Baked Alaska Read online

1 egg, beaten

  1 (4.5-ounce) can tiny shrimp

  1 (4-ounce) can water chestnuts, finely chopped (or 1/2 of an 8-ounce can)

  1 celery rib, finely chopped

  3 green onions, finely chopped

  2 (12-to 16-ounce) packages wonton skins

  Vegetable oil, for frying

  In a medium-sized skillet, brown sausage, breaking clumps into small pieces as it cooks; drain fat. Add beaten egg, shrimp, water chestnuts, and onions. In a frying pan over medium heat, heat 2 inches of vegetable oil.

  Put rounded teaspoonfuls of sausage mixture in the center of each wonton skin. (To keep skins from drying out, keep them covered with a damp cloth while working with them.) Dip finger in water and moisten edges of wonton skin. Fold wonton skin as desired to seal in filling. When oil is hot enough that a corner of the wonton immediately floats to the top, add uncooked wontons and cook 1 minute, or until golden brown. Turn wontons over and cook an additional minute (reduce heat if necessary to prevent overcooking). Remove wontons from oil with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel-lined cookie sheet. Once fried, keep wontons warm in a 190-degree oven until ready to serve. Serve with Saundra’s Sweet and Sour Sauce.

  Makes approximately 48 wontons.

  Note: Wontons can be fried ahead of time and reheated in a 450 degree oven for 5 minutes.

  Note: Shawn likes 2 ounces of softened cream cheese added to the sausage mixture.

  Sandra’s Sweet and Sour Sauce

  2 tablespoons cornstarch

  1/2 cup honey

  1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

  1 clove garlic, minced

  1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated (or 1/4 teaspoon dry ginger, ground)

  5 tablespoons ketchup

  6 tablespoons pineapple juice

  Mix all ingredients in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Simmer 1 to 2 minutes until mixture thickens and becomes clear. Serve warm.

  Chapter 4

  Because of her discussion with Breanna, Sadie had missed the first half of the one-hour show. But she was no longer in the mood for show tunes anyway—a rare thing for her since she usually loved the upbeat tempos and easy-to-recall lyrics she’d known since she was young. Cruise ships were a mecca for such nostalgia, and since there was a show every night, she didn’t worry about missing out on too much.

  Pete and Shawn seemed to be getting along, which helped her feel less guilty about ditching them, though she wondered if either of them would have gone to the show if not for her being excited about it. She’d have to find a way to make it up to them later.

  Instead of going to the show, she went to the coffee counter on deck seven and ordered a hot cocoa, then wandered over to the photo gallery, which was just a hallway displaying all the welcome pictures taken by the ship photographers that were available for purchase.

  The welcome photos from yesterday were organized by time of arrival in half-hour intervals. She and Breanna had arrived at 1:45, and Sadie found their picture quickly. She frowned at how wide her hips looked and immediately determined never to wear those shorts again. She turned the picture around and returned it to its place on the rack, indicating she wasn’t planning to purchase it. She found Pete and Shawn’s picture in the 3:30 to 4:00 section and decided to buy that one. Seeing the two of them together made her a little misty-eyed.

  She was on her way to the counter when she caught a flash of black and pink braids from the other end of the hallway. Sadie turned her head quickly and made eye contact with the woman for a split second before the woman turned and began walking away, casting an anxious look over her shoulder after just a few steps.

  Sadie followed her without considering whether it was a good idea. She wouldn’t need to get answers from Shawn if she could get them from this woman instead. But why was the woman in a hurry to get away? There were so many other people around that Sadie refrained from calling out to the woman, but she really wanted to.

  “Ma’am!” someone said behind her. “Excuse me, ma’am!”

  She looked over her shoulder as the cashier from the photo gallery walked toward her with his hand outstretched.

  “You must pay for your photograph.”

  Sadie realized she still had Pete and Shawn’s welcome photo in her hand. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, handing it to him. She caught another flash of braids as the woman turned the corner into the foyer area in front of the elevators. “I’ll come back and pay for it in a minute,” she said over her shoulder as she began heading in the woman’s direction.

  The staff member said something Sadie didn’t hear as she increased her pace, earning a curious look from a few of her fellow passengers who seemed shocked to see someone hurrying at all; this was a cruise after all.

  Sadie turned the corner to see the woman one last time just as the elevator doors closed. She ran to push the button, hoping to reach the elevator quickly enough that the doors would open before the car left the deck, but she was too late.

  “Biscuits,” she muttered under her breath, then stepped back to watch the digital display above the elevator. It stopped on deck eleven, but did that mean the woman had gotten off? Or had someone else gotten on?

  Another elevator opened in response to her button pushing, but she ignored it, waiting until the doors had closed before she pushed the button again. Two more elevators had come and gone before the original elevator finally returned after making a stop on deck nine. The woman with braids wasn’t inside, rather there were two Caucasian women with perfect makeup and tailored clothes.

  “Did you get on at deck eleven, by chance?” Sadie asked.

  “I did,” the younger of the two said.

