The Cider Mill Mix-Up

My name is Hanna, I'm fifty-four years old, and I have a problem. The problem is that I cannot lose at anything without it ruining my whole week.

Eli says it's charming. Eli has been saying it's charming for three years, ever since we met at the farmers' market in Kingston when I was fifty-one and he was fifty-five and he beat me at a raffle drawing for a crate of Honeycrisps. I had my ticket in my hand and he had his, and they pulled his number, and I said something unkind under my breath, and instead of being offended he laughed and split the crate with me. That's how it started. Apples and poor sportsmanship.

Now he was driving us up Route 9 toward a cider mill in the Hudson Valley where I was going to win a gingerbread competition. Professional division. First place is two hundred dollars and a ribbon and the right to be insufferable until next October.

"Say the theme again," Eli said. He had the printout in his lap even though he'd memorized it Thursday.

"Hometown holidays," I said. "Interpret as you wish."

"And you wish how?"

"An old stone mill, obviously. With a waterwheel that actually turns. Marshmallow fondant for the snow. Isomalt supports in the structure so the roof doesn't sag."

"Sixteen hours of work."

"Eighteen. I did a practice mill."

"Of course you did." He reached over and squeezed my knee. His hand is huge and warm and it always lands in the same spot, just above the kneecap, like he's done it a thousand times, which he has. "You're going to destroy those poor grandmas."

"That's the plan."

We passed an orchard with a pick-your-own sign and a straw hat scarecrow slumped over like he'd given up. Eli slowed down to look, because Eli looks at everything, and I checked the clock and calculated we were still on time. Barely. I had built in a twenty-minute cushion and he'd eaten twelve of it at a diner with bad coffee, but that's marriage-adjacent life for you.

We're not married. Three years, no ring, no plans. It comes up at parties and we both just shrug. It works. He buys fish at four in the morning and comes home smelling like the Hudson, and I do my radio shift from noon to three, and we meet in the middle around six with whatever he couldn't sell. People think I'm joking when I say the way to my heart is monkfish. I am not joking.

The mill came up on the left, all stone walls and a big red barn with a new sign over the doors. HOLIDAY MARKET AND GINGERBREAD CLASSIC. Steam was coming off the press house and the whole place smelled like apples, the good bruised-at-the-bottom-of-the-bushel kind. Cars everywhere. A kid in a puffy coat was directing parking with a glow stick, which made no sense in daylight, but whatever.

"Deep breath," Eli said.

"I'm calm."

"You're doing the jaw thing."

I unclenched my jaw. We found a spot between a minivan full of church ladies and a Subaru with a kayak on top in November, which told me everything about the amateur division.

The barn inside was better than the website promised. Original beams, string lights, long tables with extension cords running everywhere because apparently half the entrants brought heat guns. A woman in a reindeer sweater stood at a folding table with a clipboard, and I walked straight to her like a woman with a mission, because I was one.

"Hanna Wexler. Professional division."

She ran her finger down the list. Ran it back up. Ran it down again. I watched her do this and felt my left eye start to twitch.

"Can you spell that?"

"W-E-X-L-E-R. Hanna. It's on my confirmation email. I registered in September."

She turned the clipboard around like it might help me. "I don't... oh. Oh no. Okay. So I see a Hanna Wexler." She pointed at a line. "Amateur division."

"That's wrong."

"It says amateur."

"I know it says amateur. I'm telling you it's wrong. I registered professional. I paid the professional fee. Twenty-five dollars, not ten."

A man behind her, younger, apron, cider-stained, leaned over. "Natalie, the ten o'clock group is here for the tour."

"One second, Samuel!" She turned back to me. Her name tag said NATALIE and under that EVENT COORDINATOR, and she looked about twenty-six and like she'd rather be swallowed by the press house. "Okay. So. Here's what I think happened. There was a spreadsheet migration in September when our old system crashed, and a bunch of entries got, um, defaulted."

"Defaulted."

"Reset to amateur. The twenty-five didn't transfer for some of them. I can refund you the difference today, obviously, and I am so, so sorry."

Behind me I heard Eli take a long slow breath, the kind he takes when he's stopping himself from saying something helpful.

"Can you just fix the category?" I asked. "Move me. There's a professional division. Put me in it."

Natalie winced. "The professional division is already seeded. Judging assignments went out Wednesday. The judges are the same for both divisions, but the brackets are printed and the schedule is... it's a whole thing. I genuinely cannot move you without redoing the entire afternoon grid, and we have forty-one entrants."

Forty-one. I'd be competing against church ladies and kayak Subarus. I'd be competing against people who use store-bought royal icing. There was a woman at the next table already, I am not making this up, gluing gumdrops to a box with a hot glue gun. That's not baking. That's crafts.

"I could withdraw," I said.

"You could," Natalie said, and then, to her enormous credit, she looked me dead in the eye. "But honestly? The amateur field this year is genuinely strong. We have a pastry person who got bumped the same way you did. And if you win amateur, you win it for real, against the same judges, with the same scoring sheet."

Eli put his hand on my shoulder. "Hanna."

"I heard her."

"You're doing the jaw thing again."

I did some math. Two hundred dollars was professional first place. Amateur first place was fifty dollars and the same ribbon, smaller. But. And I hate that my brain went here. But winning amateur while annoyed, with a waterwheel that turns, against a field that included hot glue? That was still winning. And losing to nobody was still losing to nobody.

"Fine," I said. "Amateur. But I want it noted that this is a registration error and not my division."

"Noted," Natalie said, and wrote something on the clipboard. "Can I also offer you two free cider and donut vouchers as an apology? Four vouchers. I'm sorry. There's a bag of cinnamon sugar donuts in it for you."

