Authors: Melanie Jacobson
“It seems like they’re having you do more and more of that kind of thing lately,” Sister Graham said.
“
Making
him do it is more like it,” Rhett said. “When are they going to hire someone to handle all the arts and entertainment stuff so you can get back to real news?”
I tried not to wince, both at the knowledge that I was part of the
Bee’s
unsuccessful attempt to bring in young blood to cover that beat and at Rhett’s unintentional diss. Emily kicked him under the table, and he winced and scrambled to correct himself. “Sorry, Pepper. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean to sound like the arts and entertainment stuff isn’t cool. Tanner likes to deal with the hard news, is all. If it were up to me, he’d be covering sports and getting me a press pass to everything.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know what you meant. I’m very . . . aware . . . of Tanner’s opinions.”
I saw a smile threaten to escape Tanner at that phrasing, but his mom shooed everyone toward the dining room before I could verify whether he or the smile got the upper hand.
From the minute I’d pulled up to the house, I had felt a touch of awe, but the dining room downright intimidated me. Deep burgundy walls surrounded a long linen-covered table set with sparkly water goblets and beautiful cream-colored china. I followed Courtney’s lead and took the seat next to her, shaking my linen napkin out and draping it across my lap. This was a far cry from the boisterous dinners we had at the kitchen table in our house.
Sister Graham bustled back and forth to the kitchen, bearing one great-smelling platter or bowl after another. She set them each on a sideboard against the wall. Wanting to help, I pushed back my chair, but Emily leaned slightly across the table and shook her head. “I know that look in your eye,” she said. “Don’t worry about helping Donna. She says Sunday is the only time she gets to fuss over her family all together, and she won’t let anyone help, especially not guests. My advice to you is to sit back and enjoy it. She’s an amazing cook.”
I contented myself with studying the table, from the gold-trimmed dishes to the gorgeous centerpiece of white early spring tulips. The place settings unnerved me. I counted three forks, two knives, and a spoon. All of our plates had bowls sitting on top of them, so I guessed that meant we were starting with soup first. That solved the mystery of the spoon, but I hoped I could figure out the rest of the utensils as Sister Graham served each dish.
I wanted to ask Courtney which fork to use when, but Tanner sat across the table and one seat down from me, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that the tableware was throwing me for a loop. I flipped through my memory files at hyperspeed, searching them for anything on fork etiquette. I vaguely recalled a Laurel activity where we had learned proper table manners. There was something about using the utensils from the outside in, with a new one for each course. I’d go with that and keep a sharp eye out to figure out if I was doing it wrong.
While the soup circulated, Tanner caught my eye. “I didn’t catch how you and Courtney know each other.”
As much as I didn’t want to do the small-talk thing with him, I was glad he had asked. I could dispel any notion that I was there to stalk him. As I returned his gaze, I noticed once again how light the gray of his irises was against the dark gray ring around them. I suspected he’d probably earned himself a stalker or two in his time simply by batting the lashes that framed them. I realized he was waiting for an answer, and I blinked. His eyes glinted in return. Somehow, what felt like half a minute had evaporated in that stare down. I cleared my throat. “We met at the singles ward. She saves me a seat every Sunday.” And then, because I couldn’t look away, I saw his gaze sharpen. He started to say something, but the soup made its way to me, and I dished it up to break the moment.
From the first taste of butternut squash bisque to the last bite of cherry cheesecake, the food was divine—as in, I think Courtney’s mom stirred everything with angel feathers. It tasted that incredible. I knew I was probably embarrassing myself with my exclamations of amazement after every course, but I couldn’t help it. Sister Graham looked pleased, and I didn’t really care what Tanner thought. He said little during dinner, just ate and watched everyone, including me, with a thoughtful expression on his face. It was a nice change from the pruney grimace he usually treated me to, but I still ignored him as much as I could without being rude. The fork situation worked out okay. Starting from the outside in solved the problem.
Sister Graham hopped up after the cherry cheesecake rounded the table to head for the kitchen again, and I looked at Courtney in panic. “Is she getting more food? I can’t eat anything else. I’ll blow up.”
