“Can I eat one?” I laughed. “Is that rude? You can never find sour cherries at the store.”

“Go ahead, honey,” Ruth Shipley said.

I popped one in my mouth, and it burst forth with a wonderful sour fruitiness. “Fantastic.” The flavor filled me with ideas. I wanted to make chutney from these cherries. Or a gin cocktail. Or a tart. “Damn. I always wanted to live somewhere where there were fruit trees.”

May Shipley laughed. “All we’ve got are fruit trees. Twenty thousand of them.”

“Twenty…thousand?”

“That’s right. And that’s not counting Griff’s experimental crops.”

It was hard to even form a mental picture of twenty-thousand trees. Humming to myself, I picked up the paring knife and began to pit the rest of the cherries in the bowl. Knife work was soothing to me. Some people knitted. Some did yoga. I liked to cut things.

A few minutes later I had a tidy pile of pitted fruit. “I suppose you have a compost can for the pits and stems?”

Ruth Shipley looked up from her own work. “That didn’t take you but a minute.”

“Cooking is the only thing I’m good at.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. The compost can is there beside the coffee maker.”

I dumped the pits and then washed my blood-red fingers.

“May!” Ruth called to her older daughter. “Can you find the barbecue sauce in the refrigerator? We need to heat it up. Then we can eat.”

“Sure!”

“Um…” Dylan mumbled in that sullen teenage way. “Didn’t know you still needed that.”

“Dylan Gerard Shipley! Did you finish my sauce and not tell me? Now lunch is going to be late! I can’t serve brisket without barbecue sauce!”

Aw. The younger Shipley brother hung his head. He was a thinner, gawkier Griffin.

I felt bad that he’d been shamed in front of strangers. “I’ll whip up another batch if you need it,” I offered.

Ruth was still staring at her son with a laser gaze, and I was pretty sure the teenager would have been incinerated if looks could kill. “Thank you, honey,” she said to me. “I’d love that. There’s an onion there”—she indicated a bowl on the prep table—“and you can use the same cutting board.”

Yay, a task! When you’ve been told all your life that you’re quite useless, whipping up a little barbecue sauce is a good time. I grabbed the onion and went to town. “Ooh, garlic scapes,” I said, reaching for the green shoots. “I never find these, either.” A quick mince had them falling into tiny discs on the cutting board.

“Yikes,” Daphne gasped, watching my knife move so fast it blurred. “How are you not missing a finger?”

“Still have all ten, and none have had to be surgically reattached. But the day ain’t over yet.”

As she giggled, the kitchen door opened and Griff Shipley filled the opening with his NFL-sized body. I’m ashamed to say that the rhythm of my knife faltered for just a moment. That chest beneath that tight T-shirt just did things to me.