Table of ContentsEpisode 1 · 2 episodes availableIn this Season · StitchworksReading order
About this story
Bonnie Marr has cooked Dunmere's harvest suppers for years. She knows who needs an extra portion, whose joints are too stiff to manage a casserole lid, and who will claim to have eaten rather than ask for help. This October, somebody else appears to be looking after them. Gutters are cleared overnight. Laundry folds itself. Stoneware bowls arrive on the doorstep with a little sheaf of wheat tied to each handle.
Then a neighbor's door is sewn shut. The village's scarecrows are facing the houses instead of the fields. And the woman who fed them the first supper has made a promise she no longer knows how to withdraw.
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Bonnie had the roasting tray halfway out of the oven when Idris said he wasn't taking the delivery list unless she took the note off the top of it. She couldn't see which note he meant. Steam clouded her glasses, the oven door was against her shin, and the tray had developed a shallow bend that sent hot pumpkin juice toward her wrist whenever she tried to straighten it.
“Give me the folded towel, would you? The blue one. Not that, that's Tamsin's.”
Idris passed her the towel without taking his eyes off the paper. She caught the low end of the tray and carried it to the stove, where one wedge of pumpkin slid into another with a soft, collapsing sound. Behind them, Tamsin lifted a painted strip of cloth out of the way just before Bonnie's elbow reached it.
“It was dry enough to move yesterday,” they said. “Then someone put a pan of water underneath it. I think the bats may have steamed.”
“You can hang it in the back room.” Bonnie peeled off her oven gloves. “What's wrong with the list?”
Idris read the note aloud. “‘Don't lift the blue carrier. Bonnie will do the heavy ones.’ I can see how you got there, but you've given me four addresses and then taken away the thing I need to carry the food in.”
She looked at his hands before she could stop herself. They were resting on the table, fingers slightly curled, the knuckles swollen enough that he had left his rings at home. He noticed her looking. He usually did.
“That isn't the same as asking,” he said. “You can ask me. I'll tell you what I can manage this morning, and if it's less after the first house, I'll tell you that as well.”
Bonnie took the note from the clip. She had put a shopping list on the reverse and didn't want to throw it out. Folding it into her hall apron pocket made the moment last longer than it needed to.
“All right. Can you carry the small bags if I drive and take the carrier?”
“Yes. That's what I was going to suggest, before the written instructions arrived.” He moved his hand away from the list. “You don't have to come up every path with me, though. Some people like to say a thing before you start looking at their fridge.”
Tamsin made a sound behind the banner and pretended it was a cough. Bonnie turned toward them, but the black bats on the cloth had run into gray streaks, and the sight of somebody else's spoiled morning took the edge off her annoyance.
“There's a dry rack in the store cupboard. I'll fetch it once this is blended.”
“I can get it. Show me which key.”
She gave them the key and returned to the soup. It was thick enough to leave a track behind the spoon. She added stock a little at a time, listening to the rain against the serving-hatch window. By Thursday there would be sixty people wanting supper in the hall, unless the weather put off the people who came from farther out. There were already twenty-three names for today's meal collection. She had made enough for thirty because some of the people who hadn't written their names down would turn up at the back steps and ask whether anything was left.
The white stoneware bowls should have been on the pine dresser, stacked in two short towers with the large mixing bowl below. In their place stood the wooden tray Yvette had used to take them away. Bonnie had washed the dresser twice while it was empty. The patch where the mixing bowl usually sat had faded less than the rest, leaving a pale circle that annoyed her whenever she passed it.
“Did Yvette bring a bag with that?” she asked.
Idris followed her glance. “Only the tray, as far as I saw. Yesterday afternoon, wasn't it? She put it in here while you were out.”
“She took the bowls yesterday afternoon. The tray was still here this morning.”
“Then I've put two visits together. She was wearing the same coat.”
Bonnie counted the tubs on the draining board. Plastic would do for deliveries, but she disliked serving a supper in it. The stoneware bowls were older than her. There were eight small ones and the large one she used for bread dough, all white with green rims. None quite matched the others anymore. Years of washing and knocks against the sink had marked them in ways she knew without thinking.
