Five-Alarm Fudge (32 page)

So Grandpa still hadn’t told her his secret. Indigestion set in. “Why are you so adamant about them not coming here?”

Grandma put down her teacup a little too hard. Tea spurted up and onto the table, just missing a truffle. “I’m afraid we’re not related to royalty.”

“How can that be? Grandpa found the link. The royals called back to say it was true.”

“I don’t even think the prince and princess are true royalty. The Van Damme bloodline died a long time ago.”

Chapter 27

G
randma’s words made me drop my truffle on the floor. Adhering to the three-seconds rule, I grabbed it and took a bite hoping I’d heard wrong. “What do you mean we’re not related to the prince and princess? They’re not royalty? We’re not?”

I stuffed the remainder of the truffle in my mouth. Across from me, Pauline did the same with a truffle, chewing like crazy.

To my left, Grandma punished a truffle by burying it under a pile of cocoa in the pan. “It’s true. When I was a little girl, one of my great-aunts told me about how a Van Damme had moved back to Belgium with a secret. My great-aunt had been raised in Belgium herself. She said the family secret was that the royal lineage wasn’t royal at all.”

“Grandma, I looked them up on the Internet. They wear royal uniforms and crowns at special events. They look royal to me.”

“They don’t know they’re not of royal blood.”

“I’m confused.” And I was worried. My grandmother was the most commonsense person in our family. She didn’t lie like the rest of us.

Grandma explained the family rumor she’d heard when a little girl. One of the Van Damme men of royal lineage and his wife—a distant aunt of my grandmother’s—had come to Door County and stayed for weeks, enjoying visiting the Belgians around Brussels and Namur and other
locales. They took a trip to Chicago a few weeks before their return to Belgium. This woman had been pregnant, but the tale handed down to my grandmother as a girl said our relative lost her own child in childbirth, but hid the fact. The couple traveled to Chicago so that they could adopt a baby.

The story stunned me. “So you believe that baby had no royal blood? But they passed it off as being of royal lineage when they returned to Belgium.”

Grandma nodded.

I exchanged a look with Pauline. We popped another truffle ball into our mouths.

Around her mouthful, Pauline said, “But do you know this for sure? It sounds like gossip. The same sort of gossip surrounding the murder of Tristan Hardy. Of course, there’s no baby involved with Tristan Hardy’s case, but—”

“Pauline,” I said, grimacing at her, “this is serious.”

“Sorry, Sophie. I’m just trying to help,” Pauline said. “My kindergartners get things twisted all the time. They tell me gossip about their parents and relatives, and maybe one percent of it is true. Maybe this is a one percent thing.”

“And adoption still means the baby was within the royal family.”

Grandma said, “Blood is thicker than water. Because the baby being adopted was kept a secret, I believe they were afraid others would remove the family’s or the boy’s royal status. A baby not inheriting the royal genes could have been passed over when it came time to ascending to a throne or taking over a position in a royal court or a castle.”

Grandma got up to wash her hands at the sink. “I have to make a pie.”

What she meant was “I have to think.” She took out a big bowl and, standing at the counter, plopped enough flour in it for at least six pies.

Grandma said, “I’ve never told anyone because I didn’t think I had to worry about this. Now your grandfather has invited the royal Van Damme family for next week, and they may not even have royal blood in them.”

“For the sake of argument,” I said, picking at the creamy chocolate dough in the bowl in the middle of the table, “let’s say they adopted a baby boy and that baby went back
to Belgium and was assumed to be their biological baby. When was this exactly?”

“The late 1850s. That baby grew up and went on to marry and have children. And those children had children. Clement Van Damme and his friend Bram Oosterling immigrated here. Clement was my great-uncle.”

In the many cookbooks I’d inherited from Lloyd Mueller, I’d found pictures of Clement and Bram as young men. My grandpa had said he thought it possible that it was Clement who was betrothed to somebody with an A name, and thus the chinaware in the bottom of our Lake Michigan bay belonged to him.

Pauline and I rolled more chocolate balls into the cocoa dust. I said to Grandma, “Your grandparents didn’t have names that started with A. Do you recall anybody with an A name?”

“No,” Grandma said, now cracking eight eggs with loud whacks in quick succession. “This hunt for chinaware is all for naught, too.”

