Sugar: A Novel Part 11

Yes, I thought, a very good man.

14.

WE were still unfolding from Kai's car when the front door of the rambling white farmhouse flew open. A tall, slender woman wearing a flowing batik skirt, tank top, and headscarf came charging toward us, one finger pointed menacingly at Kai.

"Tom Breyon just called," she said, striding past a painted sign that stood in the yard, its careful lettering announcing Forsythia Farms. "You're here. With a real, live girl. And I have to hear this news from an elderly man at a highway stand? Have you not one considerate bone in your body, Kai Malloy?" By then end of this little monologue, she was laughing, her sinewy, muscular arms draped around her brother's neck.

"Good to see you, Dahls." Kai lifted her and spun her in a half circle, making her skirt ripple outward in a colorful arc. He set her down and turned her toward me.

"Charlie Garrett, this is my eldest and bossiest sister, Dahlia. Dahlia, meet Charlie. Famous pastry chef and a woman who alphabetizes her clothes according to label."

"What?" I sputtered, noting the way my heart had started to thump loudly in my chest, suddenly eager to impress this woman. "First of all, I'm not famous-"

"Oh, yes, you are!" she said, barreling toward me, arms outstretched. "You are famous in our family. You're a girl! And Kai let you come here with him! You're already a legend around here." Dahlia gathered me into a neck hug. My nose rested on her bony collarbone. "So lovely to meet you, Charlie," she said, eyes bright. "My dolt of a brother could have given me a little notice, and I would have at least cleaned the toilet. But you'll just have to take your chances. Come," she said, tugging on my hand. "You can freshen up while I get drinks. Ruben is out in the fields, Kai. I'll pack a lunch, and you and Charlie can take it to him."

"See?" Kai whispered into my ear. I was still not used to having him so close. The word scrumptious came to mind. "I told you she was bossy."

He held the screened door for me, and I stepped into the front hallway. My eyes swept over the rooms before me. A family lived here, I could see, and by the looks of it, one that was spirited and creative and lively and full of love. Creaky oak floors cushioned our steps, punctuated every now and then with colorful rugs. I loved the wide white baseboards and molding, the abundance of beautiful photography, family portraits, and children's artwork. I slipped into a tiny bathroom tucked under the stairs. The toilet, as it happens, was sparkly clean, making Dahlia out to be either a liar or a woman with very high standards of cleanliness. Either way, I felt relieved.

After I finished slapping my cheeks in an effort to pretend I had encountered the summer sun before that morning, I walked to the end of the hallway and was greeted with a large, open room flooded with light. An expansive family room sat to my right, full of comfortable furniture, stacks of board games, and bookshelves crammed with worn t.i.tles. To my left, a large, inviting kitchen beckoned, and Kai had already answered the call. He looked up from where he stood by the island, his hands busy with a bag of tortilla chips.

He smiled. "Salsa and chips okay?"

"Perfect," I said. "How can I help?" I hesitated, waiting for Dahlia to give me the high sign. One never wanted to presume in another person's kitchen.

She turned from her post at the kitchen sink and grinned. "Two professional chefs in my kitchen! I should go take a nap."

"You certainly can," I offered. "We'd be happy to give you a day off."

"Um, no," Kai said. "No, we would not."

Dahlia punched him in his side, not gently, I noted, and then pointed me to a cutting board.

"I'd love some help with the margaritas," she said, gesturing to a pile of limes waiting to be juiced. "This isn't exactly a lunch, but Kai said you guys ate lots of Tom's fruit and snacks on the way in." She rolled her eyes. "I'm so happy to hear that after meeting that anorexic woman Kai introduced us to at that sw.a.n.ky Seattle lunch spot a while back."

Kai stared at his sister. "She was not anorexic. She was genetically predisposed to terrifying thinness. Also," he pointed the tip of his knife at her as he spoke, "that meeting occurred about three years ago, so have I finished serving my sentence yet?"

Dahlia shook her head at me conspiratorially. "She was a train wreck. Too eager to please. And she didn't eat her salad. It was a salad." She huffed at the memory. "That woman," she added, eyebrows raised, "never made the cut to a farm visit."

