“It’s not her I’m worried about,” Jack said.
Next to complain was Kendra, who swept into the kitchen and regarded the parts of the bathroom fan as if they were filth covering the island. “I have not received my dinner.”
“Auntie Zee will be back—” Jack began.
“I will have chicken potpie,” Kendra declared, “as well as a glass of chardonnay. For dessert, I desire pudding. You will add a swirl of whipped cream on top.”
Calisa and Jack glanced at each other.
Jack looked slightly panicked. “Um, I don’t…”
“It is in my agreement with the Faraway Inn,” Kendra said sharply. “I am guaranteed dinner. If Auntie Zee is not available to provide it, then it falls to you. I hope you will not disappointme.”
Calisa flipped through the cookbook, searching for a chickenpotpie recipe. How hard could it be? It was just pie crust with vegetables and chicken inside. Cornstarch for thickening? “It has to bake for almost an hour. Would you rather—”
“I will wait,” Kendra said, and spun to sweep out of the kitchen.
She swallowed. “I don’t know yet if we have all the ingredients….” Kendra was already gone. She wasn’t the type to stick around to hear excuses, even valid ones.
Jack jumped off his stool. “You read. I’ll check.”
“Chicken and vegetables, first off,” Calisa said. “Then: salt, pepper, celery seed, garlic powder, bullion, milk, egg…I know we’re out of milk, but I can use cornstarch with water instead.” They scrambled to assemble the ingredients, and Calisa began to mix the dough for the pastry crust.
Her fingers were deep in the butter and flour when Melidor raced into the kitchen. “Auntie Zee didn’t replace my sheets, and mine are full of mulch.”
“I’ll check the laundry,” Jack offered.
“Also, she promised me vegetable soup for dinner tonight.”
Calisa had no idea that Auntie Zee provided dinner as well as breakfast at her B&B, though she supposed it made sense. None of the guests could easily trot into town for a meal, not without drawing attention to the inn. She supposed she could reheat soup, if there was any. After rinsing the pastry dough off her hands, she checked the fridge and spotted a jar of soup with carrots and string beans floating in broth. “I can heat up—”
But Melidor was already gone.
She started a pot of soup heating on the stove and thenfinished up the dough, before starting on the chicken potpie innards. She was searching for a carrot peeler when Jack emerged from the hallway with an armload of towels. “I’ll fix up her room,” he offered.
“I’m taking care of the soup. Auntie Zee…”
“She’ll be back,” Jack said. “She’s Auntie Zee.”
Calisa was halfway through slicing the carrots when Mulligan appeared to ask for milk and strawberry syrup, for Zef, as well as a slice of leftover cake, for himself. Shortly after that, Kendra returned to demand her chardonnay. Jack sprinted up and down the stairs, carrying sheets and towels for all the guests to and from the linen closets, and then returned to the third floor with the toilet plunger.
By the time the chicken potpie was baked, the toilet fixed, the linens replaced, and everyone satisfied, it was late. The birds on the kitchen clock had closed their eyes, as if asleep. And Auntie Zee still wasn’t home.
—
The next morning, it was raining so hard that the trees outside Calisa’s window looked as if they were crying. Everything was coated in a silvery gray, and the clouds were so thick that she couldn’t even tell where the sun was.
Worse, Auntie Zee still wasn’t back.
Calisa made the usual pancake breakfast, thanks to Jack’s early-morning run to the store for milk. Jack delivered the trays to the guests, but he barely ate more than a few bites of his pancakes, and he almost used honey instead of maple syrup.
“What do we do?” Calisa asked. She could call her moms, but it wasn’t as ifthatmuch time had passed. And it wasn’t as if they could do anything about it.Except for tell me to come home.No, she wasn’t going to call her moms.
Jack frowned at the honey as if it had wronged him and then picked up one of the maple syrups, cardamom-flavored. “I don’t know.”
“Has this happened before?”
He was silent for a long moment. “Yes.”
