Friendship Bread (33 page)

The town of Avalon is overflowing with Amish Friendship Bread. It seems that every other person (and their cousin or neighbor or aunt) has a bag of starter to share. Bake sales, cake walks, book clubs, and birthday parties serve some variation of Amish Friendship Bread in the form of cakes, loaves, muffins, brownies, cookies, even cinnamon rolls. People aren’t getting tired of it exactly—just concerned that the amount of starter might soon outnumber the population of Avalon itself.

Today, the rain is pouring down relentlessly. The weatherman has predicted heavy rains all week, with flood warnings in certain counties. Word has quickly spread that Connie’s recipe and tip cards have moved from the Wash and Dry to the tea salon, so right now Madeline’s sitting room is clogged with at least fifteen women, their voices jumbled as they burrow through the boxes or compare notes.

The wicker “Spare and Share” basket is spilling over with bags of
starter in various cycles. The Spare and Share basket was Connie’s idea. Connie was also quick to notice that sometimes the women brought in their loaves of bread to swap and compare, and while Madeline doesn’t mind, Connie doesn’t want Madeline to lose any business. So she came up with an unofficial BYOB—Bring Your Own Bread—policy. She set out a self-serve tea station in the sitting room and found an old letter box to double as an honor box. She printed a small price list and put it in an antique frame with a suggested “donation” of $2.50 per cup or $5.00 for all the tea you could drink. She also wrote the daily special and a couple of their most popular to-go items on an old chalkboard and propped it up nearby. The letter box was always stuffed with cash by the end of the day.

“Wow,” Hannah is saying as she cranes her neck from the tea room to get a better look. Their visits have become more frequent since Hannah and Julia’s return from Chicago.

“I know.” Madeline keeps her voice low even though she is delighted. Beyond delighted. The constant gaggle of women coming and going has made Madeline’s a bit of a hot spot, and business is thriving. And while she looks forward to her regular visits with Julia and Hannah, there’s something to be said about having someone help with all the heavy lifting—literally and figuratively. On slow days she has someone to talk to, someone who wants to see the tea salon be a success almost as much as she does.

“I’m so glad you have someone good to help you,” Julia says. Some of the women coming in know Julia and offer friendly exclamations but Julia is cautious in her greetings, preferring to stay in the dining area with Madeline and Hannah. Madeline understands this and knows that while some of these women are just casual acquaintances, Julia has clearly distanced herself from most of the people she knows in Avalon.

But now is not the time to mention anything, and Madeline knows that timing is everything. She herself wasn’t in a position—much less interested—to listen to anyone’s advice when she was still finding her way out, and she doesn’t want Julia to feel like she’s lecturing. Julia’s
doing the best she can, and Madeline sees that and knows that, in itself, isn’t easy.

She fans herself, trying to create a breeze with the new menus Connie has printed up. The ovens have been working nonstop and the kitchen is so warm it’s taking her longer to cool herself down these days. “I tell you, that girl is a godsend. I feel like I’m helping her rather than the other way around. She has the energy of a hundred men—or women.”

“Ah, youth.” Julia gives a wry smile. She gives Hannah a nudge. “You young kids make us old folks look bad.”

“Hey, I’m not
that
young,” Hannah protests, her chin tipped upward in a touch of genuine defiance. She gives Julia a nudge back. “And you’re not that old.”

Julia grins. “Fair enough.” She picks up a table tent with the daily special printed on it. There’s also a “Tea of the Week” special to encourage people to buy loose tea or bags as gifts, and an inspiring quote. “I like this,” she says. “ ‘My friends are my estate.’ Emily Dickinson.”

“That’s Connie for you,” Madeline says. She reaches over to another table and plucks the sign from there. “Each table has a different friendship quote.” She hands the table tent to Hannah.

“ ‘The ornaments of our house are the friends who frequent it,’ ” Hannah reads. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’m going to copy that and put it in my wallet.”

“I don’t know where that girl gets her ideas from,” Madeline continues. “Did you know that she ordered a self-inking stamp with our name and address? She stamps it on all of the blank index cards so that when people write down recipes and take them, they’ll always be reminded of us. It’s so much better than a regular business card! And the women adore her.”