"Two bags," said Eli.

"Done. Go set up at table nineteen. Judging starts at one."

We walked to the far end of the barn. Table nineteen was under a window with a decent light, which mattered, judges care about light. I opened my carry case and the mill looked good. It looked really good. The fondant snow had held in the car, the waterwheel was intact, and the little gum-paste couple on the porch had all their limbs.

Eli set up my little folding stool and then just stood there watching me arrange the base board.

"You're going to enjoy this," he said.

"I'm going to win this."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive. That's my point." He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. He's a foot taller than me, so that's his natural landing spot. "Do your thing. I'm going to go buy cider with our apology money and find out what a doughnut hole is in this part of the state."

"Bring me back three."

"Four. Vouchers." He went off toward the press house, weaving through tables, saying hello to everybody, because that's Eli. He has never met a stranger. I have met nothing but strangers my whole life and I prefer it that way.

I got out my detail tools. While I lined them up, the pastry person Natalie mentioned walked past my table, a tall man about forty with a piping bag already in his hand and a structure that looked, I will admit it, structurally ambitious. Some kind of covered bridge. With a river.

I looked at my mill. I looked at his bridge.

Game on, I thought.

The waterwheel needed one small repair. I got out the royal icing and got to work.

The repair took about twenty minutes. One wheel paddle had cracked at the joint, so I piped a splint of royal icing behind it and wedged a toothpick in as rebar. Isomalt supports. You learn things when you build an eighteen-hour practice mill in your kitchen while your boyfriend eats the test gingerbread.

Eli came back with two cups of cider and a grease-spotted bag.

"So the doughnut holes here are called supernovas," he said. "Because they're bigger. I don't fully understand the logic but I support it."

"Give me four."

"Six. There were twelve in the bag and I ate five walking over."

He pulled the folding stool around to my side of the table and sat. That was unusual. Eli's usual spot during a bake event is a wall somewhere, eating, making friends with strangers. This time he parked himself right next to my elbow.

"You're hovering," I said.

"I'm spectating. Different thing entirely."

"You never spectate. You graze and wander."

"Well." He took a supernova out of the bag. "Maybe I want to watch my girl work today."

I did not say anything to that, mostly because my ears went warm and I had a piping bag full of flood icing and no time for ears. Three years. He's been saying things like that for three years and it still lands every time, which frankly feels like I was built with a defect.

First round was a fifty-minute build-and-decorate sprint. Anything structural you brought pre-baked, but all decorating had to happen at the table, in view, so nobody could claim a piece was done at home. The theme was hometown holidays. I'd planned my whole program around it. The mill, the snow, the gum-paste couple on the porch who were, in my head, two people who'd met at a farmers' market, because I am not above putting my own life on a gingerbread house when there's money involved.

The judge with the clipboard called time at the top of the hour and the barn got loud with piping bags.

"Talk to me," Eli said. "What do you need."

"You're going to help?"

"I hold things. I'm excellent at holding things."

"Fine. Hold the wheel steady while I set the axle icing."

He put his big fishmonger hands on either side of the waterwheel, careful, fingertips only, and I piped the joint. His hands are wrecked from thirty-some years of cold water and ice hooks, knuckles like walnuts, and he held that wheel steadier than any clamp I own.

"Good?"

"Good. Let go slow."

He let go slow. The wheel stayed. I felt genuinely victorious and I told him so.

"You should've seen me with the cod crates this morning," he said. "Same skill."

"You iced a wheel this morning?"

"Practically."

We worked. And here's the part I didn't expect. We fell into a rhythm like we were doing his prep table at six in the evening, me piping snow along the roofline, him handing me things before I asked. He'd watched me make the practice mill. He knew the order of operations. When I needed the fine tips he already had the case open. When I needed to squint at the porch couple he already had the little magnifier out of my bag, the one I forgot I packed.

"You went through my bag?"

"You packed the magnifier and forgot. I watched you put it in."

I stole a look at him while he was watching my roofline. Fifty-eight years old, gray coming in at the temples, a small burn scar on his forearm from a grill at some fish stall in nineteen ninety-something he never fully explains. He caught me looking.

"Take a picture," he said.

"I'm assessing my situation."

"Assess away."

"I'm saying the company's decent."

"The company's winning," he said, and I laughed, actual out-loud laugh, right in the middle of piping snow, and screwed up one drift and had to redo it. "Worth it," he said.

An older woman at the next table over leaned across. "You two are sweet. Married long?"

"Three years together," Eli said, cheerful. "No ring. No plans. She won't have me."

"He asked once," I said, not looking up. "In a cider orchard. I said ask me when the wheel turns."

"That's not what happened," Eli told the woman.

"It's close enough."

The truth is he asked me in his kitchen, holding a crate of Honeycrisps, the same kind he beat me out of at the Kingston farmers' market three years before that, and I said ask me again when I've won something, so fast he claims I interrupted him. But the orchard version is better and I'll die defending it.

At about the forty-minute mark the tall man with the covered bridge walked past our table again. He slowed. He looked at the waterwheel.

"Is that turning?" he asked.

"It turns," I said.

"How."

"Secret."

"That's not how competitions work," he said, but he was smiling, and he went back to his bridge, which by then had a river made of isomalt that honestly looked good and I hated him a little for it.

Eli nudged me. "You like him."

"I like beating him."

"Same thing with you."

Then it happened.

A kid. Maybe seven years old, belongs to the hot glue gumdrop woman, came tearing around the end of the table row with a foam board under his arm like