Free Stones for Bread by Christa Parrish Page A

something new?”
    “What’s chev-ree?” she asks.
    “Goat cheese.” He doesn’t correct her pronunciation.
    “Yucky. No way.”
    “Well, then maybe the one there, with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.”
    “The chocolate, Daddy. It’s right there. And there’s only one left.”
    There’s always one left. I keep it aside, just for her, each time I make it.
    Seamus hmm s loudly, pretends to deeply contemplate her words while stroking his beard. “I don’t know. I heard a little girl in Montpelier turned all sweet and melty because she ate too much chocolate bread.”
    Cecelia giggles. “You did not.”
    “True, true.”
    “Please, please, please?”
    “Aren’t you sick of it?”
    She shakes her head, pigtails slapping her face.
    “Alrighty then. I suppose we can all be a little sweeter. One chocolate bread. Thank you much, Miss Liesl.”
    I bag the loaf and give it to Cecelia. “And you?”
    “Oh no. We’re good,” Seamus says, taking a step back from the counter. “We can’t take any more from you.”
    “I told you, it was a slow day. There’s too much left, and it will just be donated. So pick.”
    He chooses a cinnamon raisin. I add a whole wheat sandwich loaf. He protests, hand fumbling to the back of his pants for his wallet, but I tell them to go. Seamus thanks me again, pinching both breads between his elbow and ribs. With his other hand, he cups the back of Cecelia’s neck, guiding her through the tables andout the door. They stand on the curb, and I hear his blurry words reminding her to look both ways. He turns her head left, right, left, right, fast enough she begins to laugh. Then they stampede across the street to his truck, and he boosts her into the driver’s side before climbing in after her.
    I want to call my father.
    In the kitchen, Tee and Gretchen argue. Tee brandishes a ladle, stabbing it toward Gretchen with each angry word. “What on earth?” I ask.
    “I have no clue,” Gretchen says.
    Tee bites her lip. “She insult my food.”
    “I didn’t. No one ordered her silly ankle soup today—”
    “Solyanka.”
    “—whatever it is. No one wanted it because they have no clue what’s in it. Or they didn’t want to look like fools trying to pronounce it. I just told her to call it something different, like summer sausage stew or something.”
    “It is Ukrainian solyanka.” Tee shouts this and flings her spoon into the pans on the counter. Her nose reddens, her glasses steaming with tears. “Only that. Only.”
    And she goes, without cleaning the stove, without putting away the food. Gretchen looks at me and shrugs. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Liesl. I was trying to help.”
    “It’s fine. She . . . she’s Tee.”
    “I can call her tonight. Apologize.”
    “Leave it alone. She’ll be back in the morning, her normal prickly self.”
    We work for some time, falling into our rhythm, kneading and mixing and shaping and staying out of one another’s way. Gretchen offers to wash Tee’s pots before she leaves, but I send her home and do it myself, spending extra time making the stainless steel shine and storing the leftover soup in the cooler for tomorrow.
    Then, upstairs, before changing my clothes or eating, I dial my father.
    I don’t expect him to answer. Most of the time he doesn’t, ignoring the ringing and letting the machine handle it, sometimes listening to his messages, occasionally returning them. More than once I’ve had to contact old Mrs. Grimm, the neighbor, asking her to knock on my father’s door and tell him to call me. She doesn’t mind; she finds him charming and likes an excuse to make conversation. And I have to not mind, because when it comes to telephones, I do the exact same thing.
    But tonight he picks up.
    “Dad, it’s me.”
    “Liesl, darling heart, how are you?”
    He still has a bit of brogue left in him, passed on from immigrant parents, though he was born in Brooklyn. There have been times he’s worked to snip it out of his