She went downstairs to the kitchen to make pancakes, Petey’s favorite. Brad’s, too. The tears started. She didn’t even know where Brad was. She set aside the pancake mix and grabbed her phone, searching through the Icicle Falls online directory for the list of lodgings in town. After writing them down, she began calling.
She struck out on the first two, and her call went to voice mail at Gerhardt’s Gasthaus, which meant the lines were all busy.
“No, he’s not here,” said Mrs. Clauson, who ran the Icicle Creek Lodge. She sounded puzzled as to why her happily married young insurance man would be at her lodge instead of home but was polite enough not to ask.
Stef hung up and tried Gerhardt’s again. It was the logical choice, nice but not too expensive.
“We do have a Bradley Stahl here,” said the woman at the desk. “Would you like me to put you through?”
“Please.”
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. And rang.
He was probably hiding in there, unwilling to take her call. Her best bet was to go over and talk to him one-on-one. She put in an SOS to Griffin, who sounded groggy. Obviously still trying to sleep.
“I woke you up, didn’t I?” Look in Wikipedia under “World’s Most High-Maintenance Friend” and there would be Stef’s picture. “I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s okay. Did Brad come home?”
Tears prickled her eyes. “No.”
“He will.”
“He’s staying at Gerhardt’s. I need to get over there and talk to him. Can you stay with Petey for a while?”
“Sure. Let me just brush my teeth.”
“God bless you. I owe you big-time for this.”
“No, you don’t. This is what friends are for.”
That did send the tears spilling. “Thank you. So much.”
Petey came into the kitchen. “Is that Daddy?”
“No, sweetie. That’s Griffin. She’s going to come over and make you pancakes while I go talk to Daddy.”
Petey frowned. “Daddy needs to know I’m all well.”
“I’ll tell him.” If I can get him to talk to me.
Griffin arrived and took over pancake duty, and Stef went to Gerhardt’s. By way of the bakery, which, fortunately, was already open. Cass was behind the counter and she looked questioningly at Stef.
“He didn’t come home. I need two of your cream-puff swans.”
Cass nodded and boxed them up. When Stef pulled out her wallet, she shook her head. “On the house. Good luck.”
Stef nodded gratefully, took the bribe and went to Gerhardt’s, praying that neither Gerhardt Geissel nor his wife would be handling reception. They were valued customers at the bank and she saw them both often. She sure didn’t want to see them today, though. This was hard enough without adding the humiliation of asking what room her husband was in when the room he should’ve been in was their bedroom at home.
“He’s in number six,” said the woman at the front desk. Someone Stef didn’t know. Thank you, God.
Brad’s car was nowhere in sight and no one answered when she knocked on the door of his room. Her heart sank. Where was he?
Maybe at the office. She drove over there. Sure enough, he was inside, seated at his desk, working on his laptop. The door was locked but she had a key and let herself in.
He looked up but didn’t smile at the sight of her. He used to look up from whatever he was doing and smile at her as if the sun had just come out.
She held up the bakery box. “I brought a peace offering. Cream puffs.”
“No, thanks.”
“Pancakes for breakfast at home,” she offered.
“I’m not hungry.”
She chewed her lip. “Petey’s feeling better.”
“Good. I’ll pick him up for the game.”
It was like Antarctica in here. “Are you going to stay mad at me forever?”
He shrugged.
“I said I was sorry.”
He shut down his computer and walked over to her. “Prove it.”
“I will. I’ll put everything back.” Well, everything she hadn’t given away.
“That won’t prove anything.” He opened the door, put the key in it, indicated they were leaving now.
She stepped outside with him. “What do you want?” Sheesh.
“Get rid of the tool man.”
“What? But, Brad, he’s not done!”
“He’s done the hard stuff. I can finish the floor.”
But would he?
She hesitated too long. “Forget it. I have to pick up Petey. The game starts at ten and we need to warm up.” He moved toward his car.
“Brad, wait!”
He didn’t. He drove off and left her and the cream-puff swans behind.
* * *
Petey was just finishing his pancakes (Mickey Mouse–shaped, like Griffin’s mom used to make for her) when Brad showed up. Alone.
“Where’s Stef?” she asked.
“Back at the office.” The words sounded curt. No smile for his wife’s friend. He did put a smile on for his son. “Hey, buddy, you feeling better?”
Petey nodded eagerly. “I’m all well.”
“Don’t feel like those pancakes are gonna come back up?”
Petey shook his head vehemently.
“Okay, then, brush your teeth and we’ll go.”
“Yay!” Petey cried and raced from the room, leaving Mickey’s ears uneaten.
“Thanks for watching him,” Brad said. Still no smile. Then, without another word, he walked out of the kitchen. Griffin followed, unsure what to say.
Petey bounded back down the stairs and then was out the door, calling, “’Bye, Aunt Griffin!”
She shut the door, which he’d left wide open, and watched from the window as Brad loaded a big canvas bag full of baseball equipment into the trunk of his car. Then, with Petey buckled in the back, he drove off.
