The Chalice Thief

by K. J. Emrick

  When I heard Rosie say she was having pains, what she really said was hunger pains.

  That’s what she told me, as soon as I got there. She’d had a craving for fairy bread but she was out of hundreds and thousands to sprinkle on top. Then just a few minutes ago she’d changed her mind and wanted hot chips with chicken salt. The chips would be easy enough to get my hands on but chicken salt’s not something I keep on hand. Not even at the Inn. I knew Cathy Morris had some on the shelf in her Milkbar though, and I have a feeling that’s where I’m heading next.

  Nala the midwife had scoffed at each new craving Rosie mentioned while she busied herself going back and forth. “My family has been in Australia since before the First Fleet came sailing,” she said, taking a perfectly folded stack of fluffy white towels from their place on the floor and folding them all over again. “We have learned the ways of giving birth and we know the things that bring a baby health and happiness. No false medicines for us! Humph. If I could go back to the times when my people walked this great land by themselves I surely would.”

  She went on nodding and muttering to herself while Rosie and I exchanged a glance. Rosie pursed her lips and sighed through her nose. “Anyway…”

  She was in another oversized dress today, a purple fabric with yellow flowers stitched in place all down the sleeves. I know if it was me about to give birth, I’d be living in my bathrobe.

  “Rosie, I don’t mind coming over as often as you need me,” I told her. “This is what friends are for. Although, I would have thought that husband of yours would be waiting on you hand and foot to bring you anything you needed.”

  The noise the midwife made this time was anything but polite. Rosie chose not to hear it. “Josh has, um, disappeared,” she told me. “Not sure where he got off to. Great timing, I know, but I suppose a man needs to stretch his legs a bit when he knows he’s about to be a father.”

  I couldn’t help but raise my brows at that. I don’t agree with that at all. Not one little bit. Besides, it’s almost eight o’clock! All that being said, running off just as his wife’s about to give birth doesn’t sound like Josh at all. He and Rosie were as much in love with each other as me and my Richard had been before his death.

  Or, to put it in more recent terms, as much in love as James and I had once been.

  “Dell?” Rosie said after another moment. “Are ya feeling all right?”

  I smiled for her because I know that she’s already stressed out enough as it is. “I’m aces, Rosie. Just wondering where Josh could’ve gotten off to. Oh, and there’s a whole thing going on in town about this Chalice that Alfonse Calico says was at the Thirsty Roo. Says it got stolen.”

  Nala went very still when I mentioned the Chalice. I could see her tilt an ear toward us. She was obviously listening intently without trying to be obvious about it.

  “What a dag that man is,” Rosie said, describing Alfonse perfectly. “A regular peacock. If he said the sky was blue I’d be sure to check the weather app just to be sure!”

  “Rosie, I don’t think…”

  “Excuse me, please,” Nala says, turning and walking out of the room, into Rosie’s bedroom. She picked up her big cloth purse as she went, and closed the door behind herself.

  I watched after her for a moment. “Does she do that a lot?”

  “Hmm? What’s that?” Rosie asked, settling her hand on the round bulge of her belly. “Oh! Dell, quick, feel this! The baby’s getting himself some exercise today!”

  “Him? How do you know this isn’t the sister?”

  “With a kick like this? Must be the boy. Oh, oh! Feel that!”

  Never one to turn down an offer like that, I let Rosie guide my hand. Sure enough, I could feel several strong kicks. Rosie was in for it when that one started walking. Might even have a future Australian Rules Football player on her hands.

  “Well,” she said, stroking her hand over the rise of her baby bump. “I suppose you have to be off? Or d’ya maybe have time to fetch me some hundreds and thousands?”

  “Oh, we’re back to that, are we?”

  “It’s a woman’s prerogative, I say.” Rosie tried and failed to lever herself to the edge of the couch. “I’d get them myself, but…”

  I stood up, and it really was a shame I didn’t have more time—oh, snap. That reminds me. “Rosie, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be having breakfast with my daughter and her new boyfriend. Right now, as a matter of fact.”

