Eleanor dropped her hands from her face.
“Oh, Claire. I’m so sorry.”
And then the words came pouring out of her, tumbling over each other, faster than I’d ever heard my careful, quiet mother-in-law talk in my life.
“E-14 is einkorn. It’s an ancient wheat. The oldest wheat there is. I get it from a little stone mill in Vermont. And R-07 isn’t flour, exactly. That one’s dried rye starter. I’ve been feeding that starter since 1987. Thirty-nine years. My mother gave me the first spoonful of it, and her mother gave it to her. And B-22 is a buckwheat blend, I’ve never tried buckwheat before, it’s my first attempt…”
“Mom,” Thomas said. “Slow down.”
“S-03 is spelt. W-19 is a white whole wheat from a farm in Washington County. The tan ones are emmer. The gray ones are a rye from a little place over near Salem.”
“The notebook?” I asked weakly.
“My feeding schedule. For the starters. You have to feed them. Every day. Sometimes twice a day. Flour and water. The ratios are how much of each. If you skip them, they die.” She looked at the notebook on the floor like it was a sick child. “I had four of them going in here. In jars. In the closet. Where it’s warm.”
“And the map?”
“The mills,” she whispered. “The little mills. And the farms that grow old grains. All around here. There are so many of them, Claire, you’d never believe it. Some of them are just one family with one stone. I’d never been to any of them. When we came to stay with you, I realized they were all so close. So every Saturday I had Harold drive me to one.”
“Your errands,” I said.
“My errands.”
“J.J. Mill. Saturday. Nine a.m. Bring a thank-you card.”
She smiled a little through her tears. “John James Hollis. He’s eighty-six. He’s run a stone mill outside Greenwich for fifty years. He gave me two pounds of his heritage red fife for free, because I was the first person in months who drove out just to talk to him about it. I owe him a thank-you card. I keep forgetting.”
“And the farmers’ market?”
“There’s a baker there who sells sourdough on Saturdays. I wanted to ask her about her starter. I never worked up the nerve.”
“And the humming?” I said.
Eleanor turned bright pink all over again.
“I talk to them,” she said. “The starters. While I feed them. I hum to them. I know it’s silly. They’re like… little pets.”
Behind me, Thomas made a sound. Half laugh. Half deep, deep exhale.
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