Love Takes a Village, page 2
She opened the Wikipedia page for Leavenworth and scanned it quickly. Apparently, they celebrated the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the end of February. The official line was that this gave more people a chance to come visit and see the festive lights, but Lena could easily discern the true motive behind the three-month span. This was a small town with what looked like little draw beyond this one season, and they extended it to give local businesses a chance to make as much money as possible during that period. Enough to carry them through the much lighter influx of tourists through the rest of the year.
Which meant that if Lena was truly going to help her aunt, she was signing on for an intensive few months of work in the restaurant. There wouldn’t be leisurely weekends and afternoons available for skiing or heading to Seattle for some nightlife and entertainment.
Three months. That was about the usual length of her aunt’s obsessions, so they’d both be ready to pack up and leave Leavenworth by the time her sentence was up. Then Lena would be free to return to her normal life, to her annual job search, with family guilt assuaged. And her aunt would be free to move on to whatever new enterprise caught her fancy. Whatever the hell it was, Lena would have done her part, and someone else in the family could step in and help her.
“Make sure you save me a reservation,” Jacquie said. “I can’t wait to meet this aunt of yours and experience some fine Leavenworth dining.”
“You’ll come? Really?” Lena asked, bypassing the obvious joke that the reservation would need to be at a different restaurant than hers if the dining was expected to be fine.
“Of course I’ll be there. And I’ll ask to compliment the chef, and when you come out of the kitchen, I’ll lavish praise on you so loudly that people two doors down will come in and leave you tips.”
Lena laughed, feeling marginally better. “I’m not setting my aspirations as high as receiving tips. I’ll just be glad if none of the diners throw their food at me. Oh, and once Rolf is done with my new contract, let him know I’ll be needing a restraining order against my family, keeping them yards away from my career.”
Chapter Two
Devin Meyer rolled up the sleeves of her light blue shirt before slipping an apron around her neck and tying it at her waist. When the shop was closed, she always wore one of her old white cotton half aprons she’d had since pastry school wrapped around her hips, but when customers might come in, she chose the more formal royal blue option with Meyer’s Fine Chocolates slanted in gold embroidery across the bib.
She was just pulling out a set of candy molds when her phone buzzed on the counter beside her. She stifled her flash of annoyance because now she’d have to wash her hands again after answering—which seemed to be an entirely inappropriate response to a call from her girlfriend—and picked up the phone.
“Hey, Criss,” she said, forcing a smile in the hope that it would imbue her voice with cheerfulness. She had left Seattle a week ago to spend this last holiday season helping her dad with the shop before he retired, and she was feeling the stress of the looming tourist hordes. Not to mention all the side jobs she was accepting to make the store seem more enticing and flourishing to prospective buyers. The thought of having to add the task of entertaining her high-maintenance girlfriend—and Criss applied the term to herself as if it was a badge of honor—had her ready to lock herself in the pantry and eat their entire stock of milk chocolate. Well, maybe not the new shipment from their favorite supplier in Belgium. She had plans for that and didn’t want to waste it in a self-soothing spree.
“Hey, sweetie,” Criss said, dragging out the syllables in a way that might have been meant to sound calming. Devin had a sudden premonition that her sanity—and their chocolate supply—might be safe. “Look, I know I was supposed to be there this weekend, and I really hate to disappoint you, but some stuff has come up at work, and, well, I just can’t get away right now.”
“Work is important. I understand,” Devin said. And she did. Criss was an optometric assistant in an office that was open on weekdays, normal hours. She was great at her job, but she hadn’t worked a minute of overtime in all the months Devin had known her, and she doubted that a sudden eyeball emergency had popped up. One that could wait for the weekend.
“And, well, you know I’d have been bored out of my mind there,” Criss added, which was much more plausible to Devin than the work excuse. “I don’t get how you were able to stand living there all those years growing up, but I suppose that’s a sign of how different we are…”
Her voice faded to a stop.
Here it comes, Devin thought. She felt a rush of emotion in anticipation of Criss’s next words. Surprise wasn’t one of them. Relief was, as well as the familiar conviction that something was very wrong with her if she never felt more of a connection to the women she had dated.
“Maybe this time apart will be good for us, so we can think through our relationship. We’ve seemed to be growing apart…”
Devin lost track for a moment when her dad, Ron Meyer, came out of the back room with their assistant Shay on his heels and saw her on the phone. He was slightly shorter than her, with carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and a near-constant smile for everyone. His blue apron was tied around a belly that provided physical testament to how passionate he was about his job and the product he made. He mouthed Criss? at her. When she nodded, Shay giggled and made kissing noises as they walked by.
“And I need time to work on myself for a…Oh, sweetie, are you crying?” Criss asked, apparently hearing and misinterpreting the kissing sounds. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’m not…well, maybe a little,” Devin said. That would be the normal response, wouldn’t it? Rather than this empty lack of any true emotion? She gave a tentative sniff to prove it, rather than admit that she really just wanted to end the call and get back to her work.
