by Janet Dailey
The next day, I explored the contents of the blue cardboard box. It was the last step for me—then the space my dad occupied in my head was going to be banished forever. What I found shocked me.
Inside were some of my mother’s things: A burgundy velvet-covered jewelry box. Her wedding ring with a miniscule diamond that I remembered her leaving when we fled. A brooch with a hummingbird on it. A colorful Mexican fan. A ceramic vase painted with blue flowers.
What shocked me was his note. My dad, my often violent, uncontrollable dad, wrote that he loved me, that he loved my mother, that he was sorry.
That word sorry came up at least ten times. He blamed himself and took full responsibility. He blamed himself for my mother’s death.
“Without my abusive attitude and behavior, MaeLynn would not have high-tailed it for Montana. I take full blame for MaeLynn’s death. I loved her, Allie, as I have always loved you, too. I am dying a broken man. I say this not to make you feel guilty. You were right to walk away from your old man. You had to. I was a mean SOB and a threat to you.
“Your Grandpa Tad left me money, Allie. I spent part of it to get cleaned up, to get off the booze once and for all. I hate what I’ve done. Hate myself. Can’t remember a time when I didn’t hate myself. I think it started with my old man. You know the scars on my face? They’re all from him and his fists. I turned into my old man with you and your mother, the last person I wanted to be. But now I’m sober and I got to try to make amends, even though it is far short of what you deserve.
“I bought the apple orchard for you. I remember how you always ate apples out of the orchard near our trailer. I remember thinking way back then that it was kind of cute how you always had apples with you. Now I know you were always looking for apples to eat because you were hungry, because your loser dad did not provide food for you. I spent my money at the bars. I failed you because I was too drunk to do anything different. Allie, I am sorry with everything I got. My gift to you is all the apples you could ever want or need. What I should have given you and what you had a right to expect.
“I love you, Allie, and I wish you the very best. I am truly sorry.”
I choked up over that box, and when I got myself together, I walked through the apple orchard my dad left me. My apple orchard now.
I picked a Jonagold off a tree as Bob went running after those tantalizing squirrels, Margaret following her man with her tongue hanging out.
Mr. Jezebel Rooster cock-a-doodle-doo’d. He gets his times messed up.
The apple was delicious.
I found the ring in the middle of an apple pie we were sharing on Jace’s deck as the sun went down over the blue mountains in the distance, pinks and yellows settling over my apple orchard down the hill.
At first, I couldn’t even figure out what I was looking at. What was it and what was it doing in my pie? I pulled the ring out of the crust and licked it. It was quite the sparkler—absolutely stunning.
Jace reached for my hand and dropped down to one knee. Gotta love that. “Will you marry me, Allie Pelletier?”
“Oh yes. Yes, I will.” He picked me up, swung me around, and kissed me the way he always kisses me, full and passionate, with love, bodies together tight.
“I love you, Allie. I’ve loved you since I met you, and I’ll love you when we’re old and making apple pies together for our great-grandchildren, using your mom’s recipes.”
“That’s a really beautiful image.” I held his face and kissed him, loving him wrapped around me, loving us, loving our future.
“Sure is,” he drawled. “As long as you don’t burn the pies.”
I laughed and elbowed him and he grabbed me, flipped me over his shoulder, and shut the bedroom door with his cowboy boot.
I was a fool.
A hopeful fool.
I called a baby doctor.
She had a cancellation the next day, so I took it. She did the exam.
She said, “We can fix it.”
I was stunned.
I told Jace the news as soon as I saw him.
He picked me up and swirled me around.
I told Pearl the news about our engagement.
She hugged me and asked for the pieces of my mother’s purple-flowered china plates that my father had shattered.
I didn’t know why she wanted them, but I handed them over.
For a wedding gift, she created a four-by-five-foot mosaic of Jace’s house, which is where we are going to live. She used the pieces of the plates to form the flowers in the trees near his home.
“Welcome home, dearie,” she said. “Now get in there and bang out some babies.”
