“Seven minutes.”
“I’ve got people asking for this stuff. Customers. Chefs.”
He handed her a business card.
A restaurant owner from the next county had eaten there two nights earlier.
He had tasted the sauce with Daniel’s pork and asked who made it.
Daniel had given him Clara’s number.
Clara looked at the card and felt a small thrill rise in her chest.
Then fear followed it.
Eight bottles in the box.
No extras in the truck.
Almost nothing unpromised at home.
Before she could say anything, the restaurant phone rang.
Daniel answered, listened, then held the receiver toward her.
“For you.”
The caller introduced himself as Thomas Reed, chef-owner of a steakhouse nearly forty miles away.
“I tried your sauce at Miller’s,” he said.
Clara waited for him to ask for a sample.
He didn’t.
“How soon can I get twelve bottles?”
She almost laughed.
“I don’t have twelve.”
“How many do you have?”
Clara looked at the box Daniel had already paid for.
“None that aren’t spoken for.”
Thomas went quiet for a moment.
“Then put me down for your next available batch.”
That evening, Clara drove home with his name written on the first clean line of a new notebook page.
The calls kept coming.
One chef wanted four bottles.
Another asked whether Clara sold larger containers.
A third said he didn’t care about labels.
He wanted the sauce for his kitchen, not the table.
That distinction stayed with her.
They weren’t buying it because it was the hottest thing they could serve.
They were using it because the smoke fit grilled meat, the acidity cut through fat, and the sweetness worked with vegetables.
Clara wrote at the top of the page:
“Not hotter. More useful.”
Then she tested the sauce with eggs, beans, squash, chicken, pork, and potatoes.
Some combinations failed.
Others made the sauce feel even more complete.
By the end of the week, word had moved through kitchens faster than Clara could move bottles.
Her notebook filled with names and quantities.
The shelves behind her kept emptying.
Every call now brought two feelings at once.
Pride that another chef wanted what she had made.
And dread that she would have to disappoint them.
On Saturday evening, Clara counted the next batch three times.
Twenty bottles.
Then she looked at the orders already written down.
Thirty-six requested.
The phone rang again.
Clara stared at it before answering.
For the first time, demand no longer felt like uncomplicated success.
It felt like a decision waiting to become a conflict.
The conflict arrived the next morning.
Thomas Reed called first.
“I’ll take your entire next batch,” he said. “I’ll pay upfront.”
Clara looked at the notebook beside her.
Daniel, eight.
Hawkins, four.
Mercer’s, six.
Those orders already represented nearly everything she could finish.
Three months earlier, an offer to buy an entire batch would have sounded like rescue.
Now it felt like betrayal.
Daniel had tasted the sauce when it still wore masking tape.
The others had ordered before Clara knew whether the idea would survive winter.
“I can’t give you everything,” she said.
“What if I pay more?”
Clara’s eyes moved toward the pantry.