Courtney smiled. “She’s going for hot chocolate. She makes it from scratch. You don’t have to drink it. Just hold the saucer up to your mouth every so often and be like, ‘Mmmmm.’”
“We should have warned you to pace yourself,” Tanner added.
“Thanks for humoring her,” Courtney said. “She lives for these Sunday dinners.”
“Are you kidding? I need a thesaurus to find more synonyms for
delicious
,” I said. Lowering my voice, I added, “We’re never this fancy at our house.”
Emily heard me and smiled. “If it were anyone else, I would think using the good china and real silverware was pretentious, but not Donna. She says she should be pulling out that stuff for her most important dinner guests. For her, it’s family.”
“That’s cool,” I said. That’s the way my mom would see it if we had fancy china. My grandmother has a set in her front cupboard that I’ve never seen used. She dusts it religiously, but I’m pretty sure no one important enough has come for her to pull it out. It gave my mother a disdain for things like fancy dishes, but staring down at the gorgeous hand-painted flowers visible through the crumbs of my dessert, I could see the appeal of eating from beautiful plates every night.
Sister Graham returned with a teapot full of hot chocolate. She poured a bit in the teacups for each of us and sat down, looking relaxed and satisfied that everyone had been taken care of. I considered how tight my jeans felt and swallowed a groan. My super-high metabolism had failed me for the first time, but I doubted anyone could be a match for a five-course meal like this one.
Eventually, Rhett and Emily rose, saying they needed to get on the road for their drive to Springville. I wondered how far Tanner had to go. I stared at him over the brim of my cup while I savored more hot chocolate. He had moved down the table near his father and sat listening intently to whatever his dad was telling him in a low voice. Tanner was definitely the oldest, but now, after observing him relaxed and laughing with his family, his face seemed younger. It helped that he had on a pretty cool retro-style black sweater with a funky purple stripe across the chest. Much better than Dockers and golf shirts. Maybe he wasn’t pushing thirty like I had thought when he’d interviewed me.
I amused myself with some investigative journalism, compiling facts and making inferences. He’d driven here, which meant he didn’t live at home. I bet he lived in Salt Lake so he could be near the paper and closer to breaking news. I wanted to snoop around the family pictures and see what else I could dig up to figure him out. He’d done such a thorough job of analyzing my character with a limited set of facts during our interview that it entertained me to draw all kinds of wild conclusions about him now.
I decided he lived in a tiny studio apartment and that the reason he wasn’t married was he was such a workaholic; no one would put up with him. In fact, I bet his last girlfriend dumped him when she realized he had a deeper commitment to his Blackb—
“They’re talking politics,” Courtney sighed. “They could take awhile. Want a tour of the house?”
“Definitely,” I said.
She led me back to the kitchen and into the family room dominated by a completely tricked out entertainment center. “This is my dad’s hobby. He loves tinkering with his television and speakers and all that.”
I heard the clink of dishes from the kitchen and frowned when I saw her mom at the sink rinsing off a plate. I started over. “Let me do that,” I offered. “You should definitely not have to clean up after cooking such an awesome dinner.”
She waved me off. “You’re sweet,” she said, “but this is only my dessert plate. Don’t worry. Tanner and Glen will handle the dishes. They do them every Sunday.”
“I get out of it by setting the table,” Courtney said. “The china has to be washed by hand, and I’d much rather iron the tablecloth every week than deal with that.”
“Deal with what?” Tanner said, coming in from the dining room.
“The dishes,” she said. “You’re a saint.”
He shrugged. “I like doing them.” He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and ran the water again.
I followed Courtney to their library and decided on the spot that I had to have one when I grew up. The book-lined room was cozy, with heavy leather furniture, thick carpets, and a window seat that I wanted to crawl into with one of the novels from the shelves. Several photos perched on the fireplace mantel, and I wandered over to check them out. Mostly, they were family snapshots of Courtney and her brothers at different ages. One in an ornate silver frame caught my eye. It showed Courtney and a really good-looking guy about Rhett’s age in a formal pose, like an engagement picture. Courtney didn’t look much different than she did now, so it had to be fairly recent. “Who is this?” I asked. “He’s cute.”