  “Did you see a black woman, with black and pink braids?”

  “Don’t you mean African-American?” the older woman said. Her age was difficult to determine, and Sadie guessed she had a plastic surgeon on retainer.

  Sadie was embarrassed to have inadvertently used the wrong terminology. “Yes, sorry, African-American. She just went up on this elevator.”

  “And you’re waiting for her?”

  “Yes, kind of. Did you see her?”

  “She got off when I got on,” the younger woman said with a cute drawling accent. “On deck eleven, like I said.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said, then stepped back so the doors would close.

  “Aren’t you coming?” the older woman asked. Sadie thought she might be trying to raise her eyebrows—there was the faintest crease toward the top of her forehead—but the Botox made the expression awkward.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m going up. Thank you for your help, though.”

  As soon as the doors closed, Sadie hit the button again, this time getting into the first elevator going up and hitting the button for deck eleven. It was the same level where she’d seen Shawn talking to the woman yesterday afternoon. Did that mean something? Was this woman’s cabin on deck eleven?

  She spent fifteen minutes walking forward to aft in search of the mysterious woman, only to give up when a steward turning down beds on the starboard-aft side started looking at her funny on her third pass. She smiled at him and took the stairs down to deck seven, where she headed back to the photo gallery. She graciously thanked the clerk for holding on to the photo of Pete and Shawn and then explained she needed to buy another photo before he rang her up.

  She found the black and pink braids easily enough; the woman had arrived in the same time period as Pete and Shawn. There was another woman in the photograph as well: younger, shorter, and darker-skinned, but with clearer skin, brighter eyes, and better teeth. The two women had their arms around each other’s backs, their heads leaned in while they smiled for the camera. Mother and daughter, perhaps? Sadie stared at the image for several seconds, then pulled the photo from the rack. There was another copy behind it, which made her decision to buy this one a little easier. She wasn’t taking away their chance to own a copy too.

  She worried the clerk wou
ldn’t let her buy someone else’s photos, but he was happy to charge her ship-card $34.99 for the two photographs. She thanked him and slid the photos, complete with cheap cardboard frames, into the shoulder bag she wore slung across her chest.

  She would need to think of a good reason why she’d bought the photo in case she ended up needing to explain herself, but she wasn’t sure she had a good explanation. Maybe she just wanted proof that the woman was real. Maybe she’d show Shawn the photo to remind him that he couldn’t pretend the woman in braids didn’t exist. Maybe then he would confide in his mother. Pete, however, would likely not approve.

  Sadie reached the theater in time to stand in the back for the last two minutes, but she couldn’t focus on the grand finale of the show. Why had the woman run away? Had Shawn told her not to talk to Sadie? What was her connection to Shawn? How on earth was Sadie supposed to enjoy herself on this trip without knowing the answers to her questions? How long could she be expected to respect these boundaries of Shawn’s that she simply did not understand?

  Chapter 5

  Shawn wanted to hit the buffet again after the show; Sadie would get her money’s worth with his ticket for sure. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but took a chance on some made-to-order crepes with a variety of yummy toppings and was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Perhaps the buffet wasn’t a lost cause after all.

  As they ate, she kept looking across the table at Shawn, wondering what he was hiding about the woman in braids. But Pete was watching her and she was pretty sure he could read her mind even though he didn’t know about Sadie’s most recent encounter with the mystery woman. Would he approve of Sadie’s chase? What would he think of the photo she had in her bag hanging on the back of her chair?

  Pete and Shawn talked about the show, while Sadie ate another crepe and turned her worry from Pete’s opinions of her actions to Breanna’s conflicts with the wedding. She couldn’t believe Liam’s mother would take things over so completely. Carriages? Eight thousand dollars in flowers? Did the woman not know Breanna at all? Had she no respect for Sadie’s position as mother of the bride?

  When those thoughts got too heavy, she ate yet another crepe and worried about Shawn again. Finally, when she felt ready to explode from both crepes and worry, the three of them made their way out of the dining room, and Shawn said he was going to check out one of the clubs.

  Sadie stiffened. “You go to clubs?”

  “Mom, I’m twenty-three.”

  “What does being twenty-three have to do with going to clubs? I was twenty-three once, and I never went to clubs. Breanna didn’t go to clubs when she was twenty-three.”

  Yes, Shawn had been away at college for four years, but she always pictured him studying when she worried where he was or what he might be doing at any given time. Could he be one of those college kids who went to frat parties and locked their friends in the trunk of a car as a joke? Oh, she certainly hoped not. She’d been locked in the trunk of a car before and it had been horrid.

  “Pete, maybe you can explain it to her,” Shawn said as they stood outside the dining room.

  Pete draped his arm over Sadie’s shoulder and gave Shawn a nod. “I’ve got your back.” They tapped their fists together. What on earth was that all about?

  Sadie looked at Pete. “You’re supporting this kind of behavior?”

  Pete steered her toward the open deck, away from Shawn. “We talked about this,” he reminded her as the doors whooshed open.

