Pinch of Love (9781101558638) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Zell

  Chapter 2 - Zell

  Chapter 3 - Zell

  Chapter 4 - Zell

  Chapter 5 - Zell

  Chapter 6 - Zell

  Chapter 7 - Zell

  Chapter 8 - Zell

  Chapter 9 - Zell

  Chapter 10 - Zell

  Chapter 11 - Zell

  Scrumpy Delight (For Ahab)

  Acknowledgements

  A PLUME BOOK

  A PINCH OF LOVE

  ALICIA BESSETTE is a freelance writer and pianist. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, novelist Matthew Quick.

  “This story of a young widow edging warily back into the world is full of vivid characters and grace. Imbued with hope but blessedly lacking in sentimentality, it is a fresh, stirring take on the devastation of grief and the holiness of friendship.”

  —Marisa de los Santos, bestselling author of

  Love Walked In and Belong to Me

  “An utterly charming read about love and loss and what makes people go on with their lives after tragedy. Ultimately uplifting . . . striking and evocative.”

  —Patricia Wood, author of Lottery

  “Intricately plotted, peopled with quirky, small-town heroes that come alive on the page. Without shirking from the pain of bereavement and without wallowing in sentimentality, [A Pinch of Love] offers, as a counterbalance to life’s sadness, the sweet taste of human connectedness and caring. Alicia Bessette’s novel is tender and deft and full of heart, touched with good humor and compassion, a modern hymn to friendship and love.”

  —Roland Merullo, author of Breakfast with Buddha

  “A sweet story of regeneration and hope, delivered by a writer of generous spirit and great heart.”

  —Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister

  “Readers will fall for the characters of this New England town who try to rescue the worn-through heart of one of their own. Told with equal parts warmth, hope, and humor, [A Pinch of Love] is destined to be passed among friends who’ve shared in each other’s grief, and honored it with love and compassion. It’s a triumph of the heart.”

  —Amy MacKinnon, author of Tethered

  “In her wise and delightfully fresh debut, Alicia Bessette has composed a tender song that rises through the clouds of loss and grief until it bursts into a joyous celebration of the human heart. To read this story is to embrace life.”

  —Beth Hoffman, New York Times

  bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

  “Newcomer Alicia Bessette has written a love letter of a novel. There’s enough warmth here to fill your house on the coldest night. You’ll wish you knew these people, this world.”

  —Justin Cronin, author of The Passage

  “Nicely wrought debut . . . charming, with a dash of romance.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Fans of Cecelia Ahern’s PS, I Love You will find a lot to like here. Strong, richly detailed . . . well worth the ride.”

  —Library Journal

  “Tasty.”

  —People

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) · Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England · Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) · Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India · Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition as Simply from Scratch.

  First Plume Printing, November 2011

  Copyright © Alicia Bessette, 2010

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

  Bessette, Alicia.

  Simply from scratch / by Alicia Bessette. p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55863-8

  1. Windows—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Girls—Fiction. 4. Baking—Fiction. 5. Single fathers—Fiction. 6. Friendship—Fiction. 7. Families—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.E783S56 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2010008894

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to the friends who grew me up.

  1

  Zell

  I KNOT NICK’S CAMOUFLAGE APRON under my boobs, unable to remember the last time I wore a bra, or preheated the oven. That’s my widow style.

  The brown sugar’s as hard as a cinder block, so I hack at it with a knife. But after that the preparation’s pretty easy, and I stir my improvised ingredients into a smooth cookie batter. That’s when I smell smoke, which is jarring because there’s nothing in the oven.

  Or is there?

  I flick the oven light switch, but the bulb’s dead. All I can make out through the little window is a dark object on the top rack. It shouldn’t be there; that much I know. Maybe I was supposed to check for foreign objects before preheating.

  “Shall I let it burn, Captain?” I kneel, and Captain Ahab joins me. Gently I tug his velvet triangle ear. He snort-sighs, like the snuffle sound that horses make. He’s unaware of the unidentified flammable object in the oven, which, any second now, will be swallowed in flames. Or maybe Ahab is aware of the impending disaster and simply takes it in stride. He’s Zen that way; it’s his greyhound style.

  “Aye,” I say in Captain Ahab Voice—that of a sloshed but kindly pirate. “Let it burn. Yer a saucy wench, Rose-Ellen.”

  I pull Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch down from the counter and let Ahab sniff the magazine’s special pullout section, where Polly’s electric white smile and tanned, peachy skin shine. She’s shown winking, her arms crossed, her head tipped coquettishly.

  The winner of Polly’s Desserts That Warm
the Soul baking contest receives twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand. The exact amount Nick mentioned in his e-mail when he told me about the money he wanted to raise for the people of New Orleans as they rebuild after the hurricane and the floods.

