A Season For Family

The other man grumbled something under his breath and kept his head down, revealing a bald spot. He continued to add to his mound of carrots.

“We always make plenty. Some people come from the other side of town for a bowl of Miss Livvy’s soup.”

“Bruce, you have three months before you need to start buttering me up for an extension.”

The two laughed. Even the old guy managed to contort his face into a grin of sorts.

“Will you wash up and give me a hand with this, please?” Olivia held a couple of quilted mitts toward Heath. “These potatoes are ready to be mashed, but I need you to drain the water off first. Over there.” She pointed to one of several deep sinks.

He quickly soaped and rinsed his hands, donned the mitts and then carefully dodged the blistering curtain of steam that rose off the potatoes as they drained into a wire colander. “Thanks for the gloves.”

“Good kitchen help is hard to find. We try not to injure a new recruit on his first day.” She placed a mixing bowl about half the size of the Astrodome on the counter before him.

“Now what?” Heath waited for instructions.

“We ain’t got time to hold your hand,” Amos barked.

“Sorry, sir,” Heath responded to the jibe. “I’m better with a Mac than macaroni.”

“Oh, a wise guy,” the older man bristled. “Well, if you’re gonna stay with us for a while you’d better get acquainted with the business end of a potato masher.”

Olivia handed Heath a utensil with a zigzag shape on one end. He brought it close to his face and studied the strange kitchen tool, trying to recall if he’d ever seen anything like it.

“I was planning to leave you in Bruce and Amos’s capable hands, but I’ve got some time to help out since I’m already prepared for tonight’s Bible study.”

Bible study?

Before he could question her last comment Olivia got busy giving him a cooking lesson. She scooped a portion of the steaming potatoes into the stainless steel bowl and then squashed away like she was working off a grudge.

“I think my mother used instant potatoes or maybe an electric mixer. Wouldn’t that be faster?”

“Look, Steve Jobs,” Amos snapped, “money don’t grow on trees around here. We make do with what’s donated. We only have one big mixer and it’s busy smoothin’ the lumps out of Bruce’s pitiful excuse for gravy.” He pointed toward a machine humming away on a countertop across the room.

“So I used a little too much flour,” Bruce defended himself. “Lighten up, old geezer.” He emphasized the insult.

Amos snarled and cast a menacing scowl toward Bruce.

“Okay, you two. Give it a rest,” Olivia insisted. “Nobody will notice a few lumps in the gravy once it’s poured over the potatoes.”

Amos turned his glare toward Heath. “We’ll never know unless Miss Livvy gets some help.”

“Sorry.” Heath reached toward Olivia who handed over the masher. He dumped more boiled potatoes into the bowl as she’d done and began to mash with gusto, little gobs flying as he worked. He eventually got a tub of chunky, starchy gunk for his effort.

When he paused, Olivia handed him a spoon and they each took a sample mouthful.

“Kinda boring and gloppy, huh?” he asked, pretty sure nobody would want to eat the stuff.

She nodded, her smile sympathetic as she reached for a cup of water to wash down the bite.

Heath stared down at the mess. “Ugly, too,” he admitted.

“I’ll take it from here, Miss Livvy.” Amos elbowed between Heath and the counter. “Out of the way, newbie. I’ll fix it since you don’t have the kitchen instinct God gave a goose.”

Without measuring a thing, the older man upended bottles of strange seasonings, dropped chunks of butter and added streams of milk to the bowl. After a couple minutes of stirring with a huge spoon till he was red in the face, Amos swiped a taste and pronounced it passable.

“It’s time for me to go help in the dining room.” He handed the spoon to Heath. “Clean up over here, and then see if you can figure out how to open those plastic bags and put the rolls in the bread baskets. And try not to make any more mess than you already have, ya pig.” Amos jerked his head toward the potato-spattered countertop before he stomped from the room.

Heath slanted a questioning look at Olivia who shrugged in response.

“I admitted up front I don’t have any experience,” Heath explained, then turned to Bruce. “My mother didn’t like me in her way while she was cooking.”

“Is there a chance you ever insulted your mama while she was fixin’ you a meal?” Bruce asked. “’Cause that might explain why she didn’t want your company in her kitchen. Same goes for Amos.”

“Huh?” Heath hadn’t slept more than a few hours in a row for a couple of weeks, thanks to a stakeout where the good guys had come up nearly empty-handed. He was exhausted and asked to delay this assignment until tomorrow. But Biddle insisted that Heath get on the case right away, and without any of the disguises he normally used during undercover operations. He’d been told to report as is, clean-faced and bare-headed, a situation he’d never encountered before.

The confusion just kept on piling up. He strained his brain to understand the comparison Bruce had just made between Heath’s mama and Amos. Obviously he’d done something wrong. “Are you saying I insulted the guy?”

“When you came into the kitchen with Miss Livvy we heard what you said about sir being code for feeble old geezer. When you called Amos sir two beats later, I thought that big vein on the side of his neck might explode.”

“I was simply showing respect,” Heath explained.

“You can’t have it both ways. Everything’s black and white with Amos.”

Heath looked to Olivia, who nodded agreement.

He hung his head. How he wished for a beard and horn-rimmed glasses to hide his naked face. There was comfort beneath camouflage. Being out in the world like this made him feel exposed.

Judged.

The real Heath Stone wasn’t exactly a guy people took to right away. And who could blame them?

Most days Heath didn’t even like himself.

“Oh, don’t worry too much about it,” Olivia said, cutting him a break. “It may take a while, but Amos will warm up to you once he gets to know you.”

“How long you plan to stay?” Bruce asked. A smirk twisted one corner of his mouth. “I’ve been here three months and he’s still calling me Bryan.”

“Well, Bryan,” Olivia picked up the joke, “things are under control in here so how about checking with Velma to see if she needs help? With these freezing temps I expect a full-capacity night.”

Bruce nodded, scrapped his pile of chopped vegetables into a container and stored it in an oversized fridge. He hung his apron over a peg on the way out of the kitchen.

“Sorry I got off to a bad start,” Heath felt he should apologize, though he wasn’t sure he’d done anything so awful.

“Most people have the same experience with Amos.” Olivia tore big sheets of tin foil from a roll mounted on the wall and tucked them over the giant bowl of mashed potatoes.

“Including you?” Heath grabbed paper towels and began to clean up the mess he’d made.

When she didn’t respond right away, he glanced up. He was captivated for the second time that hour by the fair skin that rose above the neck of her sweater and the short crop of jet-black hair framing her face. Something quickened inside Heath’s chest at the thought of this woman being guilty of trafficking drugs, especially if it was to support her thieving father who’d fled the country a decade earlier to avoid prosecution for tax evasion. The Feds had never given up on finding Dalton Wyatt and they wondered if he might somehow be behind the recent influx of meth and ecstasy that seemed to be passing through this shelter.