Amelia pulls herself away from the window and returns to the job. She opens a closet and finds more boxes, and potentially the promise of slightly better organization. At the very back, on the bottom, is one box marked 1945.
The first year of the Meade Creamery stand.
Amelia wrestles it out, hope fluttering inside her heart. Inside are lots of scraps of paper, old time cards from the punch clock, invoices, a receipt for Molly’s Emery Thompson ice cream maker, which cost her eight hundred dollars. Amelia is surprised it was so expensive—weren’t movies like fifty cents back then?—but clearly the machine was worth every penny.
But no recipes.
Amelia does, however, find a photo—black and white, scalloped edges—of the girls from that first summer, posed in front of the ice cream stand, flexing their scooping muscles, big wide smiles. They must have been excited, on the cusp of something new, lined up in crisp white blouses instead of the modern polos.
Amelia’s phone rings. It’s Cate.
“How’s it going up there?” she asks.
Amelia slumps backward, against the wall. “I don’t know when I’m going to be down today. Do you want me to call one of the other girls? Get someone to cover for me?”
“It’s fine. If we get swamped at lunch, I’ll text you. Where are you right now?”
“Sitting in Molly’s office, sweating my butt off. Hold on.” Amelia puts the phone down and peels off her Meade Creamery polo. It’s way cooler in just her bra.
“Are you having fun? I’d think you’d love going through her stuff.”
“I’m too stressed to enjoy it.” Suddenly the air on the line sounds weird. “Cate?”
Amelia’s phone rings again, but this time, not with a call: a video chat. She slides her finger across the screen and sees Cate in the stand office, her feet up on the desk.
“Is that some kind of new uniform Grady’s having you try out?” Cate cackles.
“Shush up! I just took it off. I told you, it’s a million degrees up here!”
“Relax, I’m just teasing. Come on. Show me something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know! I want to see her house!”
Amelia reverses the camera and pans the office.
“Boring. What else?”
Amelia almost doesn’t say it. “Well, her childhood bedroom is across the hall.”
“Why are you holding out on me?”
Amelia bites her finger. “Okay, hold on.” Aiming the camera in front of her, she walks down the hall. She turns the knob and pushes the door wide open.
“Holy crap,” says Cate.
It’s a big, dreamy space with six-paned windows on both sides of the sloping ceiling. One has views of the roadside and the other overlooks the back fields. Molly clearly got the best room in the house, likely because she was the Meades’ only girl.
Amelia walks over to the vanity. It’s neatly arranged with dozens of thick glass bottles, ceramic tubs, a tortoise comb. A square gold compact with pink pressed powder sits next to a bottle of Mavis talcum powder. There are two Revlon lipsticks in colors named Rosy Future and Bright Forecast. That had to be, Amelia thinks, some marketing strategy for the girls left at home during World War II. She picks up a pineapple-shaped glass bottle of deep amber liquid with a tiny pink bow fastened just under the nozzle. The name sends her eyes rolling—Vigny’s Beau Catcher—though she’s curious enough to take a sniff. The scent is warm and sweet. Orange blossoms and honeysuckle and sandalwood.
“What’s that on her vanity mirror?” Cate asks. “Pictures?”
Amelia sets the perfume down and aims the camera. Wedged into the mirror frame are more black-and-white photos. Molly and her girlfriends at the lake. Molly holding a baby calf.
“Any of that hottie Wayne Lumsden?” Cate asks.
“No. Maybe because it was too painful to see his picture,” Amelia reasons.
“Closet, please!” Cate says.
Inside are the most gorgeous clothes. Silk and satin party dresses with billowing skirts, day dresses in crisp cotton, tea-length skirts, soft blouses. Wedge sandals and pointy high heels. A woven straw sun hat.
“Anything else?” Cate asks, a little bored.
