Stay Sweet

  Agreed? But that’s what they’ve always gotten paid. Amelia shakes her head, tries to refocus. “The problem is that three girls make up an entire shift. Without them in the rotation, the rest of us have only one day off a week.”

  “I’m still sorting through Molly’s financial stuff. It’s going more slowly than I expected. Her books are a mess. I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

  “Okay, but . . . we’ve always had ten girls on staff. So it obviously does work.”

  He gives her a thin-lipped smile. “Anything else?”

  Amelia feels unsteady. She was not expecting to be shot down so quickly. She knows Cate is going to be angry. And when Amelia goes over the conversation with her, Cate is going to find a hundred different ways that Amelia could have been stronger, more articulate, more firm.

  “All right then . . . ,” Grady says, without waiting for her to answer, and walks toward the stairs.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Grady says, “We can connect tomorrow on anything else you need to talk about, Amelia. I’ve got a paper due for one of my summer classes that needs to be up by midnight.”

  Amelia shakes her head, incredulous. “But I need ice cream. Remember?”

  Finally, he stops. And when he turns toward her, confusion twists across his face. “So make whatever you need. You’re not going to bother me.”

  Amelia nervously laughs. “I don’t know how to make ice cream. Only Molly knows the recipes. Everyone in Sand Lake knows that. Molly . . . and now you.”

  Grady presses his palms into his eyes. “Amelia. I’m seriously too tired to be messed with right now. When we first sat down, you told me that you helped her make the ice cream.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Then you implied it!”

  “No. I didn’t!”

  “I distinctly remember you saying that, as Head Girl, you were in charge of managing the stock.”

  Amelia puts her hands on her hips. “Which is why I am here now, telling you that we need more ice cream.”

  “I asked you, What about the ice cream? And you said, What do you want to know?  ”

  “I never said I helped make ice cream,” Amelia says again, though this time, her voice is shaky. “If you had asked me that specific question, I would have said so.”

  Grady bites his fist to muffle a curse.

  “Whatever, it’s fine,” she says, uneasy. “I mean, I’m sure I can do it. Just give me her recipes and I’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t have the recipes.”

  “You said in the paper that the recipes are the most valuable things you inherited! So go get the recipes you inherited so I can try and figure out how to make ice cream.”

  “I meant that in a general sense! How would I know where the recipes are?”

  “Have you looked for them?”

  He’s pacing, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why would I have looked for them? After our interview, I figured you knew. Either where they were or . . . I don’t know, by heart.” His breathing is getting faster and faster, leaving Amelia to worry that he’s about to hyperventilate. “How much ice cream do we have? How long will it last us?”

  “We have about fifty more drums. They could last us another week. Maybe a week and a half if it rains?”

  “How can I run an ice cream stand if there’s no ice cream?” He startles, surprised at the volume of his own voice.

  Amelia gets a text from Cate.

  How’s it going? Can I put out the newbie applications yet?

  Amelia doesn’t write back. It’s nine thirty p.m. An hour and a half until closing. It wasn’t busy when she left. Cate and the other girls can hold down the fort.

  Something about Grady freaking out makes Amelia feel super calm, like she has to keep it together because he’s losing it. And right now, keeping this ice cream stand open is important to both of them. She convinced the girls to come back. She can’t let them down.

  “Okay, there’s no need to panic,” she says. “I’m sure the recipes are here somewhere.”

  Amelia wanders over to the kitchen area, thinking they would most likely be kept where the magic happens. Grady lurks not far behind her, more watching over her shoulder than helping. Amelia pulls open the drawers, which contain mismatched, bent silverware. Next she checks the cabinets. Strangely, each one is filled with plain glass vases, the cheap kind that come with floral deliveries. Amelia opens the refrigerator and finds it half full of expired milk and eggs and cream from Marburger Dairy.

  Grady’s phone rings. He mutes it, but almost immediately, it rings again.

  “Is that your dad? Should you answer?”

  “If it was my dad, I’d definitely answer. It’s my friends trying to FaceTime. They got to Amsterdam today, which means they’re high.” He puts his phone down and it starts ringing yet again. “Don’t give me that look. It’s legal there, Amelia.”

