by Linda West
Home.
She hoped she hadn’t made the wrong choice—not that she had many options.
Fluff meowed in his carrying case; he hated flying, even in first class—especially the landings.
Summer reached into the case and pet him.
“Where’d your ugly Gumby squeaky toy go?”
Within minutes, they were on the ground. Summer finished her coffee and avoided the stares of the deplaning passengers as they tried to recognize her behind her dark glasses. She fished around, looking for Fluff’s ugly Gumby toy, as she dialed her mom’s number. A smile came to Summer’s face as she imagined her mother’s surprise.
“Hey Mom, it’s me. You’ll never guess where I am! Mom, are you crying?”
Summer listened to her mother sniffling on the other end of the phone. She couldn’t quite get out of her what was wrong.
“I’m going to grab a cab and I’ll be right there, Mom. Don’t worry!”
She grabbed her Gucci bag and Fluff’s case and made her way off the plane.
A pretty flight attendant with short blonde hair and big breasts waved goodbye.
“Thanks for flying United,” she chirped, in a fake sounding southern accent.
“Thanks. Hey, I lost my cat’s squeaky toy. If you find it, can you please have it sent to where I’m staying?”
The flight attendant’s pretty smile fell to a line.
“I have nothing better to do.”
What the heck did that mean? Summer immediately disliked her, for some reason.
“Yeah? Well, thanks.” Summer scribbled down her number on a piece of paper. “My cat loves that darn thing.”
Summer turned to leave and bumped into the Captain exiting the cockpit.
Fluff’s carrying case went flying with a resounding wail from the cat inside. Summer nearly fell over.
Brad Anderson grabbed her just as she lost her balance.
“Whoa there, little lady! Sorry about that. Are you all right?”
Summer collected herself, and spotted Fluff’s case a couple of feet away. The cat was okay—albeit, glaring at her now through the mesh window.
“Yes, thank you.” She looked up at him and almost fainted when she saw the familiar grey eyes.
“Brad?”
Brad looked confused. Then a scowl formed on his handsome face. His eyes turned stormy. He thrust her back away from him.
“Summer.”
Summer regained her composure and smiled, hoping he wouldn’t notice how insecure she felt at that moment.
“Long time no see.”
He looked her over with a hard stare.
“I forgot … you were blonde now, living in L.A.”
Whoa that was icy. Summer’s hope sank. How he managed to make L.A. and blonde sound so bad, she had no idea.
Darn that Brad Anderson. She didn’t care what he thought.
She didn’t want to care. Her heart beat loudly in her ears as she struggled to find something interesting to say.
“I am… I mean…I live back in L.A., but I travel all the time. Well, look at you; a big time pilot! No more flying crop dusters for your dad?”
The pretty flight attendant interrupted their conversation and slipped her arm through Brad’s.
“We need to catch our crew car Darling,” she drawled in a sticky way.
Summer liked her even less now.
‘Miss Big Boobs,’ as Summer had now dubbed her, led Brad away down the ramp and far away from her.
Story of my life, Summer thought—Brad Anderson walking away from her. Some things never change.
Chapter 10
Summer found her mom busy in the kitchen making pies.
The house was decorated beautifully for Christmas. The smell of apples and cinnamon filled the air. A warm comforting heat rose from the oven. It felt like home.
“Hey honey! It’s so great to see you!” her mom said, squishing her with a warm hug.
“Great to be home.” Summer said— when she could breathe again.
They laughed together and hugged some more.
“It’s so good to have you home, Honey. Thanks for coming.”
She looked at her daughter seriously. She wiped a lone tear away.
Summer was concerned.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
Her mother put the kettle on the stove to heat up.
“Honey, this is going to take some hot cocoa therapy.”
Soon they were perched together on the couch in front of the decorated Christmas tree, hot cocoas in hand.
Mom’s tree had dozens of strings of lights and barely a visible branch that wasn’t loaded with ornaments.
A black and white newspaper article was lying on the table. It was open to the picture from the Kissing Bridge Gazette that Mom had sent her in the mail.
Her mother picked up the article and handed it to her.
“Look at it.”
“It’s a copy of the one you sent me?”
“Look again.”
Summer peered closely again at the picture, and then her mouth fell open.
The clipping showed a picture of the cookie competition contenders that had been taken right after last year’s judging. A proud smiling bunch of cotton tops (grey-haired ladies) stood together holding their ribbons up for show.
Her mom however, was not smiling in the picture.
Ethel Landers’ unhappy face was clearly evident as she held up her red ribbon for second prize.
She held it far away from her, as if a skunk had sprayed it.
Summer pulled the Gazette closer to her face.
“Mom! Why is Mrs. Beaverton holding your first place blue ribbon? And why are you….”
Her voiced trailed off to a whisper as she looked at her mother in horror and realization.
“Because she won it!” shouted her mother.
Summer gasped out loud and brought her hand to her mouth in disbelief.
“But you sent me the annual picture of you winning? I don’t understand?”
