And there it was—her mother’s pie bible. The cover, a fuchsia cross-hatch pattern on contact paper, caught her eye. She pulled it from the bottom of the box. Little dust eddies swirled in the air in front of her as she brushed the cover off with her hand before she opened the book.
The pages had grown a little brittle with age. Her mother’s precise writing was easy to read, as unpretentious as the recipes. Apple Pear Ginger pie. Coconut Macadamia. Lemon Hazelnut. Sometimes she included a photo clipped from the pages of a magazine. An amateur artist, her mother liked to sketch too. Crust designs and little bird shapes populated the pages too. The book was a treasure.
Hilary sat hunched over the book, slowly turning pages, taking it all in.
And here it was—lavender apple pie.
The recipe was simple enough. It sounded amazing. Now she’d need to hunt down some lavender. She might know just the person to ask.
Hilary fished her phone out of her back pocket and snapped a photo of the recipe. Then she scrolled through her messages, finding his name right away among the three texts she’d sent since she came home five days ago. What an exciting life she led. A real social butterfly she was.
While she typed out the message, Hilary caught herself full-on grinning again.
Have you ever tried apple lavender pie?
Chapter Twenty
The goats congregated in the barn earlier than usual, sensing rain was on the way. That meant Gertie, the affectionate matriarch of the herd, pressed herself against Dane’s side as he tried to clean out the small stall inside the barn before supper. She nuzzled into his pockets, swatted him with her backside, and was a general sweet nuisance while he cleaned.
“Maria, take this please.”
Dane passed Maria his phone. He’d learned not to carry it on him when he tended the goats. Gertie smeared it with silage in her search for treats. Another goat slipped it out of his back pocket once, thinking it a snack. So the phone stayed outside the corrals.
“They seem more ravenous than usual. Have you not been taking care of my girl?” Maria said, setting his phone on the wooden table beside her. She reached over the fence to scratch Gertie between her ears.
“Please. These beasts are more spoiled than toddlers at Christmas.”
Gertie was Maria’s favorite. Maria followed Dane to the barn earlier with a baggie filled with corn kernels and sliced apples. The other goats would compete with Gertie for the treats, and they’d get some too. But Gertie stood head and shoulders above the rest, easily craning her neck between the slats of the top two rails.
Dane leaned the rake against the outside of the stall and picked up the bucket of alfalfa mixture for the goats’ trough. Gertie met him at the gate again, smelling more food coming her way.
His phone dinged.
Dane tipped the bucket to empty its contents into the feeder.
“Who’s Hilary?” asked Maria.
The handle almost slipped out of his hand. He tossed the empty bucket aside and was through the gate and at Maria’s side in two long strides. He snatched his phone from the cart before she read any more. Maria loved to gossip almost as much as she loved Gertie.
“Just someone I know.”
Maria took an exaggerated step backward and held up her hands in surrender. “Obviously. I don’t think you get many texts from strangers. Don’t let me get in your way or anything.”
“Sorry. I…it’s something from the conference. I’ve been waiting for this person to get back to me.”
“You’ve never been a good liar, you know. Your ornery brothers, yes. But I could always read the truth in your eyes.”
“Give me a break.” Dane pressed his lips together, annoyed. She liked teasing him, always had. Most times he took it. But today was different. The cart he used to pull the heavy bunches from the fields lost a wheel, so they’d loaded up the wheelbarrows instead, which took forever. Two of his workers went home sick an hour into the day. And more rain was coming tonight. This message was the bright spot of his day—his week actually—and he wasn’t going to let Maria take that away from him.
“She must be pretty special. I haven’t seen you move that fast since I watched you run the hundred-meter dash in high school.”
“Maria, I didn’t run track. I played baseball.”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s right. Rafe was the sprinter.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “You knew that. And I told you it’s business. You’re trying to rile me up.”
Maria snickered. “Like that’s even possible. I can finish up here—”
