The Dairy Queen's Second Chance
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Laurie Batzel
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CHAPTER ONE
WHEN MOST PEOPLE talked about their babies, they usually mentioned whose eye color their offspring had inherited or how remarkably early they’d started babbling. Almost never did they boast about the rapid growth rate of their horns or the exceptionally soft quality of the hair coating their entire bodies.
BeeBee Long gave her water-buffalo calf a satisfied pat on its rump and rose from crouching on the barn floor. She was not most people, and that was more than fine by her.
“Good girl, Lady Rosamund,” she crooned. “Almost up to two hundred pounds. I’m so proud of you.”
A rustling in the hay behind her prompted BeeBee to turn and shake her head lovingly at the calf’s other mama. “No need for the sass, Countess Viola. You’re big and beautiful too.”
Light broke through the crevasses between the wooden beams of the old barn. That meant only one thing—sunrise on another beautiful day in Crystal Hill, New York. BeeBee pushed open the double doors of the cattle barn and walked through the straw-covered pen and into the middle of the vast grazing field until she reached the perfect viewing spot. Crystal Hill Dairy Farm was situated on two hundred and fifty acres of stream-fed valley below the foothills of the Adirondacks. Now that it was officially May, the hills had burst into a green so vibrant it was like looking through emerald-colored glasses. To see a beautiful sunset, you had to drive into town, take a right at Jane Street, the main drag, and park at Crystal Hill Lake. But the perfect sunrise? That was right here.
This morning, it was all hers.
After the sun’s rays crested over the tallest fir tree, she pivoted and headed for the main gate closing off the cow pasture dotted with hay bales and roaming Holstein cattle. The dairy farm had been in the family for years—passed down through the women, as their family was particularly prodigious on that account. BeeBee chuckled to herself. The overwhelmingly high ratio of women to men born in the town had caused many to speculate that there was something in the waters here. While mineral-rich enough to provide ideal nutrition for the grass that fed their cows, BeeBee scoffed at such nonsense. True, she was one of a set of four sisters, including a pair of twins, but there was nothing supernatural about Crystal Hill. It was simply another small town in upstate New York. Rural. Peaceful. Perfect.
And her home.
She closed the wooden gate behind her, padlocked it, then walked down the dirt road leading toward their family home. Every season on the farm had its own special magic, but spring was her favorite. New life cropped up everywhere she looked, from the pregnant heifers ambling slowly in the pen to the flower boxes bursting with blue cornflowers out of every window of their white two-story farmhouse. The vines climbing up the trellis sparkled with pink buds, and even the porch swing creaking in the breeze sung with extra vigor this beautiful morning.
Kicking up dust as she walked, it didn’t bother BeeBee in the slightest that her boots and jeans would be coated in yet another layer of dirt. Her older sister, Jacqueline, used to shake her head in dismay when they’d been kids each time BeeBee had materialized in the doorway looking as if she had bathed in mud. At twenty-five, Jackie was only one year older and had long since given up trying to refine her middle sister into anything other than a sentient dust cloud. The twins, who were seventeen, were so busy that they weren’t home enough to have opinions on BeeBee’s appearance.
Today was Sunday, however, so the dance school where Lindsay essentially lived these days was closed and the antique jewelry store where Katelyn worked wouldn’t open until eleven. That meant all her sisters would be home to hear the wonderful news.
Bursting through the door of their farmhouse, BeeBee pumped her fists into the air triumphantly. “It’s time!”
Jackie’s fingers stilled on the keyboard of her laptop. The back of her blond head tilted to one side as if stirred from deep contemplation and trying to figure out whether the words had come from the real world or the characters who lived in her head. Apparently having decided that BeeBee was indeed real and not one of her romance-novel creations, Jackie twisted in her chair and draped one arm around the back.
“Time for what?” she asked absently.
A trooping of feet from the staircase around the corner of the living room heralded the twins’ arrival.
Katelyn followed her mirror image with measured, careful steps, holding on to the railing and not looking up until she reached the landing. “Time to get a new watch,” she quipped, pushing her glasses up her nose with one finger to punctuate her joke.