Ethel Landers looked at her daughter sheepishly.
“Photoshop.”
Summer gasped again.
“Photoshop? When did you learn Photoshop?”
Her mother shrugged. “Your Aunt Carol and I took a senior class at the Y. I just switched out our heads. I also do the Facebook.”
Summer didn’t know which shocked her more.
“Mom, how could this happen? Nobody has ever beat Grannie Izzy’s famous cut-out cookies!”
“You haven’t been home in a long time, Darling. Things have changed.”
Chapter 11
The next morning, bright and early, Summer and her mother got to work.
Frank Sinatra’s Christmas Hits played in the backdrop. The kitchen was aglow with the crackling of the fireplace. The kitchen counter was completely filled with cookie ingredients. Flour, sugar, butter and a large, old recipe book lay open to a worn out page. A light snow was falling softly outside, and no one had any idea what the Landers ladies were up to.
Summer had decided that the recipe had been made wrong. Her mother assured her that she had done nothing different.
“I’m telling you, I made it the way we always do. That Mrs. Beaverton has just gone and out-modernized me.”
Summer looked puzzled.
Her mother shook her head. “She’s had her grandson helping her on the internet, I’m pretty sure. I’ve seen him come up the walk at least once a week with that laptop holder thing.”
This was getting serious.
Summer gazed out the window at the Beaverton’s house next door.
Through the window, she spotted Mrs. Beaverton up early as well – making cookies! She pressed her nose to the window to get a better look. The requisite cookie ingredients were laid out in a mirror image to their own. Summer spotted an odd-looking spice jar. She squinted, trying to make out the words.
And with that, the window shade was suddenly rudely slammed down and blocked Summer’s view.
“Well, I never!”
She turned to her mother.
“This is getting serious.”
Her mother nodded in complete agreement.
Summer thought about it.
“We need a plan.”
Mother was all ears. She waited for her to continue.
“I don’t have a plan, mind you.” Summer said.
Her mother threw up her hands.
“I’m going to be humiliated – again!”
Summer tried to calm her down.
“Let’s think, Mom. Either we go standard all the way and hope they still appreciate the classic version we’ve always done, or we fight with fire and get on YouTube! You can learn anything you want on YouTube!”
Her mom considered that.
“I would like to see if they have any color videos. Although I can’t imagine beating my colors from last year. The colors were impeccable, Summer. If you’d only seen them. They were truly magical. I really outdid myself.”
Besides the fact that Grandma Izzy’s cookie recipe was super and unbeatable, Mom had a special talent.
As I mentioned, the Landers had a curse, but they each also had a special unique one-of-a-kind gift.
Mom’s unique talent was color healing. She was a legend for her coloring book pictures as a child, so it was only natural she ended up teaching water color painting to the high school kids as well. Mom was also the one who found the exact perfect red shade of hair color that set Aunt Carol apart from all other red heads.
Their house interior was painted a certain buttermilk cream ivory paint that was the envy of all the neighbors.
Many of them had asked over the years where to buy it, in an attempt to replicate the ethereal effect. Alas, there was no color to buy! Mother had created the color herself! She had bought a few gallons of paint and mixed them up, and magically came up with the envious hue that now graced their walls.
When Summer had been sick with grief after her break up with Brad, Mother had insisted they paint her room the subtlest of rose colors. Many a night, tears were dried staring at those lovely walls, and somehow solace was found and a career made.
There were many who believed it was her mother’s gift with color that gave the Landers’ Christmas cut-out cookies their extra edge.
After Grandma Izzy passed, the cookies taste changed ever so slightly. No one had been able to discern the subtle difference but the Landers themselves. However, their cookies were still far better than anyone else’s, and so had continued to reign supreme.
Yes, they always won. But it was Mother’s special gift for color that was the cherry on the cookie cake. Mother’s joyful warm reds and vibrant tree greens shot out in contrast to the dull pastels of her competitors. Without a doubt, her mother had the gift with color.
Summer gazed at her mother’s unhappy face in the picture, and her holding the red ribbon.
She felt filled with guilt.
She shouldn’t have stayed away so long. Look what had happened.
Summer looked suspiciously toward the closed shades of the Beaverton’s house across the way.
“Mom, do you think Mrs. Beaverton knows about YouTube yet?”
Mom sipped on her hot cocoa deep in thought.
“Her grandson is pretty wily—just like his father—the one that looks like a ferret.” Wily. There’s a chance he told her about ‘The YouTube’.
Summer considered this.
“Okay, then it’s an even playing field. She has him, but you have me. And I have my computer. We’ll have to think outside the box. In the meantime, let’s make a batch of our originals and see if we can notice anything different. It could be oven temperature, or that the water had too much fluoride.”
The two Landers ladies tied on their aprons and got down to business while The Best of Bing Crosby’s Christmas tunes played in the background.
Chapter 12
Before long, they had a few dozen of their famous fresh-baked cookies lining the kitchen counters.