That odd shadow I’d seen flicker over her face a few times returned and settled there. “That’s Grayson. He was my fiancé.”
I wondered why someone who spoke in the past tense about her fiancé would still have a picture of him on her fireplace mantel, but I didn’t like that it made her sad, so I dropped the subject, choosing friendship over nosiness. I grabbed the next framed photo in an effort to change the subject. “Wow,” I said, staring down at Tanner’s senior photo. “Tanner took this photo very seriously.” He stared out of the picture without the hint of a smile, giving the camera his best Blue Steel.
She mustered a small smile. “Sometimes he takes
himself
too seriously, but if you scratch a little under the surface, there’s a pretty good sense of humor.”
I stared at the picture doubtfully. “This is not the face of someone who laughs a lot.” Hoping to cheer her up, I held the picture up next to my face and did my best to imitate Tanner’s serious expression, which is how he found me when he walked in a second later. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, and then he scowled when he realized why Courtney was laughing so hard. I set the picture back on the mantel, nearly knocking over the photo of Courtney and her ex-fiancé in my hurry.
I turned around and clasped my hands behind my back. “Done with the dishes already?” I asked, offering no explanation for my mugging.
“The pans are soaking.” He stared back and forth between Courtney, who was still grinning, and me, with my innocent face. “Mom sent me in to see if you guys want to play cards.”
“No!” Courtney shouted at the same time I said, “Sure.”
“No way,” she said again. “Trust me. You do not want to play any kind of card game with this family. They turn into crazy people.”
“No one’s crazier than my family,” I reassured her. “My sister Ginger has psychotic breaks every time Uno doesn’t go her way.”
“Ginger?” Tanner repeated. “Pepper. Ginger. Do you have a brother named Basil?” he asked, giving it the British pronunciation.
“No, but I do have one named Coriander and another one named Mace.”
He laughed and then stopped when he realized I wasn’t joking. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “And there’s one more sister named—”
“Don’t tell me!” he said. “I want to guess. Turmeric? Parsley?”
I refused to take the bait. This was not the first time someone had poked fun at me for my parents’ ridiculous idea to name all of their Spicer children after actual spices.
“Cayenne? It can be a Porsche. Why not a kid?” Tanner was on a roll now.
I shook my head at Courtney. “Why don’t you take me to the cards?”
We formed a single file line out of the library as Tanner followed me, rattling off guesses. “Marjoram? That’s a nice name for a girl. Oh, or how about Anise?”
I ignored him. Ignoring annoying males was a job skill at Handy’s.
“Cumin? Oregano?” Tanner persisted. When he saw I wasn’t going to crack, he relented. “I give up. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Cardamom. We call her Cardy for short,” I said with a tone that dared him to comment.
He cleared his throat. “Cardamom? Oh. That’s, um . . .”
I laughed. “It’s Rosemary.”
His face cleared. “That’s pretty,” he said.
“So is she, so it works out, I guess.”
“Did your parents predict your personalities when they named you, or do you all just live up to your names?”
I stared at him. “You think I have a pepper personality? What does that mean?” This was also not the first time I’d heard this theory, but I liked putting him on the spot. Most people tripped over their explanation or gave me lame answers like, “You’re really spicy.” Ugh.
Leave it to a word guy to have an answer ready. “You’re black pepper, definitely. The kind that comes from peppercorn.”
I arched an eyebrow, waiting for the rest of his metaphor. After eating a meal at his mom’s table, I had no trouble believing he knew what a peppercorn was.
He picked up his pace a bit until he was right on my heels before he leaned forward and said so only I could hear, “You can’t do much with a peppercorn . . . unless you grind it down, of course.”
I shot him a sharp glance, but his eye was on his mom. He didn’t want her to catch him picking on me.
I took a stool beside Courtney at the breakfast bar. “Anyone with a little talent in the kitchen knows what to do with a whole peppercorn,” I said in a normal tone. “It’s the cooks with no imagination who think it has to be cracked.”
Courtney followed this exchange in puzzlement. Without knowing about our previous run-in, I suppose my annoyed expression and his satisfied smile didn’t make much sense. Clearly trying to dial down the tension, she turned to Tanner. “Do you mind getting the cards?”