It took another ten minutes to reassure Criss that Devin would survive the breakup, and then she was finally off the phone. By that time, both her dad and Shay had figured out that this wasn’t the time for teasing.
“So, she’s not coming this weekend?” her dad asked as she put her phone on the back counter and started washing her hands again.
“No.”
“Did she break up with you?” Shay asked, with all the pathos of a teenager who probably thought a breakup was the worst thing that could happen to someone.
“Yes.” Devin dried her hands on a clean white towel and went back to the molds she had set aside when she got the call.
Shay and her dad exchanged glances in what they might have thought was a surreptitious manner. The shop was too tiny for that to work, though.
“Do you need to cry?” her dad asked. “Drown your sorrows in a pint of ice cream from Tucker’s?”
Devin paused at that one. “I wouldn’t say no to a bowl of ice cream,” she said. “But mostly I just want to get back to the chocolates for this Friday’s wedding.”
“I’m on it,” her dad said, heading for the door, looking relieved to have some way to help her through her barely felt pain. “One bowl of cherry chip coming up. Shay?”
“Ooh, a hot fudge sundae, please.”
He left, not even bothering to take off his apron. Devin went into the walk-in fridge to grab a few ingredients and came out to find Shay leaning against her work counter.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked hesitantly, as if not wanting to intrude. It was typical in such a small town—and in an even smaller, family-run shop—that people were very careful about not pushing past boundaries. Small-town residents might have a reputation of being overly involved in everyone else’s personal business, but Devin had always found it to be the opposite from what people saw on television and in books.
She smiled at Shay. “I’m sure. And thank you for asking. Criss is a wonderful person, and we had fun together, but she wasn’t the great love of my life.”
She had serious doubts about ever finding that kind of love, but she wasn’t about to start looking right now. She needed to get the shop sold and her dad settled into retired life, make some decisions about the trajectory of her own career, and then maybe she’d make more of an effort in her relationships. Give them more of a chance. Change who she was? She wasn’t quite sure what it would take to become the kind of person who found true love, but at the moment she needed to keep her focus on more important things.
“Can you teach me how to make these?” Shay asked as Devin started picking through a pile of fresh mint leaves.
“Oh, sure,” Devin said, a little surprised. Her dad always hired local students to help during the holidays. Most just wanted to work the register and make some extra cash, and they had likely applied to every business in Leavenworth, not really caring which job they got. Some of them, though, were actually interested in learning more about the process involved in being a chocolatier, and she was always willing to share what she knew. Shay was peering at the ingredients with what seemed like genuine interest. Her light ginger hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had masses of freckles across her arms and cheekbones. Devin thought they were adorable, but she wondered how the girl felt about them since too many teenagers hated anything that made them look unique or different. Judging by the greatly increased number of teenage male customers they’d had lately, Devin was quite certain that her opinion was shared on the matter. Shay was bright and friendly with all their customers, and Devin was glad to see that she wanted to get more involved in the shop.
She slid a bunch of the leaves in front of Shay. “I’m just picking off the tiniest of leaves right now. We’ll candy them and use them as a garnish. About this size, or smaller.”
She held one up as a model, and they quickly sorted through the bunches, and then she set a pan on the burner and added heavy cream. “We’re going to steep the rest of the leaves and infuse the liquid with their flavor, just like you would for tea, but with cream instead of water so we can use it to make a ganache.”
Her dad came back as she and Shay were mixing raspberry puree with glucose, and after taking a look at where they were in the process, he wordlessly stashed their ice cream containers in the freezer until they were at a good stopping point. He joined them at the counter and seamlessly entered the conversation about the properties of pectin and citric acid while Devin carefully poured a cascade of rich chocolate coins into the stainless steel bowl on the scale. She loved hearing her dad talk about the art of chocolate making, and he used to read books about confectionary technique to her instead of bedtime stories when she was young. Her mother used to joke that her first word wasn’t mama or dada, but cacao…
Devin had to force herself to relax and gently fold the raspberry-mint concoction into the chocolate. This shop was full of memories of her mother and her grandparents—and the two generations before them, even though Devin hadn’t known them. It wouldn’t be easy for her dad to walk away from this place, but he seemed convinced it was the right thing to do. Maybe he was even relieved to have the burden of running such a high-maintenance shop lifted from him. She hoped he was. And then Devin could focus on her own career, not worrying about whether an employer would let her leave for two or three months every year to come back and help him, and not feeling guilty in those seasons when she couldn’t get here.
She had struggled all her life against the expectation that she would continue to run the store, but even when she had managed to get away from Leavenworth and the family business, she had still felt driven to come back. Usually by guilt, but also force of habit. She had been making chocolates at this counter since she was old enough to stand on a stool and hold a spatula. She always said, though, that while she was very knowledgeable about chocolate, for her dad—and for her mom, when she was alive—it was truly a passion.