“Did someone say breakfast time?” Lindsay asked, taking the last two steps in a graceful leap that sent her curly brown hair flying behind her.
BeeBee clapped her hand to her forehead and groaned. “No puns until at least nine in the morning,” she said, pointing at Katelyn before moving her finger in Lindsay’s ever-shifting direction. “And no breakfast either unless one of you can magically summon cinnamon rolls from Georgia’s.”
Jackie was a decent cook, although she had been known more than once to wander away from an overflowing pot of oatmeal because fleeting inspiration for another novel had struck. The twins could at least make toast without setting off the sprinkler system, which was more than anyone could say for BeeBee’s cooking skills. It had gotten to the point that Kit, as Katelyn was known, recorded the smoke detector on her phone and trolled BeeBee with the sound every time she offered to make anyone so much as a peanut butter sandwich.
“What time is it, BeeBee?” Jackie asked with a gentle smile.
“It’s time to order the water-buffalo sperm.” BeeBee folded her arms over her chest and waited for the others to share her excitement—or at the very least pretend.
Instead, the twins simply shrugged before padding into the kitchen across the room.
“I’m making coffee.” Lindsay, who everyone called Lou, illustrated the statement with a yawn. “Mom’s volunteering at the library this morning. Kit, can you check the board to see if she has a school-board meeting tonight?”
Kit doubled back and crossed the room to check the large white board calendar on the wall between the kitchen and the living room fireplace. Each location of activity was color coded. Their mom, a former English teacher who retired for approximately two weeks before she successfully ran for the hamlet’s board of supervisors, was like a rainbow with her various town committees and volunteer work. “Yeah, she’s got a meeting tonight. Dad’s doing a lecture on soil samples for the community college too, so we’re on our own for dinner.”
“I can pick up a pizza on my way home from the dance studio, but it will be late,” Lou called out over the hiss of the coffeepot.
“Speaking of cheese on pizza...” BeeBee raised her voice a notch in a desperate attempt to pivot the conversation. “I bet Lucas will be happy to hear that we’ll be adding more buffalo milk to his supply for Mama Renata’s. She said it’s really much better quality than the regular stuff.”
“How about a couple of hoagies from Big Joe’s?” Kit countered, completely ignoring BeeBee as she disappeared into the kitchen. “I have my metalworking—folk art class at the community center, then a shift at the antique store, though, so it will be late. I guess we can each do our own thing for dinner like usual.”
BeeBee crossed her arms and frowned. It was bad enough that everyone was so busy with their activities, including both their educator parents, that they couldn’t even find time to sit down for dinner together. But the complete lack of interest in a major development on their own family farm was simply unacceptable.
“But...but the buffalo.” BeeBee held out her hands helplessly. “Jackie, you write romance. This is kind of in your wheelhouse.”
Jackie pursed her lips. “I’m not sure how the progeny of water buffaloes from a farm in Italy is romantic.” Her blue eyes lit up. “Unless you’ve fallen in love with the breeder over the phone, and you’re going to fly to Tuscany to meet him in person.” She grabbed a small notebook from the table next to her computer and took the pen out of her bun to scribble something in it.
“Salvatore doesn’t speak a word of English, and he’s also one thousand years old,” BeeBee pointed out. She took off her boots at the doorway and put them on the stoop, then closed the door. “Guys, Lady Rosamund is close to maturation. She’s almost two. We can inseminate her and add to the herd. I really thought you guys would be more enthusiastic about this. I’m mad and disappointed.”
Jackie crossed the room and patted BeeBee on the arm. “I’m happy you’re happy about the buffalo cheese, sweetie.”
“You say it, but you don’t mean it,” BeeBee sulked, then jabbed her thumb at the patched front pocket on her plaid work shirt. “I always mean what I say.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Kit walked back into the living room and blew steam off the top of her mug. “And how’s that working for you?”
BeeBee sniffed. “Just fine, thank you. My life is perfect.”
“Was it perfect when Mrs. Van Ressler kicked you out of the B and B’s haunted house last Halloween because you said the scariest thing there was her late husband’s portrait?”