I felt my cheeks getting warm and decided my safest response would be to get to business with the juicing. I cut and squeezed, content to listen to the easy banter between Kai and his sister. They caught up on local gossip, discussed the weather and the season's harvest. When I brought the lime juice to Dahlia, she thanked me no fewer than five times, then went into full-throttle interrogation mode as she spun the rims of our gla.s.ses into a mound of kosher salt.

"So, Charlie, how long have you lived in Seattle?"

"Only a few months, actually. I moved this spring from New York."

"Ooh, I love New York. The city that never sleeps! Why did you move to sleepy little Washington?" she asked, unblinking eyes trained on my face.

I looked at Kai, who appeared to be enjoying watching someone else endure Dahlia's pointed questioning. "I came for the job at Thrill. I've been working toward being a head pastry chef for about ten years, so when the opportunity came, I took it."

A few moments of demure interest in that little tidbit and then she was locking and loading the real ammunition. "Kai told me your name on the phone a few weeks ago and I may have done just a quick Google search. I read all about you on the Thrill website. Great photo, by the way. Are your waves natural? And you work for an ex-boyfriend. How's that dynamic working out?"

I could feel The Splotch revving up along my neck. Dahlia turned and had her back to me for a moment. I took the opportunity to widen my eyes at Kai. She Googled me? "Well, yes. We do work together, but it's going fine. There's nothing between us. There really never was. Very much. And it was a long time ago." I stopped talking, because when a person resorts to sentence fragments, that person should be silent.

Kai let out a sound of younger-brother exasperation. "'K. So we're done with the skinny lunch girl and Charlie's working relationship with her ex. Any other items to cross off the list before you start the waterboarding?"

"Hmph." Dahila sniffed at her brother. "I'm not being too nosy, am I?"

"If you have to ask that question, the answer is yes," Kai muttered, scooping salsa into a bright ceramic bowl.

Dahlia turned to me. "Am I being too nosy, Charlie? I'm just doing due diligence. It's so seldom that we get any information at all about Brother Dear's social life-"

"I'll be on the porch," Kai said and scowled at our grins on his way out.

Dahlia and I followed Kai to the porch off the kitchen, an airy room that opened onto a long, green backyard dotted with gardens. Splashes of magenta, deep purple, and show-off yellows nodded in the breeze. The view within the room was just as charming. Under a beamed ceiling and suspended by thick ropes, two sofa-sized porch swings faced each other. A smattering of other comfy chairs circled the seating area. The collection of soft cushions everywhere practically begged for a slow and luxurious afternoon nap. Or a fantastic makeout session with a very good-looking man. My eyes darted to Kai, and my pulse instantly quickened with the idea that perhaps Dahlia could read my thoughts. She set the margaritas on a rough-hewn table between the swings and poured each of us a generous drink.

I sat and sipped. "This is delicious," I said, nose in the gla.s.s. "Citrusy, salty, made with very good tequila."

Kai nodded. "Sweet. Less fiber, more floral and herbal. Patrn Silver maybe?"

We looked at Dahlia, waiting for the answer. She burst out in delighted laughter. "You're both total nerds! This is perfect!"

"The salsa is Ruben's mother's recipe, right?" Kai asked, ignoring her outburst. "And I'm sure Charlie loves being ridiculed for her food a.n.a.lysis as much as I do."

I laughed. "I don't mind," I said. "At least you're making salsa from scratch. My family never ate tortilla chips without melted Velveeta and a heaping spoonful of ground beef. And beef not raised on a sustainable farm, mind you."

"That concoction sounds delicious," Dahlia said with a smile.

I smiled back because, truthfully, it really was.

"The recipe for the margaritas was in a cooking magazine," she said with a shrug, "and I did it exactly as written. And the salsa, chefs, is from a jar with a bar code."

Kai frowned, but I had to bite back a smile.

"I'm not very much of an experimentalist," Dahlia said. "Certainly not like Kai, who commandeered my Easy Bake Oven by the time he was six and who thinks of recipes as cheating."

Kai shook his head but had to wait to swallow a mammoth chip piled with salsa before he could speak. "Not true. I think recipes are great. For children."

