
“Come by Christmas Day,” Brinn whispered. “I’ll have a couple at the house.”
“Don’t tease me. Donna and I still talk about that meal.”
“About what do you two whisper?” Hans, the pastry chef for the Grande, stood at the end of the line with his hands on his hips. He attempted a stern look, but Brinn knew that the creased eyebrows and tight lips were a facade. He cocked his eyebrow and his gaze held hints of playfulness.
“Surely, Edgar, you are not going on and on and on about this torte of which you cannot stop speaking?”
A sheepish smile took over Edgar’s face.
“I have been pastry chef at the Grande for over a decade and yet this man will not stop raving about your torte.”
Edgar retreated to the other side of the line with a smile on his face.
Hans, turned to Brinn. “You must give me the recipe, please. I must make this man stop humiliating me in my own kitchen. His love for your torte is insatiable.”
Brinn laughed. She was ple
ased that two of her favorite chefs thought so highly of her skills.
She lifted her palms skyward. “Family recipe.” There was no option but to keep the recipe a secret.
“Family recipe,” Hans muttered. “Fine. I can respect the sanctity of a family recipe, however you must then bake the torte for me, and I will recreate with my own spin, yes?”
“Come over Christmas afternoon. I’ll have it then.”
“I will be there. Now come. We have much work to accomplish today. Stop being Edgar’s food-testing guru and come to the baking side of the kitchen.” Hans looked over his shoulder toward Edgar, who was now on the line discussing something with his sous. “The important side,” Hans called. A smile played around the edges of Hans’s mouth.
Edgar and Hans had a mutual respect for one another and often collaborated on special entrée and dessert pairings. One of the reasons Brinn had been so excited to do the Christmas castle for the Grande was because she enjoyed the easy and fun-loving camaraderie that Edgar and Hans cultivated in the kitchen.
Kitchens could be tense places. She’d done her internship after cooking school in some of the finest and fiercest kitchens around the world. More than a few had been hot, dangerous places with angry cooks, angry chefs, hot grease, fires, and knives. When she’d opened her own bakery with Marco, they’d vowed to make their kitchen a quiet and loving place. They’d succeeded… for a while. A brief while.
Brinn and Hans walked toward the area of the giant kitchen at the Grande where ovens, giant mixers, and all the things needed to create fabulous sweet treats for hundreds of people every single day of the year were kept. Hans allowed Brinn the luxury of doing all her prep baking for the Christmas castle at the Grande instead of baking all the pieces at Bea & Barbara’s and transporting them over snow-packed roads. For the past two weeks, Brinn had come to the Grande for five hours each day. A sixteen-foot gingerbread castle was easier to construct if you made the necessary pieces of gingerbread in the same place the gingerbread castle was meant to be built.
“Get your coffee, please. The morning air is very cold. Colder than my own Bavaria.” He reached for two mugs and handed one to Brinn.
She filled both their cups. The coffee was rich with cinnamon for the holidays, and she took a long, deep sniff before she raised the warm mug to her lips.
The rolling speed rack that contained the first day’s work for the Christmas castle waited outside the walk-in freezer. She pulled out each drawer and looked at the different shapes. The gingerbread was firm beneath her fingers. She lifted each piece up and examined both sides for cracks.
“It is looking very solid. Much like your father’s gingerbread.”
A big compliment for Hans to say her gingerbread was as sturdy as her father’s. Pop’s gingerbread houses at the Grande were legendary. They were solid and big and bold and beautiful. His gingerbread didn’t crack. The past two Christmases, since Pop had passed, Hans had flown in a different pastry chef each year to build the Christmas castle. The first year he brought in a chef from New York, and the second year one from Germany. While the castles were solid and pleasant to look at, Hans had been unhappy with their work. Brinn had been thrilled when Hans arrived at the bakery and asked her to build the Christmas castle this year.
She closed her eyes. To disappoint Hans, or Ma, or Nonna, would be horrible. Now that Bea & Barbara’s had once again been invited to build the Christmas castle, if she messed the castle up or if the castle tilted or cracked and fell to the ground, failure would be humiliating not only for her but her entire family.
“Do not worry, I have watched you all these weeks, and I would not have you build this gingerbread castle if I weren’t certain you would complete the castle with the same vision and care as your father.” Hans sipped his coffee. “You are a great baker. Like your father. A natural.”
Brinn’s heart thumped in her chest. “Thank you.” His words were just what she needed.
“Pieter will make the icing now.” Hans nodded to one of his assistants who stood at the ready beside a giant industrial-sized mixer on the far side of the kitchen. Pieter poured the premeasured ingredients into the mixing bowl. While playful with Edgar and even his own staff, once work began, Hans ran his side of the kitchen with the precision of a German engineer. “Let us go over the plans once more.” Hans walked toward his office and Brinn followed.