“It was a joke,” BeeBee protested, throwing her hands into the air. “Besides, everyone knows she hated him. She married him when she was, like, twenty and he was almost sixty. No judgment,” she added with a respectful nod of her head. “The dude was loaded. Do you know how many adorable water-buffalo babies I could buy with that kind of money?” The tingly anticipation spread through her chest once more at the image of a field full of regal water buffaloes wallowing in the streams behind their fields. There was nothing like it anywhere in the tristate area. They could become a hub for supplying high-end restaurants. Crystal Hill would become a destination for more than just the shimmering clear waters of its eponymous lake.
“That’s what we’re talking about,” Kit said, putting her coffee mug down on the end table between the couch and their dad’s ancient rocking chair. “Yes, everyone knows it. But we don’t say it out loud. It’s called being polite.”
Jackie silently picked up the mug and placed a coaster under it before turning back to face BeeBee. “Or like the last town hall meeting where you shot down Joe Kim’s idea for the deli platter the diner was going to provide for free at The Nutcracker reception?”
“Oh, come on, that was just tacky.” BeeBee nodded at Lindsay. “There is nothing Christmassy about a nutcracker head made out of salami. Back me up here, Lou.”
Lindsay was still in the kitchen, stretching with her left foot propped on the butcher-block counter that divided the rooms. She straightened her back and gracefully lowered her leg. “It was grotesque. But there was probably a nicer way of saying it than actually using the word grotesque. Which you did. Repeatedly. Into the microphone.”
“Whatever,” BeeBee said. “I love this town, and it...has grown accustomed to me.” She rolled her eyes and walked past her sisters with a huffy toss of her long chestnut-hued braid. “When you love something you’re one hundred percent honest about it. That’s what real love is. Now, I’m going to go order premium water-buffalo seed, and since you guys are the Nice Police, I would appreciate some positivity on this most auspicious event.”
Her sisters trailed her as she walked to the computer, trying not to let their words sink indelibly into her skin. She knew they were just trying to help her. But she was different from her sisters. She didn’t have Jackie’s gentle way with words and angelic face, Lou’s grace and charm or Kit’s ability to make beauty out of literally anything. Her sisters weren’t meant to stay in Crystal Hill. But BeeBee was here for the long haul. Committed.
Anyway, this town would forgive her for anything, especially when she had enough of a herd to start providing them with delicious, creamy water-buffalo milk. Milk that could be used in plump, airy balls of mozzarella, silky-smooth yogurts and a thousand other delicacies their cousin Lucas would sell at the dairy farm’s retail space downtown. They didn’t produce as much milk as the Holsteins, so they were still dependent on the cows to make ends meet. But today they were one step closer to their farm achieving something very few others in the United States had dared to try.
Settling into the chair, BeeBee swiveled to face the computer and muttered to herself, “Buffalo baby day, huzzah.”
Somehow it just wasn’t as exciting as it had been five minutes ago. Yet her soul inflated a little more once she pulled up Salvatore’s website and saw the faces of his water buffalo staring back at her. With their wide inky eyes and curly horns, they were so much more majestic than the workaday cows their farm had milked for decades. This addition had been BeeBee’s idea, and her mom had been more than happy to let BeeBee take on the running of the farm the minute she had graduated from her two-year degree at the community college where her father taught.
She moved her finger on the mouse to click on the email icon, then froze and let out a yelp.
“No, no, no, no, NO!” BeeBee clutched her head with her hands and pushed the rolling chair back.
“What’s wrong?” Jackie placed her delicate hand on BeeBee’s arm and leaned forward, searching her face. “Are you hurt? Did Salvatore jilt you?”
That was enough to calm BeeBee out of her hysterics, at least temporarily. She pointed at the image of Salvatore that flashed on the screen. “For the last time, the man is basically one of the mummified victims from Pompeii. It’s not going to happen. No, Salvatore is retiring, and...” BeeBee swallowed back the bitter taste of frustration and loss. “He’s selling Orlando. My perfect stud.”