Connie chooses to walk by at that moment holding an empty cherrywood cigar box. The three women quickly hush themselves while giving her wide, encouraging smiles. Connie arches a suspicious eyebrow as she adds a fresh selection of tea bags to the box, but doesn’t say anything and quickly returns to the sitting room.

“Oh, dear, she probably knows we were talking about her.” Madeline sighs as both Julia and Hannah burst out laughing.

“I think she knows we’re pretty harmless.” Julia says. “And possibly a little crazy, too.”

“Insane,” Madeline amends. “Certifiable.”

Hannah smiles along with them but then picks up a dessert spoon and rubs the smooth curve with her thumb. “Philippe wants a divorce. The papers came today.”

The mood instantly shifts. “Oh, Hannah.” Julia takes her hand and Madeline jumps up to offer a hug.

“In retrospect it’s so obvious. I think he actually pushed us to come to Avalon so he could buy a house and stick me in it, keep me naïvely unaware until he knew what he wanted to do. I was such a fool for believing his whole story about wanting to live in a small town, that it reminded him of his village in France, blah blah blah.” She looks disgusted with herself.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Julia tells her. “You didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”

Hannah wrinkles her nose, unsatisfied. “Looking back, I know there were signs. I just chose to ignore them.”

“Think of it more like a timing thing,” Madeline suggests kindly. “Everything unfolding as it needs to. You were doing the only thing you knew to do at the time.”

“But I could have just saved myself the heartache if I hadn’t gotten married in the first place,” Hannah says. “Why put myself through all this, even subconsciously, if I’m just going to end up with a divorce? I mean, really! I think I can do without this part.”

“True, but then you wouldn’t have ended up in Avalon and we wouldn’t have ever met you,” Madeline points out.

Julia interrupts. “I don’t know. That’s exactly the sort of thing that people used to say to me, and I hated it.” She quickly takes Madeline’s hand to let her know she doesn’t mean to offend her, and continues.” Someone who has never lost a child would say to me, ‘Well, at least he’s in a better place,’ or ‘All things happen for a reason.’ But what do they know?

“My son’s death should not be so easily explained. What is the real reason a ten-year-old boy has to die? That Gracie has to grow up never knowing her older brother? So we all become better people?” Julia shakes her head. “I
hate
being a better person. I don’t want to be a better person.” She says these last words bitterly, angrily blinking back tears.

Madeline holds Julia’s hand tightly and looks her in the eye. She understands this, she really does, but she wants Julia to understand one thing, something that once filled her with despair and, at the same time, saved her.

“Dear Julia,” she says quietly after a long pause. “What other choice do we have?”

Edie walks past the open doorway of the dining room, unsure of what to do. She’s just spent the past hour talking with the ladies in the sitting room, sipping tea and gathering history. She’s done it every day for the past week and found herself enjoying the chitchat, the conversation, the company.

But this morning she woke up and saw an email from one of her classmates. They were shortlisted for the Hillman Prize for an article on illegal immigrant detention. It was enough to remind Edie that she was there for a reason, and that it was time to get back to work.

She and Livvy have been meeting regularly to talk about Amish Friendship Bread. Livvy, despite her enthusiasm, is somewhat lacking in her note-taking and research skills, but it’s still been a big help and Edie is grateful for it. Edie feels ready to write the article, to see if she can stir up some bona fide interest in Avalon and the Amish Friendship Bread insanity that has taken over their town. Edie recognizes that there is a certain charm in the story, but so much of it is dependent on revealing the players involved, to putting names and faces to certain Avalonians. Based on Livvy’s notes and the dates of the recipes in the boxes, the earliest person to have the starter was Madeline Davis. That would have been sometime back in March, just about three months ago.

Edie’s own bag of starter met a disastrous end. She’d left it in a cupboard in the kitchen, unable to stand looking at it, and then promptly forgot about it. It was Richard who heard an odd knocking from inside a couple days later.

When they opened the cupboard door, a fully inflated Ziploc bag jumped a couple of centimeters toward them, tipping over an almost empty plastic container of thyme. Edie screamed and Richard had plucked the bag out, only to have the whole thing pop open and explode over the cupboard and the two of them.

Once Richard had gotten past the shock, he couldn’t stop laughing. Batter was dripping from his hair and shirt. Edie, on the other hand, was furious. It took a container of Clorox wipes and half a roll of paper towels to get everything cleaned up.