  “Now, tell me that’s not fate. Yarr.” I kiss Ahab between his eyes.

  An alarm screeches. A smoke alarm. A fire alarm. A saucy-wench-trying-to-bake alarm.

  Balls.

  The object in the oven is officially on fire. Its azure and orange wings shoot up as if inflated, as if ready for takeoff.

  Minutes later, still on my knees, I yank open the oven door. Rolling, oily smoke engulfs me and Ahab. Something grips my shoulder, and I look up at a hulk of boots and helmet and axe.

  “Get out of here, Zell!” It’s Chief Kent. I recognize his gravelly voice. He hooks his thumbs under my armpits and hefts me to my feet. He pushes me through the now-roiling smoke into his second in command, either EJ or Russ; through the smoke, in their bulky black fireproof suits, they both look the same.

  Here they are, Wippamunk’s finest beer-gutted volunteer superheroes, extinguishing a fire at 111 High Street, the home of Rose-Ellen Roy (née Carmichael): Zell—me, the woman whose husband, Nick, died on their watch, in another world, another lifetime. Do they think I’ve done myself in? Torched my house intentionally? Do they think my head burst into flames?

  “Get her out of here!” bellows this second rescuer. He shoves me into a third rescuer, who drags me through the kitchen, through the living room, out to the front porch, and down the cement steps. I scream, “Ahab! Ahab!” the whole way.

  Somehow I slip and land belly up on my yard’s thin, hard crust of snow. My attic, with its one boarded-up window, seems church white against the blue, blue sky. The attic I will not—cannot—enter.

  RUSS SHEDS HIS FIREFIGHTER COAT, revealing spindly arms, a wifebeater undershirt, and reflective suspenders that flash in the sunlight. He kneels on the icy sidewalk that leads to my front porch. Shoveling was Nick’s chore, along with car maintenance and—big surprise—cooking. I refuse to perform these tasks. I’ll get to them later, I tell myself. For more than a year now, I’ve manually pumped my broken turn signal when turning left, eaten microwavable Polly Pinch meals for dinner, and stomped down two tire-width tracks in my driveway after every snowfall.

  Russ holds a snout-shaped oxygen mask over Ahab’s long nose. Ahab seems to think nothing unusual is happening, as if he’s not breathing pure oxygen from a mask specifically designed for dogs that may have inhaled smoke. From time to time, he blinks.

  I sit on the porch steps wrapped in a blanket from Engine 1747—incidentally, the year Wippamunk was incorporated as a Massachusetts town. Engine 1747 grumbles away in front of the house.

  It’s so cold, I can’t really tell whether my nose is runny. I wipe it with the blanket anyway.

  “Dogs dig me,” Russ tells Ahab. “That’s why I carry the mail. In my real job, I mean.” With his free hand he gives Ahab a thumbs-up sign, then smacks his flank so hard that Ahab stumbles.

  “You okay, Zell?” Russ asks.

  “Well, is Ahab okay?”

  “Right as rain.” He grins and gives Ahab another flank smack.

  “Then so am I, I guess. Right as rain.”

  “Zell? Got a present for ya,” says Chief Kent. “Literally.” He groans as he eases down next to me on the steps. Chief is older-gentleman sexy, in the way of many park rangers, bagpipers, and commercial airline pilots. But right now his face somehow reminds me of an old brick, his silver hair pokes out crazily, and his boots dwarf my bare feet. He’s lived in this town his whole life, and he’s been the fire chief since the year I was born.

  In Chief Kent’s huge hands is the object from the oven: a charred box the size of a human head, apparently made of hard plastic. The cube is deformed from heat. It looks like hardened lava coated with residue from the fire extinguisher. Its lid is sealed shut.

  Chief Kent tosses it at me. I let it land, dense and heavy in my lap. I can tell right away there’s something inside.

  It’s a present from beyond the grave. A present from Nick.

  I always wondered where Nick hid his gifts for me. Several times a year, before Valentine’s Day or my birthday or Christmas, I snooped around the house. Invariably I inspected the same places: behind the coats in the closet, the unusable fireplace, the clothes hamper. Nick followed me from room to room on these hunts. “You’ll never find it!” he said, smiling with his mouth open.

  Come to think of it, all his gifts—the small ones, anyway—emitted a certain odd, unfamiliar scent when first opened. A vaguely chemical, greasy, cavelike smell. The smell—I now know—of oven.

  G.d. oven, Nick would have said. His father never allowed Nick to say “goddamn,” but he preferred the abbreviation anyway, and the habit stuck.