Pauline raised her hand across the table from me. “What if the cups were for Adele Brise?”

Grandma slid into her chair to join us. “But she gave her life to God. She didn’t marry.”

“Yes,” Pauline said, rolling a truffle in her hands, “but before she became a nun she was a young woman who’d come over on a ship looking for a better life. Maybe she was going to marry a Van Damme here. And it never came to pass.”

I said, “Adele’s journey was documented pretty closely. She wasn’t betrothed. Maybe the cup isn’t for a woman at all. Remember that another Arnaud Van Damme in the family married into a royal family. Grandpa told me that back in July. So there is royalty on the other side somewhere back in time.”

My grandma shrugged. “What does it matter? We’re not of pure royal lineage. It’s all a lie. We’re like ghosts. And the prince probably doesn’t know he’s not of royal blood.”

Grandma got up and went straight to beating the eggs into the flour in her pan on the counter. Belgians are practical and move on quickly. “This is a terrible secret, Ava, but I guess I can keep it buried in my heart until I die.”

Both Pauline and I got out of our chairs to stand next to my grandmother. The cool air from the kitchen window over the sink feathered across our cheeks.

Grandma said, “I suppose I’m sounding old and senile.”

“Grandma, you’re a vital, smart woman in her seventies. Were you going to Chicago to see if you could find the adoption records?”

“Yes. I found some agencies online and contacted them. Their people said it might be good to consult church records that aren’t yet on the Internet and visit the library collections.”

Pauline and I returned to the table. I tossed more truffles in the cocoa. “Grandma, you know it doesn’t matter to me if we’re not blood relatives of the royal line. We’re still Belgian. The lineage married other Belgians, even marrying royalty.”

“But the Van Dammes aren’t pure royalty. They pulled a fast one. Your grandfather doesn’t know any of this. He thinks you could be a princess by bloodline somehow. Now what do I do? It makes me ache to think about telling him.”

“Don’t tell him.”

Pauline gave me a cross-eyed look before stuffing another truffle in her mouth.

I said, “Grandma, Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine are royal people. They live in a castle in Belgium and have horses and do things for charity and wear crowns. That’s real enough for me. And it’s really not our place to tell them to get a DNA test because of something that happened over a hundred and sixty years ago.”

Grandma was pouring cream into the flour and eggs to make her piecrust dough. She put the jug of cream down on the counter. Then she laughed, turning to us. “You’re right. Bah and booyah on me. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? I’d be asking a prince and princess to get a blood test. I’d be construed as a lunatic.”

“Not like you at all, so therefore you must keep this secret.” I smiled at her. “You’re the most sensible person in this family. What if what you heard your relatives talking about long ago was merely a rumor? Gossip, like Pauline said? What if it’s not true? There’s a fifty-fifty chance that
Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine are our blood relatives.”

Pauline said, “There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that as a little girl you heard things wrong.”

Another thought struck me. Grandma’s worry about this past rumor wasn’t usually her way. This thing about the adopted baby was pretty darn insignificant in our lives. But I wondered if last summer was weighing on her. In July she’d found out Grandpa had kept a big secret from her about not paying the taxes on the bait shop for a few years. He could have lost the shop and maybe their house in order to pay the taxes. Grandma had been madder than an old wet hornet, as we say.

“Are you embarrassed that you haven’t confessed this secret to Grandpa? I know how important it is that you both share everything. You love each other so much that the sun and moon smile on you both.”

Grandma’s mouth and nose twitched. Her gaze cast away, then came back to me again. “It’s just that he’s so excited about this royal visit and you being related to royalty. I should have told him about this long ago.”

Pauline said, “I think it’s a one hundred percent thing that even if Gil knew about this rumor he’d laugh and ignore it and still believe Ava was a princess.”

Grandma laughed. “Those are good odds.”

She came over to tug lovingly on my ponytail. “You’re a gift. I love you, you little stinker.”

Grandma pulled Pauline’s hair, too. “I love both of you. How’d you get so smart? Oh, that’s right. I used to feed you my booyah when you were tykes.”

I said, “And I hope to eat a ton of it at the kermis next weekend. I’ll help stir it.”

The voices of Grandpa, John, and Marc came through the kitchen window.

