“Thank you, Lanz, but I don’t need you to make excuses for Malie.” She sighed. “What I need is for my daughter to accept her responsibilities. Not force them on her friends.”
Mom walked through the door into the front area, and I followed her, not believing what I’d just heard.
“That’s so unfair!” My voice was rising, and several customers looked up from their sundaes. “I’ve never—”
Mr. Sneeves cleared his throat. “Mrs. Analu, please,” he told Mom, his tone quiet but stern. “Whatever family drama this is, the customers do not need to be a party to it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sneeves. It won’t happen again.” Mom turned to me. “Malie, can you please prepare a vanilla soft-serve cone for the next customer?”
I marched over to the soft-serve machine, trembling with pent-up anger. Mom hadn’t even given me the chance to explain!
When I depressed the soft-serve handle, a whine rose up from the machine’s depths. I ignored it, only wanting to be done with this order as quickly as possible. Suddenly, smoke began pouring from the back of the machine. Its whining rose to a shriek.
“Mom!” I cried, and she flew to my side, unplugging the soft-serve machine and fanning away the smoke. A collective groan rose up from the customers.
“Don’t worry, folks.” Mr. Sneeves’s voice rose silky smooth over the complaining. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes certainly weren’t. “This is just a small malfunction. We’ll have it fixed in no time. And in the interim, I’m happy to offer two free scoops for everyone.”
Some people nodded, while others kept grumbling.
Mr. Sneeves examined the soft-serve machine, his jaw flexing. “This machine is past its service date,” he said quietly to Mom. “No wonder it overheated. I’d like a word outside?”
Mom paled, and guilt gnawed at me, dulling some of my anger. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I can handle things here. It’ll be fine.”
But the moment Mom and Mr. Sneeves stepped outside, customers began grumbling all over again.
“Please,” I started, “I appreciate your patience—”
“We’re out of patience!” one teenage boy piped up from the back of the line.
“But wait!” a familiar accented voice called out. “You haven’t tasted this ice cream yet.” It was Lanz, who’d appeared from inside the kitchen, holding a tub in his arms. “Who wants to try our new flavor? Fairy-Tale Ambrosia.”
“What are you doing?” I whisper-hissed. “We don’t have that flavor.”
He set the tub on the counter. “We do now. I made it last night at home.” He gave me an imploring look. “Trust me. For a little while? Va bene? Okay?”
I hesitated, then looked at the crowd of frowning faces before me. At this point, I didn’t have a choice. I nodded.
Lanz grinned, popped the lid off the tub, and slid it into an empty slot in the display. “Who would like the first scoop?”
An hour later, the parlor was empty, and so was the tub of Fairy-Tale Ambrosia. I peered at its scraped-clean bottom, bewildered.
“I don’t know what you put in that ice cream, but it worked like magic,” I said. “I’ve never seen people’s moods change so fast.” The customers had gone from grouchy to beaming almost the instant the Ambrosia touched their lips.
“It’s the crushed formiche,” Lanz said with a smile. Together, we headed into the kitchen to start a new batch of ice cream for the next day. “Works every time.”
“Four-me-kay?” I mangled the word. “Is that a special Italian ingredient?”
“In English, I believe the word is … ‘ants’?”
I glanced warily at his cooler, which now rested on the kitchen counter. “You mean, the six-legged crawling kind of ants?”
“Of course! What other kind would there be?”
“Oh. My. God.” I sank against the counter, covering my mouth. Eeeeeww. I seriously hoped there weren’t any more creepy-crawly ingredients in that cooler right now. How was I going to explain that to Mom? She’d returned from her talk with Mr. Sneeves looking even more stressed, and since the afternoon rush finished, she’d been in the back office crunching numbers. “I’m … not sure how Mom’s going to feel about bugs as an ingredient.”
He burst out laughing. “I am making a joke! There were no ants in the ice cream. Only macaroons and marshmallows.”
“Oh …” I shook my head, flustered. “Joking … right.”
He tilted his head at me. “This joking. You don’t do it very often?”
“No,” I mumbled. “Ever, actually.”
“Well,” he said quietly, peering into my eyes. “Maybe you should try it. Your mom, I think, needs laughter.”
My stomach clenched with sadness. I thought I was the only one who noticed. “Mom didn’t used to be that way,” I said softly. “She used to laugh all the time.” I smiled, remembering. “She’d sing in the shower. Led Zeppelin and Bon Jovi. Loud enough that we could hear her from the other side of our house. She’s completely tone deaf, but Dad and I promised each other we’d never tell her.”
“So … what happened?”
“The divorce.” My voice tightened. “Mom and Dad split three years ago, and since then Mom’s stressed all the time.”
“My parents divorced, too.” Lanz began lifting Tupperware containers from the cooler. “A few months ago. That is why we moved to Florida. My aunt lives in Fort Myers, not far from here. Mama wanted to be closer to her and to our cousins. She thought the change would be good for us.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. Divorce stinks.”
“Marcio. Rotten.” Lanz nodded. “I am glad that they do not fight anymore. My parents. Only … I miss us together, too, even with the fighting.”
“I totally get that. It’s hard on my dad not being able to see me, and it’s hard on my mom being by herself. She’s lonely, even though she doesn’t want to tell me she is.”
“Yes. My mother also,” Lanz said quietly. “She is angry, too. My papa and I … we both love creating new flavors, experimenting with food. It is something we shared. Mama didn’t understand this, or how much time my dad spent at