  “Zell!” Dennis trots up the sidewalk, waving his steno book. His J.Crew barn jacket has to be twenty years old, and a Wippamunker press pass flaps from the frayed pocket. The press pass is purely for show, because he’s the only press person here.

  He stops at the porch steps. His face is ruddy with cold and adrenaline. He and Nick worked at the paper together for ten years. They were about as close as two coworkers can be.

  “Zell, thank God you’re all right,” Dennis says. “When I heard the street address over the scanner, when I realized it was your house, I—” He blows air through his lips, puffing out his cheeks.

  “I’m okay, Dennis,” I say. “I’m just the world’s worst cook. That’s all.”

  “Anyway.” He licks the tip of his pencil; he always uses a pencil in winter because ink freezes. “Chief, cause of fire?”

  Chief Kent pats my knee. “Ask Zell here.”

  “Cause of fire?” Dennis repeats.

  “Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch,” I say.

  “Polly Pinch?” Dennis scribbles. “The celebrity chef?”

  “That’s off the record,” says Chief.

  The new guy pulls up and parks. He darts around the yard, snapping photographs, twisting his camera in all different angles. He peeks in my windows, then hurries over to Ahab, and the shutter clicks a few times in Ahab’s face as Russ kisses him through the oxygen mask. The new guy photographs Chief, who, as everyone in Wippamunk knows, hates being photographed. And he gets a few shots of barefoot, braless me, slouched on the steps with a singed plastic cube in my lap. I’m wearing a camouflage apron and a neon orange blanket.

  I watch him spaz around. He’s got it all wrong, and that’s why he’s still, in my mind, the new guy, even though he took Nick’s place at The Wippamunker more than a year ago. The contrast between his style and Nick’s is glaring. Nick always strolled around casually before he took his camera out of his bag. He observed the scene, introduced himself, and asked for the homeowner’s permission to take some photographs. “Let’s not take ourselves too seriously,” he was fond of saying. “Wippamunkers aren’t Nixon, and I’m not Woodward and Bernstein.”

  The new guy bounds up the porch steps—Chief leans into me to avoid his swiftly moving knee—and continues snapping photographs inside. I hear him talk with EJ, who’s in my kitchen, doing firefighter stuff, I suppose.

  A moment later the new guy descends the steps. “No damage in there at all,” he says.

  “Wow, really?” I say, trying to sound cheery. “That’s good news for me. Disappointing for you, I suppose, though.”

  He shrugs, fits the lens cap back on his camera, and walks to his car. I wonder what he knows about me. About Nick. And EJ.

  A Wippamunk police cruiser pulls up to the house. France gets out, climbs the porch steps, and raps on my new neighbors’ door.

  “Hey, Zell,” she says over the metal railing that divides the porch. Acne scars pock her thin face. Her eyes bulge slightly, and red ears poke out from under a low-slung cop hat. “You hurt?” she asks.

  Before I can answer, the neighbors’ door swings open. France shakes the hand of a tall man
with close-cropped hair, hazel eyes, and cocoa skin. “Officer Frances Hogan,” she says.

  “Garrett Knox,” says the man. “My daughter, Ingrid, and I moved here from the other side of town last month.”

  France reassures him that everything’s okay; it was just an accidental cooking fire, and our shared house is no worse for wear.

  “Glad to hear it,” Garrett says. “Thanks.” He waves to me—a quick flick of wrist—and flashes a warm smile before heading back inside.

  My house is really half a house, a twin. During today’s regular mail route, Russ accidentally slipped the Knoxes’ copy of Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch into my mailbox. An understandable mistake, seeing as our mailboxes are side by side, epoxied to the vinyl between our doors.

  Ahab and I were returning from a walk when I spotted Meals in a Cinch sticking out of my box. The headline promised to lift my spirits, so naturally I grasped the magazine and pulled it out, and saw Polly Pinch, midlaugh, surrounded by clean-cut teens all happily munching on carrots, apples, and a few other fiber-packed and wholesome after-school snacks. I read the teasers: PERK UP THE SPIRITS OF EVERYONE AROUND YOU! ENTER POLLY’S FIRST-EVER BAKING CONTEST AND WIN $20,000!

  It was that dollar amount—Nick’s same dollar amount—that did it. I headed inside, locked myself in the little powder room under the stairs, and read Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch cover to cover.

  Garrett’s daughter, Ingrid, comes outside now, clomping across the porch in knee-high Uggs. She grips the railing and does some pliés. A too-big red ski hat caps her long auburn braids. She’s nine or ten, and her skin is lighter than Garrett’s, the color of sunlight on oak floors. “What were you cooking?” she asks.

  “Good question,” Dennis mutters, licking the tip of his pencil.