Amelia spins around and walks toward Molly’s four-poster bed. It’s twin-sized, with one pancake pillow and white sheets with yellow scalloped edges that are hand-sewn. Her quilt is gorgeous, a checkerboard of pastel squares that make flower shapes and sunbursts on white backing. Next to that is a nightstand, white wood, with one pull drawer and a pink glass knob.
“It’s kind of weird, don’t you think?” Amelia muses. “This looks like the room of someone who died during high school, not who lived until she was almost ninety.”
“Hey, Amelia, try lifting up her mattress!”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where girls keep their secrets!”
Amelia turns her phone around so Cate sees her. “What secrets do you keep under your mattress?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Cate says coyly. “Come on! The recipes could be there!”
Amelia sets the phone down on the carpet and kneels on the floor next to the bed. The mattress is heavy, but she manages to lift it a few inches.
“Anything?” Cate asks.
Amelia stares down at a pale pink and clothbound book, the word DIARY stamped in gold script on the cover.
“Nope,” Amelia says, letting it fall. And then, quickly, “Hey, Cate, I should go. The sooner I find these recipes, the sooner I can come back down. Text me if things get busy.”
“Don’t forget to put your shirt back on before Grady gets home,” Cate teases.
The diary has that old-book smell that’s hard to describe. Amelia flips through it without reading. The paper feels brittle against her fingers. The pages were probably white once, but they’ve turned something closer to khaki. The handwriting is a neater, crisper version of Molly’s familiar old-lady cursive.
Amelia knows she shouldn’t. Molly Meade was so private. But Cate’s right, Molly’s diary may be the key to finding the recipes. Curiosity tugging at her, she turns to the first page.
September 22, 1944
Every other boy was already on the bus, hidden behind fogged-up windows, though some had wiped space off for a last goodbye wave to their families. The bus driver had one boot up on the tire, one boot on the street, while Tiggy tried to make small talk with the driver, bless her, to give Wayne and me a few seconds more together.
“You know, the sooner I leave, the faster I’ll be back.” He said it as a joke, but I started to cry. He was ready to go. Eager to fight. And I didn’t want to let him.
“Promise me,” I said. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
“Of course I will, Moll Doll,” he said, taking my face in his hands, wiping away my tears with his thumbs. He kissed me on the lips, then brought my hand to his mouth and kissed it, almost on top of the engagement ring. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this was a trick to make me let go of him.
And then, suddenly, I was cold. I closed my coat and watched Wayne bound onto the bus, giving the driver a chummy clap on the shoulder as he passed.
We walked home. Tiggy had to lead me because I’d forgotten the way. She kept saying it would get easier, but never easy. On some level, I knew it. My brothers have been gone a year already. Tiggy’s brother nearly two. But this time, it’s different.
This is my love.
The realness, the rawness of the emotion have Amelia shaking like a leaf. She looks up from the page. Would Molly have wanted this? Some stranger, in her bedroom, reading what would turn out to be the most painful experience of her life?
No. Absolutely not. No girl would.
Except . . . what if Molly wrote the recipes inside? There is a good chance of this. The timing is right.
Amelia carefully thumbs through the entire diary, gently, scanning each page. Not reading, but allowing her gaze to land lightly here and there, a word,
a number, something recorded in a way that resembles a recipe or a list of ingredients. If she finds something, she’ll pull out the relevant pages, show Grady only what he needs to see and maintain Molly’s privacy.
When she reaches the end, she goes back through once more, just to be sure.
But no, there’s nothing.
And yet she can’t bring herself to put the diary back under Molly’s bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GRADY AND AMELIA SPEND THE rest of the day digging through Molly’s office. The fan he’s bought doesn’t provide relief so much as a disappointingly warm wind, but she is grateful that Grady locks it so it blows primarily in her direction.
At the end of first shift, Cate texts Amelia and lets her know that she and a few of the other girls are heading to the lake, and does Amelia want to come with?