She returned to the kitchen and cleaned up the breakfast mess, then sat at the table, expecting Stef to walk in any minute.
But the minutes dragged on and there was still no sign of her friend. Worried, she pulled out her phone and texted. Where are you?
At the office eating cream puffs. My life sucks.
He’ll come around.
Only if I fire Grant. Know anyone who wants a half-remodeled house?
Want me to come over there?
No. Going to Petey’s game. Thanks for being such a good friend.
Griffin wished she knew how to be a better friend, wished she knew how to help Stef fix her problem. But when it came to love, you were on your own.
Stef and Brad would patch up their marriage. They had to. What they had was solid.
Unlike what she’d had with Steve. It was a little scary that she had so easily gotten over breaking up with the man she’d planned to marry and that he’d moved on so quickly. Obviously it had been a bad plan.
Well, that was what came of rushing into things when you were young. They’d barely been going out six months when they’d moved in together. Her grandmother had been horrified. “You’re too young to know what you’re doing,” she’d scolded.
Gram was right. She had been too young to know what she was doing. She still wasn’t sure she knew what she was doing.
Back home again, she put in a load of laundry and then settled down at her computer to work on her blog. Using her handy dictation app—much easier than trying to type wearing a cast—she started a new entry—“Cooking with One Hand.” Hmm. Kind of boring. She changed it to “Cooking with Three Hands,” smiled and then wrote about her evening making dinner with Matt while she had one hand in a cast. The pictures were both fun and attractive. She had one of him posing with a bunch of cilantro st
uffed sideways in his mouth and labeled it Cilantro Tango. Another shot of their finished salad was, if not magazine-worthy, at least attractive. So was the selfie they’d taken.
They looked happy. More than that, they looked like they belonged together. She reminded herself that she’d thought the same thing about Steve.
Muriel Sterling’s book was sitting on the coffee table, silently commanding her. Read me.
She picked it up and turned to the next chapter. “It’s natural to have doubts when you’re about to embark on a new adventure,” Muriel told her. “Sometimes we even look for excuses to stay home and not go.”
Was Matt an excuse? An excuse to avoid moving to New York?
“But stay true to your dream. In the end, you’ll be glad you did.”
Yes, she would. She’d stalled out with Steve. This was her chance to hit Restart. She had to take it.
She just wished she could take it and take Matt, too.
Chapter Sixteen
Stef went to her son’s baseball game and sat in the bleachers with the other moms and dads, pretending that nothing was wrong. It was a little hard to pretend when, after the game, Brad came over and said, “I’m going to take him out for ice cream. I’ll bring him home afterward.”
How many of the moms had heard that? She glanced over her shoulder to see one of them looking in her direction with raised eyebrows. She lowered her voice. “I don’t know if ice cream’s a good idea, considering he had an upset stomach yesterday.”
“He’s fine. Anyway, you gave him pancakes for breakfast.”
Pancakes for breakfast. So now she was not only a terrible wife, she was a terrible mother, as well. She frowned at Brad. “Make him eat a sandwich first.”
Brad nodded curtly, then strolled off, calling to Petey.
The same mom who’d overheard Brad was at her side now. Anna Nettles. More like Anna Meddles. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said.
Yes, she could have.
“Is everything okay with you and Brad?”
“Fine,” Stef lied. “We just came in separate cars.”
Anna nodded, but her expression said, You’re not fooling me, you poor, pathetic loser.
How many people already knew that Brad was staying at Gerhardt’s Gasthaus? How many people would soon know that Brad wasn’t coming home after T-ball games, that he was only dropping off his son and then leaving?
She stopped at Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company and bought herself a consolation box of chocolates. Brad and Petey were out having ice cream, but she had chocolate. So there.
He dropped Petey off an hour later, and Petey wasn’t looking at all happy when he walked in the door. “How long does Daddy have to stay at his friend’s house?”
“Not much longer,” Stef said and hoped she was right.
That afternoon, Petey went to a neighbor’s house to play, and Stef weeded her flower beds and felt sorry for herself. For dinner she made an easy meal of tuna casserole. Not gourmet fare, but Petey enjoyed it. She played three games of Cootie with him and two games of Sorry before popping him in the tub.
By the time her son went to bed, she was ready for bed, too. Pretending you were happy when you were miserable was exhausting. She fell asleep on the couch watching House Hunters International.
The next morning, it was still only her and her son. Rather than show up at church alone and set tongues wagging, she played hooky.
At one in the afternoon, she got a call from Velma Tuttle, one of the church deaconesses. “We missed you at church today, Stefanie.”
“Oh. Well, I wasn’t feeling up to it.” No lie. Let Velma draw her own conclusions.
“That’s what Bradley said.”
So Brad, who hadn’t been home since Friday, was now at church pretending to be Mr. Spiritual? She could feel her jaw start to clench.
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” Velma persisted.
It was getting more serious all the time. “No, no,” Stef said airily. “Petey had a little bug.” It was true. He had. “I might have caught it.”
