“What do you mean the mark of a true Stevens woman?” Georgia asked, mystified.
Star leaned forward in her chair and clasped her hands. “The women in our family each have... a special gift,” she explained calmly. “Call it magic, call it a deep connection to the earth. It can be labeled many things, but the fact is that every woman in the Stevens line has had some special ability. Your great-grandmother, my grandma Emma, could bake pies that inspired people to tell the truth. One bite of her apple streusel crumb pie and a man would confess to an affair. A forkful of her peach cobbler and feuding siblings would apologize for their mistakes and make up. I’m told her cherry pie was especially popular for making shy beaus finally declare their true love and propose to their sweethearts.” Star chuckled. She peeled off a label from the sheet, then reached over and carefully stuck it on the front of a Mason jar.
“Grandma Emma was famous in her small Georgia town for her ability,” Star continued. “Now my mama, Helen’s, gift was something different. She could heal any small ailments or injuries just by her touch. Growing up, we never suffered from cuts or scrapes or sore throats. I remember coming in crying as a child with a scraped-up elbow. I’d fallen off my bike. Mama bent down and kissed the wound, bloody and dirty with pieces of gravel in the scrapes, and when she lifted her head, the skin on my elbow was pink and smooth, and the hurt was gone.”
Georgia listened, wide eyed and astonished. Star’s pale eyes turned suddenly sad. “She couldn’t heal everything. She couldn’t save my grandma Emma from kidney failure, or heal herself of breast cancer, but she could soothe the little aches and pains of life with just a touch. She always had the gift, as long as she could remember.” Star met Georgia’s gaze frankly. “So when people tell you that your food brings them clarity, that it has a touch of the sublime, I don’t find that strange at all. You’re a Stevens woman, carrying on the line with your own unique gift. And that gift is to bring clarity to people’s hearts through the food you cook.”
Georgia stared at her mother, dumbfounded. “You’re telling me that every woman in our family was what, some kind of a witch, and I am too?” She couldn’t have been more shocked if Star had announced she was an alien visiting earth from outer space.
“No,” Star said firmly with a shake of her head. “We’re not witches. My grandmother was a devout Catholic. My mother was Lutheran. I came back to my own place of faith when I got sober in AA. We have a gift. It’s a blessing, not something we control with incantations or spells.” She stuck another label on a jar. “Our gifts are often misunderstood by those around us, but each of us has a unique gift, and we use it to bring joy to those around us. We use our gifts for good, and as our gifts bring blessings to others, they bless our own lives as well. We find purpose and delight in using our gifts to help others. It is a virtuous cycle.” She paused, waiting for Georgia to process her words.
Georgia felt completely blindsided. Of all the secrets Star could have shared, this had never crossed her mind. It was ludicrous. Yet she had to admit it was also strangely compelling.
It occurred to Georgia that she knew little of Star. What ifthere was a history of mental illness that she’d never been told about? What if her mother wasn’t quite in touch with reality? Because what other explanation could there be? And yet, when Star had described the women in her family, Georgia felt instinctively that she fit right in. She’d known for years that what she felt when she touched food was different, thatshewas different. She just didn’t know why. What Star said made sense, although it felt far-fetched at the same time. Of course, she didn’t believe it. Except it would explain so much...
15
“If what you’resaying is true, then what’s your gift?” Georgia asked skeptically. She wrapped a length of twine around the neck of a honey jar and tied a neat bow.
“This.” Star reached up and snapped an apple twig from the bough above them. It was laden with small white buds not yet blossomed. “Watch.” She cupped it in her strong-knuckled hands. Before Georgia’s eyes, the buds began to slowly open, their blooms unfurling into delicate white starbursts. Soon Star was holding a branch laden with fragrant white blossoms in full bloom where a few seconds before there had been only tightly closed flowers. It had taken no more than a minute. Star looked at her and smiled knowingly.
“Impossible,” Georgia breathed in astonishment, eyes wide.
“I have a green thumb,” Star said, offering the blooming twig to Georgia. “That’s my gift, to help things flourish and grow. I can make tomatoes ripen all year round, harvest peaches so juicy they’re bursting on the trees in the dead of winter. I can coax life from any plant at any time.”
Georgia took the twig gingerly and looked up at her mother in disbelief. It sounded like a fairy tale, like wishful thinking, except she’d just seen it happen with her own eyes. “But how?” She struggled to form the words.
