What was the matter with her?
She didn’t even feel like the same person who had whipped out her newspaper column just hours before deadline, the words flying from her fingers as she captured a scene with the instant clarity of a snapshot, followed by a recipe to illustrate her point. Often she had no time to spare when she dashed off her column with a feeling of confidence and satisfaction.
And now she had all the time in the world, yet she was dithering. At first, she used the excuse that all her grandmother’s precious handwritten recipes had been lost in the fire. Without them to pore over, how could she bring the past to life?
Just an excuse, she admitted. Especially after the Troubadour had covered the fire and Nina had issued a call for photos and memorabilia from anyone who might have such a thing. To Jenny’s astonishment, she returned from New York to discover that Nina had collected a box of various items—a photograph here, a page from a book there, an ancient rate sheet from the bakery, a set of high-school yearbooks from Jenny’s years, and from Mariska’s as well—in the 1970s. Most of the items also came with a brief heartfelt note—so sorry for your loss—and a few came with monetary donations, which she promptly turned over to Gram’s church. All this from the people of a town Jenny had longed to leave, that she considered constricting and provincial. Maybe Rourke was right after all. She was in the place she belonged.
Still, Martin Greer had set her a task that was completely different from anything she’d ever done before. It wasn’t enough to offer recipes and vignettes. She needed to examine the workings of the family bakery on a deeper level. He wanted detail and emotion the column didn’t require. He wanted pathos—her mother’s abandonment, her father’s absence and dramatic reappearance. And although Mr. Greer had only seen Joey mentioned in passing, he had sniffed out the tragedy there. Jenny wasn’t sure she could find the words to write about that.
Frustrated, she got up and paced the floor, her thumbs hooked into the back pockets of her jeans. She snapped on the radio. Only one station came in clearly up here, and the music selections were old and tired, but sometimes the murmur of background noise was preferable to silence. She paced some more, paced through “My Sharona,” and wasn’t even tempted to dance. The song was followed by an amateurish-sounding ad spot—“Palmquist—your family jeweler since 1975,” the announcement concluded.
In 1975, her mother had been an attractive teenager, and after school worked at the jewelry store as counter help. She was ambitious, Gram and Grandpa had told Jenny, taking on the counter job in addition to the bakery in the morning. Even Jane Bellamy remembered that about her—always trying to get ahead.
Jenny flipped open one of the donated yearbooks to a shot of her mother. There was a bright recklessness to Mariska that, according to Laura, drew people to her. Jenny didn’t have that quality. Maybe if her mother had stuck around, she would have learned it.
But did she want to be like Mariska? Did she want to be so enamored of adventure that she’d eventually leave her home behind for good?
“I hope you’re happy, wherever you are,” she said to the girl in the photo.
She became aware of a hot, metallic smell and realized the water had boiled away in the iron kettle on the wood-burning stove. She put on an oven mitt and carried the kettle to the sink to refill it, the loud hiss startling Rufus from his nap on the hearth rug. “Sorry, boy,” she said.
The reek of dry iron and hot steam teased at her, awakening a distant glimmer of memory. Something came to attention inside her, and she shut her eyes, picturing a scene from the past in minute detail. The kitchen smelled of iron and steam, and a familiar song played on the radio—“867-5309/Jenny.”
She rejoined the past, her imagination stepping into the scene she’d been struggling to describe. It was winter, and she was very small, sitting at the round Formica table with a cup of hot chocolate. The cup was in the shape of an elephant’s head, its two ears forming the handles.
Her mother stood at the stove, swaying to the music. Every time “Jenny, Jenny” came from the radio, Momma would turn and sing along, pointing to Jenny and making her giggle.
“What you making?” Jenny asked, eyeing the pan on the stove.
“A fortune,” Momma said with a laugh.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll find out when you’re older.”
“Can I help?” Jenny slipped down from her chair and crossed the room, her Winnie-the-Pooh slippers scuffing on the linoleum.
“No,” Momma said in a voice that said she really meant it. “It’s hot. Don’t touch. These are sinkers for fishing.”
Jenny stood back and watched. The windows were open, Momma said to get rid of the fumes. She poured dark liquid from the pan into a tray. Then she danced all the way to the end of the song. She was so pretty and happy. “I think I’ll go out and celebrate.”
“No, Momma,” Jenny protested. “You always go away.”
“And I always come back. Now, let’s wait until these cool. Then we can put them in Grandpa’s tackle box. Be careful you don’t lose a single one.”
A popping sound came from the woodstove and Jenny opened her eyes, blinking at the harsh light on the snow outside. That was probably her clearest memory of her mother, and she realized the scene had repeated itself more than once. Yet there was something missing, something she didn’t get. Despite all her big dreams and ambitions about getting rich and seeing the world, Mariska still went fishing with her father in winter when they had to make a hole in the ice.
Jenny wondered what had become of the homemade sinkers,