  “I’m not giving any look!”

  Across the room is a large wood cabinet with gold mesh fabric across the front. Amelia walks over. Half the top of the cabinet is lifted up, revealing a record player inside. Amelia peeks inside the other hatch. It’s full of old records. Hundreds of them.

  The phone rings yet again. “Ugh. They’re not going to give up.” With a groan, he flicks off his baseball cap and answers. “Yo, dudes. It’s a very bad time for me.”

  Five, maybe six guys scream at once.

  “You should be here with us, Grady!”

  “Dude, screw your dad! Get on a flight!”

  “Yeah, tell ol’ Paddy Meade to ease up! He hasn’t canceled your credit cards yet, has he?”

  Grady gives a quick glance at Amelia. “I’ll hit you guys up later.” He hangs up and tosses the phone aside. “My friends are complete idiots.”

  “Forget them and help me.”

  They continue to search the basement, silent and focused. Obvious places are checked again and then checked a third time. When they come up empty-handed, they exchange a brief look and start searching weird places, like inside the books on a bookshelf, underneath the couch cushions.

  Amelia does discover a few ingredients that shine a light on Molly Meade’s process—containers of vanilla beans marinating in a dark syrup, gallon jugs of homemade fudge sauce. There are jars of homemade strawberry jam too, maybe a hundred, tucked inside a small cabinet underneath the basement stairs. The lids are marked with the current year, which means Molly prepared them this past spring. “Grady, I think this is how she got the strawberry so perfectly integrated.” This discovery amuses Amelia no end. She sits back on her heels and holds a jar up to the light. It looks like liquefied rubies.

  “Amelia, not to be a complete jerk, but the only things I care about you finding are the recipes.” Grady lets his head drop into his hands. “Which are totally not down here.”

  She’s disheartened too, of course. In the back of her mind, a niggling thought takes hold, wondering if they aren’t hunting fool’s gold. After all, Molly had been making her ice cream for so long, it’s not like she’d need to consult a recipe. Amelia pushes this thought aside. It’s too early in their search to be pessimistic. Instead, she chooses to hope. Because why would Molly bequeath her stand to Grady without also leaving him her recipes?

  Amelia hears three long beeps outside. She checks her phone, shocked to see that it’s already eleven thirty. The stand’s been closed for a half hour. She glances out the basement window and sees Cate’s truck, here to pick her up.

  “Grady, I’m sorry but I have to go.”

  “Damn. Me too. I haven’t even started my paper yet.”

  “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning.”

  He beams a grateful smile. “Oh, really? Wow, great, thank you so much.” Then his long legs take the stairs two by two. Amelia follows. “Please don’t tell any of the girls about this,” Grady says. “We don’t want anyone to panic. Or word to get out to the customers. Or that newspaper guy.” br />
  Amelia avoids answering Grady’s request directly, because of course she will be telling Cate. Like, the second she gets outside. But she does want to help him. “I’m sure we’re going to find them tomorrow. We’ve only searched one room. There’s a whole house to go through yet.”

  Grady walks Amelia to the door.

  Cate calls out her open truck window, “What have you guys been doing up here all night?”

  “Amelia’s helping me with some paperwork,” Grady lies, almost too easily.

  “Oh? That’s cool.” Cate tosses Grady the deposit bag and the day’s receipts. As Amelia climbs into the truck, Cate whispers, “What the hell, Amelia! I was about to come up and make sure you weren’t being murdered!”

  Buckling up, Amelia whispers back, “I’m sorry. I lost track of time,” and she gives Grady a small wave goodbye. Through her teeth, she says, “Just drive and I’ll explain everything.”

  Once they’re on the road, Amelia lays it out. “Grady doesn’t have the ice cream recipes. He has no idea where they are.” She tells Cate the whole story, including how she may have potentially, inadvertently misled Grady during their first meeting.

  Cate is having none of it. “Amelia, this is so not your fault.”

