I stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene. The thumping was the sound of filing cabinet drawers being slammed shut. Kristen was in the act of flinging more papers up into the air and letting them flutter down, adding to the glorious mess already on the floor.

Idly, I wondered who was going to clean it all. Certainly not Kristen herself, who hadn’t seen her feet in weeks. Bending over to pick things up off the floor was a physical impossibility for her.

“This is you taking it easy?” I asked.

Kristen whipped her head around, flinging her long blond braid over one shoulder as she did so, and glared at me. “You weren’t supposed to see this. I told Misty and Harvey to keep you out.”

“Looks like you’re going to have to fire them again.”

“Already fired them three times today,” she said.

“Is that a new record?” I asked.

She grinned. “Not even close. Best ever was two summers ago. Remember? Ninety degrees out and the air-conditioning broke. I think I fired everyone ten times that day. Except for me, and that was twelve.”

I laughed and was reminded once again how it was that the temperamental, no-holds-barred, tongue-lashing-inclined Kristen had a staff that came back to Three Seasons year after year, like migratory birds. She was hard on them, but harder on herself, and freely admitted when she was wrong. It all just worked.

“Are you purging your files because the IRS is coming after you?”

Kristen snorted. “I hire accountants to keep me out of that kind of trouble. No, I was looking for an idea I know I wrote down for stuffed whitefish. It’s filed here. Somewhere.” She said the last word in a grim sort of way, and I knew she wasn’t going to rest until she found what she was looking for.

“Can I help?”

“Do you know the difference between a good recipe idea and a stupid one?”

My eyebrows went up. “Of course not.”

“Didn’t want to assume,” she said, turning her attention back to the open file drawer. “So, thanks, but no. I pay people to clean up after me. You don’t need to . . . oh, hey. I remember this.”

I peered over her shoulder. She was holding a plain white paper napkin with her handwriting scribbled all over. Chocolate shavings, cream cheese frosting, powdered sugar, maple syrup. Though I was pretty sure that didn’t have anything to do with whitefish, you never knew with Kristen. “Anything I’d like?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, probably. It’s a red velvet beignet I was working on. Never did get the maple flavor right.” She waddled over to her desk, sat heavily, reached for a pad of paper and a pen, started writing, and was mentally gone from the current time and space.

“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll see you when the baby graduates kindergarten.”