The Sourdough Crock

I still can't believe I spent the morning of a funeral under a horse. Well, half a morning. Marjorie Rodriguez's reception was at noon, and my client's mare threw a shoe at nine, and that's just how it goes when you're a farrier in a town this small.

I'm Edwin Fitch, twenty-nine years old, and I've been shoeing horses around here since I was old enough to hold a rasp. Michaela Dempsey, my girlfriend, is twenty-eight, and she's worked as a housekeeper at the bathhouse for six years. That's the bathhouse where the reception was happening, which is why my day was about to get weird.

I pulled my truck into the back lot of the place at eleven forty, dodging a row of parked sedans and one enormous floral wreath somebody was wrestling through the front door. The hot springs were steaming away like always, and the courtyard smelled like eucalyptus and cut grass. Kinda nice, honestly, if you ignored the whole reason everyone was there.

"Edwin!" Michaela met me at the kitchen door before I could even grab my toolbox. She had flour on her cheek and a look on her face I recognized from two years of dating. It was her "I need help but I can't stop moving long enough to say so" look.

"Hey, babe. What's going on?"

"So much. Come here, you have to see this." She grabbed my sleeve and hauled me into the kitchen.

The kitchen was huge, old, all copper pots and tile counters. And in the middle of the biggest counter sat a stone crock as big as a fire hydrant, with a cloth draped over it.

"Okay. That's a big crock," I said.

"It's her sourdough. Marjorie's starter. Noel found it in the back pantry when they were sorting her things, and it's still alive, Edwin! After all this time, it's still alive!" She lifted the cloth and there it was, this bubbling, sour-smelling grayish mess that had apparently survived longer than most marriages.

"Huh. That's kinda amazing, actually."

"It's fifty years old. She started it the year she opened the place." Michaela was doing that thing where she talks faster when she's excited, hands going everywhere. "And Noel wants to just, what, throw it out? With everything else?"

"Whoa, hold on. Back up. Noel's clearing out the whole place?"

She stopped with her hand halfway to the flour bin. "You didn't hear?"

"Heard what? I've been up to my elbows in horses since seven."

Michaela bit her lip. "Noel's selling the bathhouse. He told the family this morning, before the service even. The whole thing. Pools, hall, the lot."

I set my toolbox down slow. "Michaela. That's your job."

"I know."

"That's six years of your life."

"I know, Edwin." She turned back to the counter and started kneading dough she'd clearly already kneaded twice. That's what she does when she's upset. Bakes. I once watched her make eleven loaves the week her cat got sick.

"Hey." I crossed the kitchen and put a hand on her shoulder. "Look at me."

She looked. Her eyes were doing that shiny thing.

"You're the best housekeeper that place has ever had. Everybody knows it. Whoever buys it is gonna want to keep you on, and if they don't, well, you're gonna have about nine other offers by Friday, because half the town knows how good you are."

"You're just saying that because you love me."

"Both things can be true," I said, and I kissed her, quick, right on the floury cheek. "Is this okay? You've got dough hands."

She laughed, sorta wet around the edges. "It's okay. Thank you." Then she wiped her eyes with her wrist and pointed a floury finger at me. "Now. Why is there a horse in the courtyard?"

"Because Mrs. Te Rangi's daughter brought her mare to the reception. Don't ask me why, they just did, and it threw a shoe in the trailer, and I'm apparently the only farrier in the district who answers his phone on a Saturday."

"You're shoeing a horse at a funeral reception?"

"I'm gonna shoe a horse at a funeral reception, yes."

Michaela put both hands over her face. "Of course you are. Marjorie would've loved that, you know. She loved anything ridiculous."

* * *

Marjorie Rodriguez was seventy-two when she died, which everyone agreed was too soon, except that she'd run that bathhouse for fifty years and everyone also agreed she'd earned a rest. She'd been widowed since she was fifty-five, never remarried, and basically raised the whole town's opinion of hot springs from "sulfur pond" to "destination." Noel Blackwood, her son, was thirty-four, never married, and had moved back to town when he was twenty-eight to help her run the place. Everybody figured he'd inherit it and keep it going.

Instead he stood up at the service and said he was selling.

So when I led the mare out into the courtyard at half past noon, hoof knife in my apron pocket, I got more than a few looks. One of Marjorie's old friends, a tiny woman in a giant hat, actually applauded.

"Marjorie would have laughed herself sick," the hat lady said.

"That's what I'm told, ma'am." I tied the mare to the rail and got to work, and let me tell you, shoeing a horse while forty mourners eat finger sandwiches twenty feet away is a unique experience. The mare was good about it, though. Better behaved than half the guests, honestly.

Every few minutes I'd glance through the open French doors into the hall, where Michaela was running the reception like a general. She'd put on her work face, all crisp apron and efficient nods, but I could see the strain in her shoulders. Every so often Noel would appear at her elbow, say something, and her jaw would go tight.

Around two o'clock Noel himself wandered out to the courtyard, black suit, hands in his pockets, looking at the steam rising off the springs like it owed him money.

"Edwin, right? You do the farrier work for the stables up the road."

"That's me." I didn't look up from the hoof. "Sorry about your mum. She was a fixture around here."

"Yeah. She was." He watched the mare stamp once. "You know, she shod her own draught horses once, back in the day. Just to prove she could."

"That doesn't surprise me one bit."

He was quiet a minute. "I'm sorry about the job thing. I know Michaela's upset."

I set the hammer down and straightened up, because that felt like a moment that needed eye contact. "Noel, no offense, but it's not really my place to say."

"Say it anyway."

"Fine. That place is her whole life. Fifty years of your mum's work, six years of Michaela's. And that sourdough starter in the pantry is older than either of us. You're selling a building. Other people are losing a home."

