She dropped the latest batch of earthy sourdough onto the marble with a satisfyingthwackand began gently stretching and folding. First there was her father, Anders Karlsson. A man who stuck around long enough to give Greta a brother and two sisters before abandoning them all. Prompting Greta to create a new surname for herself that her siblings adopted as well. It was a practice not uncommon in her home country; Sweden was understanding in that way. Names are important. Beyond the shared genes she could not change, Greta could at least distance herself from her cowardly father with a new surname. Severing her connection to the family tree of Anders Karlsson was apractical necessity, and if she could do it artfully, all the better. It was how her surname, Nyqvist, came to be.Nyfor “new,” andqvistfor “twig.” Greta like the botanical symbolism as much as she did the sound of it. A new bud unfurling, bending away from the branch that rooted it, and reaching skyward to the sun. As a young girl with three even younger siblings to help her mother care for, Greta often imagined herself that little twig. Sturdy, bending to the elements, but never ever breaking.
Greta survived her father’s leaving, even if it left a mark. What she had not anticipated was that other marks of the male-induced variety would follow. There was a stepfather, Hans, who followed her father’s departure around the very time Greta felt that the little branch of her family was finally growing strong again. Hans, who did not like children, now found himself under a roof with four who were not his own. What Hans did like was akvavit. Soon Greta’s mother joined him in that affection, and the alcohol flowed through the household if the happiness did not. Eventually Hans left, too, but the toll his time with them took on her mother did not. As Greta worked her way through secondary school, she found herself burdened more and more with caring for her younger siblings and running a household. The only thing that sustained her through it all was her love of cooking. In her upper secondary years, she focused her studies on the Hotel and Restaurant Programme. There, she found peace within the confines of recipes. Recipes provided certitude, a reprieve from chaos. The perfect internal temperature for oxfile steak was 135 degrees. A vigorous whisk achieved the sabayon for Béarnaise sauce. Molasses stabilized emulsion in a vinaigrette. A clean workspace. A sharp cleaver.These thingsGreta could control.
But the safety of the kitchen was not without one final dose of male-induced disappointment. That disappointment, perhaps the most insulting of all because she was older now and stronger, too, came from her final-year instructor at Högskolan Kristianstad University: Lars Asp. How thrilled Greta had been to work alongside the intimidating but renowned chef in her final year of culinary school. Lars was a god in the kitchen and a god to look at, but Greta paid little attention to that last part. That final semester she was too focused on winning the internship in America, at a prestigious Manhattan restaurant run by one of Lars’s former colleagues, awarded to the highest-ranking student in the graduating class. It would change everything for her.
Though sharp and impatient with her at first, Lars began encouraging Greta during that final term. As other students strove to create modern dishes with worldly inspirations, Greta found herself reaching back into her own culture, drawn to experimentation with Swedish tradition. For one assignment she created smoked herring and pickled daikon dumplings accompanied by a lingonberry soy sauce, an idea sparking smirks and eye rolls from her peers. When it came time for tasting, Lars made a face before he even sampled one. Ignoring her artful presentation and chopsticks, he plucked a dumpling from the bowl with his fingers, dragged it through the sauce, and popped it indelicately into his mouth. He chewed, his expression not exactly shifting, to Greta’s dismay. “Too much coriander in the pickling,” he said, flatly. Then, “Otherwise ingenious.”
Soon Lars began asking her to prep for him before class. He suggested cookbooks she should read, undiscovered bistros she should try in the city. He gave her permission to stay after classand test new ideas in the kitchen. For the first time, Greta felt seen. She trusted Lars’s expertise and input. She trusted him.
One night late in the term she stayed after class perfecting a dessert course for a final exam: a coconut crème brûlée dusted in key lime. Lars surprised her when he came in to retrieve a set of knives he’d left behind. When he stopped by her station and asked to try the dish, Greta held her breath and handed him a spoon. At first he gave away nothing, his mouth working. “I hope you’re applying for the American internship,” he said finally. When he strode out, tears sprang to her eyes. Perhaps all her work had paid off. Perhaps a new chapter in New York was within striking distance.
The next night Lars returned to the kitchen. This time he did not ask to try the pastry dish she was at work on. This time he peered over her shoulder, silent, as she whisked a chocolate ganache over the burner. At first Greta thought she was doing something wrong. As his silence stretched, she tensed, waiting for his correction. But when Lars ran his hand up the back of her thigh, she understood. Greta figured her chance at the internship was over the moment she spun around and dumped the hot pot of sauce down the front of his shirt and pants. She wasn’t wrong.
Once more Greta was a small twig, freshly budded, branching toward an uncertain sky. But she tried to keep her face always turned to the sun. When she landed at Logan airport four summers ago, with neither an internship nor a job, Greta found herself making the rounds of the city, and later, the suburbs. No one good was hiring. No one knew who she was. The small printed ad for a chef at the Cranberry House she stumbled across one afternoon in a café was not what she’d traveled all this way for. It was halfway up the arm of Cape Cod, a placeshe’d never even heard of. Its so-called restaurant was small and obscure. By all definitions, the old inn was, too. But it was a job. With a kitchen all her own. And a kind older woman named Francine as innkeeper. Greta figured she’d stay for one summer, then return to the city during the offseason. But when the leaves turned color around Pleasant Bay and the trees rustled in the autumn wind, Greta paused to consider. Her branch felt strong and steady; for the first time she sensed her roots beginning to deepen. She decided to let them.