Ugh. I should stay and keep looking. But hopefully I can meet you guys there in a bit! Amelia knows it’s a stretch. It’s not as if they seem any closer to finding anything. But she is trying to remain hopeful.
She readies herself for a bit of pushback from Cate. Maybe a guilt trip that Cate had to work the whole shift without her, or a bit of teasing.
But Cate doesn’t even respond.
Amelia has been attacking the oldest files, Grady the newest.
Grady moves with assembly-line speed, setting aside anything he thinks might be helpful for his business plan, sending everything else through his brand-new shredder, which he picked up with the fan at Walmart.
Amelia winces every time the shredder’s blades whirl. This takes care of any lingering remorse she might feel about slipping Molly’s diary inside her tote bag.
But Grady is making better time with the job, that’s for sure. Amelia’s pace is far slower, in part because her boxes contain more mementos and ephemera, especially the ones from the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Molly was just starting out. She’s tempted to read everything. And Amelia can’t determine what, if anything, she should shred. An ad in the Sand Lake Ledger from 1947? A certificate of recognition from the Sand Lake Chamber of Commerce?
And what about all the photos? Of summer picnics at the farmhouse, of the girls at the county fair, and what seems like an annual tradition of the stand girls posing in front of Meade Creamery, their scooping arms flexed, exactly like they had the first year in business. Why did that end? she wonders, and examines the faces in each one, looking to spot town residents, noticing how hairstyles changed, in curls one summer, up another, then cut into bobs. Eventually, she sets them aside in a separate, neat pile. Grady might throw them away eventually, or shred them, but she’s not going to be the one to do that.
While she tries to lose herself in the work, her thoughts drift back to Molly’s first diary entry. Her goodbye kiss with Wayne. Even though Amelia doesn’t think she ever actually heard Molly’s voice, she can imagine it now, somewhere faintly inside her, urging him to promise to come back to her, with no idea that it would be the last time she ever laid eyes on him.
Amelia’s eyes begin to tear, her throat tighten. A tear rolls down her cheek.
It is so tragically romantic.
“Whoa,” Grady says, his blue eyes intent on her. “You okay?”
“Ugh. It’s so dusty in here,” she complains, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve and shifting the direction of the fan, and only then does she peek over at Grady to see if he’s bought her performance. Only he’s not watching her anymore.
Grady’s got a bundle of papers in his lap.
And from his stunned blinking, Amelia assumes they are something.
“What did you find?” she asks, crawling toward him.
He glances up, startled. And as Amelia nears, he seems to want to hide whatever’s in his hands.
“Grady?”
“These are letters my mom sent to Molly.”
Amelia sucks in a breath. “Whoa. I bet she’ll get such a kick out of seeing them. You should send them to her!” Grady lowers his head and rubs the back of his neck, which makes Amelia feel suddenly unsure. “I mean, maybe wait until she’s home from New Zealand. I don’t know how much international postage costs. Probably a lot.”
He wets his lips. “These are from my real mom,” he explains. “She died when I was six. My dad married Quinn a year or so later. That’s who raised me, basically.”
Avoiding her eyes, he passes over a stack of envelopes held together by an old rubber band. They’re addressed to Molly Meade. The return address is from a Diana Denton-Meade.
“Oh.”
“She got cancer. The summer she and I spent in Sand Lake was her last one.”
She passes the letters back to him. Maybe this, and not the heat, is why Grady’s confined himself to one room of the farmhouse. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’ve tried not to think too much about it.”
Except Amelia knows he has thought about it, at least once. The moment he tasted Home Sweet Home. The sadness she saw in those lake eyes.
Grady sets the bundle on the mantel and goes back to flipping through a bank ledger. Maybe he’ll read them once she’s gone.
Or maybe he won’t.
* * *
By the end of the night, what sounds like a thousand crickets are chattering away in the dark, and they still haven’t found the recipes. Grady says, tiredly, “I’ll drive you home.”