He rubbed his jaw. "Fair."

"Also your mother's starter is still alive and Michaela will fight you over it, and I've seen her determined, so I'd pick your battles."

That actually got a laugh out of him, short and surprised. "She's serious about the crock?"

"Deadly."

"Okay. Well. The crock can stay with the house. Whatever happens." He looked back toward the hall, where Michaela was refilling a tea urn. "I should go say something to her."

"Probably shouldn't interrupt her mid-refill," I said, and went back to the hoof.

The mare took another twenty minutes, and by the time I was done, the reception was winding down. Mrs. Te Rangi paid me cash, apologized twice, and drove off with her remarkably well-shod mare. The hat lady waved goodbye to me like we were old friends.

I found Michaela in the kitchen again, alone this time, sitting on the counter with her legs swinging and a cup of tea going cold beside her.

"Hey, you," I said.

"Hey, yourself. Horse all done?"

"Done and dapper. You look wrecked."

"Gee, thanks." She laughed anyway. "It's been a day. Noel talked to me. He says the sale might take months, and there's a chance the buyer keeps staff on, and, well. Might be okay. Might not."

I stepped between her knees and put my hands on the counter on either side of her. "Might be okay."

"Might not," she said, but she was smiling a little now. Then she looked past my shoulder at the big crock, still bubbling away under its cloth. "Edwin. What if I kept it? The starter. Whatever happens to the building, what if the starter came home with me? Just to my flat, until things settle?"

"Home with you, huh?" I'd been thinking about asking her to move in for about four months and hadn't found the words yet, and I could feel them sitting right behind my teeth. Not now, I thought. Not at a funeral.

"I mean, hypothetically," she said, going pink.

"My place has more room," I said. "Saddle rack, shoeing forge, half a garden. Kinda a lot of counter space, actually."

"Stop it, you're doing that on purpose."

"Am I?" I leaned in. "Can I kiss you properly? The cheek thing earlier doesn't count."

"Yes, you dork," she said, and I did, and it was good, flour and all.

Then the kitchen door banged open and a woman in a giant hat said, "There you two are. The family's doing speeches in the hall."

Michaela sighed against my mouth. "Duty calls."

"To be continued," I said, and helped her down off the counter, and we went out to face the speeches together.

The speeches went about how you'd expect. Noel stood up first, and he did fine, actually. He said his mum ran the bathhouse for fifty years and never once missed a Saturday open, and that she was widowed at fifty-five and never looked back, and everybody nodded and blew their noses. Then a cousin got up. Big fella, red face, introduced himself as Dwayne, and I gathered he was the money-minded branch of the family.

"So while we're all here," Dwayne said, rapping his glass with a spoon, "I've got figures on the property. Noel, we should talk timelines, mate. Market won't wait."

Michaela's hand found mine under the table and squeezed. Here we go, I thought.

"Dwayne, not today," Noel said. "It's Mum's funeral."

"It's a business asset, Noel. She'd have wanted it moved quick. I've had a valuer through already."

"You had a valuer through already? Before she was even in the ground?"

Michaela stood up so fast her chair screeched. "Excuse me, sorry, everyone. Can I just say something?" She didn't really wait for permission. "There's tea and there's shortbread, and there is, thanks to Marjorie, a sourdough starter in that kitchen that has been alive for fifty years. Fifty. Longer than every single person in this room has been alive except Mrs. Te Rangi, who I see nodding. Maybe we talk about that instead of timelines?"

"Who is this woman?" Dwayne said, not quietly.

"Michaela. I've housekept this place six years, and Marjorie taught me that starter myself, and if you say the word timeline again during her eulogy tea I'm going to feed you to it."

Well! The hall went dead quiet, and then Mrs. Te Rangi started laughing, and then everybody did, and even Noel cracked a smile. Dwayne sat down looking like someone who'd been handed a hot pan with no cloth would look.

Michaela, being Michaela, immediately turned it into something useful. "Noel, Dwayne, come to the kitchen with me. Both of you. Right now. Family meeting, baking edition."

She grabbed my sleeve and dragged me along too, which I didn't argue with. In the kitchen she pulled the cloth off the crock and there it was, bubbling away, that sour smell like old apples and wet stone. Kinda amazing, honestly. It looked a little tired after a week without Marjorie's hands on it, but it was alive all right.

"Look at it," Michaela said. "Fifty years old. She started it the year she opened. Do you know what she fed it? Plain flour and water, same as always. She'd say, Michaela, love, a starter doesn't need fancy, it needs steady. Every day. Same time. That's the whole secret."

I caught Noel looking at Michaela with an expression I recognized, because I'd probably worn it myself a hundred times. Sort of a this-person-is-onto-something look.

"Steady," he said.

"Steady," she agreed, and she rolled her sleeves and measured out flour with her hands, no cups, the way Marjorie showed her. "You want to learn? Dwayne, you too. Come here. Both hands in, this is a two-person job with a crock this size."

"Me?" Dwayne said. "I don't bake."

"You're gonna learn today. Everyone who has an opinion about this building's future puts their hands in Marjorie's crock. House rule as of right now."

And I'll be jiggered if Dwayne didn't roll up his sleeves and stick his hands in warm flour paste with the rest of us. Four adults around a stone crock as big as a fire hydrant, stirring, while Michaela talked about hydration ratios like she was reading scripture.

"So when do we bake?" Noel asked.

"You feed it today, and since it's this strong we can mix a first dough from the feed and bake tonight. Sourdough doesn't rush for anybody, but this one's old enough to know what it's doing." She looked at Noel over the crock. "You said the sale might take months anyway. So there's time to do things properly."

"Michaela," Noel said slowly, "are you negotiating with me via bread?"

"I'm feeding your mother's starter, Noel. What you do while it rises is your business."

* * *