  “Really?” Rosie’s face brightened at the promise of some gossip. “Well, it’s about time. She’s been in town for all these months and a girl gets lonely, after all.”

  I had the feeling that last bit was aimed at me, but I didn’t have time to get into that part of my life even with Rosie. So, I changed the subject. “Breakfast isn’t going to be anything spectacular, that’s for sure. Not now that Marco’s quit.”

  “He what?” Rosie made another powerful push to sit up, her emotions getting the better of her. It was a struggle to be sure. With her babies on board, she wasn’t built for speed. Or grace. Or, well, moving in general. Her face turned red, either from the exertion of moving her swollen… everything, or her rising anger over this news about Marco. “How could he just up and leave like that? What is wrong with those ratbag temp cooks you’ve been hiring on?”

  “The problem,” I told her honestly, “is they aren’t you.”

  “Well, I’ll make sure they are me! I mean, that I’m them. No, I mean… Dash it all!” She finally managed to make the edge of the couch, but in doing so she rocked the couch into the side table which knocked the lamp over with a smash that busted the bulb. “What I mean is I’m coming back to work. Right now!”

  “Rosie, hold on.” It took me some doing to keep her from pushing up onto her feet. She was determined. “You can’t come back to work now. You’re pregnant. Very, very pregnant!”

  “No need to remind me of that!” Breathing hard, she perched on the edge of the corduroy cushions and stayed there, defeated. “Fine, fine! I’m just so tired of all of this, Dell. I need to go back to work. I need little Angus and little Diana to come out of here already! Oh, why did Josh have to be so good at making babies!”

  I felt my cheeks flush. That was information I didn’t need.

  Rosie drummed her hands on the top of her belly, and one of her little nippers kicked back. I actually saw Rosie’s hand jump.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “That one’s a regular Centre Half-Forward, now isn’t he? Is that you Angus? Or maybe your sister Diana?”

  “Wait, when did you name them?”

  “Last week,” Rosie said, going from angry to ecstatic like the flip of a switch. “Josh wants Angus, after his great grandfather, and I wanted Diana. I’ve always admired Lady Diana. So sad when she died, ya know.”

  As names go they definitely could have picked worse. Plenty of bad ones out there in the world of celebrities. Apple. Blanket. Moxie Crimefighter.

  No, I did not make that up.

  Nala poked her head back out of the bedroom, glaring at both of us. “No exertion! It is bad for the babies!”

  “Yes, Nala,” Rosie said right away. “I know. I’m better now. Just got a bit excited, is all.”

  “No excitement!’ Nala snapped, and then closed the bedroom door again.

  That was about all I could take of that. “Rosie, why do you take that? Nala works for you. You’re the one about to give birth, not her.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” was Rosie’s response as she started fanning herself with a teacloth again. “I’m half convinced my babies don’t want to meet the world!”

  I remember feeling just exactly like that myself when I was pregnant with Carly. “They’ll come in their own time. You just have to be patient. Still, that doesn’t explain why you’re letting this woman talk to you any way she pleases.”

  “She’s the best there is, Dell. Besides, they say that the original inhabitants of our fair country knew things that modern medicine’s for
got. They passed it down to their descendants, including the folks from Torres Strait. I want my babies to have the best.” Smoothing her hand over her belly, she smiled down at little Angus and Diana. “You understand that, don’t ya?”

  “I do.” It may have been some twenty years and more since I had mine, but I remember the emotions of new motherhood as though it’d been yesterday. “Well. Rosie, I promise I’ll come back later today to check on you. I’ll bring the chicken salt when I come, too. Right now I have to get back to the Inn. I was supposed to meet Carly and… well, she told me last night that she wants to leave. We need to talk, me and her. I’m afraid I might be losing her.”

  “Oh my. Oh, of course. Dell, you rush back to that daughter of yours. She’s the pride and joy of your life, to be sure. Her and that wonderful son of yours. That Kevin has been just a wonderful senior sergeant for our town and I’m so glad you all are my friends.”

