“I think the lye’s cooled down,” Lizzy announced. “How’s it coming over there?”
“Good. And it smells fantastic.” Rhanna took the pan off the hot plate and walked it over to Lizzy. “I think we’re ready to mix. You’re going to pour the lye water into the oil mixture. Go slow, though, and pour it down the shaft of the spatula. You don’t want air bubbles.”
Lizzy followed Rhanna’s instructions, then set the empty measuring cup aside. “Are you sure this is right?” she asked, scowling at the bowl of gelatinous slop. “It looks like breakfast gone terribly wrong.”
Rhanna answered with a snort. “It’s fine. Now we mix.” She leaned in, careful as always to avoid contact. “That’s right. Slow and easy. No, don’t scrape the sides. Just stir, and watch.”
Lizzy cocked an eye at her. “What am I supposed to be watching?”
“This.” Rhanna dropped in a spatula of her own, then lifted it out slowly. “You want the dribbled batter to lie on top instead of sinking the way it did just then. It’s called trace. It’s how you know the soap’s ready to cook. It may take a bit, though. We’re doing this old-school method. They use stick blenders now. And Crock-Pots. Once we hit trace, it goes back on the hot plate. The oatmeal goes in after that.”
Lizzy looked at Rhanna in wonder as she took back the spatula. “How do you know all that? I don’t remember you ever taking an interest in what happened out here.”
Rhanna shrugged. “I didn’t back then. I was too busy being a brat. But life has a funny way of giving you what you need. Even if you don’t know you need it. I moved to Half Moon Bay for a while, with this guy I met. Actually, I liked the name of the place more than I liked the guy, but that’s a story for another day. I took a job at an herb farm. Grunt stuff mainly, but when I had a break, I’d hang out where they made the scrubs and soaps, and watch. If I closed my eyes, it was like I was back here. It helped a little.”
Lizzy looked up from the pot, the spatula still. “You were homesick?”
“Didn’t expect that, did you?”
“I didn’t. No.” Lizzy went back to her stirring, letting the quiet spool out as she tried to reconcile this startling revelation with the Rhanna she used to know, the one who’d gone out of her way to make tongues wag. “Why’d you do it?” she asked finally. “That day in the coffee shop, why did you say all those terrible things—the stuff about cursing the whole town, making sure Salem Creek got exactly what it deserved—when you knew what it would mean for Althea? For all of us?”
“I was angry.”
The glib response annoyed Lizzy. “We were all angry.”
Rhanna’s eyes glittered as they met Lizzy’s. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everyone whispering and pointing fingers, like they knew. They didn’t know anything. No one did. But they kept on pointing. And then one day I had enough. I thought, If they’re so determined to think the worst of us, let them. I’ll give them something to talk about.”
“And you did.”
Rhanna lifted one of her braids, fiddling briefly with the scrap of yellow ribbon before dropping it back over her shoulder with a sigh. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Lizzy, done a lot of things I’ve been ashamed of. But that day . . . I’ll never forgive myself for the things I said. It was like I couldn’t stop myself. You can’t imagine how it was.”
“I don’t have to imagine it,” Lizzy said flatly. “I was here, same as you. I heard what you heard, saw what you saw.”
“No,” Rhanna breathed. “Not the same as me.”
Lizzy huffed, in no mood for Rhanna’s drama. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She would have turned away, but Lizzy caught her wrist. “Talk to me.”
“Don’t!” Rhanna jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned. “Please . . . don’t touch me.”
Lizzy stared at her, baffled by the panic in her mother’s eyes. “Did something happen to you?”
Rhanna dropped her gaze as she sidled past her. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We need to pay attention to the soap.” She grabbed the spatula and lifted it out, watching closely as the batter drizzled back into the pot. “It’s ready,” she announced, all business. “Move it to the hot plate, and keep an eye on it. When it looks like day-old Cream of Wheat, you’re ready to add the vanilla and oatmeal. I’m going to start cleaning up, then get the molds ready.”
It took every ounce of willpower Lizzy had not to prod for answers as Rhanna gathered the used bowls and measuring cups and carried them to the sink, but she didn’t have the energy for another battle. And that was what she’d get if she kept pushing. The signs were all there: the shifting eyes and rigid shoulders, the brooding energy coiled just beneath her skin. Rhanna was spiraling toward one of her dark places, and that never ended well.
An hour later, Rhanna had mixed in the oatmeal, and was showing Lizzy how to press the batter into the molds and pack them tightly so the bars would be smooth when they came out. Her shoulders seemed to relax as she worked, but she was still avoiding eye contact, her face carefully shuttered.
“You okay?” Lizzy asked when they had finished the last mold. “You seem . . .”
“I’m fine.”
“Before, when you pulled away from me—”
“I think you’ve got this now,” Rhanna said brusquely, and handed back the spatula. “Don’t forget to cover the molds with waxed paper when you’re through. And