I received a call from the owner of Mackie’s Designs.
“We want you back, Allie,” Belinda Carls, the chic owner, said in her soft Texan drawl. “Annalise is gone. We checked out your claims and you were right as rain on a desert. Shane, Jeremy, and David said they were bee-bopping on the mattress with her, and they appreciated the promotions, but that’s wrong as a skunk’s scent and it’s not how we work, not how Mother would have wanted it. Did you know Annalise threw her Manolo Blahniks at people who made her mad? I just found out that many of her employees have had nervous breakdowns and plumb lost their minds. She was fired quick as a wink. How would you like to be president of Mackie’s Designs?”
I thought about it for a long . . . two seconds.
“No, thank you.” I could not imagine wearing four-inch heels again, and I don’t need to hide myself or my past behind couture or high-end fashions anymore.
“No?” Belinda was astonished, baffled. “What do you mean no, sugar? I’ve told you the salary, the benefits. This is a Texas-sized opportunity for you, Allie, and that’s no bull . . .”
“Sorry, Belinda. I’m going to bake pies.”
“Pies, dear?”
“Yep. Pies. Most especially, apple pies. My mother’s favorite. I’ll send you one.”
Epilogue
I’m selling pies.
I started selling them at a local Saturday market. The first time, I sold twelve pies. The next Saturday I tripled that, and the next Saturday I doubled that. I was mentioned in an article about the best food to buy in local Saturday markets. I started getting orders from local stores in addition to the country café down the road.
I decided to turn my dad’s house into a country store where I could bake and sell my pies. I bought new industrial appliances, took down a wall, hired a few local women, and we baked, sold, and shipped pies to other stores all day. I covered a table with my mom’s tulip tablecloth and her apple orchard photograph is on a wall. I wear her apple apron.
I love my new life. I love watching the leaves of the apple orchard change. I love the smell of all the pies we make: raspberry, rhubarb, lemon meringue, chocolate, etc. and, most especially, apple pies, which I have named MaeLynn’s Apple Pies.
I love remembering my mom and baking pies with her.
Sometimes I can hear her voice, her laughter. I look at the photos of us in Bigfork often.
I have brought the happiest memories of my mother right into this kitchen. Her memory is not blotted with grief and simmering resentment anymore, and I revel in the joy of who she was, the light she brought to my life. I love the time I had with her, however short. I have no room in my heart for anger, grief, or hatred toward my dad. I lived with it for too long; it wore me down to nothing and turned me into someone I am not.
At night, I hug my husband.
We cook dinner and sit by the fire. We locate the constellations, we put puzzles together. We hike through the gorge, by waterfalls, up to magical viewpoints. I go with him on photography forays because he likes taking pictures. We let the dogs run and we ride the horses. We bike. I read Jane Austen out loud. We read the same crime thriller together and talk about it. We have planned a trip to Yellowstone.
And we laugh. We always laugh.
My name is Allie Pelletier.
I had some trauma in my childhood.
I was
often lonely and miserable.
I ate a lot of apples.
I made pies with my mother.
I fell in love in Yellowstone. I am still in love with that same man.
I have found peace with my past.
I am pregnant. We’re having a little girl.
We will name her MaeLynn, after my mother.
We are going to give her brothers and sisters, too.
Jace and I are very excited.
A KISS BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Mary Carter
Prologue
Many moons ago
Like her mother and grandmother, and on up the maternal line, young Rose had the gift. But it wasn’t until she fell in love herself that her powers truly progressed. In fact, ever since George first kissed her, women of all ages began flowing into the shop and begging for her love spell. It seemed everyone who used the secret tincture—purple clover, a drop of George’s cologne, petals from the roses he’d given her—soon fell madly in love. Rose was happy she could help. When you were in love, you wanted everyone in the world to feel the same. And it was all because of George. Everything good in life was because of George.