“I’m glad to hear it’s nothing more. But still, Bradley should have stayed home and taken care of you. And I told him so.”
Good old Velma, always about the Lord’s business. And everyone else’s.
“Thanks for checking on me,” Stef said. She hung up, cutting Velma off in midplatitude, and texted Brad. You hypocrite.
He texted back within minutes. What?
You know what. Telling people I wasn’t up to coming to church. You are such a jerk!
She got no reply. Big surprise.
Petey had another play-date invite from a friend two streets over, and after dropping him off, Stef found herself with nothing to do except be angry. She decided to go over to Griffin’s and see if she wanted company.
But as she approached Griffin’s house, she saw that her friend already had company, and good-looking company at that. So this was Grant Masters’s son. Griffin had told her that Grant had delegated painting her place to him. She hadn’t told Stef the guy had the body of a cover model. Of course, that should’ve come as no surprise considering how fit both his dad and his brother were.
Griffin’s house was now a lovely shade of robin’s-egg blue and he was in the process of painting the trim on the windows white. She was standing next to him, a brush in her left hand. He said something and she laughed. She obviously did not need company.
Stef kept walking. She’d just stop by Cass’s place and see how the roof was coming along. And then find out when Grant would be back at her place.
Get rid of the tool man, Brad had said. She would...as soon as he’d put in one more day.
* * *
Grant was up on her roof, sweating in the hot sun. Cass decided the least she could do was make him lunch. A BLT on some of the sourdough bread she’d brought home from the bakery. And maybe a strawberry shortcake.
Since Grant had started working on her roof, it seemed she’d been getting a lot of urges to whip things up in the kitchen. The kitchen wasn’t the only place where things were getting stirred up. She slid the biscuits in the oven and then took some whipping cream out of the fridge. Suddenly she was envisioning herself in here with Grant, putting the kitchen table to good use. And they sure weren’t eating strawberry shortcake.
“Get a grip,” she told herself. But she didn’t listen to her own advice, just kept right on fantasizing about Grant Masters.
She whipped the cream and sliced the strawberries. Then she got busy on the sandwich. By the time she’d finished, the biscuits were out of the oven and the kitchen was getting warm.
So was she. She poured him a glass of lemonade, then took that and the sandwich outside and called him down from the roof.
“You don’t have to feed me, you know,” he said as he settled on the porch step with the plate.
“What the heck. I have to eat anyway. It’s no harder to make something for two instead of one.”
“Where’s yours?”
“I’m saving myself for strawberry shortcake.”
“You made shortcake?”
“I’m a baker. We love to bake.”
“I haven’t had shortcake since...” His sentence trailed off.
Oh, no. From treat to torture. “Did your wife make it a lot?”
He nodded and took a sudden interest in the profile of the mountains that surrounded the town.
Cass felt guilty for even thinking about getting romantically involved with this man. He wasn’t ready. Maybe he never would be.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose someone you love.”
He took in a breath, let it out. “Sometimes I wonder why it wasn’t me instead of her. I thought I’d be the one to have a
heart attack.” He put the sandwich he’d been eating back on the plate.
Cass didn’t know what to say, so she sat there and kept her mouth shut. Grant and his wife had been married a long time. She had been beautiful. She’d certainly been loved.
Cass couldn’t help feeling inadequate. Most of all, though, she felt sympathy. When it came to covering grief, sympathy made a sadly thin blanket.
He gave her an apologetic look. “It’s always a downer listening to people talk about the person they lost.”
“That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s got to be hard to move on.”
“It is, but I’m working on it.”
“This town is a good place to do that. Lots of kind people.”
“So I’ve discovered.” He managed a smile. “I do like strawberry shortcake.”
She got the message and went back in the house to dish some up.
Everyone loved Cass’s shortcake. She made her biscuits with butter and sweetened them with a quarter cup of sugar. She sweetened the berries, too, and mashed them just enough to extract some juice. She never sweetened her whipped cream, though. Vanilla needed no competition. Still, when she came back out and handed him a bowl of biscuits stuffed with juicy berries and smothered in whipped cream, she felt self-conscious, as if she were in some sort of competition.
He took a bite, nodded and smiled. “That’s good,” he said after he’d swallowed.
She wondered if it was as good as what his wife used to make. She certainly wasn’t going to ask and shadow a moment of pleasure with sadness from the past, especially when he was trying to move on.
Was Grant Masters ready to move on? Really?
He finished off the shortcake, then said, “I’d better get back to work.”
“Yes, it’s important to keep your favorite baker dry in the winter,” she cracked.
“Absolutely. Can’t have you catching cold and sneezing all over those gingerbread boys,” he said, and his smile returned. When he stood up he towered over her. Nice to meet a man who could do that. She was no petite bunny.
But as he walked off, she could almost see the ghost of his wife hovering over her. Hey, I had someone before, too, she informed the first Mrs. Masters. But I don’t now and neither does he. And there was something addictive about the man. The more she saw of him, the more she wanted.
Starting Over on Blackberry Lane--A Romance Novel Page 19