  There were tears in her eyes. A woman’s hormones went haywire during pregnancy, and I knew that, but the hormones never made you say a thing you didn’t mean. My friend was telling me exactly how she felt, tears and all.

  I loved her for being who she was. I couldn’t imagine running the Inn or living in Lakeshore without her.

  “I’ll be back later,” I promised again, hugging her tight. “Josh will be here, too, right?”

  “Oh, that man!” she growled, swinging through the emotional spectrum again. “I can’t say where he is. He hasn’t been here for me to ask.”

  “Wait, do you mean that he didn’t come home last night either? I just assumed he went out early. Where’s he been?”

  Rosie didn’t have an answer. I thought the worst. Then I thought daggers in Josh’s direction for ignoring his wife right at the moment she would be giving birth. Then I worried some more. At the end of my own little emotional roller coaster, I wondered.

  Where was he?

  Josh answered my dozen or so texts with a single one of his own.

  Home soon.

  Well, I thought to myself as I angrily gripped my unicorn necklace. Isn’t that nice? The horn on the little pendant dug into my palm as I tried to contain myself. At least we knew Josh wasn’t dead, or in some sort of serious trouble. The question was, why in God’s name wasn’t he here?

  I was already back at the Inn, and when I parked in the drive I saw a pickup truck that I remembered seeing at the Thirsty Roo Tavern. Drew’s truck, I believe. If he’s already here that means I’m late to meet him and Carly for breakfast. Finding Josh is going to have to wait until later. So’s the matter of the maybe missing Van Diemen’s Land Chalice. And finding a replacement for Rosie in our kitchen.

  If time moves on, like I always say it does, I wish it’d do it a bit quicker.

  As I walked inside my thoughts kept running from one thing to another, always coming back to how I still don’t believe there is such a thing as that Chalice. Round and round, round and round, and always coming back to the same thought.

  Everything in my brain stopped the moment I stepped through the front doors, and smelled the aromas coming from the kitchen. Bacon and eggs and something sweet mixed with the unmistakable tang of fresh fruit juice. There was spice in the air as well. I’d become accustomed to the dining room smelling good enough to make your stomach growl when Rosie’s here to run it. This was a very close second to what I was used to. I’m not sure what I was expecting from Ikon, but certainly not this!

  Following my nose I found a good dozen people at the tables in the dining room enjoying a meal that included laughter and conversation. It’s been my experience that when people like what they’re eating they’re much more likely to ease into a friendly conversation. It’s the moments when the people eating at my Inn are silent that I worry something’s wrong. There was a lot of silent eating whenever Marco made his special dishes.

  I saw some of the guests down from their rooms. A few locals as well. It was a good scene. Apparently the incident at the Thirsty Roo hadn’t scared people away from Lakeshore yet, like my Kevin was expecting it to do. We’d survived being in the news before. What would come of it this time, I wonder?

  “Mom, over here.”

  Carly’s voice cut through the din around me from the furthest table, over by the window looking out toward the water of the lake and the Monterey Pine trees growing tall and scraggly all along the shore. She had put on a short black dress with a square neckline this morning. Her copper jewelry reflected light in muted flashes as she waved to me.

  There was a smile on her face that would have been impossible for a blind man to miss. She looked… happy. Carly and I hadn’t spoken in so long and then when she came back it was under the worst of circumstances—her father’s death—so I took a moment to memorize what happy looked like on my daughter.

  It was all because of the man sitting next to her at the table. Drew Norstrom had dressed up for breakfast too, or what I supposed was dressed up for him. A leather jacket over a white button-up shirt and dark blue dungarees. His hair was still messy cute, and I realized now that it was always that way.

  As crushes went, I could understand why Carly had fallen for him. I wasn’t convinced she should rearrange her whole life and move away with him, mind you, but that was a woman’s prerogative, not her mother’s. I needed to remind myself of that.