Mom was mixing up the frosting with the real vanilla maple syrup (one of the secret ingredients) when Aunt Carol walked in.
Aunt Carol was a sight to behold in person. She was a boisterous lady with a large red beehive that had somehow made it from the ‘50s straight on through to the 21st century. It had actually come back in style a couple of times during those decades—but in style or not, Aunt Carol bulldozed on.
Aunt Carol had also, upon returning home, turned into a notorious cat woman. At last count, she had over 20—and they were all black. It had gotten to be that anytime anyone in Kissing Bridge Mountain had a litter with a black cat, or just found an old stray black cat, they would just high-tail it over to Aunt Carol’s and be done with it. Who knew how many she had now?
Aunt Carol also had a special talent. She had an unsurpassed amazing ability to eavesdrop.
Aunt Carol had the gift to be able to hear gossip drop a good 15 feet away, and in a ruckus crowd! One would never have expected that the loud, overly talkative senior could also simultaneously overhear full conversations across the room; even while she herself was in the midst of having one!
She was, in essence, a phenomenon.
The only liability with the talent was with the B’s. She had a hard time hearing them for some reason. However, most of everything she overheard could still be pieced together with basic logic and substituting a ‘B’ now and then.
Of course, they had kept her special talent a secret in the family so it could be best utilized.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the town, through Aunt Carol, they had been able to keep tabs on most of the goings-on in Kissing Bridge Mountain.
That’s how, in fact, Summer had heard the truth about Brad that ruined her life.
Chapter 13
Before she had time to think further, Summer was swept up in everything that was Aunt Carol.
“Summer, what a wonderful surprise! Why Ethel, how dare you keep this from me,” she chided her younger sister.
Summer laughed. “Don’t blame Mom, Aunt Carol. It’s my fault. I surprised her.”
Aunt Carol looked at Mom trying to decide if that was, in fact, the truth. With a loud “Hrmmph,” she gave up.
“Well then, I take it you have learned the state of things?”
Summer nodded in seriousness.
Mom and Aunt Carol went into the living room.
Mom put a log on the fire.
All three were soon seated around the Christmas tree, holding hot steaming mugs of cocoa in their hands.
Aunt Carol took on a serious look. “I don’t want you getting upset… but I was walking by the GameStop at the mall and who did I see, but young Peter Beaverton!”
Summer looked at her mom for clarification.
“The wily one.”
Summer nodded in understanding. “Oh, the grandson.”
Aunt Carol waited for them to finish before continuing dramatically.
“He was bragging to another young man about his grandma and how she was going to win the Silver Bells Christmas cookie competition hands down this year - again!”
Summer looked at her mother.
“What, Aunt Carol… what did you overhear?”
Aunt Carol took a long swallow of her cocoa and looked her family in the eyes.
“She’s getting private coaching…with a professional…on Skype!”
Mom looked confused.
“What—what’s Skype???”
Aunt Carol shrugged.
Summer shot to attention.
“It means she’s getting private coaching from someone that could be in Ireland, for all we know!”
Summer groaned.
“He is wily!”
Mom pulled herself together.
“Well then. . . I can’t enter. I can’t compete against Skype!”
Summer and Aunt Carol looked at each other. They wanted to console her.
They just couldn’t.
The Beaverton’s had a professional.<
br />
This was getting serious.
Chapter 14
Summer was thoroughly depressed.
Here she had come home to get away from her sadness, and now her mother was ready to be committed. After Aunt Carol had left, her mother had taken to her room and refused to even come out for dinner.
Taking to the bed was a common expression of major depression for the Landers women. When one of them declared they were ‘taking to the bed’ that meant lots of tears, lots of moping and generally little or no communication from the bed—other than for basic nourishment.
Depending on how bad the event to be dealt with was, nourishment could swing between pizzas—or juice-only cleanses.
By early evening, Summer was bored and decided to go to the corner café that was a walkable distance in the snow. She looked out the window at the snow banks blocking the road.
She pulled on her boots and hunted through the hall closet for a warm coat. She had left L.A. with just her leather coat on and that wouldn’t hold up on Kissing Bridge Mountain. Up on the mountain, the winds whipped the snowfall into a blizzard in a blink and you had better be prepared with the correct gear.
Summer chose a parka and some fuzzy orange mittens. She donned her black sunglasses, even though it was night time. She didn’t want to be recognized; she just wanted to get out of the house and possibly see what was going on at the Beaverton’s house.
As she passed the driveway, she saw young ‘Wily Junior’—as she had dubbed him now—trudging up the driveway with the dreaded laptop.
Ugh, she thought. Another Skype session with ‘the professional’!
She focused on the falling snow. Getting stressed wasn’t going to help anything.
The snow felt good on her face as she walked the short distance to the cafe. The neighbors all had their homes decorated with lights and ornaments and the pre- requisite blow up Santa dotted each snow-covered lawn; as they should be. She waved at an older Italian man who was outside shoveling his driveway. “Hey, Mr. Machelli,” she called out gaily.