Now the four of them were plonked down at the long farmhouse table in Francine’s kitchen, making gnocchi. By intense principle, Francine never made turkey on Thanksgiving, a notion which struck Erik, Lucky and David as bizarre. Almost on the verge of treasonous.
“Turkey is vile,” Francine said. “You wait. I’m going to convert each and every one of you tonight.”
She and Daisy had prepped one batch of plain gnocchi dough, another with butternut squash, and a third with spinach. Watching Daisy in the kitchen, working side-by-side with Francine, ricing potatoes, kneading dough, laughing, joking, Erik was so happy and so in love, he was practically choking up.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t know how he’d missed it before, but the shape of Daisy’s physique had completely changed. The training of the summer and fall was evident in her lean muscles and athletic curves. Nothing near Lucky Dare’s hourglass figure, but still, quite a respectable pair of boobs was up high in her tight sweater. And what she did to a pair of jeans, in Erik’s opinion, should have been illegal. She was gorgeous. Moving confidently and competently around the kitchen. Chattering French. And smiling.
A few weeks ago she was given the all-clear to go back to class. And just before they broke for the holiday, she put her left foot into a pointe shoe and went up on her toes. The pain was there—a sharp bite in her inner thigh, an ache in her calf and shin, and a morbid complaint from her ankle. One way or another, those pains would always be there. But now Daisy was back up on pointe, her leg straight and true. Erik always marked it as the day Daisy’s smile came back.
She sat down at Francine’s kitchen table, kissed him carelessly, then joined the others in rolling out snakes of gnocchi dough, yellow, orange and green. They cut the snakes crosswise and rolled the knuckles off the tines of forks, dropping them onto floured wax paper. Daisy could make two dozen in a minute. Will soon got the knack. Lucky, David and Erik just made a mosh of their gnocchi, but Francine walked among them like a nursery school teacher, praising, coaching, ruffling heads. Joe poured wine with a lavish hand. Then he sat quietly, rolling perfect, ridged gnocchi off the tines of his fork. Three yellow, three orange, three green. Each one precisely the same size.
“Erique, darling, tell me,” Francine said. “At boarding school I had a friend who was Swedish, and at Christmastime her mother would always send her these wonderful cookies. They had orange zest in them, and black pepper. I loved them, but I forgot what they are called. Do you know these cookies?”
Erik was about to shrug apologetically when his memory nudged him in the side and he heard himself say, “Pepparkakor.”
“Yes,” Francine said, her face lighting up.
Erik laughed as if he’d sunk a half-court shot at the buzzer. “I totally pulled that out of my ass,” he said. “Pepparkakor. They were the Christmas cookies.”
Daisy was smiling at him. “Who made them?”
“My grandmother. She sent them in the mail. She made one batch without pepper for me and my brother, and another with just a little pepper for my mom. Then my dad would get his own little box and they’d have both pepper in them and pepper sprinkled on top. He liked them really hot.”
“Is she alive?” Francine asked, with wide, hopeful eyes. Mentally she was already tying on an apron and zesting oranges.
“No, she passed away. I’m not really in touch with my father’s family. It’s all distant cousins. But maybe there’s someone I could ask…”