Her face changed.
Personally, I felt her reaction to our discovery of her criminal life was very mild.
My MIL sat down heavily on the bed.
“Oh,” she said. Just that.
“Oh?” I said. “Eleanor. Oh?!”
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “Claire, honey. Did you open any of them?”
“No!”
“Thank God.” She exhaled so hard it came out shaky, and then, to my absolute bewilderment, she laughed! A short, embarrassed laugh!
Her criminal life.
Then her eyes filled up, and she laughed again!
Harold stepped closer to her. “Ellie, honey. Just tell them.”
My MIL waved him off without looking at him.
Thomas glanced between his mother and me, clearly trying to decide whose side of the crazy circus to stand on. “Mom. You’re not helping.”
“I know! I know!” She twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “I just… I really didn’t expect any of this.”
“Just tell them.”
“Eleanor, I have been standing here for an hour thinking my MIL is running some kind of illegal operation out of my guest room.”
Harold made a small, strangled sound behind his hand.
“Don’t you dare laugh, Harold!” I reprimanded him.
“I’m not laughing!”
“You are absolutely laughing! Please. Someone. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Don’t you dare laugh!”
Eleanor smoothed her skirt. She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“I was going to take them all with me yesterday,” she said. “Truly. I packed the suitcase first thing in the morning, but it wouldn’t zip with the last row in, so I tucked those under the mattress, and I thought, well, I’ll just pop back today and slip them out.”
“You were going to take them,” I said slowly, “just like that?”
Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mom, I really love you, but I need you to say something that makes this better.”
She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
She opened her mouth, then looked at the floor.
My FIL cleared his throat gently. “It’s really not that serious, Ellie. My flour girl.”
Eleanor’s head snapped up, and something crossed her face that I hadn’t seen before. Not anger. Something smaller and more private. A little wince, as if he’d stepped on her toe in a nice restaurant.
Harold saw it too. His mouth softened. “Sorry, love.”
“It’s really not that serious.”
I caught the whole thing and knew what I had to do.
“Eleanor,” I said, quieter now. “I need to see. I’m sorry. I have to.”
“Claire, please don’t!”
“I have to.”
I crouched down and picked up the nearest bag. E-14. My hands were not steady. Thomas moved to stand beside me, one hand on my shoulder, half bracing me and half bracing himself.
“I need to see.”
I peeled the Ziploc open.
I expected a smell that would tell me my life was about to change. Something chemical, something wrong.
Instead, there was almost nothing. A faint, dry, nutty warmth. Like the pantry at my grandmother’s house on a summer afternoon.
I lifted the bag closer to my nose and breathed in properly.
My eyebrows drew together. I looked at my husband, then at Eleanor, who now had both hands over her face.
I peeled the Ziploc open.
“This,” I said, and my voice had gone strange and thin, “this smells like…”
I couldn’t finish. I dipped a fingertip in, touched it to my tongue, and stared at the ceiling as my whole panicked morning quietly rearranged itself around one very confused, very floury conclusion.
“It’s flour,” I said out loud, my nose still in the bag. “It’s just… flour!”
Eleanor uncovered her face.
“Oh, Claire! I’m so sorry!”
I dipped a fingertip in.
My MIL started talking fast, the words tumbling out. E-14 was einkorn from a little mill in Vermont! R-07 was a rye starter she’d been feeding for decades! B-22 was a buckwheat blend she was trying for the first time!
“The notebook is my feeding schedule,” Eleanor whispered. “The map is the mills I wanted to visit while we were staying nearby.”
“And the humming?” I asked weakly.
“I talk to them. The starters. They’re like little pets.”
My MIL started talking fast.
Thomas made a strangled sound behind me, half-laugh, half-exhale.
“But why hide it?” I asked.
Eleanor’s eyes filled.
“Because Harold teases me! Sweetly, endlessly. And I love him for it at home. But I couldn’t bear it echoing through your house for six whole months. So I kept the door shut. I washed our sheets so you wouldn’t see the flour dust.”
Harold’s face crumpled a little.
“But why hide it?”
“Ellie, I thought you knew I was just being silly. I thought Claire would’ve loved it.”
“I would have,” I said. “I really would have.”
I started laughing then, the kind of laugh that turned into crying and back into laughter. Thomas pulled his mother into a hug.
“The banana bread,” Eleanor sniffled. “It’s from the R-07. A thank-you.”
“I thought Claire would’ve loved it.”
We carried every bag out to her car together. I tucked the notebook into her purse as if it were treasure.
“Sunday,” I said. “Come back Sunday. We’ll bake.”
“Every Sunday?”
“Every single Sunday.”
Later, Thomas and I stood at the kitchen counter, tearing warm bread with our fingers, the guest room quiet behind us.
On the windowsill, a small jar of R-07 was already bubbling.