Yvette had wanted them for an old-fashioned harvest display at Kitt's press house. She had said she would bring them back before Bonnie needed them. Bonnie had said that was fine, though she had wanted to explain that she needed them whenever she was cooking, which was most of the time the hall was open.
She tasted the soup and added pepper. There would be time to chase Yvette after the deliveries. The bowls couldn't have gone far.
By the time they loaded the car, the rain had thinned to a cold mist. Idris took the small bags from her one at a time, putting them where he wanted them rather than where she had expected them to go. She waited beside the open hatch and tried not to reach past him. Tamsin came out carrying the banner rack, decided against letting it get wet, and went back in without asking either of them to make the decision.
At the bottom of Button Lane, Helen was pushing the shop's awning up with a broom handle. The fabric sagged with water. Idris lowered his window to warn her before it spilled, and she stepped clear with a look that said she had already discovered that risk once today. Across the road, wet leaves had banked against the bridge parapet. The stream below was brown and quick, carrying a white scrap of something that caught on a branch and turned in the current.
Len's house was just beyond the bridge, squeezed between the gravel path and a larger house whose owners only came for summer. His front gate stood open. Bonnie pulled in as far as she could without blocking the path, and Idris spent a moment choosing which bag he wanted.
“Leave the soup in the carrier until he answers,” she said. “I've put the lid separately in his bag. The clips on these new tubs are stiff.”
“I know how he opens a tub, Bonnie. I've seen the knife he uses, and I think we'd both rather not see it again.”
He got out carefully, using the door rather than her offered arm. She waited in the car until Len appeared. It took longer than usual. Through the screen door she could see his white hair and the pale shape of his face, but he seemed to be speaking before Idris had knocked.
Bonnie lifted the carrier out and joined them. Len had his cricket jumper on beneath a fleece vest, with one side of the vest caught under the hem. He was pointing up at the gutter.
“I was going to ring you. Whoever it was has done the back as well. You can't see it from here, but there's nothing coming down the wall anymore.”
Bonnie looked at Idris. He shook his head slightly.
“Ruben might have been round,” she said. “He was making a list of jobs before the weather got worse.”
“It wasn't him. I rang him this morning to say thank you, and he said he'd still got my ladder in his van. He thought it was a joke. Not in an unkind way, but I could hear him trying to work out what I meant.”
There had been a thick clot of leaves beneath the gutter outlet on Bonnie's last visit. She remembered offering to call somebody about it and Len saying he had already called, which might or might not have been true. Now the gutter was clear enough for her to see the little metal joint at the corner. The ground below was clean. No leaves, no muddy ladder marks, no fresh scuff on the fence where somebody would have rested an arm.
“Perhaps one of the festival volunteers,” she said. “There are people doing the displays all along here.”
Len nodded toward his gate. “They've mended that too. It doesn't catch now. You'd think they'd have knocked, but I suppose I might not have heard if I was in the back.”
Bonnie set the carrier on the bench by the door. The bench was dry under the small porch roof, except for a white bowl sitting near the end. Its inside shone with a little pool of rainwater. She recognized the green rim, and the chip beneath it shaped like a pale thumbnail.
“Oh, that's one of ours. Did Yvette bring you something?”
Len turned with the slow surprise of somebody who had forgotten an object only a moment after putting it down.
“I thought you did. There was bread in it last night. I didn't have any, because I'd already eaten, but I brought it in so the birds wouldn't get it. I was going to ask you about it today.”
“I didn't come this way yesterday evening.”
“Then it must have been Yvette.” He drew his vest straight. “She knows I like the crust, and there were two ends in it. I was quite pleased, actually. I meant to have them with breakfast.”
“Did you?” Idris asked.
Len looked down at the bowl again. “No. I thought I'd put them somewhere. There was a plate on the side, but that was empty too. I've probably eaten them and forgotten. You know how you do a thing while you're listening to the radio.”
Bonnie did know, but the familiar explanation did not quite fit the care with which he was trying to supply it. She picked up the bowl. The underside was gritty. A dark smear lay across the base, and something narrow scratched her thumb when she turned it over.
