“You let us know if you need anything. Goodnight, dear.”
The minute he steps outside I reach in and tap the remote to shut the door and then get to work unloading. When we packed the back of the SUV, we put all the fresh perishable food at the end so we could get to it first. My arms feel like dead weights by the time I get it all into the house and the floor of the kitchen is completely covered. There’s still most of what we took from the store in the car, but I shut the hatch and leave it for tomorrow.
Penny’s nosing around all the bags of meat so I shoo her outside the back door and then go to the lowest level of the house where my mom’s hobby room is. My dad built floor-to-ceiling shelving on one side for all the supplies for her many ventures, along with a work counter on another wall. The two extra large freeze-dryers are against another wall with cabinets filling the rest of the space. I find the manual for them and toss it on top of the seven long trays from each freezer to take upstairs to the dining room. I take a few minutes to read over the cook times and sigh when I see most of the meat is listed at around twenty hours to dry completely. The good news is the manual says I can do around forty pounds of meat in every batch so I can double that with the two freezers.
It takes time to unpack and sort all the different meats into groups. My eyes keep going to the clock on the stove, wondering when Gigi will get here. I’m so freaking worried about her getting stuck somewhere or hurt because of the moon missilescoming down. There’s nothing I can do about that, or Gage’s flight, or Jules and Reid being near the water, or Torrin not being here. I can’t control anything except what’s right in front of me, so that’s what I keep my focus on.
I start with the ground beef. I fry all of it up in multiple batches in multiple pans. I drain all the grease off, rinse each batch with water to remove as much of the grease as possible and then spread it out on the dryer trays and season it all with different spices to use in different dishes. Taco seasoning, Italian, chili, and just plain. Once all the hamburger is cooked and laid out, I chop up onions and peppers and fry a bunch of those before adding them to the hamburger trays and mixing them in. It takes forever to carry all the trays down to the basement and get them loaded in the freeze-dryers. I set the times for twenty hours and slowly plod back up the stairs, more than ready to drop dead in my bed.
The sheer amount of meat still to be done, as well as the cooking pans that need to be washed, has me rubbing at my tired eyes but it’s Gigi stepping into the house that brings tears to them. She strides over to me and wraps her arms around me in a desperately needed hug. Some of my exhaustion flows away now that she’s here. She lets go and turns to look at the piles of meat trays with wide eyes.
“Oh my! How far did you get, darling?”
I blow out a breath as I look around the messy kitchen. “I got all the ground beef processed and into the freeze-dryers but it’s got a twenty-hour timer before they’ll be ready. I’m not sure what else to do right now.”
She pats my back with a smile. “Good girl! Alright, we can make jerky in the oven and do some pressure canning to get some more of this put up. Is the canner up here or in the basement storage room?”
I chew on my bottom lip in thought and then say, “Basement.”
We head back to the basement with a quick stop to give Penny a belly scratch. She’s flopped on her back on the couch with all four of her paws in the air and her tongue hanging out to one side while snoring away.
“Show me the freeze-dryers, Peach. I saw them when she first bought them to start that business but not since.”
I take her into the hobby room and she peers through the glass viewing area with a hum. “That’s a lot of ground beef. How do we pack it once it’s done?”
I open the cabinets beside the dryers and wave her over to explain everything. Mom had paid me to be her assistant that summer, so I know how most of this stuff works.
“These are mylar pouches. You put the meat in them, add oxygen absorbers, suck out any extra air, and seal the bags up with this tool. After that, the food is good for twenty-five years as long as it’s stored right.”
Gigi kneels down on the carpet and drags boxes from the bottom shelves. “What’s in these? More packing supplies?”
I have no idea so I get on my knees with her and start opening the boxes. Inside are sealed mylar bags. I pull one out and can’t stop the soft sob that overcomes me. The label on the bag has mom’s handwriting and it’s like she’s reached out and gifted these to me from the grave.
Ten Luna Burgers
I drop the bag and rifle through the other ten in the box. They all say the same thing. I lean back on my heels and hold one of the bags to my chest like I’m giving my mom a hug.
“These are her homemade hamburgers, Gigi. They were my favorite food that she’d make for me. I can’t believe they’ve been down here all this time.”
There are a hundred freeze-dried burger patties in this box alone. I’ve tried so many times to recreate the recipe but it just never came out the way she would make them. This is such a gift to me.
Gigi starts pulling out more of the boxes and sorting through them excitedly.
“Five pounds of egg crystals, ten in this box. That’s fifty pounds of eggs! Look, this box has Mexican rice and beans. This one has chicken fajita mix and bags with tortillas.”
We go through all of the boxes and find chili, chicken chunks, shredded BBQ pork, various vegetables, and different fruits. There are even some bags with freeze-dried desserts. This is all the food she made to sell in smaller serving bags on her website for hikers. She must have packed it all away when she moved on to the next project. Candle making, I think it was. God, I miss my mom. Even gone, she’s still taking care of me.
We leave everything there in the cabinets and go to the storage room to get the pressure canner and the two flats of jars stored with it and carry them upstairs to add to the ones we got at the store.
“We will get more jars tomorrow when we go out to shop. For now, help me process some more of this meat.”
I glance at the clock and see it’s 2 AM now and sigh. Before I do anything else, I need a big pot of coffee. It’s going to be a long night.
Chapter 37 - Julian
I dream about death. I dream about the broken scream that came from Luna when the doctor told us that her parents and Atlas didn’t survive the crash. I dream about that savage ache that ripped into my chest at his words. Tom and Hannah Bolton gave me the closest thing I ever had to parental love. They filled the void left by my own vapid, self-absorbed parents who never gave two shits about their children. The Boltons showed me what it meant to have people give a damn about your day, your dreams, your future. For years, they kept me under their loving wings and showed me what it was like to be wanted, to be a family. And then they were gone.
They left almost as big a hole as Atlas's dying did. He was one of my best friends; actually, he was a best friend to us all. We stood there that night, surrounding a shattered Luna and made a pact to never leave her alone in her pain. I dream about Mars bursting through the stairwell door and the look of devastation on his face before he turned and walked away from us all. The slam of the metal door closing behind him is so loud and finalthat it pulls me from the dream. I don’t know if I dream of that night because the second anniversary of their deaths is only a few days away or if it’s because I now know Luna will be alone with none of us there. It’s enough for me to reach for my phone through the blinding headache from my hangover to book us flights home.