The smell of fermenting batter made her want to throw up. No, correction: She
did
throw up. Morning sickness, it seemed, was not reserved for the first trimester.

Fortunately Edie had a clear enough head to take a few pictures of the mess in their kitchen and already has the perfect caption:
WARNING: THIS COULD BE YOU—STARTER CRAZE EXPLODES IN AVALON, AND IN ONE REPORTER’S KITCHEN
.

Edie pretty much has the story written in her head, but the one thing she hasn’t been able to put together is the Madeline piece. She hasn’t figured out where Madeline got the bread from, and she’s put off interviewing Madeline until today. For some reason she thought Madeline would be younger, a roly-poly woman in her fifties wearing a gingham apron—Livvy made her sound that way, at least. Edie should have known not to make an assumption until she could see for herself. Now she feels a twinge of discomfort at pointing to Madeline as the instigator of all this Amish Friendship Bread hoopla. Edie has to remind herself that she’s a reporter who’s just reporting the facts. It’s nothing personal.

There’s the sound of someone clearing their throat, and Edie jumps.

Connie, the punky girl who works at Madeline’s, is cutting her eyes at Edie, clearly disapproving. Edie knows it looks like she is eavesdropping on the women’s conversation, but she wasn’t, at least
not intentionally. She was going in to introduce herself to Madeline and it was clear the women were in the midst of a private conversation. If anything, she was being respectful.

Connie’s voice is loud as she glares at Edie. “Madeline, I have some to-go orders. Do you want me to fill them?”

The three women look up and Madeline quickly puts on a welcoming smile. One woman with short strawberry-blond hair turns away and looks out the window. The Asian woman with dark hair just stares at her hands.

“What? Oh no, you keep working your magic with the ladies. I’ll take care of this.” Madeline comes over to collect the orders from Connie and gives Edie a sweet smile as she does so.

Edie feels her resolve faltering. Lately she’s been at the mercy of pregnancy hormones, crying at commercials for flu medication and then almost bursting into tears when someone cut in front of her on the road. She bought a “Baby’s First Year” scrapbook at the last meeting and has found herself weepy over the pink bootie die cuts and soft polka-dot ribbons.

Edie suddenly isn’t sure if she can do this. She doesn’t want to get attached to Madeline, feel sympathetic because of her age or her seemingly kind demeanor. She needs to stay objective, to finish what she set out to do. The Amish Friendship Bread story is quirky enough with plenty of soap opera antics to get picked up on one of the wires, provided Edie writes it right. And soon.

Connie is pretty good at sizing people up, and there’s something about the young woman with wire-framed glasses that Connie doesn’t trust. Her name is Edie something or other and she’s been coming every day for the past few days. She always has a ton of questions, and every now and then Connie sees her jot something in a notepad. Connie doesn’t want her harassing their customers, but the women don’t seem to mind, enjoying any opportunity to talk about their lives and when they first started baking Amish Friendship Bread.

“I think it was in April …”

“March. Right after St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Two weeks ago. Doris Donald left a bag on the windshield of my car. Didn’t even have the courage to ask me to my face if I wanted it!”

“I’m on my third starter, so maybe a month?”

“A little over six weeks …”

Connie doesn’t know why Edie is so interested, especially since she’s never baked the bread herself and refused on several occasions to take a bag of starter home from the Spare and Share basket.

Now, Madeline is shaking her head in admiration as she reads through the orders. “Connie, this practically rivals the business we did at lunch. You’re a marvel!”

Connie blushes, embarrassed by the praise, and forgets that Edie is standing next to her. She loves working at Madeline’s, and Madeline has practically given her carte blanche to do whatever she thinks is appropriate to help the business and offer good customer service. Connie not only feels useful, but needed. It’s a good feeling.

She knows she should say thank you, but instead she changes the subject, wanting to get the attention off her. “I was thinking that maybe we could offer an end-of-the-day meal replacement special. We’ll post it on the board along with everything else, and people would have to get their dinner orders in to us by eleven
A.M
. That’ll give us enough time to get everything ready and we won’t have to scramble at the last minute like this. If they don’t get it in, we don’t fill the order.” Connie knows Madeline loves the work, loves that people love her food, but it’s 3:00
P.M
. and now Madeline has to go back into the kitchen after the end of a long day. Madeline is usually up at 4:30
A.M
. getting everything ready. Connie doesn’t even show up until two hours later.