I got up and took Grandma by the shoulders and pointed her out of the kitchen. “Grandma, your suitcases. Hurry and unpack. I’ll stall Grandpa. He’ll never know a thing about any of this. It’s our little secret.”

Grandma’s hands flew to her cloud of white hair. “Bah on me. You’re right.”

She raced off while Pauline and I lured the men to the kitchen with the chocolate truffles. It made me think of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. But what would Gretel’s fudge flavor be?

*   *   *

I was ready to stay and help Grandma finish her pies, but Grandpa told me there was a wild party over on the docks in front of the fudge shop. I headed over straightaway.

Pauline, John, and Marc took off for the Troubled Trout for dinner.

In my fudge shop all my fudge was gone from the glass cases and Dotty Klubertanz and five other women in red hats were stirring batches in all six of my copper kettles. They were talking loudly and laughing. Beers and glasses of wine sat on the floor next to their feet or on nearby shelves.

“What’s going on?” I felt as if I’d landed on another planet.

Dotty tossed gold glitter into the air. “It’s ‘Fudge Fairy Tale and Saints Night.’”

“What’s that? I hope that’s edible glitter.” I tasted some of the gold flecks that had landed on top of my empty glass fudge case. It was edible. “How much have you all had to drink?”

Laughter from outside bubbled up within earshot. I rushed to the big bay window on my side of the shop. Outside on the docks the picnic tables were filled with other women in red hats playing cards. Extra strings of lights hung over their heads. Card tables were also set up along the docks all the way down to the
Super Catch I
. I thought I saw piles of money on a few tables. Panic set in.

I turned back to Dotty and her troupe of red-hatted fudge stirrers. The shop smelled of chocolate, cherries, and red velvet cake. My mouth was watering. “Why are you all making fudge, Dotty?”

“We ate all your fudge, so we’re making new fudge. Don’t worry. Everybody paid.”

“What type of cards are they playing out there?” The hoots and cheers were rattling the windows.

“Go see for yourself.”

Outside, the women waved at me. “The new princess
among us.” There were a few cheers. The locals were enjoying kidding me. “Come sit by me for good luck. Over here, Cinderella.”

There must have been fifty women. I glimpsed a bus in the parking lot. Mercy Fogg sat about five tables away from where I stood. I shimmied among the tables. Feather-festooned finery tickled me on the chin and nose.

Mercy was wearing a bus driver’s hat covered in red wrapping paper with a big red bow on top. She held a glittery gold star taped to the end of a foot-long toy fishing rod, obviously purloined from Grandpa’s shop. Her other hand showed sparkly cards. Glitter was falling everywhere.

“What’re you playing, Mercy?”

She waved her cards. “A new card game Lois and Dotty invented. We’re trying it out. If it works, we’re rich. You are, too. These are saints, the women tell me.” She pointed to her cards. “I’m not Catholic or Lutheran or much of anything but ornery, so I wouldn’t know about saints, but they tell me there’s a saint for each day of the year. Dotty and Lois created this new card game out of prayer cards. They put glitter on them to fancy them up.”

“Why are you here?”

Mercy never liked being around the fudge shop.

“Dotty invited the Red Hats over to try out the game. I bus them around every Thursday night. How do you feel about all this filthy lucre in the middle of the table?”

A mountain of cash sat in the middle of the table. “This is gambling and illegal. Right out in the open. This could close down our shop. Oh, damn you, Mercy, that’s what you want!”

The other women at her table raised their beers and wineglasses and with sloppy grins, chorused, “Have Mercy on Mercy!”

They were all beyond reasoning.

Mercy said, “Don’t get your undies in a bunch. Nobody’s shutting you down. That sheriff of ours is tracking a killer and an arsonist after your
arse
. He’s not going to come all the way up here tonight to bust a bunch of ladies. Besides, the fudge shop gets a cut of everything under the table.”

“A cut?” I groaned. “That’s so illegal.”

“That was the law Dotty set down. And I’m a very law-abiding citizen. I used to be village president, you know.”

I picked up the beer in front of her. It was empty. “You’re cut off.”

But women were fetching more drinks from coolers on the dock overflowing with ice. The night was getting chilly, but the women had on light jackets, sweatshirts, or sweaters and didn’t seem ready to quit any time soon.