A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [40]
Lindsay stared at her and Cici leaned forward from the backseat. “What are you talking about?”
“Pectin. It’s the stuff that turns fruit into jam. It makes it thick.” Bridget backed carefully out of the parking space.
“And you don’t have any? Why didn’t you say something?” Cici demanded.
“And let that woman know how stupid I am? She probably wins first prize at every county fair with her jams.”
“Bridget!” This was an accusatory chorus from both women, and Lindsay added, “Go back and get some!”
“No point,” Bridget replied with a sigh. “We already cooked the fruit and sugar. It’s too late to add it now.”
“Do you mean to tell me we have ten gallons of strawberry mush sitting on the stove?”
“Actually,” answered Bridget morosely, “I think it’s more like twelve.”
While Lindsay and Cici unloaded the rocking chairs and wrestled the antique Victrola into its place beneath the stained glass window, Bridget carried the canning jars into the kitchen. With her face pulled into a grimace of self-disgust, she dipped a wooden spoon into a pot of the strawberry mixture and watched it drip back into the pot like a thin soup. She picked up the pot to dump it into the sink, and then she noticed something.
On the work surface beside the range there was a book that had not been there before. She put the pot down and looked more closely. It was more than just a book. It was a recipe book, with a faded blue cover and pages that were dark and crisp around the edges with age. It was open to the section on “strawberries.”
Bridget snatched up the book and turned toward the door, drawing a breath to shout for Cici and Lindsay. But then she stopped, glanced down at the book in her hands, and again at the door. Cici and Lindsay had been with her all morning. Neither of them could have left the recipe book there, even as a poorly timed joke. But if they hadn’t done it, who had?
Bridget flipped through the pages. Some were stained, as the pages of any good cookbook should be, and on others notations had been made in a thin spidery handwriting: “reduce to half,” “serve with sweet cream,” “substitute pecans”—the same kinds of notes that Bridget’s own recipe books contained. The recipes themselves ranged from the oddly old-fashioned—“Milque toast for the Invalid”—to the outright bizarre, like “Brains and Eggs.” Bridget turned to the front page, and saw the publication date was 1939. And in the same faded, elegant script was written the name Emily Blackwell.
“Oh . . . my,” said Bridget softly, and sat down at the island. She turned back to the section on strawberries, and began to read.
“The moral of this story,” said Cici, raising her glass, “is ‘when life hands you strawberry mush, make coulis’!”
They sat on the front porch in their brand-new rocking chairs, sipping wine, watching the evening roll in like a slow-moving wave. Crickets chirped. Purple shadows rippled in the grass. The breeze smelled like honeysuckle. The subtle rhythmic thumping of three rockers against wood boards was like the tympani of complementary heartbeats. And seventeen jars of jewel-colored strawberry syrup—which when laced with framboise could legitimately be called coulis—lined the pantry shelves.
“I should have thought of it myself,” Bridget said, shaking her head. “After all, what is coulis anyway except fruit puree with liquor?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lindsay said. “Until today I’d never heard the word coulis. Now I’m hearing it in every other sentence.”
Bridget sipped her wine thoughtfully. “Do you think a house can talk to you?”
Lindsay made a snorting noise. “This one can. And what it says is, ‘Feed me, feed me!’ just like the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s true. Everywhere you look, there’s something else this house needs. You restore the stairs, and the floors look like crap. You paint the trim and that only makes the walls look dirty. You weed the rose garden and you have to resod the lawn. It never ends.”
Cici said, “I should have gotten another water heater.”
Lindsay rocked forward;