The weak December sun filters through the crimson leaves of the sugar maples overhead. This stretch of Quincy Street is uncharacteristically quiet at the moment—she pictures students all tucked into lecture halls, their backpacks slouched at their feet, the cavernous hallways silent. The foliage is still flaunting its riotous colors, later than usual it seems, and she idly names the trees in her head, a habit instilled in her by hours of forest field trips at summer camp (she can still differentiate between a chipping sparrow and a dark-eyed junco by hearing just a few notes of their trills): American sweetgum, smooth sumac, Kentucky coffeetree.
Read moreBUTTERMILK CHEESE BISCUITS
Her nerves feel as tangled up as a knotted shoelace, needing to be gently teased apart and smoothed. Jangled, that’s the word for it. The nerves—electric and snarled—are covering up other things: the persistent pulse of worry and the melancholy blue tinge of sadness and possibly even a fiery, flaming red anger, but she hasn’t dug down that far yet, unable to even touch the top layer.
Read moreCHOCOLATE HAZELNUT AMARETTI
The tea room is dim and cozy, lit by soft glass lanterns that dot the walls, which are lined in an opulent red and gold wallpaper. The murmur of voices drifts down the marble hallway and out into the hotel lobby, where it meets and gets subsumed by the bright cacophony of comings and goings. Bellhops whirl their gold wheeled luggage carts to and fro, the elevators ding cheerily, the glass doors whoosh open and shut.
Read moreAPPLE PEAR STREUSEL CAKE
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.
Read moreCINNAMON TWISTS
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.
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