Now, in the early hours of opening day in her fourth year at the inn, the sourdough had grown sticky beneath her fingers. She reached for a handful of flour and sprinkled it generously across the counter before shaping the dough into a bundle and nestling it into a bowl. Here, finally, Greta had what she needed. Freedom to run her own kitchen. A devoted local following she’d grown steadily in the last year and who had fallen in love with her unique menu offerings. Inn guests who rose early and filled the cozy dining room no matter the fine beach weather, thanks to her cranberry scones and honey butter. And a nurturing boss in Francine, who adored her no-nonsense approach and never asked her to change a darn thing: except once to trade out the pickled herring for cod (Americans had such timid palates). Greta had all the things she’d worked for.
True to her word, a man had never been among those things. But damned if she didn’t get goose bumps when she heard Oliver Owens whistle. When the back kitchen door opened, there he stood in his tall green Wellies, a goofy grin plastered across his tanned face as he held out his latest offering.
“For you!” he said, tromping up to the island and thrusting a basket of greens beneath her nose. Already she could smell sunand soil, the scents of the garden, rising from within. Avoiding his big brown eyes, Greta forced her blue ones down to the contents of the basket. To the bright batch of butter beans, the thicket of pea pods, the soil-sprinkled leaves of the most beautiful purple radicchio she’d ever seen. “This may be the best batch of peas I’ve ever grown. Try one.” When Oliver handed her a pod, their fingers brushed, and it fell to the floor.
“Gosh, sorry!” he said.
“I’ve got it,” she said, bending to retrieve it. When she stood, Oliver was holding out a new one, inches from her mouth.
“Taste?”
Greta blinked. Her lips parted, and Oliver deposited the pea pod gently on her tongue.
His eyes narrowed as she crunched.
Oliver Owens gardened with the fervor of a doting new parent. He’d once told her he hated to wear gloves because he needed to feel the earth, the tender shoots between his fingers, the shape of a warm tomato in his palm. No one had spoken to her like this before, this language of love for the food he grew. Greta knew this language. She also knew this love.
Now, the sweet bright taste only a June pea could proffer flooded her senses. Unconsciously Greta closed her eyes and smiled.
Oliver laughed, delighted. “My thoughts exactly.”
When she opened her eyes, he was already halfway out the door, whistling once more. The screen door slapped shut, and Oliver disappeared around the corner.
In the silence that followed, Greta stared at the basket of vegetables he’d left on the butcher block counter. She was in trouble.
That night’s dinner menu was printed. Her coworker Linus would come huffing in any second to run through reservations and complain about one dish or other. Guests would arrive laden with luggage and looking for a cocktail. The dining room and porch would hum with hungry diners clamoring for chowder. After all she’d been through in her young life, none of that spelled trouble for Greta Nyqvist. The real trouble had just walked out the door.
Ezra
The summer was already promising to be a hot and humid one, not that it really mattered. Unless you counted the extra time it took his art canvases to dry. Ezra sighed and removed his latest work gently from the easel before taking it indoors to the air-conditioning so the acrylic could set. The heat was not for him. He wasn’t sure the Cape was anymore, either.
His daughter, Amy, loved a hot summer day. Freed from the sticky confines of the city, here she could climb dunes and skip rocks and race up and down the beach with the other summer kids, her long limbs unfurling like a leggy foal. Ezra shook his head at the memories, recalling the trouble he had dragging her off Ridgevale Beach each afternoon. His wife, Rachel, too, for that matter. Unlike Ezra, with his thin fair hair and pale skin, Rachel’s and Amy’s skin turned tawny then gold as June spilled into July, their long dark curls tinged with copper. All while Ezra parked himself beneath the umbrella, moving his beach chair irritably every hour as the sun played games, shifting the shade away from him. No, he did not love the Cape like the womenin his family. But how he loved them. And that was why they’d ended up with the house on Pleasant Bay. But that was a long time ago. Now it was just Ezra and the house and the fresh disappointment he’d been delivered a few hours earlier.
Amy had tried to break the news gently when she called. “I’m sorry, Dad. I really wanted it to work out, but I just don’t see how we can manage it this year.”
It had broken what little was left of Ezra’s heart. “You mean you’re not coming? At all?”
He heard her sigh on the other end of the line, and instantly felt bad. “Though I understand,” he rushed to add. “I do. You and Ethan have your hands full with the kids, and now he’s got that new job.”
“They won’t give him the time off, Dad,” she tried to explain. “And bringing all three kids out there alone… well, it’s just too much.”
“You won’t be alone,” he said before he thought.