  He guided her across the open deck toward the stairs that led to deck thirteen-forward. The ever-determined hot-tubbers were there again, basking in the steaming water and occasionally running across the deck to jump into the swimming pool. She’d worn better pants tonight and wasn’t so chilled by the dropping temperatures, but she couldn’t imagine wearing a swimsuit, let alone getting wet. On the port side of the hot tubs, someone seemed to be asleep on a deck chair, and Sadie shook her head. Weren’t they cold? It had to be close to forty degrees out here.

  “I can’t believe he goes to clubs,” Sadie said when they reached the top of the stairs. They had the deck to themselves again. She narrowed her eyes at Pete. “And I can’t believe you’re supporting him in that.”

  “You’re going to let Shawn be a grown-up, remember?”

  Letting your children be grown-ups stunk like liverwurst.

  There was less cloud cover tonight, leaving patches of starlit sky they both admired, though Sadie struggled to shake off the day, which had been full of difficult things. Finally, Pete asked her what was wrong, and she downloaded everything she’d been aching to tell him. He commiserated with the parts about Breanna, and then asked to see the picture of the woman with braids. Sadie reluctantly took it out of her shoulder bag, not sure if he was in support or not.

  After looking at it for several seconds in the muted light, Pete passed it back to Sadie.

  “Well?” Sadie asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re well on your way to driving yourself crazy, and if Shawn finds that photograph, it’s going to make things even harder between you two. Why did you buy it?”

  “I guess I just wanted to get a good look at her. Every other time I’ve seen her, she’s hurrying away from me.” Sadie let out a breath and put the photo back into her bag. Last night Pete had been holding her, but tonight, she and Pete were sitting side by side on deck chairs and the night felt heavy and cold. “How do I let this go?”

  “You just do,” Pete said, reaching over to rub her shoulder. “You focus on something else.”

  “Like my daughter who’s miserable about her wedding that I apparently don’t get to help with?”

  “At least she wants your help. She invited you into that situation; you’re not invited into Shawn’s.”

  Sadie couldn’t help but glare at Pete a little bit. “Is it a man thing to shrug things off like this? Or a cop thing?”

  Pete smiled without answering and moved onto her deck chair. Squeezing both of them into the relatively small space was tricky, but a little exciting too. They ended up face-to-face, arms wrapped around each other.

  “You could focus on us,” he whispered before kissing her gently on the lips. “We’re grown-ups with a future ahead of us as well.”

  “You might have a point,” Sadie said as her worries began to drain away.

  They stayed there until a group of teenaged girls coming up the stairs sent Pete back to his own chair, and then it was just too cold to enjoy the night—nevermind the giggling girls hanging over the railing and swooning over the boys getting out of one of the hot tubs below.

  With a look, they agreed to go and made their way down the stairs. Sadie was disappointed when the girls followed them down; she and Pete could have stayed up there if the girls hadn’t interrupted them. Still, it was cold. Cold enough that Sadie did a double take when she noticed that the passenger they’d passed earlier was still curled up on the deck chair.

  She elbowed Pete in the side before pointing toward the dark form. “That person was there when we went up,” she said. “It’s freezing.”

  Pete scowled and then nodded. “They probably overindulged at the bar. Stay here.”

  It was silly for Sadie not to go with him, but his cop instincts must have kicked in, and she wasn’t a fan of dealing with drunks anyway. The hot-tubbing boys and giggling girls left through the automatic sliding doors, leaving silence in their wake save for the bubbling hot tubs.

  “Drinking makes you even more susceptible to hypothermia, you know,” Sadie added as Pete moved away. “Alcohol lowers your internal temperatures.”

  Pete smiled at her over his shoulder and wound through the deck chairs while Sadie shifted her weight from one foot to another. He leaned down, shaking the person’s shoulder and talking softly enough that she couldn’t hear what he said. She watched as he paused, then seemed to pull back the blanket covering the person’s head.

  The increasin
g cold Sadie felt wasn’t from the weather. Something was wrong.

  She quickly joined Pete, and he looked up at her with an anxious expression on his face. “I can’t find a pulse.”

  “What?” Sadie stepped around him so she could get a better view, then gasped as she saw the black and pink braids spilling over the side of the chair.

  Crepes and Toppings

  4 eggs

  1 cup milk

  1 cup water

  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  1/4 cup melted butter

  Put eggs, milk, water, and vanilla extract (if desired) into a blender. Blend until smooth. Add flour and salt. Blend until smooth, using a knife or rubber spatula to get all the flour off the sides of the blender. When blended, add butter and mix until combined.

  To cook, heat a crepe pan or medium-sized frying pan on medium heat. Brush pan with butter or spray with nonstick cooking spray. Pour approximately ¼ cup of batter into pan (bigger pans will require larger amounts of batter) and tilt the pan until the batter covers the bottom of the pan in a thin layer.

  Cook until top is dry. Flip crepe over with a rubber spatula or fork. Cook for an additional few seconds. (If you like darker crepes, increase heat.) Remove to a plate and add toppings as desired.