Author, wife, adoptive mother, and peanut butter lover. Will dance for laughs, won’t eat anything spicy because you asked, but will squeeze boobs in replace of a hug. Grew up in Southern California, lived in New York, and now resides in Colorado with my wife, our son, two dogs, three cats, and my multiple book boyfriends. Loves love, anything romantic, and will die if I ever meet Tom Hanks. Yay, books!
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Beard and Hen
Penny Reid
Cletus and Jenn's story continues.
Copyright ? 2018 by Cipher-Naught
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Part 1
Richard Badcock and the Serenity of Good Layers
Jennifer
There’s no faking quality.
A thing was either high quality or it wasn’t.
And I was convinced Mr. Richard Badcock’s organic, free range eggs were the highest quality anywhere in Green Valley, east Tennessee. Perhaps the whole of Tennessee. Maybe the southeast USA. For that matter, quite possibly in the entire universe.
They were the platinum-diamond-Nobel Prize of eggs. Some were narrow, some were wide; some had sage green shells, robin blue, tawny brown, or snow white; some were even speckled. But all his eggs contained firm whites and the most gorgeous orangey yolks, brighter than orange sherbet—don’t get me started on the yolks!—that I’d ever seen in all my years of baking.
I didn’t take to broadcasting this much, mostly because folks already thought I was a little off, but I didn’t think anything I made tasted as good if I didn’t use Richard’s eggs. My creations lacked a richness, a texture, one I could only achieve with Badcock eggs, and that was fact.
Which was why I was currently up to my eyeballs in despair.
“What do you mean you don’t have any eggs?” I looked behind Mr. Richard Badcock, searching his huge gated lawn and fancy hen house in the distance.
It had gables, eves, a white gutter, and even an actual picket fence.
My gazed shifted back to the man, moved over this new Mr. Badcock who had never been anything but kind to me in the past. I had no idea why he was behaving this way, but I couldn’t spare a thought to that. I was too much occupied by the great egg-dearth of the decade.
“Just what I said, Ms. Sylvester. I’m plum out of eggs.” His voice was firm, hard, and—if I wasn’t mistaken—laced with distrust. “But if you want some fresh chicken, we just butchered last—”
“I can’t put a chicken thigh in a custard, Richard!” I wailed, unashamed in my anguish, my teeth chattering in the early-January cold snap. “It’s not a gelatin. Fat and meat and bones won’t do me any good.”
Mr. Richard Badcock sighed, his eyebrows tenting on his forehead in an arrangement of both compassion—finally—and helplessness. “I am very sorry, Ms. Sylvester. If I had some eggs, I’d give them to you.”
“I’m sorry too, but this doesn’t make any sense. You must have a hundred chickens back there, and—”
“We have sixty-one chickens.” He sniffed, looking down his nose at me, once again hostile. “Unlike some folks, we believe our hens need space, autonomy, greens, and serenity to be good layers.”
Good lord, now I’d offended his serene egg-laying chickens.
“Of course, Mr. Badcock.” I tried to make my tone conciliatory. “And I can’t tell you how much I just love—and I do mean love—those eggs. Which is why, please pardon my outburst, I am feeling a great deal of desolation at the prospect of baking without your superior product.”
His shoulders relaxed, apparently mollified, and he quit peering at me, instead sighing for maybe the tenth time since I showed up. “Ms. Sylvester, there ain’t nothing I can do. I am sorry. But we had two unexpected—and very large—orders late last night. I’m cleaned out for at least two weeks, and—”
“Two weeks?” I clutched my chest and shrieked, completely beside myself.
He sighed again, taking off his hat and wiping his brow with the back of his flannel covered forearm, saying nothing. His old brown eyes moved over me with a look that seemed speculative, and I got the sense he was having himself an internal debate.
Meanwhile, I was going to cry.
I could feel it. The twinge in my nose, the sting behind my eyes, the tremor of my chin. But I couldn’t go two weeks without Badcock eggs. I couldn’t. Folks would remark. They’d notice. We’d be asked if we’d changed our recipes, and not for the better. Once, I’d gone three days without the eggs and the church choir near pitched a fit about my coconut custard pie.
“It’s fine.” Mrs. Seymore—the pastor’s wife—had said to my momma. “But what I don’t understand is, why didn’t Jenn make it? We specifically asked for Jennifer’s coconut custard pie.”
My momma had hemmed and hawed and, in the end, she’d lied. She told them an under-baker had made it, and had eventually given it to them for free.
The thing about the church choir was, it didn’t take much to get them to sing, if you know what I mean. In fact, one might even say they were gleeful about spreading unhappy news.
Therefore, once I did have the eggs, I made coconut custard tarts with shaved coconut and dropped them off—in person—to the Saturday choir practice.
All had been forgiven and my praises were sung once more.
But . . . two weeks? With the church picnic coming up?
Lord have mercy.
I swallowed my panic and nodded for no reason. “Well,” I croaked when I found my voice, “I guess . . . I guess . . .”
Mr. Badcock made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Fine, fine. How about this?” He sounded reluctant, and for some reason, the reluctance gave my heart hope. “I have four dozen eggs up at the homestead.”
“Oh Mr. Badcock, I would—”
“Now settle down.” He lifted is hands, even the one holding the hat. “I’ll give them to you, for double the price.”
I swallowed again, because that was a tough pill to swallow. Double the price? His eggs were already ten dollars a dozen. Part of me wanted to argue. I told that part to hush: serene eggs didn’t grow on trees.
“O-okay.” I tried—and failed—to smile.
“And from now on,” he continued, “the Donner Bakery needs to pre-order their eggs three months in advance, with a-uh . . . fifty percent down payment. That’s right, fifty percent.” He nodded as though agreeing with himself.
I found myself momentarily at a loss for words, not because these were unfair terms, but because Mr. Badcock had never expressed any interest in pre-orders or pre-payments prior to right this minute.
And it took me less than a second to respond, “But, of course. Absolutely, Mr. Badcock. In fact, I’ll be happy to place our order for the entire year right now.”
He blinked at me. “You would?”
“Yes. I most certainly would. I don’t want anyone’s eggs but yours.”
He blinked some more, standing straighter. “You wouldn’t?” His voice cracked.
“No.” On a whim, I reached forward and held his hand. He looked between my face and our joined fingers as I spoke from the heart, “Mr. Badcock, your eggs are. . . well, they’re magical. And I guess I should have told you prior to now, but all other eggs in comparison might as well be applesauce.”
Applesauce being the low-fat, vegan replacement for eggs in baking recipes. In other words, a sad and inferior imitation.
“Oh,” he was blinking faster now, and a bit of color touched his cheeks. “My goodness. I don’t—I mean, I don’t know what to say. This is all very unexpected.”
I released his hand, stepping away as he watched me retreat. “Just, thank you. Thank you for your eggs. Thank you for taking the time to raise those chickens right.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Sylvester.” He sounded a bit breathless, a bit dazed, but also proud.