  “You weren’t there, Cate. I could have been more direct. I—”

  “Even if you accidentally led him to that conclusion, which I know you didn’t, it’s still Grady’s responsibility to be up to speed on all things Meade Creamery. It’s his fault for assuming. This is his problem. This is his stand. We’re just the employees.”

  Amelia knows this is true, even if it doesn’t feel that way. “Well, I don’t mind helping him find them. We’re on the same team.”

  “Grady isn’t Molly. He’s not some sad old lady trapped in a farmhouse, making ice cream to ease her broken heart. He’s smart. He’s savvy. If he makes you feel bad or like you have something you need to prove to him, it’s because he’s playing you.”

  “Playing me? What do you mean?”

  “Let me guess. I bet he dropped his boss routine real quick and acted all grateful and nice to you, so you’d stay up there and help him tonight.”

  “He was grateful,” Amelia says. Though how can she be sure it wasn’t also, simultaneously, a guilt trip? She doesn’t even know the guy. Not really. But she’s nervous when she admits to Cate, “I told him I’d go back tomorrow morning to help him look some more.”

  At this, Cate is silent, but when she reaches the next stop sign, she puts her truck in park and turns to face Amelia. “I’m not saying don’t help him find the recipes. Just remember you don’t owe him anything. At the end of the day, this is his problem to solve. Don’t let him use you.”

  Amelia fiddles with the flower pin on her collar. She knows that Cate is probably right. This is Grady’s problem. And hopefully, sooner rather than later, he will solve it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AMELIA RIDES HER BIKE TO Molly’s farmhouse and arrives by nine o’clock, two hours before the stand opens, dressed in one of her newer, brighter Meade Creamery polos and a pair of white twill shorts. Grady answers the door in running shorts and no shirt, his hair wet from a shower.

  “Hey, Amelia. I didn’t expect you here this early.” He holds the door open with his foot.

  “I’m on the schedule for first shift and I don’t want to leave the girls shorthanded,” she says flatly, and quickly averts her eyes, though she can almost feel the heat of his tanned skin as she passes him in the doorway. “Can you please put a shirt on?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Of course,” he says, though Grady doesn’t seem embarrassed to be half-naked in front of her. Amelia remembers walking through a coed dorm on a campus tour of Gibbons; when the group stopped to look at a study lounge, a boy walked out of the bathroom dressed only in his boxers. He excused himself, completely unselfconsciously, while passing between Amelia and her mother to cross the hall, and his body wasn’t even half as good as Grady’s. Maybe this is what dorm life does to you?

  He holds out a plate balanced in his hand like a waiter. “You hungry?”

  “I’m fine,” she says, because she’s there to work, not hang out, though his eggs do smell good. They’re fluffy and cheesy, just how she likes. White toast, too, glistening with melted butter.

  “You sure? Eggs are my specialty.”

  “Boys who can’t cook always say that.” That’s what her home ec teacher used to say, anyway.

  “Well, I’m also ace at doctoring up cafeteria ramen. Just give me access to a half-decent salad bar and some hot sauce and I can make ramen magic happen.”

  “I’d rather we get started.”

  “Suit yourself.” Grady shovels the eggs into his mouth in three bites before setting his plate on a foyer table.

  She clears her throat. “Did you get your paper in last night?”

  “Yeah. About a minute before midnight.” He grabs a T-shirt hanging on a doorknob and slides it over his head. Then he claps his hands once. “I think it’s safe to say that the recipes are not in the basement. So let’s start clearing the first floor room by room. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  Amelia begins in the kitchen. She checks every cabinet, empties two junk drawers. She shakes out every cookbook. She drags one of the kitchen chairs over to see the top of the refrigerator.

  Nothing.

  Meanwhile, she hears Grady rummaging around in the back bedroom. He emerges more disgusted than disheartened.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He almost can’t make the words, like he’s got a mouth full of sour candy. “Doing a granny-panty raid in my deceased great-aunt’s room is not exactly what I had in mind for this summer. Have you finished in here?”

  “Almost,” she says, stepping down. “I still need to check the pantry.”