Outside, it’s much cooler. Almost cold. The girls have already placed the evening deposit bag with the receipts in the mailbox. Grady sticks it in his waistband, then loads Amelia’s bike into the trunk of the pink Cadillac while she climbs into the passenger side. The seats are deep and made of smooth tan leather.
On the way down the driveway, Amelia says, “We should probably check the stock. See how much the girls sold today.”
Grady doesn’t slow down. “I’d rather not.”
So Amelia directs him to her house. His mind seems to be elsewhere, but he does make the correct turns. He pulls up to the curb and she asks him, “Have you asked your dad? Would he know something about the recipes?” Grady shakes his head nervously, as if answering both questions at once, and puts the car in park. Amelia tries again. “Well, maybe he’ll have some advice for you about what to do.”
“Come on. You don’t need a business degree to know that an ice cream shop can’t stay open without ice cream to sell.”
“Right, but—”
“Here’s the thing, Amelia. I can’t fail.” He leans back, his hands in his lap, and stares at the roof of the Cadillac, his shoulders sagging like he already has.
It’s clear Grady has a weird relationship with his dad. And he has his own emotional ties to Meade Creamery. But do those things add up to this level of anxiety? Because Grady’s making it seem like Meade Creamery going under is on par with the end of the world.
She thinks of Cate’s warning. Grady could be trying to play her.
“I don’t want the stand to fail either. This place is as important to me as it is to you.” Amelia is almost sure their reasons are different. But what does that matter now?
He rolls his head toward her. “So what do we do?”
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “How hard do you think it is to make ice cream?”
He shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”
“It’s not like Molly had any formal training. We have her whole setup. And most of the ingredients. Her strawberry jam. Her fudge sauce. The vanilla beans she has soaking in that random syrup. Maybe we can find ice cream recipes that use those ingredients and see how close we can get.”
“What about Home Sweet Home?”
“Home Sweet Home will probably stay a mystery,” she concedes, getting out of the car. “But three out of four flavors would be enough to keep the stand in business. Meanwhile, we keep looking for the recipes. We’ll find them eventually.”
Calling after her, Grady says, “You’re making this sound easy.”
She calls back, “Look for green lights, not stop signs, remembe
r?”
For the first time that day, Grady laughs. “What idiot told you that?”
* * *
Amelia’s mom is still awake when she comes through the door.
“Oh. You waited up?”
“No. I was coming to get some water. Cate dropped you off?”
“Yes,” Amelia lies, because she doesn’t want to get into it right now. She glances at her phone. There’s still no text from Cate. Not since her afternoon invitation to the lake. “Well . . . good night.”
Upstairs, Amelia gets ready for bed. She texts Cate Sorry I never made it and then brushes her teeth.
Cate’s response comes as Amelia moves on to flossing. Any luck?
No. Hopefully tomorrow.
Amelia carries her phone back into her bedroom, watching as Cate types a response. And then Cate stops. It takes another few seconds—until Amelia climbs into bed and pulls the blankets up to her chin—before Cate types again.
K.
Amelia sets her phone down. Cate’s clearly annoyed with her, probably because she was abandoned for an entire shift today. And since she just volunteered to try making ice cream tomorrow, there’s a good chance Amelia won’t be around for that shift, either.
The best thing that could happen, on all fronts, is that Amelia finds the recipes ASAP.
Though she’s tired, she opens Molly’s diary and begins reading.
November 29, 1944
I’ve been trying to help Daddy with his chores, not that he lets me do any real work, even though everything is falling behind without Liam and Pat and now Wayne around. He threw me out of the barn yesterday—that’s how much he did not enjoy the sight of his only daughter dripping with sweat during the first dusting of snow, shoveling a knee-deep pile of dung in the cow stalls. I can’t say I enjoyed it either, but he needs help and I desperately want to do something. Being physical did ease some of the heartache for me, calluses aside.
But no, Daddy says my job is to be a comfort to Mother.
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