He turned away and started unpacking the milk crate. “No. It’s taken care of.” To Gennie, he asked, “What will you eat for a vegetable tonight?”
“Baby carrots,” she replied, busy doodling on the sticky notes.
“Baby carrots are not real carrots,” he said. “We’ve talked about this. I can cut carrots into small pieces but—”
“Baby carrots,” she said, “are real and I want them.”
“I cannot feed you baby carrots. They do not occur in nature. I can’t sell four different colors of carrot while putting processed carrot stumps on your plate.”
“Baby carrots,” she yelled.
He looked up from the crate, a loaf of bread in one hand. “I can give you carrots in small pieces. That’s the best I can do. That, or cucumbers.”
She set her head on the table, her little hands fisted to her ears. “Cucumbers,” she mumbled into the surface.
“Cucumbers it is,” he replied, crossing to the fridge.
I swiveled a gaze between Gennie and Noah for a moment. It seemed the great baby carrot debate was settled, at least for now. After a tense minute, I said, “Gennie, why don’t you pack up the supplies for today?”
“And then you can grab eggs from the henhouse,” Noah added.
She lifted her head, her dark, unruly hair curtaining her face. “Do I have to?”
“If you want to visit the dogs later, yes.”
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered. She tossed the sticky notes and markers back in the plastic bin and carried it out of the room.
I caught Noah’s exasperated gaze and offered a quick grin. He rolled his eyes. “We go a few rounds on baby carrots at least once a week.”
“She has a passion. It’s important.”
“It’s driving me mad,” he said.
“Are you sure I can’t do anything?” I watched as Noah started slicing a loaf of bread. “I’ve heard those come presliced these days.”
“I don’t care for the uniformity of machine slicing,” he said. “Besides, this is a new recipe the bakehouse is working on. I grabbed a test loaf to try.”
I stepped closer to the island where he was working. “Since when do you have a bakehouse?”
“About four years now. It started with apple crisp. We had a huge yield a few years ago and ended up turning the surplus into crisps and pies. Figured we’d break even at best. Ended up selling out. Then we tested pound cakes and shortcakes during strawberry season. Now, we have eleven year-round pies and four special pies per season. Breads were the next logical venture.”
“Any other businesses I should know about?”
He glanced at the ceiling for a second, as if he had trouble recalling the details of his empire. “Summertime ice cream stand down on Old County Road, near the mouth of the cove. There’s also honey and jams—”
“That’s Noah’s favorite.” Gennie returned to the kitchen wearing her eye patch and dragging the tip of her sword along the floor. She marched toward the door. “All of his secret projects are about jam. He’s like Blackbeard but for jam. But no heads cutting off.”
The door closed behind her as Noah said, “I’m not the Blackbeard of—never mind.”
“You did all that in the past few years?” I asked.
He returned to the task at hand, not at all concerned with responding to me. I was starting to understand this was one of his mannerisms. One of the more maddening ones.
After longer than was reasonable to keep someone waiting, he said, “It came together pretty easily. All of the pieces were already there. It was just a matter of getting it off the ground. The ice cream was a no-brainer as far as dairy surpluses are concerned.”
“But the jam is your favorite.”
He jerked a shoulder up as he turned toward the fridge. I was forced to notice the lovely way his jeans settled low on his hips. He looked completely different than I’d remembered him, but also, he finally looked like himself. I knew that was a lopsided sort of compliment though it was the most accurate way to explain the ways he’d changed. It was like his bad haircut had grown out and he didn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of that in-between time anymore. He was taller and mature and more at ease but he looked like himself. He looked like the friend I remembered.