My turn to punch him. "I use recipes all the time, and I'm not a child."

"Speaking of children," Dahlia interjected, her eyes lively, "Charlie, when do you see yourself getting married? Raising a family?"

"All right, then," Kai interrupted. "We can pick up this line of questioning again never. Thanks, Dahls, for the drinks and salsa." He stood and waited for me to join him.

"What?" Dahlia said, looking ornery as she pushed her swing gently back and forth. "These are perfectly logical questions, Kai. You take a girl home for the first time in a decade, you better believe I have some questions at the ready." She winked at me.

"Right," Kai said, his ears pinking again. He steered me by the elbow back to the kitchen. Grabbing a brown paper bag by the fridge, he pulled me by the hand and called behind his shoulder as we made our way to the front door. "We'll drop this off with Ruben. You said he was in the blueberries, right?"

"Yes," Dahlia said, not moving from her swing. "Tell him dinner is at six. You two will be here, I a.s.sume? I could use some help, fancy chef people."

"Sure!" I said, heartily.

Kai rolled his eyes at me. "We'll be here."

Three hours later, Kai and I took our time making our way back toward Dahlia and Ruben's house. My face and shoulders had taken on a deep pink, and my hair, piled into a messy bun, was hot to the touch. After meeting an effusive and jovial Ruben and handing off his lunch, we had toured the farm. Kai showed me rows of blueberry bushes, strawberry plants, and apple trees. We picked fruit as we walked, tasting, talking, bickering about the best way to use them at their prime. We sat on a sandy spot on the river's edge, letting our feet get tugged along with the gentle current. We stood against the trunk of an apple tree, crushed blossoms still littering the ground, and kissed each other like we meant it.

I watched Kai's face as he told me about how much he loved his family, even with their intrusive questions and constant advice. His eyes softened when he described his nieces and nephew. The lines around his mouth deepened as he laughed through a story of when he and Gemma had hung out the upstairs window to spy on Dahlia and a high school boyfriend, only to be found out when he slipped on the windowsill and fell to the lilac bushes below. A broken arm and Dahlia's weeks of merciless rebuke made him give up eavesdropping for good. Kai's face, I decided, was one I could imagine watching for many, many years and not ever tire of it.

We followed a wooden fence line, and as we topped a lush, green hill, we glimpsed the house in the distance. Gra.s.shoppers flew up around the path we cut through the gra.s.s, and the sun continued its slow drop toward the horizon. The air was close and warm, dancing among the trees and the alive summertime light. I took Kai's arm, and he moved closer to me as we walked.

"So what's the deal with never taking a girl back here? I would think you'd be an easy sell once she saw this place."

I could hear the smile in his voice. "An obnoxious sister and an afternoon in the orchard is all it takes?"

"Pretty much."

"Well," he said, slowing his stride as we neared the house, "I came close once. The skinny lunch girl Dahlia was telling you about. You know her, actually."

"I do?" I scanned my mental images of Kai and another girl and, happily, came up empty.

"Sunshine. The server at Howie's."

I felt my heart drop. The girl was gorgeous. And she had dreads. This was horrible news.

"We dated for a while, and I think she wanted more, but I just didn't. I felt bad about it, really. She's a nice girl."

I nodded, going for nonchalance. "You never took her here. That's interesting."

He stopped and pulled me into him. "You're gloating." The corner of his mouth pulled up into a smile.

"Am not," I said, tipping my chin. "Sunshine is a lovely person. And a very good server."

"Ouch," Kai said, wincing. "Might have heard a little sn.o.bbery in there. A lowly server, not a chef. At least she could go on a date more than once a month." He still smiled, but I heard a quiet rumble of discontent underneath his words.

I kept my arms around him, forcing him to stay close to me. "I'm working on that," I said, starting to kiss his check, his neck, his lower lip. "This too shall pa.s.s. Maybe sooner than later."

"Mmm," he said, not appearing to be as interested in conversation as he had been moments prior. "That's nice."

"Kai! Kai! Stop lip-locking and get yourself over here! And bring the girl !"

Kai groaned into my hair. "You've got to be kidding me."