Hans’s office was in a corner of the baking side of the kitchen. There were windows with blinds on two walls. From this spot Hans could work at his computer researching recipes and ingredients, place orders for all the necessities of the kitchen, and keep a watchful eye on his kitchen and his staff. The blinds allowed him some privacy should he need it. This morning the blinds were tilted at an angle so that while Hans could see out, no one could see into his office. He’d given up the top of his desk to accommodate the plans for the Christmas castle.
Brinn and Hans had spent the first four weeks of the Christmas-castle process going back and forth on what type of castle they wanted to build. They’d finally drawn inspiration from the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. While not quite as intricate, the design for the Grande Christmas castle was big and bold and beautiful.
“Foundation day.” Hans’s fingertips pressed across the creased design papers.
Today, Brinn and Pieter would work behind curtains. Hopefully, today was the only day that the curtains would be necessary. Hans wanted to keep the magic of the Christmas castle alive for all. He didn’t want anyone to see the foundation being built. Foundation day was the only day that anything other than edible materials would be used to build the castle. Today big wooden boxes, built by the hotel’s carpenters, would be set in a square for the lower level of gingerbread. The foundation pieces and icing would need nearly a full eighteen hours to set. Hopefully tomorrow morning the wooden boxes could be removed and the foundation for the castle would stand on its own. If today went as planned, then tomorrow morning the curtains wouldn’t be necessary and Brinn would continue to build the Christmas castle in full view of hotel guests.
Brinn’s fingertip brushed across the blueprint. They’d carefully calculated the weight of the structure and believed that they’d created a design that could bear the load of the icing, the gingerbread, and the decorations, but neither of them was an architect or an engineer. While Brinn had built a holiday house in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel each Christmas for the past five years, this Christmas castle exceeded both in size and in sheer amount of detail what she’d built in the past.
“The boxes have been placed and the curtains are erected. This phase will take from six a.m. until ten thirty. That will leave plenty of time for the icing to harden. We shall know by tomorrow morning if our plans are a success.”
Tomorrow morning. Please God let her come tomorrow morning and every piece of gingerbread still be in place.
There was a knock on Hans’s office door.
“Yes?”
“The icing is prepared, Chef.”
Hans turned to Brinn. “Come, liebchen, it is time.”
Chapter Four
Brinn and Hans followed Pieter. He pulled the speed rack through the staff corridor of the hotel. In Housekeeping, the staff was already bustling in preparation for their day. The Christmas holidays were the busiest time of the year for the Grande and all of Powder Springs.
Brinn glanced at the clock that hung just inside the housekeeping offices. It was nearing six. At Bea & Barbara’s, the bread baked for today would be nearly finished. The cookies would be in the oven and Ma, with Dom’s help, would start icing the first batch. Then there would be cakes and tortes and other creations based on the orders that had come in last night. Ma would fill the display case, and the bakery would smell of sugar and cinnamon.
Ma baked extras of everything during the holiday season. Nearly every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a customer would come in and need five dozen cookies for a party they were going to, having forgotten to order because they were s
o busy with the holidays.
Pieter pulled the speed rack through the service entrance and into the lobby. Brinn and Hans followed. Brinn’s breath stopped in her chest. The lobby of the Grande took her breath, always. Giant marble pillars sprang up from the white and gold marble floor. The giant two-story staircase, which was a centerpiece of the Grande and the backdrop for every Powder Springs High School prom since anyone could remember, arched gracefully up to the second floor. Each step was decorated with massive poinsettias on a brass holder.
The giant Norway spruce, specially scouted by the Grande’s head gardener and then cut and hauled to the Grande, stood in the center of the lobby. This year the tree was decorated with bright red and gold decorations. Red balls and gold bows went all the way to the top where the golden, lighted star was. The Christmas castle would live in the center of the lobby to the side of the tree. Together, the Christmas castle and the Christmas tree would create the holiday focal point for the hotel. Pieter pulled the speed rack which contained the gingerbread and their essential tools for today behind the black curtains that surrounded the spot where the building of the Christmas castle would begin.
Brinn pulled out a measuring tape from her pants pocket. She measured the castle’s footprint based on the wooden boxes to be certain the placement was correct. Everything looked right. Brinn took a long, deep breath and air filled her lungs. The next thirty-six hours were critical. If the foundation wasn’t properly set, the Christmas castle would collapse, and once Brinn began, she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, until the foundation was set.
“We’ve got the primary foundation pieces?”
Pieter pulled the big pieces from the speed rack. This first stage was like building a house of cards. If she didn’t build the original footprint foundation with care, the entire castle could crack, sag, tilt, or worst of all, fall to the ground.
Pieter handed Brinn the first piece, which she carefully placed in the slot designated for it. Next, he handed her the frosting bag and spatula. For the foundation they would use melted white chocolate. Then Brinn would outline the edges with royal icing. She lined the edge of the gingerbread, and Pieter quickly handed her the next one, which she pressed against the icing. The wooden boxes would merely act as supports, inside the foundation, for the first day. Tomorrow the wooden boxes would be removed from the open top.