Page 10 of A Wedding in a Week

I haven’t. Not properly. But I will. I would have done already if not for getting distracted by a kiss I can still feel. I also still hold my phone, but I don’t focus on my brother’s next message. I’m too busy replaying a mouth-to-mouth moment that reminds me of when the cliff rescue team finally reached me.

Until they dragged me from the Land Rover, it felt like I’d held my breath forever. Now I’m breathing again, greedy for each new lungful.

It also confirms that Marc’s far from out of my system. My elbow throbs as if in agreement. I rub it while reading what else Lukas sends me.

Lukas: Tell him how much his coming home means to you, Stef.

I rub my elbow harder at proof that my brother might have thrown me under a bus with his watch Marc order, but he’s also great at throwing lifelines.

Lukas: And if you can’t tell him, why not go ahead and show him?

4

There’s no one on the farm but me for the rest of the day. That means I get to redefine plenty of chores as “light duties” to keep myself busy. The whole time, I think of how to follow my brother’s show-him suggestion. An hour later, I’m no closer to deciding, plus I ache in a way that means I grab the sling I’ve hated wearing. Needing it now shines a light on just how much help I’ve had here lately and on exactly how much of my load Marc’s carried. It prompts me to think even harder.

The moment I walk into the farmhouse kitchen, sunlight catches the chrome of the stove, and an idea comes to me.

For a full thirty minutes, I’m almost successful, only it turns out that making Marc’s favourite Cornish pasties one-handed isn’t easy. By the time I’ve gathered ingredients and got as far as weighing flour and butter for the pastry, the kitchen resembles a bomb site.

That’s how my mother finds me.

She bustles in with the laundry she’s taken care of while I’ve been out of action and stops dead, then crosses the room next to touch my forehead. “No fever.”

“I’m fine.”

“You say that, and yet it looks suspiciously like you’re cooking.” She fishes out her phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Consulting the family doctor, because the last time you baked was…” She playacts counting on her fingers as if it’s been years. In reality, I’m pretty self-sufficient since she moved down to Porthperrin. But this is how I’m also sure Lukas isn’t actually a pixie. The person he gets his teasing streak from is right here, trying to feel my forehead again.

I dodge her hand. “I’m only making some pasties.”

“Only?” She squints. “That wasn’t on the list of concussion signs your brother emailed over.” I’d be grateful for Lukas doing that when I was first injured if Mum didn’t add, “He did say you’d be the last person to tell me if your head was giving you trouble.”

That’s the second time I’ve been accused of being too reticent today. Three times, if I count John saying I was a chip off the old block, because self-contained defined Dad. I do my best to contradict that. “I’m not feeling too strong right now, Mum.” Weak as a kitten fits better. “It’s stupid when the accident was weeks ago.” It makes no sense that I’m still so quickly exhausted.

“It’s normal, Stef. You need time, that’s all.” Mum pushes out a chair at the kitchen table as if she can tell I really am done for the day, defeated by shortcrust bloody pastry.

I don’t take that seat—it’s barely four, no reason to want to curl up next to the stove like Jess does, her tail slowly wagging. I push the chair back in as Mum still teases me, if gently.

“If I’d known you had a craving for pasties, I could have picked one up for you on the way over. Pretty sure they keep some in the chiller at the petrol station.”

“You’d buy one from there?” I realise she’s joking a beat too late. I also know she would have bought one for me, if I’d asked her. I know all of that and yet I can’t help rumbling, “I wanted to make some proper ones. Real Cornish ones, you know? Authentic.”

Forget genetics. Maybe she and Lukas are pixies. Her eyes dance the same way as his, and she arches a similar single eyebrow. “Authentic, is it? What’s behind you suddenly cooking up a storm?” Like Lukas, she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Or should I say who?” She tries to bump me out of the way with her hip. “At least let me do that for y—”

“No.” That comes out too abruptly. I start over. “Sorry. It’s just that I want… This is for…”

Maybe I’ll get to explain myself without stumbling at some point today, but now isn’t my moment. Mum interprets regardless, the laughter in her eyes not exactly fading, more softening as she completes my sentence. “For someone special?” She scans the wreckage I’ve made of a kitchen that used to be hers before she gave me space to make my mark here. Or to crash and burn.

Her gaze darts from the scattered flour and lumps of butter on the table to the meat I’ve browned on the stove. It finally lands on the vegetables by the sink. “How about I get that veg peeled and chopped while you work on your pastry? That way you might have something ready before midnight.”

And that’s what she does, not taking over exactly. She’s supportive now the same way as when she stepped back from the farm—ready to help, but from a distance. One that gave me the freedom to stumble in too-big shoes without her here as witness. I appreciated that so much like I appreciate her chatting as she peels and slices, telling how her Cornish cream-by-post business is doing, and only stepping in when shaping the pasties one-handed is too hard for me.

I make one before I have to admit defeat. “These don’t look right, Mum. I… I need at least one to look good.” Or at least better than the pasty I saw on Marc’s phone. That’s important for reasons I don’t have words for until I find two. “Help me?”

“There,” Mum says quietly, nothing teasing left in her expression. “That’s all you had to say, Stef. Didn’t kill you, did it?” She shapes a perfect pasty, crimping the edge so it’s thick and sturdy, fit for any Cornish farmer. Or for someone else I need to show some appreciation. She places it next to a pasty that, like this kitchen, resembles the aftermath of warfare. “Look,” Mum says. “A perfect pair.”

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