The Other Side - J. D. Robb [138]
“Where’s she going?”
The sisters were unconcerned. Her mother answered. “She wants more apples.”
Okay, first off, M.J. had no idea the ghosts could leave the house. And secondly, not only were the pies as phantom as everything else involved with the three sisters . . . aside from the aroma . . . but where the hell in the backyard was Odelia getting apples?
“Wait a second.” She jumped up from her table and reached the back door in time to see Odelia passing through a five-foot wooden fence on the far end of the yard as if it weren’t there. “Odelia. Wait. Where are you going? Odelia?”
She heard her happy, chubby aunt giggle from a distance greater than the neighbor’s backyard. “Not to worry, dear, I won’t be long.”
“But where are you going?”
“To my orchard. Papa planted it just for me. There are several different kinds of apple trees, cherry trees, peach trees, and pear trees.” She paused, her voice echoing. “The peach tree doesn’t bear much fruit, but it tries. Don’t you, you sweet old thing?”
M.J. jumped as high as she could to peek over the fence to see which tree she was talking to . . . though there didn’t seem to be any trees there at all. “Odelia. How far away from the house did he plant the trees? Where are you?”
“Oh dear, Imogene is better with feet and yards than I am, but it’s a ways,” she called back. “Flies, you know.”
“Flies?”
“They come for the ripe fruit if I don’t get to it first. If the trees were too close to the house . . . oh my, Papa would be so angry. They’re pesky, you know. Summer flies. And it’s like he always said, I can certainly use the exercise. The hard part is hauling all the fruit back to the house.”
Papa, Hobart Hedbo, was beginning to sound like someone M.J. was glad she’d never had the chance to meet. “I can smell your apple pies, you know.”
“Really?”
She remembered Odelia as a sweet, kind, older woman. She died of breast cancer in her late fifties before M.J. had a real chance to get to know her. . . .
Well, that wasn’t exactly true, she realized, shifting her weight uncomfortably. She could have gotten to know Odelia had she been a different sort of youngster, she supposed. But then, who thinks farther than the tip of their nose when they’re young?
“They smell delicious, Aunt Odelia.”
“Secret recipe. I have a million of them. I wanted to be a great chef, you know.”
“What, like Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray?”
Odelia scoffed. “Our Lady of the Ladle. There’s never been another like her.”
“Who?”
“Julia Child. She didn’t just cook. She studied cooking. She knew food. She wasn’t simply a television personality who knew how to cook. She was a larger-than-life chef. An American culinary icon.”
M.J. smiled, enjoying her good-natured aunt’s show of vehemence.
“I wanted to study at Le Cordon Bleu or even the CIA.”
“The what?”
“CIA. The Culinary Institute of America in New York.” Her voice was getting closer; she was coming back. “Or even Kendall College in Chicago, but no. Papa said if I wanted to go to college, I could become a teacher or a nurse. If I wanted to study history or anthropology, he could help me get a job in a museum or a library, maybe. Those would be acceptable professions. But all great chefs are men, he’d say, and he wouldn’t waste his money to get me cooking classes when he could pay Mrs. Wheimer to teach me. . . . She was our cook then. He said even Betty Crocker was made up and named after William Crocker, one of the company directors at the time.”
She stepped back through the fence suddenly, startling her niece, her arms around the wicker basket that was now full of hazy-looking apples.
“So what did you do?” M.J. asked, giving the little ghost a moment to catch her breath, struggling with the impulse to take the heavy basket from her. It was a short struggle. Feeling ridiculous, she reached for the apples, and Odelia gave them up gladly. She held her arms out in a circle as Odelia had, knowing full well that they’d pass straight through the basket if she didn’t.