The sisters let out a chorus of understanding “Ooohs.” Orlando—or rather Orlando’s seed—had sired Lady Rosamund, the first buffalo calf BeeBee had birthed and raised all the way from infancy. Sure, it was normal to be biased with one’s own babies, but Lady Rosamund was perfect. Gentle, affectionate, she followed BeeBee around wherever she went in the pastures, never leaving her side. BeeBee had hoped to create an entire herd just like her, and Orlando had been the key. She had interviewed water-buffalo breeders over the phone for months before deciding on Salvatore. How dare he retire? The man was a spring chicken. Plenty of years left in both his artificial hips.
“Why don’t you just buy Orlando?” Lou asked.
BeeBee leapt to her feet, temporarily forgetting that she was as clumsy as Lou was graceful. Tripping over the leg of the chair, she flew forward into Jackie’s arms. “Yes! We could buy Orlando.”
The idea cemented instantly as the greatest suggestion since it had occurred to someone in Naples to put cheese and sauce on hot dough to make pizza.
“Can we afford him?” Kit asked.
BeeBee shrugged. “We could always apply for a grant from the dairy association. I’m sure between that and our savings we can make it work.” She hugged her sisters tightly. “Dream team, right here. I’m going to call him now.”
Kit reached out and took BeeBee’s hand gently. “Maybe I should call him for you.”
“You think I’m going to accidentally insult him and blow the sale, don’t you?” BeeBee bristled.
“No,” Kit protested, “because you don’t speak Italian.” As she turned to unplug her phone from the charging station on the desk, she added almost inaudibly, “But yes to the other thing.”
BeeBee stuck out her tongue at Kit when her sister leaned back over the computer to check the number, not caring that it was juvenile and probably slightly proving her point. So what if she was outspoken? It was always better to speak the truth, in her experience. That way there was never any confusion about how she felt about something...or someone.
BeeBee followed closely behind as Kit wandered into the kitchen speaking in lyrically fluent Italian. An exceptional artist, her younger sister dreamed of an apprenticeship to a goldsmith in Florence someday, so she had started taking Italian classes from a local tutor when she’d been fourteen. BeeBee had driven her to the classes, and even though Kit would repeat what she had learned on the thirty-minute drive home, not a single word had stuck. That was okay. They supplied all the milk for Mama Renata’s Italian Ristorante and Pizzeria downtown. The only Italian BeeBee would ever need to know was spaghetti alla norma, her favorite dish there.
As the conversation went on, BeeBee’s patience waned. Finally, she placed her hands flat on the kitchen table and stage whispered, “Kit, what is he saying? How much for Orlando?”
“Scusi, per favore,” Kit said into the phone before covering her end with her hand and inclining her head to BeeBee. “He says he has a buyer already interested who is willing to pay twelve thousand euros.”
“Twelve thousand?” BeeBee dropped the whisper and raised her voice to a shout. “That no-good grifter. We only paid three thousand for Viola.” To be fair, she had been a rescue, but the principle was still offensive. “What’s he trying to pull? Let me talk to him.” She lunged for the phone, but Kit ducked and scooted to the other side of the table to create a barricade.
“Perdono,” Kit said into the phone before launching into a series of murmurs. “Mmmm. Mmm-hmm. Grazie. Ciao.”
BeeBee threw up her hands in despair and sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “That’s it, then. No Orlando.”
Jackie, who had been listening from the safe distance of the living room, crept into the kitchen and tutted sympathetically. “Poor BeeBee. I’ll make you some hot cocoa.”
“It’s May,” BeeBee muttered. “I don’t need hot cocoa. I need my water buffalo.”
Jackie shrugged and went to the fridge for a gallon of milk anyway.
Kit sat down at the chair opposite BeeBee and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, if you had waited for me to finish the conversation instead of flying off the handle, I could have told you that Salvatore is willing to hold Orlando for you since our farm is a previous customer as opposed to the other buyer.”
BeeBee sat up straight and clasped her hands over her heart. “He did? Really?” She sprang from the chair and grabbed Lindsay, who had been reaching for the coffeepot. She whirled her sister around by the hands, while Jackie spread her arms in a wide protective stance in front of the china hutch next to the fridge.