They took a brief break to eat their ice cream, and Devin and her dad took turns explaining terms like couverture and tempering to Shay. She seemed interested, and Devin decided to get her more involved in filling orders and making some of the simpler truffles and pralines. She usually was just relieved to have someone else watching the register and boxing up chocolates for customers so she could concentrate on making the confections, but she didn’t want to ignore the girl’s desire to learn. If nothing else, Shay would end the holiday season with some go-to recipes for chocolates that she could bring to parties and use to impress her friends. Devin also thought it might be an additional selling point for the shop if they had a ready-made local assistant who had some knowledge and experience.
The scented ganache was the right temperature when they had finished eating, so Devin brought the heart-shaped molds and piping bags over to their workstation. She filled the bags and handed one each to her dad and Shay.
“You’ll want to go slowly with this, making sure you’re filling the entire mold and not leaving air pockets,” she said, demonstrating with her own mold. “Don’t go all the way to the top.”
“Wait, you’re letting me make some? What if I mess them up?”
Devin shrugged. “You’ll be fine,” she assured her. “And Dad will eat the mistakes.”
He patted his stomach. “Best part of the job,” he said. “I was real disappointed when Devin got good enough so all her chocolates were fit to sell.”
They were silent for a few moments as they concentrated on carefully filling the molds, and then her dad took over and showed Shay how to cap the truffles with a layer of chocolate that would become the base when they were unmolded. Devin used a spatula to scrape the excess chocolate off the mold, subtly marking a few of Shay’s that had too thick a layer of chocolate on the bottom. Devin would show her the difference later, once they were finished. They wouldn’t be good enough to serve at the wedding, but they’d still be delicious, and Shay could take them home to share with her family.
Devin set the trays aside to rest before they were unmolded and fully encased in chocolate, and then she pulled a tray of already enrobed truffles out of the freezer.
“Cool,” said Shay. “It’s like a cooking show, where they put something raw in the oven and pull out an already cooked one at the same time. But wouldn’t it be easier just to do all the batches at once, like an assembly line?”
“Well, in some ways, yes,” Devin said, prepping a spray gun with a canister of red-colored cocoa butter. “That’s what we used to do when I worked at a bigger candy company. But we also had less variation in our product. We’d make a bunch of shaped candies, and then use an enrobing machine to coat them all with the same chocolate. We really don’t have the space here to make hundreds of candies at a time, especially since these ones are for the wedding, and we’re also making chocolates for the store at the same time.”
“Plus, we’re more focused on small-batch, artisan confections here, rather than mass-produced candy,” her dad added, bringing the focus back to passion and off logistics. “We’ll often use different techniques and different flavors for each type of chocolate. Just watch what Devin does with these ones.”
Devin turned on the sprayer and gently moved it across the surfaces of the frozen treats. As soon as the cocoa butter hit the little hearts, the chocolate crystallized, and its texture transformed.
“Oh, they look like velvet,” Shay said.
Devin smiled at the excitement in her voice, remembering how she had felt every time she learned some new technique or how to use a new candy-making tool from her parents. She looked at the bright red confections with pride. She had missed being so in touch with her creations when she worked for the larger company in Seattle during pastry school, often feeling like she was merely running the machines while they were the ones actually making the chocolates. Here, she was hands-on with every single truffle. By the time Friday arrived, she would have dozens of these little hearts ready to go, as well as a variety of other shapes and flavors for the fancy dessert table.
At the thought of the weekend, she realized that she hadn’t spared a thought for Criss in over an hour. She opened a jar of teensy mint leaves that she had already cooked in a sugar solution and used a pair of tweezers to place one on each heart while her dad let Shay practice with the spray gun on a piece of parchment paper. She wondered what Criss would have thought of Devin’s work. Would she have been impressed? Intrigued? Eager to try something Devin had created with her own hands and expertise? Or just bored and ready to go back to Seattle?
Likely the latter, she thought, setting the hearts aside to fully set and putting a pan on the little burner to start crystallizing the new leaves she and Shay had separated.
“Say, Dad,” she said, looking at the texture on the hearts. “I’ve usually only done this for hearts and Valentine’s Day candy, but wouldn’t this technique make cute little Christmas stocking truffles? They’d look like those plush, old-fashioned ones.”
“Oh yes. Maybe flavored with chestnut puree?” he agreed eagerly. “And some chopped dried cranberries.”
“And piped white chocolate to make the little cuff on the top,” Devin said, practically able to taste them already. “I’ll make a batch this weekend and we can see how they sell.”
Chapter Three
According to her car’s GPS, the trip from Portland to Leavenworth should have taken four and a half hours. Lena managed to more than double that. She ignored the computerized voice’s suggestion to follow the Columbia River Gorge and then head north toward Yakima, preferring instead to remain along the I-5 corridor for as long as possible, where she was rarely out of sight of some city or town. Civilization. She even disregarded the advice to take the Auburn exit off I-5, once she had passed Tacoma, and held out until she reached the turnoff for 405, just south of Seattle. Of course, that meant she had to crawl along in heavy traffic with everyone else headed toward Bellevue, until she eventually had to admit defeat and merge onto I-90.
