Black Box by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

7

Her kitchen was a disaster. It had been cleaned, at least there was that, which appeared to be Andi’s doing. But the spices were no longer sectioned by cuisine, nor were they in any other order that she could ascertain except alphabetic by the third letter—mostly.

The flour was supposed to be organized by color: rice, bread, all-purpose, buckwheat, rye, and whole wheat. Corn flour, being so yellow, had always worried her. She’d finally kept it at the end, but now it sat next to the rice flour, which wasn’t even close.

Measuring spoons weren’t nested.

They’d used the brownie pan rather than the cake tin and hadn’t nested them properly when putting them away.

The mayhem didn’t end there either.

While Holly and Andi had baked, Mike and Taz had cooked. Long skewers of beef, chicken strips, and vegetables were arranged in no apparent order. There was scant attention paid to measuring out the spacing and making sure that the opening sequence was repeated down the entire length of the skewer. Peanut sauce for the chicken meant that her peanut butter would be out of place. From-scratch BBQ sauce implied…she shuddered to think about it.

But she had to admit that the party was fun. Holly had womaned the grill. They sat at the big picnic table on the front patio, looking south and west across the mile of blue water separating her home from San Juan Island. Sailboats, power boats, and the occasional large green-and-white car ferries plied the waters.

Tall glasses of strawberry iced tea and chill bottles of beer adorned the well-laden table. They’d eaten and talked through the warm afternoon and well into the cool evening. The breeze had stayed up in the tops of the trees, making the dark green firs wave against the darkening sky, without disturbing their party. Other than bird calls and the now rare boat, the silence wrapped around them with only the waves lapping on the shore offering a constant backdrop of sound. It was one of her favorite times of day.

A few deer visited, but only the youngest doe on the island, Thumper, came forward. Miranda had tucked some dried apple rings in her pocket and fed them to the deer. Then she scritched its back close before the tail. In response, Thumper happily closed her eyes as she chewed and one of her rear legs spasmed in delight, thumping the ground.

She had to walk away from the team to feed the other deer a few apple rings.

By the time she had returned, everything had been cleared away, creating more disorder in her kitchen she was sure.

Then Holly arrived bearing the cake. It was big enough to serve twenty rather than just the six of them. A blue-and-silver helicopter made out of frosted gingerbread was perched high atop of dowel that had been jammed into the cake. Painted on the windows were six faces. She and Andi at the front, the others equally easy to make out. They all seemed to be looking down at the cake.

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