“But coffee,” Lou wailed, turning her head longingly toward the pot as BeeBee continued to jig her in dizzying circles around the small kitchen.
“Coffee can wait,” BeeBee crowed. “I’m getting my water buffalo. I take back everything I said about Salvatore. He’s an angel and the love of my life.” The image of hazel eyes and a strong jawline that definitely did not belong to the wizened Salvatore flashed in her head. She dismissed the memory with a defiant toss of her braid. Releasing Lou, she continued to spin in happy circles on her own until a minor collision with the counter stopped her.
“Um, BeeBee?” Kit said quietly. “You still have to pay him twelve thousand euros. And that doesn’t include transportation. We’re easily looking at a total of fifteen thousand dollars to get him here.” Her dark eyebrows furrowed over her glasses.
Clutching her left ribcage where she had bumped into the counter, BeeBee frowned. “Shoot. You’re right. Did Salvatore say how much time he would give us to come up with the money?”
“He said two months was the longest he could do,” she replied. “The other buyer wants to breed his water-buffalo heifers sometime this summer.”
“Okay.” BeeBee tapped her finger on her lips. “There has to be a way we can do this. Fifteen thousand dollars in two months.” She looked at Lindsay. “Could you do a fundraiser at the dance studio?”
“We just did one,” Lou said before taking a long sip of her coffee and sighing contentedly. “The Crystal Hill Clog for a Cause, remember?”
BeeBee shuddered. How could she forget? Lou had tap-danced through the house for twenty-four hours straight. It had been like sharing a house with an overcaffeinated woodpecker. “Okay. What about the New York Dairy Association? Don’t they have a grant program for local farms?”
“I’m on the website now.” Kit held up her phone. “There’s no grant applications open at the moment because they give out money as part of the Dairy Royalty Pageant coming up in June.”
Jackie crossed the room and peered over Kit’s shoulder. “I had a friend who won Dairy Princess in high school.” She looked up at BeeBee. “Maybe Kit or Lou could enter and win the money.”
Kit shook her head. “It says here the winner of the Dairy Princess pageant only wins a five-thousand-dollar grant, and it has to be used for education. But...” She scrolled down further, a terrifying smile spreading across her face. “The Queen of the Dairy Pageant awards a twenty-thousand-dollar grant to anyone ages eighteen to twenty-four who works full-time at a dairy farm. The money has to be used for something dairy-related, like farmland acquisition, milking equipment or—” she set her phone down and pushed her glasses up her nose “—livestock procurement.”
Dreadful awareness blanketed BeeBee like storm clouds obscuring her beloved horizon. Her eyes dropped to the mud-encrusted hem of her jeans, the ragged cuticles on her right hand. An ache in her shoulder reminded her of where she had staggered into the doorframe leaving her bedroom this morning. All three of her sisters were staring at her as if thinking the same exact thing at once. “No. I can’t. There has to be another way.”
“I don’t know if there is,” Kit replied. “Most of our savings are tied up in the state-college funds. You can’t touch those without incurring a penalty. And we’re still paying down the bank loan for the new milking stand we put in last year. With interest rates being as high as they are, there’s no way we could afford to go into any more debt. If you want to grow this farm—heck, even to keep it going another five years—you have to be creative.”
“There’s a difference between creativity and delusions of grandeur,” BeeBee huffed, sinking lower into her chair. “Me winning a beauty pageant definitely falls into the latter category.”
“But why?” Jackie straightened up and began ticking items on her fingers. “You’re more passionate about dairy farming than anyone else on the planet. You know everything about it. You definitely don’t suffer from stage fright.” She nodded her head in BeeBee’s direction as she concluded with “And somewhere underneath all that mud, plaid and denim is a very attractive woman. At the very least, it would be incentive to wash out whatever is permanently caked under your fingernails.”
“But wouldn’t I have to be, like, graceful and demure? What if there’s a talent portion? The only talent I have is hand milking faster than the machine. Oh, and whistling,” she added with a proud puff of her chest.
