Page 15 of Heartland
“If only I knew.”
* * *
It takes a while, but we plod along through the homework. I make her do every problem the long way, and slowly she pieces it together. And—hallelujah—she even does the hardest problem without any help.
“Nice!” I say, holding up a hand.
It takes her half a second to realize she’s supposed to high-five me, but then our palms make a satisfying sound as they meet in midair. And there’s that smile again. It warms me from the inside.
There aren’t many people in my life who see the best in me, but Chastity has always been one of them. It relaxes me to spend time with her. And helping her with math problems is really no big deal.
I sit back on the bench and drain my coffee. “Good work today.”
“Thanks.” She unzips her backpack to put the textbook back inside. The spine is practically falling off. Chastity must be that book’s hundredth owner.
“I have some packing tape at home you could use on that thing,” I point out. “I can’t believe the bookstore didn’t throw that copy away.”
“Someone did,” she mutters. “I bought it off eBay for seven bucks. It’s a hundred bucks new.”
“Ah.”
“Hey, Dyl? I need to pick your brain about something. It’s a moneymaking idea with a twist.”
“Yeah? I like money.”
“So…” She licks her lips nervously, which is a little distracting, because Chastity is a really pretty girl, and I’m oversexed. But I snap out of it when she says, “You have all that goat’s milk in the freezer, and Leah hasn’t been able to use it for cheese.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumble.
My two goats—Jacquie and Jill—are a major point of contention at home. I bought them this past summer when Leah and Isaac—Chastity’s surrogate family—said they’d like to try making goat cheese. But when I accepted Rickie’s offer of a room in his house, the goats became my brother’s problem five days out of the week.
Also, Leah hasn’t found a goat cheese recipe she likes well enough to put into production. So Jacquie and Jill are losing the family money and driving my brother crazy.
“Would you consider another use for the milk?” Chastity asks me.
“Anyuse will do.” I chuckle. “My mother made a big batch of goat’s milk soap, but that will last for months. Griffin mostly pours it on his cereal and blows up my phone complaining about milking Jacquie and Jill by hand. What’s your big idea?”
“Well…” She clears her throat. “Goat’s milk makes really good caramel. And the only other ingredients are sugar and vanilla.”
“Caramel,” I repeat slowly. “Like, candy?”
“Exactly. And people buy a lot of treats during the holidays. I thought caramels would be a good seasonal product.”
“Oh. Wow.” Who doesn’t like caramel, right? So this is a fun idea. Except for one problem. “Isn’t that hard to make? Have you done this before?”
“Well, no.” Chastity bites her lip. “But it's just chemistry. Not that you should make a habit of taking chemistry lessons from your friend who never went to high school. But I watched a lot of cooking videos, and those people pulled it off.”
“I thought candy was tricky. Don’t you need to bring it to exactly the right temperature?” I’ve never been known as a details man.
“What if we tried to make a test batch?” she suggests. “It’s just three ingredients and a little patience. Although you probably don’t have time to noodle around in Leah’s creamery.”
“Wait, the commercial kitchen? Doesn’t she charge money for that space?”
“Usually,” Chastity admits. “But there are openings when she’s not making cheese and nobody else wants to rent it. She said we could use it on—” Chastity’s eyes dip. “—Friday nights.”
Friday nights. Now that’s a problem. I usually drive home to the farm on Saturday morning, leaving the comfort of my bed before five a.m. so that I can help in the dairy barn by six thirty.
Kaitlyn likes me to be around on Friday nights. She calls it “our night out.”