  He opens the pantry door and gasps. “Hells! Yes!”

  “What?”

  After a fist pump, he reaches in and removes a tin box marked RECIPES. “Boom! We’re back in business!”

  He pops the lid off and dumps all the index cards onto the table. Amelia joins him and they begin checking each one, front and back, like some kind of matching game. One that, after a minute, they lose.

  Grady slumps into a seat. “I really thought . . .”

  “Come on. Shake it off,” Amelia says. “Where do we try next?”

  Amelia follows him into the living room but splits off at the foyer, diligently searching places she is 99.9 percent sure the recipes won’t be, like in the pockets of the coats hanging in the hall closet, and tries not to feel disappointed when she comes up with nothing but loose change and lint.

  Then she joins Grady, sitting cross-legged on a rug, pulling books out of the bookshelves and fanning through the pages while Grady paws through the drawers of a writing desk.

  On the second floor, the air is hotter, drier. By the time she reaches the landing, Amelia can feel the back of her hair sticking to her neck.

  Grady quickly reveals what’s behind each of the closed black doors they pass as they make their way down a white hallway. “That’s the guest bedroom, that’s my grandpa’s old room, a bathroom, linen closet.” At the end, the roof is angled, coming down in two sharp peaks, with one door in the center. “That’s Molly’s bedroom.”

  Amelia wrinkles her nose. “I thought you said she slept downstairs.”

  “She did. This is the one she had when she was a kid. I’m putting you in charge of going through it, for the underwear situation I previously mentioned.”

  “Whatever you say,” she says breezily, though excitement is fizzing inside her. She has the doorknob half turned when she hears Grady open a different door.

  “But let’s start in here,” he says. “I think this is where we’ve got the best chance.”

  The room is small and stuffed to the ceiling. There’s a desk on top of an oblong braided rug, and a fireplace that’s been filled in with red brick. Stacks of cardboard file boxes—the same as the ones Grady ha
d open downstairs—cover every other available bit of space.

  “This was her office,” Grady says. “Though I don’t know how she worked in here, seeing as it’s ten degrees hotter than in any other room in the house.”

  Amelia approaches the desk and pulls on the lower of the two drawers. It’s packed tight with green folders. She’s not sure she could squeeze in a single piece of paper more if she tried.

  “They have to be in here, don’t you think?” Grady says, the desperation in his voice obvious. “I mean, clearly she kept everything.” He wipes his forehead with his sleeve as he walks toward the one window. “Let me try this again,” he says, thrusting his hands upward against the window frame to try and pop it open. The harder he tries, the more embarrassed he gets. “Dammit!”

  Amelia comes over with the intention to assist but gets distracted by the perfect view the window provides of the ice cream stand. She checks her watch; it’s already a few minutes before eleven. One of the girls, ant-sized, is sitting on top of a picnic table, waiting to be let in. Cate’s truck isn’t there yet.

  Even though it’s hot as an oven, Amelia shivers, thinking about Molly Meade standing in this very spot, looking down at them. It had felt, on some level, like the place belonged to the girls, the Meade Creamery girls, since Molly herself was never around. Now Amelia sees how foolish that was. She’d been watching them the whole time.

  “Grady, I’ve got to go and open the stand.”

  “Doesn’t Cate have a key?”

  “No.” Amelia doesn’t say any more. That Cate hadn’t wanted hers.

  “Well, I have to go to the bank, so why don’t I let them in, and give them the heads-up that I’ll need you up here for a couple of hours. On my way home, I’ll swing by Walmart and grab us a fan for up here. I’ll try to be back as quickly as I can.”

  Amelia nods. “Okay.”

  Grady hurries down the stairs, and a few minutes later, Amelia hears the engine of the pink Cadillac turn over. From the window, she keeps her eyes on Grady, now back to his classic handsome in jeans and a navy-and-green-striped polo shirt, as he races down to the stand and unlocks the door. Cate pulls in right then, ten minutes late, and the two cars pass each other, Cate and Grady pausing to talk for a moment, before Grady pulls onto the road and Cate parks.