A little loop of wheat had been tied through the handle. Not the broad stalks used in the festival displays, but a thin, pale twist with a few grains still clinging to one end. The knot was hard and damp. She pulled at it with her fingernail, then stopped when Len shifted in the doorway.
“Come inside if you want to look at it. There's no point getting your hands wet.”
“We'll leave it here for now. I've got your soup, and Idris has the bread. I don't want to put a dirty bowl beside the clean tubs.”
She had not meant to sound as firm as she did. Len's expression closed a little, and she wished she could take the tone back without turning it into a discussion.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of furniture polish. That was new as well. Len usually kept a window open despite the weather, but the small kitchen panes were shut. The tabletop had been cleared except for the radio and a saucer holding his keys. A dishcloth lay folded beside the sink, with its corners tucked under so neatly that Bonnie looked at Len again.
“You've been busy.”
“Not especially. I had a better afternoon yesterday.” He reached for the bag Idris offered. “I don't mind having someone in to help now and then. I just don't like not knowing who's been.”
Bonnie paused with the soup tub in her hands. She had been about to ask when he had last slept properly, and whether he wanted her to look in the fridge. Idris was watching her from the hall.
“I'll ask Yvette,” she said. “She borrowed the bowls, so she ought to know where that one went. If she's organized volunteers, she should have told you who was coming.”
Len looked relieved. “That's all I meant. I'm grateful about the gutter. I don't want her thinking I'm complaining.”
She put the soup where he asked her to put it. The lid went beside it, loose, with the bread bag within reach. Idris stayed to talk about a piano Len had once tuned for the school. Bonnie could hear them from the porch while she wiped the underside of the bowl with a tissue from her pocket. The dirt came away in a greasy line. Beneath it the stoneware was unbroken, except for the old chip she already knew.
Beyond the gravel path, the allotment fence ran toward the orchard. Festival scarecrows had been attached at intervals along it. Most were cheerful enough in a bedraggled way: a woman in a purple raincoat holding a plastic watering can, a child-sized figure built from striped clothes, an overstuffed gardener with empty gloves hanging from its sleeves.
The gardener faced Len's house.
Bonnie was certain it had faced the road when she drove past the day before. People were meant to walk along and vote for the displays. Its hat brim had been pulled low, and the sackcloth face beneath it looked unfinished, as if whoever had painted the eyes had changed their mind halfway through.
She walked to the gate. The latch lifted easily. Len was right about that; it used to require a shove at the bottom while you pulled the handle up. Now the hinge sat level, and the screws looked dark with something wet. No new wood had been fitted. Bonnie closed it, opened it again, and found the motion unpleasantly smooth.
When Idris came out, he stopped beside her rather than stepping through.
“What are you looking at?”
“That one was turned the other way.”
He followed her gaze. “They may have moved it while they were working. You'd have to get past there to clear the back gutter.”
There was no useful reason to argue. Somebody had mended a gate and cleaned a gutter. A woman Bonnie had known for years had borrowed some bowls. It would be ridiculous to turn those things into a problem because a damp decoration was facing the wrong direction.
She went back for the carrier and told Len she would ask about the bowl. He offered to wash it properly, and she said not to trouble himself, she would collect it tomorrow. This time she managed to make the words sound like a promise instead of an instruction.
As he pulled the screen door toward him, it caught halfway. He leaned on it, then frowned at the hinge.
“It was doing that earlier. Never had trouble with this one before.”
Bonnie set the carrier down and crouched. A pale strand lay across the gap near the bottom hinge. She thought it was packing material blown in from the allotments. When she pinched it, the dry edge pressed into her skin.
“Hold it there a moment. You've got something caught.”
Len kept his hand on the door. Bonnie pulled gently, expecting the strand to come away with a leaf or a bit of the old weather strip. It tightened instead. Through the narrow gap she saw another pale line draw itself straight, disappearing toward the dark space under his kitchen cabinet.
She let go. The strand stayed taut. For a moment nobody moved, and she could hear the radio inside Len's house, the announcer finishing a sentence that she had not heard the beginning of.
“Don't push it shut yet,” she told him. She put her own hand beside his on the frame and held the door where it was while Idris came back up the path.Paste your opening installment here to see it in the Lantern reader.
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