It was something she had always been able to do—whistle in perfect pitch with a volume and clarity on par with the Revolutionary War fifes the Hudson Valley Battlefield used to sell at their gift shops. At one time in her life, it had been a way to signal a certain someone she didn’t think about anymore—hardly ever, anyway.
“Actually, it says there are three portions to the pageant,” Kit said. “You have to do some sort of creative presentation, like a skit or an original song. There’s an interview where you talk about your specific platform for your dairy, like why you need the grant money—that part is in formal wear,” she added with a cringe.
BeeBee rolled her eyes so hard she felt something pop. “Because mincing around in heels and an evening gown is such an essential part of dairy farming. That’s ridiculous and outdated and—stop looking at me like you’re already planning how to style my hair.” She whipped her head around and pointed at Lou.
“Half-up, half-down,” she said with a lift to her shoulder as if it was obvious.
“Uh-oh,” Kit said.
“What, uh-oh?” Lou put her mug down with an indignant jut of her pointed chin. “BeeBee has gorgeous hair. You just can’t tell it because you never see it out of a braid.”
“No.” Kit shook her head and held up her phone. “The pageant requires you to submit a dairy recipe that you prepare yourself.”
All four of them groaned in defeat, and BeeBee dropped her head. “That’s the nail in the coffin, then.” Cooking was the worst. Their dad had done most of it when the girls had been little. However, since he had accepted a job as an adjunct science professor in the community college the year after BeeBee had graduated with her associate’s degree there, they had gotten in the habit of bringing home takeout a few times a week from Big Joe’s Diner or Mama Renata’s Italian Restaurant.
“I guess we’ll just have to find another way to come up with the money, then,” Kit said sadly as she set her phone down on the table.
“No,” Jackie said with an uncharacteristic force in her voice. “BeeBee, you need to do this. Not just for the money. Not even for the farm, although I agree with Kit that we need some sort of financial assistance to keep it going.”
“For what, then?” BeeBee asked, confused and a little frightened. Jackie usually only spoke in tones that invited woodland creatures to sit on her shoulder.
Jackie walked around the table to stand in front of BeeBee. Even though she was older, she was several inches shorter and tiny-boned like a bird. Next to her, BeeBee felt like a water buffalo herself. “For you. I worry that you spend so much time and energy on the farm that you don’t take time for your own care and maintenance. I think you should use this pageant as an opportunity to focus on doing things that are good for you, like learning to cook and dressing nicely,” she said, tipping her head to the side and casting a critical eye at BeeBee’s boots. “Growing the farm with a water-buffalo herd will mean branching out into gourmet and niche suppliers, like restaurants and caterers in the city. You’ll need to be comfortable dressing for business meetings and events. Think of this as practice.”
Out of the corner of her eye, BeeBee could see the cows moving across the pasture outside the living room’s bay window. The water buffaloes were out of sight, probably happily taking their mid-morning soak in the stream on the outer edges of the grazing lands. They mingled with the cattle here and there but almost always at a distance, separated as though they knew one of these things was not like the other. They weren’t sleek and pretty like the Holsteins, and they moved with a distinct gait, slow and slightly uncoordinated. But inside they kept a secret treasure trove—milk that was creamier and richer than anything in the world yet with a lower lactose content to make it easier for almost anyone to digest. Water-buffalo herds were few and far between in the US, especially in the northeast where special care had to be taken for them to make it through the winter.
BeeBee knew what Jackie was saying without saying it out loud. The three of them—Jackie, Kit and Lou—had talents that would require them to one day leave their small comfortable nest in Crystal Hill. They were bound for the biggest, brightest places the world had to offer. Short of a talent scout combing Upstate New York in search of the next World Champion Whistler, BeeBee had no such prospects. She didn’t want them anyway. Why would she want to leave her perfect town with its perfect sunrises and its perfectly imperfect people who would always forgive her no matter what slipped out of her mouth?
“Let’s do it,” she said with a sigh. “Wash my nails, fix my hair, teach me to walk in high heels, find some cooking classes. If I want my king of the water buffaloes, then I guess I have to become a queen.”
