Page 23 of Sweet Surprises

The kitchen was a massive space with windows overlooking the hillside. But a low ceiling with exposed wooden beams made it feel cozy anyway. There were no upper cabinets, just an open shelf along the top of the walls displaying a sort of evolution of pottery—from lumpy beginner attempts to smooth, polished work. It was mostly mugs and pitchers, but there were also some bowls and trays.

“We had to take a couple of walls out,” Maggie said with a smile, as if she had read Charlotte’s mind. “Houses this old don’t usually have big kitchens, but we’re a big family, and we like to cook and eat.”

“It’s wonderful,” Charlotte told her, appreciating her hostess’s unspoken permission to keep looking.

Maggie had chosen simple wood lower cabinets with a plain stone top, but the appliances looked more like something out of a commercial kitchen.

“I splurged on my stove,” Maggie said, looking a little embarrassed. “And then half the time I just use the crock anyway.”

“Maggie lived for years with appliances that were older than she was,” Daniel said, gazing at his wife with so much love in his eyes. “And she always made them work. But when it was time to buy new ones, I knew I wasn’t going to cut any corners.”

“Daniel,” she said with a smile, looking just as smitten.

“What can I say? You married a man with a healthy appetite,” he teased her. “And I like to do some cooking myself, too.”

“Come help me with the biscuits then,” she told him, laughing.

I want that,Charlotte thought to herself as she watched the two of them moving around the kitchen together with an effortless grace that made it clear how often they prepared meals together.

“It’s like they’re dancing,” Tag said quietly. “That’s what Allie always says.”

“That sounds like Allie,” Charlotte said. Allie was a big reader, and it had given her a romantic way of thinking. But in this case, she wasn’t exaggerating.

“We’ll wash our hands and then set the table,” Tag told her.

They moved past his parents to the big farmhouse sink. Then Tag grabbed plates from a cupboard and they set them out on a dining table that was probably big enough to seat twenty. After that, he handed her real cloth napkins and put a basket of rustic looking napkin rings on the table.

“From Mom’s pottery phase,” he said.

“I heard that,” his mother said from the counter. “It wasn’t a phase. It’s a hobby.”

“Then why did you stop?” Tag asked.

“I guess I filled up the house,” she said, shrugging.

“The boys have houses too, you know,” Daniel said. “You shouldn’t stop doing something you love just because it takes up a little space.”

Tag was smiling again as he got back to work. Charlotte watched him roll a napkin and slide it into a glazed clay ring. Then she tried one herself.

“How many people are here for lunch today?” she asked.

“Just Tripp, Zane, Mom, Dad, and us,” he said. “We have hands working here too, and Mom sometimes invites them for a hot meal. But they’re doing their own thing today. The kids are at school and Allie’s teaching, West really only comes by for Sunday dinners lately, and of course Cash is the one Lawrence who actually left Vermont, so you won’t get to meet him.”

It was funny to think of six people as a small group. Charlotte had always wanted a big family, and she was seeing now that all of this was part of it—wanting to take out walls and have big tables and a six-burner stove that wasn’t really a luxury. It was all practical.

“My grandmother had ten kids,” Daniel said as he slid biscuits off the tray and into a towel-lined basket. “My dad and his brothers and sisters had to eat in shifts.”

“But she would have been furious to think that we took away her back parlor to do this,” Maggie said, shaking her head.

“Well, she’s not using it,” Daniel pointed out.

Maggie smacked him with a potholder, and he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her on top of the head.

“Smells good,” a deep voice practically roared from the front door.

“Boots,”Maggie yelled back in reminder. “And hands.”

“Tripp always forgets,” Tag said quietly.

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