The farm stand is situated just off the side of the road—tucked behind a beautiful old farmhouse with a wraparound porch. The stand itself is a ramshackle wooden building that’s open in the front and on both sides so that people can wander around the tables full of pumpkins and lean down to pick up an apple from the bushel baskets lining the pathway. A strong gust of wind could probably blow the whole thing over, she thinks, but then reconsiders—this very structure has likely withstood the force of generations of Maine winters, weathering the snow and ice with its steadfast, stoic presence.
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The floor in her bedroom is made of wide wooden planks. The apartment is on the 8th floor of an imposing limestone building on the corner of Commonwealth Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Boston Public Garden. Pale-colored brick covers part of the faded facade—this is a building that whispers old money and summers on Nantucket and Harvard alumni. Inside, the lobby reminds her of an aging patrician matriarch: once beautiful and still formidable, but time-worn and washed out. The walls are mirrored and an ancient green carpet directs visitors around a massive oak table upon which sits a flower arrangement so large you can barely see the doorman in his navy blazer. He sits at a marble-topped desk, the polished brass buttons dotting his lapel a perfect complement to the brass trimming along the wainscoting. Wainscoting: this was one of many words she’d never spoken aloud, or knew of, before she moved into apartment 8F. Part of her education is living in the rarified sphere of wealth of the Carlton House (she didn’t know apartment buildings could have names that sounded like prep school dormitories); part of it is Hadley.
Read moreCHOCOLATE HAZELNUT BISCOTTI
The first letter he writes is almost impossible to read. “I don’t even have to worry about how I phrased it,” he jokes, “because you won’t be able to figure out what it says.” She smiles and slips the thin envelope into the pocket of her bag. The envelope is white and flimsy: the sort that comes in 100-packs from Office Depot. He must have picked it up at work, stopping by the supply cabinet somewhere to search for the stack of envelopes—the idea of him in a meeting, thinking about writing to her, makes her inexplicably glad.
Read moreTOASTED PECAN SUGAR DIRT BOMB MUFFINS
Working at a start-up is exhausting—that’s how she puts it to everyone who asks whenever she travels home to the suburb where she grew up. Regardless of how unglamorous the reality, her parents' friends look impressed when they find out she’s living in the city, employed at a company that’s frequently cited in Forbes and Business Insider: a “hot” place to be, as her father’s friend Everett puts it. He tilts his old-fashioned at her, the ice rattling around the almost empty glass. Everett’s words are a little slurred as he says, “You’re in exactly the right place! Good for you for getting that pedigree. You got a head on your shoulders!” He nearly shouts the last bit, and she leans back to avoid any errant splashes of bourbon. Before she can respond, he’s shaking the glass in the direction of his wife, who’s wearing the exact same outfit she wears to every social function—regardless of the season or occasion: maroon tweed skirt, white turtleneck, black cashmere cardigan with a lizard-shaped brooch. Two tiny emeralds wink as the lizard’s eyes; when she was little, the brooch terrified her, keeping her from falling asleep some nights.
Read moreDECADENT CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I’ll think about it,” and she hangs up the phone, holding it in her hand and staring at it as if some message will appear on its darkened surface like a Magic 8-Ball. She and her sister used to consult the Magic 8-Ball religiously when they were younger: There was a phase, somewhere around age 13, when they genuinely believed it told you true things. This was the era of sleepovers and Ouija boards and middle school mixers where all of the girls stood in a knot on the polished floor of the gym and the boys threw cheese puffs at each other by the folding tables that held the sodas.
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