Stay Sweet(47)

“Oh.”

“She got cancer. The summer she and I spent in Sand Lake was her last one.”

She passes the letters back to him. Maybe this, and not the heat, is why Grady’s confined himself to one room of the farmhouse. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’ve tried not to think too much about it.”

Except Amelia knows he has thought about it, at least once. The moment he tasted Home Sweet Home. The sadness she saw in those lake eyes.

Grady sets the bundle on the mantel and goes back to flipping through a bank ledger. Maybe he’ll read them once she’s gone.

Or maybe he won’t.

*

By the end of the night, what sounds like a thousand crickets are chattering away in the dark, and they still haven’t found the recipes. Grady says, tiredly, “I’ll drive you home.”

Outside, it’s much cooler. Almost cold. The girls have already placed the evening deposit bag with the receipts in the mailbox. Grady sticks it in his waistband, then loads Amelia’s bike into the trunk of the pink Cadillac while she climbs into the passenger side. The seats are deep and made of smooth tan leather.

On the way down the driveway, Amelia says, “We should probably check the stock. See how much the girls sold today.”

Grady doesn’t slow down. “I’d rather not.”

So Amelia directs him to her house. His mind seems to be elsewhere, but he does make the correct turns. He pulls up to the curb and she asks him, “Have you asked your dad? Would he know something about the recipes?” Grady shakes his head nervously, as if answering both questions at once, and puts the car in park. Amelia tries again. “Well, maybe he’ll have some advice for you about what to do.”

“Come on. You don’t need a business degree to know that an ice cream shop can’t stay open without ice cream to sell.”

“Right, but—”

“Here’s the thing, Amelia. I can’t fail.” He leans back, his hands in his lap, and stares at the roof of the Cadillac, his shoulders sagging like he already has.

It’s clear Grady has a weird relationship with his dad. And he has his own emotional ties to Meade Creamery. But do those things add up to this level of anxiety? Because Grady’s making it seem like Meade Creamery going under is on par with the end of the world.

She thinks of Cate’s warning. Grady could be trying to play her.

“I don’t want the stand to fail either. This place is as important to me as it is to you.” Amelia is almost sure their reasons are different. But what does that matter now?

He rolls his head toward her. “So what do we do?”

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “How hard do you think it is to make ice cream?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”

“It’s not like Molly had any formal training. We have her whole setup. And most of the ingredients. Her strawberry jam. Her fudge sauce. The vanilla beans she has soaking in that random syrup. Maybe we can find ice cream recipes that use those ingredients and see how close we can get.”

“What about Home Sweet Home?”

“Home Sweet Home will probably stay a mystery,” she concedes, getting out of the car. “But three out of four flavors would be enough to keep the stand in business. Meanwhile, we keep looking for the recipes. We’ll find them eventually.”

Calling after her, Grady says, “You’re making this sound easy.”

She calls back, “Look for green lights, not stop signs, remember?”

For the first time that day, Grady laughs. “What idiot told you that?”

*

Amelia’s mom is still awake when she comes through the door.

“Oh. You waited up?”

“No. I was coming to get some water. Cate dropped you off?”

“Yes,” Amelia lies, because she doesn’t want to get into it right now. She glances at her phone. There’s still no text from Cate. Not since her afternoon invitation to the lake. “Well . . . good night.”

Upstairs, Amelia gets ready for bed. She texts Cate Sorry I never made it and then brushes her teeth.

Cate’s response comes as Amelia moves on to flossing. Any luck?

No. Hopefully tomorrow.

Amelia carries her phone back into her bedroom, watching as Cate types a response. And then Cate stops. It takes another few seconds—until Amelia climbs into bed and pulls the blankets up to her chin—before Cate types again.

K.

Amelia sets her phone down. Cate’s clearly annoyed with her, probably because she was abandoned for an entire shift today. And since she just volunteered to try making ice cream tomorrow, there’s a good chance Amelia won’t be around for that shift, either.

The best thing that could happen, on all fronts, is that Amelia finds the recipes ASAP.

Though she’s tired, she opens Molly’s diary and begins reading.

November 29, 1944

I’ve been trying to help Daddy with his chores, not that he lets me do any real work, even though everything is falling behind without Liam and Pat and now Wayne around. He threw me out of the barn yesterday—that’s how much he did not enjoy the sight of his only daughter dripping with sweat during the first dusting of snow, shoveling a knee-deep pile of dung in the cow stalls. I can’t say I enjoyed it either, but he needs help and I desperately want to do something. Being physical did ease some of the heartache for me, calluses aside.