I giggled, peeking around his shoulders at the woman waving at us from the open kitchen window. "Is that Dahlia?"

"Nope," he said, dragging his feet and me behind him. "It's the other one. Apparently Gemma drove all the way from Portland to meet you."

"Portland's five hours away!"

"These women will stop at nothing to make me uncomfortable."

I laughed. "This day gets better and better," I said, dodging Kai as he tried to pull me back to the car and Seattle. I quickened my pace to match his determined stride. Still laughing, I said, "I'm so excited there are two of them." I waved to Gemma, who was bouncing on the top step of the porch.

"Let's do this," Kai said, begrudgingly. "The sooner we start, the sooner it's over. And in advance, I'll just apologize now for the stories about my acne in junior high, my indescretions at Homecoming soph.o.m.ore year when I asked two girls to the dance but didn't tell them that, and, always a family favorite, the story of when I bet Morris Harper I could beat him in a cherry pie eating contest and I ended up on IV fluids."

I tried to tamp down my grin but wasn't entirely successful. "This is going to be fantastic."

Kai shook his head as we ascended the stairs and became enveloped in a three-person hug with Gemma.

"Charlie, we have so much to talk about!" Gemma said into my hair. I saw Kai raise one eyebrow in victory.

15.

FRIDAY morning, back at Thrill and a world away from the laughter and comfort food of Forsythia Farms, I paced along the back hallway outside Avery's office. I'd arrived early for the meeting Margot had called in a late-night email, and I wanted to take the extra minutes to rehea.r.s.e my lines. Not lines for an upcoming episode, but lines for my speech. I could hear a murmur of voices behind the door, and I knew Margot, Vic, and Avery were already inside. Turning my back to the door, I began walking again, deciding to wait a few more moments before knocking.

A thousand years prior, I had competed on the debate team for one semester in high school. What were the maxims of oral persuasion again? I tried to remember the acronym ... PCPF? Posture, Clarity, Poise, Focus? Or were they Posture, Clarity, Purpose, and Finality? I knew posture had to be in there because we used to mock Trish Friars for her exceptional, nipple-noteworthy posture during her turn on the stand.

Turning back once I reached the end of the hallway, I rolled my shoulders and cleared my throat, the sound bouncing off the quiet walls of the kitchen. With one last deep breath, I came to stand in front of Avery's office door. I knocked a peppy rhythm with my knuckles, and the door swung open.

Vic clasped his hands. "There she is," he said in a radio announcer voice. We air kissed, and he opened one arm to allow me into the cramped room. "A few days off can make all the difference, can't they? Doesn't she look refreshed and renewed, folks?"

Avery sat in one of three chairs gathered into a tight semi-circle. His expression was difficult to read. Chagrined, or maybe brooding? He turned to nod at me but didn't rise from his chair.

Margot leaned against Avery's desk. A half smile formed on her thin, painted lips. "You look great, Charlie. How was your vacation?"

It struck me as a bit ridiculous that we were calling thirty-six hours a "vacation," but I played along. "It was wonderful. Thank you." I sat down in the chair offered by Vic and tucked my ankles under the seat in an effort to avoid knee-knocking one of the men.

"Good," Margot said, voluminous gold hoops swinging when she directed a chin nod at Avery. "We were just chatting with Avery about the response from Network. We sent them some footage from the last few weeks, and they were very pleased, much more so than with the pilot we filmed before you arrived, Charlie."

I managed a weak smile. About that ...

"They gave the green light to film the rest of the season." Margot beamed, a sudden shift that appeared to require some effort. "Perfect timing, then, for you to return rested and ready to go. The next few weeks are going to be intense, very time-consuming. You'll need all your strength, plus your sharp wit and perfect camera face, two attributes Network particularly loved."

I swallowed. "Actually, I'd like to talk to you about the schedule."

Vic tried crossing his legs but gave up in the limited s.p.a.ce. Avery kept his eyes on the floor.

"We'll get to the schedule in a moment," Margot said. She positioned a pair of reading gla.s.ses onto her long nose and looked through them at a clipboard on the desk beside her. "First, I want to be clear about the contract."