Crops and Robbers Read Online Free Page A

easy.
    At that moment, I realized exactly who Joan was; she was the owner of Bistro, one of the best restaurants in all of central South Carolina. Bistro was located in the small town of Smithfield, but there was nothing small about the restaurant. It was large, and elegant on the inside, and served delicious food. I once heard the menu described as almost designer food, but still tasty and filling. I’d been to Bistro, but not for a number of years, and I suddenly remembered the melt-in-your-mouth pasta dish I ate that had big, juicy pieces of lobster throughout it. I would love to say that a preserve I’d created was an ingredient in one of the restaurant’s desserts.
    I made delicious preserves, jellies, and jams from all kinds of fruit, but my best efforts were whatever included my amazing strawberries. I had no idea how I managed to grow such delicious fruit. I was proud of my crops and my products, and I hoped she’d love them just as much as everyone else seemed to.
    But something suddenly went wrong, very wrong, about as wrong as something could go.
    Joan’s face didn’t light up as so many of my customers’ did. She didn’t get that look that said she was experiencing a little bit of heaven on a cracker.
    In fact, her face pinched and soured. She’d taken a bite out of a cracker, but she put the rest of it back on the table. She looked at Nobel and shook her head slightly. Instead of putting the cracker I’d handed him into his mouth, he set it back on the table and gave me an apologetic wince.
    Joan said, “Thank you, dear, I’ll have to let you know later.” She turned and went on to visit other stalls. Whoever wasn’t straggling behind followed her and ignored my stall altogether.
    I felt the vacuumlike shock of rejection. I’d never experienced such a thing before. Never. I’d even converted those who didn’t like fruit into avid eaters of my jams, jellies, and preserves. Until that moment, I had batted a thousand. I hadn’t had one strikeout, one foul, or one misstep.
    And now my perfect record was over, crushed and demolished in front of all of the people who were most important to me.
    Including my parents.
    Maybe they hadn’t picked such a good day to come back to Monson, after all.

Two

    Everyone tried to console me, so much so that I began to feel bad that everyone else felt bad. I tried to make a joke out of the entire situation, but I was sure it came off as just a bunch of discomfort trying to find a way out of my system.
    On their first day back to see their daughters in a long time, my parents had to go into parent mode. My dad ate some of the samples and tried to convince me that Joan was either crazy or her taster was “off.” He did a lot of pshawing and harrumphing, which was another change in his behavior. He’d never been the type to do much of either; he usually just took things as they came.
    My mother attempted to soothe me in motherly ways, but I could see through her act as well as she could probably see through mine. She was angry at the public humiliation of one of her daughters. As she and my dad left to see Mathis, I was sure I saw smoke escape from her ears. I was glad that they left before Allison escorted the group back down the aisle and out of the market. I thought Mom might do something we’d all be sorry for later.
    Allison shot me another secret and private look as she passed by; this time the look said, “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry I can’t do anything about what just happened, but I can’t jeopardize the other vendors’ opportunities.”
    I shot her a private look that told her I got it and would be horrified if everyone else had to suffer for Joan’s taster being off.
    As twins, I suppose we did communicate silently, but it was more with our eyes than with any sort of ESP or secret language.
    “Becca, are you all right?” Linda, having been too busy to commiserate earlier, said as she pulled up one of our shared tent flap walls and walked into my