Chapter 18 of 18For the Judging Table

The entry form for the Hazelnut Festival confectionary competition lay on the marble slab beneath the tin of cocoa nibs, and its signature line was still empty. Thea Quinn had until the festival office closed to file it, which meant putting Margot Dubois's praline into the town's official record with her own name written underneath. Thirty-five dollars, nonrefundable, and no way to take any of it back.

The county tax notice was still taped above the register where she couldn't miss it.

Fina came through from the front with the mail and a coffee she'd picked up at The Daily Grind, and she set the cup where Thea could reach it without looking.

"Still blank?"

"Still blank."

"You've been standing over that page since I unlocked the door."

"The praline won't make itself."

"It won't make itself while you stare at it, either." Fina leaned over the ledger and put her chin near the spine. "Which recipe is it?"

"The hazelnut praline. The one with the flower in the corner."

"They all have the flower in the corner."

"This one has three petals filled in. The rest have two."

"That means something?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. She wrote these notes for herself, not for us."

Thea opened the ledger. The spine cracked, and what came up was brown sugar and dust and a thread of orange peel, which was how the whole back room smelled once the rain quit.

She fetched the hazelnuts from the cooler, the ones Ben had brought down from the farm ten miles out, small and blunt-tipped and heavier than they looked, and she spread them on a sheet pan and let the oven pull the skins loose.

"Smells like somebody's barn in here," Fina said.

"Toasted hazelnut. It's the skins coming off."

"You're rubbing them one at a time?"

"One handful at a time. It's the only way to keep them whole."

"Then hand me a towel and stop hogging the pan."

Thea passed her a dish towel and they worked side by side, the skins coming off in papery curls, until Thea's fingertips shone.

"How many do we need?"

"Every last one of them."

The sugar went into a dry pan, and Thea didn't stir it. She watched it slide and slump and finally run liquid at the edges, tilting the pan to walk the clear parts onto the hot spots, and Fina watched without saying anything.

"You're not stirring that."

"Stir it and it seizes."

"Seizes how?"

"Crystals climb up the sides and you get grit in the caramel. Margot underlined that part."

When the caramel came to the color of an old penny, Thea pulled it off the heat and stirred in the brown butter, then the cream, and the pan hissed and climbed.

"Now the nuts," she said.

"All of them?"

"All of them."

Fina tipped the whole bowl in and stepped back from the steam.

Thea poured the praline onto the marble and let it set, then broke it into shards and fed the shards through the grinder until they went from sand to paste to something glossy enough to hold a light. She pressed the paste across the marble with the heel of her hand and worked in a pinch of salt to keep the sugar honest, which was the note waiting at the bottom of the page.

"Salt? In a candy?"

"It's in the recipe. Brown ink, bottom of the sheet."

"Has anybody ever told you that you follow those notes like they're scripture?"

"Not out loud."

Then she tempered the dark chocolate, taking it thick and thin and thick again with the scraper, testing it against her lip, and it set with a snap and a shine.

"Taste it," she said.

Fina chewed slowly and then stopped chewing altogether. "Oh. Wow."

"Right?"

"It's nuts, and it's burnt sugar, and then — what's the third thing?"

"Cream. It comes in late on purpose."

"It comes in late and stays." Fina wiped her thumb on her apron. "That's the one. That's the festival one."

The back door rattled and Ben Coleman came in sideways with a canvas sack, boots wet to the ankle.

"Morning, Ben. Sit down, I'll get you coffee."

"Can't stay."

He set the sack on the counter, and water ran off the canvas onto the marble.

"These are smaller than the last batch."

"Rain came early. Nuts don't care for rain."

"Will you have enough for Saturday?"

"Got enough for you."

"That's not the same as an answer."

He looked past her at the tray of truffles on the rack and shrugged, and then he picked up his sack and went back out into the wet, and the door banged behind him.

Simon called while the truffles were setting.

"Did you file?"

"Not yet."

"Then write the origin line carefully. The competition wants provenance on any recipe that isn't your own."

"I'm writing Margot's name."

His chair creaked, and then he spoke again. "The board will ask you to prove it."

"Let them ask."

"Annelise sat on that committee for a decade. People remember her."

"I'm counting on it."

After she hung up, Thea turned back to the ledger to check the salt note against the page, and three words sat in the margin that she had skimmed past as a shopping list: for the judging table. Underneath, smaller, in the same brown ink: she'll hate it.

She set the ledger down flat.

"Fina."

"Yeah?"

"Come here and look at this."

Fina came over, read it with her lips moving, the habit she had with every recipe. "For the judging table. She'll hate it." She looked up. "She was going to enter."

"She wrote it beside the recipe she meant to enter with."

"So she wasn't hiding."

"Whatever else she was, she wasn't hiding this."

"Everybody in this town says she was a quiet soul who never wanted to be seen."

"Eleanor said she avoided crowds. That's not the same as not wanting to be judged." Thea ran her thumb along the words. "She meant to walk into that tent, put her work on the table, and let the whole town taste it."

Fina looked at the empty signature line, then at Thea. "Are you sure?"

"No."

Fina waited.

"That's not a no."

Thea picked up the pen and filled in the shop's name and address, and where the form asked for recipe origin she printed Margot Dubois in block letters and signed her own name underneath.

"Festival office closes at four. If we're doing this, we're doing it today."

Fina pulled her jacket off the hook. "If they ask me who she is?"

"Tell them the truth. She wrote the recipe."

Fina took the form and went out into the rain, and Thea stood in the kitchen with the praline tray in front of her and no way left to pretend the ledger was only hers.

Fina came back with a wet collar and a stamped receipt, which she laid on the marble where the form had been.

"The clerk looked at the origin line a long time, then went and got somebody from the back."

"What did they say?"

"Nothing. She wrote something on the back and asked if you'd be at the tent Saturday morning."

Fina turned the receipt over. On the back, in cramped handwriting, was a name and a phone number.

"Who is that?"

"I don't know."

Thea folded the receipt and tucked it into the ledger, between Margot's praline and the blank pages where the other statements were still waiting.