Star shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always been that way, since I was a little girl. Just like my mother with her gift, justlike you, I don’t know how or why I can do it. It’s just a part of me, as your gift is a part of you.”
“That explains the gardens,” Georgia said, glancing back at the garden beds near the house. She’d been right. Ithadbeen too early for the verdant riot of vines and plants—the cucumbers she’d seen peeking out from under vines, the red globes of the tomatoes swaying in the breeze off the bay. The ripe purple figs... She’d chalked it up to a long growing season, some sort of bizarrely mild island microclimate, when in reality it was all Star’s gift. She sniffed the apple blossoms. Each silky white bloom was filled with a heady sweet fragrance. “This is amazing,” she whispered, stroking the delicate silky petals.
Star smiled. “And so is your gift. I left when you were so young, I wasn’t sure what your gift was yet. Your daddy’s family viewed my gift with suspicion, as a bad thing. They thought I was using witchcraft, that I was consorting with the devil. I didn’t fit into the box of what they could comprehend about how the world worked, so they feared and rejected me. I was worried that they would never encourage you to use your gift if they knew you had one. I wasn’t sure how you would feel about your gift either, if you were even aware of it. When I heard you’d gone to Paris to be a chef, I was pretty sure that cooking had something to do with it. I’d sensed it when you were a child too, but you were too young for me to be certain. But yesterday, when I tasted the dinner you made for us, it confirmed what I’d suspected all along. I could taste it in your food.”
“You could taste the magic?” Georgia said with a touch of skepticism.
“The gift,” Star said simply. “It’s not hocus-pocus, not fairy tales, Georgia May. It’s just a special little extra something we get to give to the world. And that’s a gift no matter how youslice it.” She pushed a few labeled jars across the table toward Georgia.
Georgia looked down, a little chagrined. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “This is all just very new and unexpected.”
“I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, if I didn’t feel it coursing through my fingers,” Star agreed. “But we don’t need to understand something fully to know it is real. We can know something is true without understanding all the whys and hows, can’t we? You’ve experienced the gift, haven’t you? You’ve sensed it even if you didn’t know what to call it?”
“Every time I touch a carrot or crack an egg or peel a tangerine,” Georgia admitted. “I just thought I was a little crazy. Aunt Hannah always seemed suspicious of my cooking. I think it disturbed her when I’d talk about how I could feel the ingredients with all of my senses. I remember being little and helping her peel apples. I told her I could hear their colors. She sent me out of the kitchen and never encouraged my interest in cooking again. I think it scared her.” Georgia suspected now, thinking back on it, that perhaps Aunt Hannah had been worried Georgia would somehow take after Star. She’d wanted to keep her a Jackson and forget all about the Stevens half of her heritage.
“People are afraid of things they don’t understand,” Star agreed. She slid a labeled jar across the table to Georgia.
“I grew up thinking my brain was just wired a little differently, that I was weird somehow. I think Michel sensed my gift from the very beginning, though,” Georgia said thoughtfully. “My mentor in Paris. He calls it my ‘spark,’ but I think he’s talking about the same thing. That’s why he told me to leave Paris, because he said I’d lost my spark and needed to figure out how to get it back.”
Star paused. “He said you’d lost your spark?”
Georgia nodded. “I thought maybe he was just picking up on me losing my sense of taste, but now I wonder if it’s more than that. I wonder if I’ve lost both my sense of taste and my gift? Maybe they’re connected somehow?”
“I tasted something last night,” Star said, looking thoughtful. “I could sense your gift in the food you made us, but I tasted something else as well, especially in the salty mousse. It tasted bitter to me.”
Georgia looked surprised. “Bitter? That’s weird.” There was nothing that would be bitter in that recipe. “What do I do?” she asked. “How do I get my gift back if I’ve lost it?”
Star frowned. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “When did you first notice something was wrong?”
“It happened gradually,” Georgia explained. “I started noticing it maybe six months ago. I couldn’t sense the ingredients like I’ve always been able to. Sometimes an ingredient would taste completely wrong, or I couldn’t taste anything at all. I even went to see specialists, but they told me everything was fine. And then after the blowup with Etienne, I woke up and all I could taste was bitter. That’s when I went to see Michel and he told me to leave Paris and try to regain my spark.”