  Making my way to their table I saw Ikon step out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel with a big smile. He had one of the white aprons with our logo on the front wrapped tight around his waist. He looked kind of cute himself.

  I sat down with Carly and Drew, across from them, picking up one of the laminated menus from the centerpiece of the table, but then I remembered. Marco quit. Nothing on the menu is actually on the menu, so to speak. “Well,” I say with a wry smile. “What’s good?”

  “Everything, actually.” Drew cut a piece out of the pikelets on his plate, buried under sliced strawberries and what I was pretty sure was freshly whipped cream. “Don’t know who the new chef is, but he’s a keeper. Definitely going to give the Thirsty Roo a run for it.”

  “Well thanks, Drew.” I appreciated the compliment but I still didn’t know what I thought about this young man. I mean, from a mother’s standpoint I wanted him to be the man of Carly’s dreams and to whisk her off on a white stallion across clouds of pink fluff. From a business standpoint, he worked for the Thirsty Roo, and they were becoming direct competition for my dining room.

  From a strictly human standpoint, I swear to you this young man is hiding something. I suppose this was my chance to find out what.

  “So, Drew. Carly tells me the two of you are considering a move out of Lakeshore.”

  “Mom,” Carly complained. “This is just supposed to be a nice breakfast. Let’s not make things weird.”

  “No worries,” Drew said with a bright smile. “Sure your mom has some questions. We did sort of pop this on her out of the blue.”

  Ikon appeared at the table while I was trying to decide if Drew was being sincere or just annoyingly cute, and put down a plate for me full of scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes and toast with—oh, yes—almond butter.

  It all smelled heavenly. “Ikon, you made all this?”

  “I’d love to take credit, but our kitchen staff really knows their stuff.” Picking up the salt, he sprinkled some over my eggs. “I had to give them just a bit of guidance and then that was it. We had eggs, we had pikelets, even found a jar or two of vegemite at the back of the pantry. Put it all together in the right combination and voila. Brekkie.”

  The eggs tasted as good as they looked. And the way Ikon had salted them was perfect. As if he knew exactly what I would like. I glanced up at him, and our eyes met, and there was a moment when I saw something more than just a man who worked for me.

  When I had the presence of mind to look away again I found Carly watching me with a wry little grin. My daughter’s a cheeky little girl, sometimes.

  “So,” Ikon said quickly, “I’m going back to the front des
k. Working double duty. Yeah. Er, if ya need anything else just come find me, right?”

  “I will.” I filled my mouth with a bite of the eggs so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. There was a definite connection forming between me and Ikon, but something was keeping me from pursuing it. I didn’t know what. I didn’t have the time to examine it right now, either.

  Of course, that’s only part of the truth.

  The rest of it? I miss James. All my talk of how a woman should be able to stand on her own, and that’s the long and the short of it. I miss a man who said he needed space. As if there weren’t space enough in a country big as this one.

  After Ikon left, I did my best to get the conversation away from my life just as quickly as I could. “So Drew, you were going to tell me about this move you have planned. You really think life will be better for you away from Lakeshore?”

  Taking a long sip from his coffee gave Drew time to think of an answer, one he probably figured I’d like, so I’d give him and Carly my blessing. On the other hand my daughter didn’t seem to need any time to reflect on her reasons.

  “There’s no job opportunities here, Mom.” She had her fingers twisted into one of the bracelets on her opposite wrist, turning it around and around as she looked off through the window. Jangle, jangle, jangle. “I still don’t know hardly anyone. I made a life for myself all those years I was away from Lakeshore. There’s things waiting for me. Friends. A job or two as well, if I’ve a mind. Plus…”

  Her expression brightened as she put her hand over Drew’s on the table. I know what she meant to say. Plus, there’s a man she loves going with her.

  “Those are all fine reasons,” I told her. “They really are. But it’s still something you don’t just up and do. You need a plan. One of you is going to have to support the other.”

  Very meaningfully, I looked at Drew. He swallowed nervously, but then leaned forward on the table, closer to me, to give a direct answer. I had to respect that.