Angels Fall

on her work.
    "Your shift's over."Joanie told her.
    "I owe you time. And we're low on potato salad."
    "You owed me ten minutes, already paid."
    Reece shook her head, kept chopping. "I was a good thirty minutes with the sheriff." Mortally insulted, Joanie fisted her hands on her hips. "Did I say anything about docking you for that?  Christ."
    "I owe you thirty minutes." Reece dumped the onions and celery into the potatoes she'd already boiled, cubed and cooled. "This would have more zing with fresh dill."
    "Well, I'd have more zing with George Clooney and Harrison Ford in a threesome, but neither of us are going to get that wish. I don't hear the customers complaining, and I said your shift is over. I don't pay overtime."
    "I don't want your damn overtime. I want fresh dill, and some goddamn curry and cheese that doesn't look like plastic. And it the customers don't complain, it's because their taste buds are atrophied."
    "That being the case." Joanie said evenly while Pete slunk away from the sink toward the back door,  "they don't give a rat's flea-bitten ass about fresh dill."
    "Well, they  should  ." Reece slammed the jar of dressing on the work counter. "You should. Why should everyone just make do? I'm tired of just making do."
    "Then get out of my kitchen."
    "Fine." Reece yanked off her apron. "Fine. I'm out." Fueled with righteous fury, she sailed into Joanie's office, grabbed her purse and headed for the door. She stopped by a booth where a trio of hikers were finishing up their lunch and pretending not to listen. "Cumin." She jabbed a finger toward a bowl of chili."It needs cumin. "And stormed out.
    "Cumin, my ass." Joanie muttered, then rounded on Pete. "Get back to work. I'm not paying you to stand around looking sorrowful."
    "I could go after her."
    "You could be out of a job. too." Cumin, Joanie thought with a sniff, and stalked over to finish the potato salad.

    Reece slammed into her car. What she should do is drive and keep on driving, she told herself. She didn't need this town, these people, this ridiculous job that made a mockery out of real cuisine. She should head out to L.A., that's what she should do. do to L.A. and take over a kitchen in a real restaurant where people understood food was more than something you stuffed into your face. She slammed out of the car again in front of the mercantile. She owed Joanie time, but the bitch didn't want it. She owed Brody a meal for painting, and by God, she was paying her debt. She shoved through the door, then scowled over at the counter where Mac was ringing up a sale for Debbie Mardson.
    '"I need hazelnuts," she snapped out.
    "Ah, can't say we have any in stock."
    How the hell was she supposed to make her chicken Frangelico without hazelnuts? "Why not?"
    "Don't have much call for them. Sure can order you some though"
    "A lot of good that does me now." She arrowed away to the grocery section to haunt the shelves, the bins, searching for inspiration and ingredients. Ridiculous, absurd, she thought, to try to find inspiration in this backcountry nowhere.
    "Oh, look, a miracle," she muttered. "Sun-dried tomatoes." She tossed them into the basket, picked through the fresh tomatoes. Hothouse, she thought in disgust. Wrapped in cellophane, for God's sake. Tasteless, colorless.
    Making do, that's all. And barely.
    No portobellos, big surprise. No eggplant, no artichokes. No fucking fresh dill.
    "Hey there, Reece."
    Tossing a few obviously substandard peppers in her basket, she frowned up at Lo. "'If your mother sent you down, you can go right back and tell her I'm done."
    "Ma? Haven't been down there yet. Saw your car out front. Here, let me carry that for you."
    "I've got it." She tugged the basket out of reach. "Or maybe you forgot I said I wouldn't sleep with you." His mouth opened, then closed and he cleared his throat. "No, that sticks in my mind. Listen, I just came in when I saw your car because I figured you might be upset."
    "Why would I be upset? Red-skinned potatoes, another miracle."
    "I heard about the woman they found up near Moose Ponds. News like that doesn't stay under the lid," he added when she only stared at him. "Has to be rough on you."
    "A lot rougher on her, I'd say." She headed over to pick through the packaged chicken breasts.
    "I guess that's true. Can't be easy for you though. Seeing her again, even a picture of her. Having to go  back in your head to the day you saw her when you were on the trail."" He shifted his feet when