The market is officially opened now, so I pick up the pace and scurry behind the booth. Tate comes up behind me a second later pushing his way past us to get to his side. My dad, Uncle Ben and George Adler have all disappeared so it’s just Jace, Tate, Daisy and me.
“Where did you disappear to withhim?” Daisy demands, her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed like she’s Mom catching me out after curfew.
“I went to seek out headache meds and he was doing the same,” I explain. “Trust me we are not friends.”
“You better not be,” Daisy replies.
“We are in a hostile alliance. Nothing more. Now go chop up some of our caramels and offer them as samples,” I say shooing her. “We need to get people to buy those over the stupid caramel apples the Adlers are peddling.”
The day passes much faster that I thought it would given my physical condition. But we’re busy and every customer is in a great mood. A lot of people are thrilled to see us back after missing the summer season. Jace and Tate try to lure our customers away as we’re talking to them by interrupting and suggesting apple products and it even works a couple of times. Two customers put down our honey and our goat’s milk caramels to buy some apple butter and caramel apples. Daisy gets even by telling me loudly, when there’s a group of about six people crowded around the Adler side of the booth, that she thought she read that there was anE. colioutbreak linked to apples.
By the time the market closes at two we are almost sold out of everything. The Adlers did well too, but I think we did better judging by the scowl on their faces as we pack up. “See you boys next Sunday!” I call merrily as we leave, which only deepens the sour looks on their faces.
“It’s going to be a long fall,” I hear Tate grumble as I climb in my car and I smile.
7
Maggie
“Umm…hello? Did you even hear what I said?”
I blink and tear my eyes away from the ice and shift on the hard cement bleacher to look at my sister. “You dragged me to this game against my will and now you’re complaining because I’m paying attention?”
“Who, exactly, has your undivided attention, Magnolia Todd?” Caroline asks in a sing-song voice that annoys me to no end because she’s caught me. Only I won’t admit it. Ever.
“The team I’m rooting for, the girls’ team,” I reply coolly and shoot laser beams out of my eyes at her before turning back to Daisy. “Now, what did I miss?”
Our women’s hockey team is playing our men’s hockey team in an exhibition game. I had no intention of going but everyone else was, and Daisy insisted I join. So now I’m sitting here on the cold concrete bleachers, breathing the cold, dry arena air, getting all warm inside when I look at number seventy-six.
Daisy huffs her annoyance at me. “I was telling Jasmyn and Caroline how much it bugs me that we don’t know anything about our grandmother.”
“Our grandmother was born and bred in New Hampshire. She still lives there today in the house our mother grew up in, on a lake just outside of Concord New Hampshire,” I say and can’t seem to stop my eyes from darting down to the action on the ice. It’s only an exhibition game but it’s really good. Currently the women are winning by one goal and there’re only six minutes left in the game.
“Not Mom’s mom. I was talking about Dad’s mom,” Daisy says, exasperated.
“Dad didn’t have a mom,” I reply. “That’s what he keeps telling us, and I think we should finally respect that.”
“I don’t know,” Caroline says as I watch Tate steal the puck from one of the forwards on the women’s team and make a break for it down the ice. People cheer and I have to sit on my hands to keep from joining them. “Maybe there were circumstances involved no one knows about. Don’t you two have a right to find out for yourselves?”
“One day. Maybe. But if we keep bringing it up right now it will only get everyone mad. And we don’t need Clyde angrier than he already is,” I reply but I don’t know if anyone hears it because Tate Adler just took a hard slap shot on goal and it sailed over the female goalie’s shoulder and into the net. The stadium erupts and gets on their feet. I do too. I can’t help it. It was a really sweet goal.
Daisy reaches up and yanks me back down. She aggressively waves her pink foam finger with the words Moo U and the female symbol on it in my face.
“Oops. Right,” I say sheepishly. Caroline smiles knowingly over Daisy’s shoulder but I pretend she doesn’t exist. “So about Dad’s mom… Why are you so obsessed with this suddenly?”
“It isn’t sudden. It’s been bugging me since ninth grade biology when we learned about hereditary diseases. Dad’s stroke just made it all too real. The doctor said there could have been hereditary factors,” Daisy says. “We know nothing about this woman’s side of the family. What if there’s something else we need to know? What if there’s breast cancer? Or ovarian? I’m finally old enough to investigate this without permission and I’m going to and I want your support.”
I don’t think Daisy is wrong. I’ve always been curious about where Elizabeth Todd disappeared to and why, but I don’t want to go behind my family’s back. “How are you going to do that without Dad or one of our uncles or, God forbid, Clyde finding out?”
I turn back to the game. Tate is on the bench now. He is squirting water into his mouth from a water bottle and he’s talking with a teammate and smiling. His skin is rosy from exercise and his eyes are sparkling with a fire of competition. He’s actuallyreallyhot right now…like he was when he was just about to kiss me. I tell myself it’s not a crush. It’s just an indisputable fact of life. Tate is hot. His bone structure is pronounced without being angular. And even with the war wounds from sticks and pucks —the faded nicks and stitch scars that are visible up close, when he’s about to make out with you—somehow make him more attractive, not less. But his personality ruins it, I remind myself, and that’s something I can never ever let myself forget. Because I need a crush on Tate Adler like I need a bee in my bathing suit.
“I told Daisy about all the DNA, genealogy and ancestry websites out there,” Jasmyn says sucking my focus off Tate and back to our current conversation. “You can go on one and fill out all the info and send in a swab from your cheek, and if others who match your profile and fit in your family tree are also open to find potential relatives, they’ll alert you.”
Daisy perks up beside me. “I knew about the sites but I didn’t know they matched you with other people from your family. So I’m going to join a couple and see what happens.”
“It’s a way to possibly find out more without pissing Dad off,” I agree. “But I doubt she’d register for something like that. If she wanted to be found by us, all she would have to do is come back. Our family has been on that land, in that exact farmhouse, since Clyde’s grandfather.”
“True,” Daisy says and bites her bottom lip for a second. “But screw it. I’m going to try anyway. If nothing else, maybe I’ll find some other cool relatives too. Like maybe we’re related to a celebrity or historical figure or something.”
