Missing

Chapter Ten

The four of them sat around the kitchen table eating the grilled cervelat wrapped in split bread rolls. "These are amazing, Tante," David mumbled. He raised a finger, finished chewing and swallowing. "Pardon me for talking with my mouth full, but this is just too delicious to have waited to compliment."

"Try a dab of this on it." Bethia slid the small dish toward him. "Only a small bit; the mustard is quite intense, but you'll find it expands the flavours."

He took the tiny spoon from the dish and shook a speckled golden dollop from it onto the end of his cervelat. His eyes widened, almost round as he took a bite and slowly savoured it.

Bethia's smile grew as she watched his enjoyment. "Better?"

"It was unbelievably good before... This is far beyond that." He looked at the roll in his hand and continued, "Conrad took me to an Austrian restaurant in Banff — one of his fellow guides had opened it to supplement his income in the off-seasons. We had something similar to this. He called them Bratwurst Brötchen on the menu, but the regulars called them BBs."

He looked again at the cervelat. "The shape is similar, but these are so much more delicious." He shook a larger dollop of mustard onto the sausage and prepared to take a bigger bite. "I'm so glad my jaw is working better."

"You warm my heart with your enjoyment."

"I've not before had such a complexity of flavours. And the mustard — it's so far from what we have in Canada. Is this local?"

"It's made very close to here." Bethia's face beamed with a smile as she pointed across the kitchen. "This is the one I blend to accent the cervelat. I use the ends of our wines to make the vinegars, and one of our cattle producers has a field of mustard. I love playing with flavours, playing with all things sensuous."

She sat back and looked at him, moving her eyes slowly to minutely examine his face, then ran them down his neck and across his broad shoulders and down his chest, continuing beyond where he disappeared below the tabletop. "I love the sensuous."

She shook her head, paused a few seconds, then turned to Rachel and Maria. "But let's hear about your trip to Gottenheim and about your visit to the nursing school."

Rachel began by talking about finding their way along the web of roads. "We decided that Maria should drive so I could concentrate on the map and the navigation. I had some recollections of the area from years before."

Maria continued. "Mama's instructions were excellent. I was always ready for turns well in advance, and we were never surprised. The only surprise was how quickly the three hours passed. Our throats grew sore from shouting conversation over the roar of the engine and the whine of the cogs and things... Whatever's down there making that whine. The buffeting of the wind across our ears and through the cab and the flapping side curtains added to the noise."

Rachel added, "After the first while of shouted conversation, we sat quietly smiling and enjoying the power and independence. Except for my few navigational instructions, we spent the remainder of the trip speaking wordlessly, soul to soul. We arrived with faces sore from the constant smiling."

"I dropped Mama at the house and continued into Freiburg. It wasn't long before I realised that the roads I had walked so often were too narrow for the lorry, so I had to find another way. One bend was so sharp I couldn't turn. It reminded me of David's..." Maria paused a second. "...David's warning before we left."

David smiled at her. "Yes, lorries can sometimes be hard in small spaces, catching us by surprise."

Her face grew a huge smile, dimpling her cheeks deeply. She looked at David then at Bethia. "This is like our faces the whole drive. We couldn't stop smiling. The lorry is so wonderful."