Her first date, her first kiss, her first time. He laid a silver blanket down on the cemetery’s soft grass. He gave her a thick red rose that was just beginning to open, and even brought two crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne. To this day all she had to do was close her eyes and she could hear the pop of the cork, see the fizz explode and drip down the long green neck of the bottle, listen to the clink of their glasses, and feel the golden liquid drip onto her fingers as she held the glass up for more. He was the center of her world.
And he looked at her as if she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, as if he couldn’t get enough. Everyone else had trouble looking into her eyes—one blue and one green—but not him. Everyone else called the color of her hair “mousy.” George called it chestnut. Others called her weird, or strange. George called her special and magical.
It was easy to say yes, and oh, how she wanted him to make love to her, because that would make them like husband and wife. And he was so slow, and so tender, and it didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, and it didn’t last but a few stolen minutes, and their love was lit by a magnificent moon.
Someday it would be different. Someday she would be his legal wife. Then they could stroll hand in hand in the daylight and no one would look twice. For now they were destined to meet in the dark. Tonight marked an entire year that they had been seeing each other. She wondered what he would bring her. A rose, of course, as always, but maybe something else? Maybe a little necklace she could wear underneath her dress. A little heart, a promise she could wear when they were apart. Oh, how lucky she was. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen.
And that was the problem. He was a man. She was just shy of sixteen; he was thirty-six. Everyone else thought she was just a girl—a strange girl, a mousy girl—but George knew different. She was a woman, and she was in love. She couldn’t wait to see him again. She wore her best dress, blue with a green silk ribbon, to bring out the best of each eye, and brushed her chestnut hair until it shone. When her mother wasn’t looking, she had applied pink rouge to her cheeks and mascara to her lashes, and just a touch of shimmering gloss to her eager lips. It was just before midnight. The moon was ripe and drooping so low she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. George had yet to appear. It was a little odd. He was always the first one there, waiting for her, standing with one hand propped against a tombstone, the other holding her rose. Posing with a silly grin and waiting for the moment when he could say, There’s my Rose.
She touched the note in the pocket of her dress, the one he slipped under the door to the shop. He was lucky that she found it first. She would have to warn him about her grandmother’s prying eyes. My Rose, meet me tonight by our favorite statue. I wish to steal a kiss before midnight.
So here she stood by his favorite statue—a young maiden kneeling with her arms outstretched, palms out, as if pleading with her lover to take her into his arms. She couldn’t stay long, for someone might notice she was gone. Something must have come up, because he would never leave her alone this long in the dark. She had just turned to go home, hurrying along the back row of headstones, when she tripped over something in her path. Startled, she lifted herself from the ground and whirled around.
His beautiful body lay faceup in the grass. His eyes and mouth were open, gaping blankly at the full moon. Just a body, a lifeless vessel incapable of saying There’s my Rose. She knelt down beside him, took the rose out of his clutched fingers. How she wanted to kiss his lips, but the foam—it was too much. She couldn’t bring herself to go near them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t wonder what had killed him; poison was the easiest spell to spot. It worked quickly and caused the lips to foam. Her mother and grandmother had seen the note. She brought the thorny stem of the rose up to her wrist and cut as deep as she could. It wasn’t deep enough. She was still alive. She cursed her mother and grandmother, she cursed all lovers, she cursed anyone who was lucky enough to steal a kiss before midnight.
Only sweet sixteen but already condemned to the life of a lonely old maid. Her lover had died waiting for her. She, too, would spend the rest of her life waiting for him, waiting for death.
Chapter One
New Orleans, 1992
It began with a scavenger hunt. Imagine Rebecca Ryan, a junior, invited on the senior trip by Allison, Cathy, and Grace (ACG!), the most popular girls in school. For the first time in her life, Rebecca wished her long, dark hair looked more like their light, fringed bobs. And what was she thinking, bringing her fanciest clothes? The other girls were dressed casually, yet somehow still looked runway ready. Rebecca was a phony. She just wasn’t like them. They were skinny; she was curvy. They were loud and carefree; she was reserved and shy. They wore designer clothes and drove to school in shiny new cars; she trolled thrift stores and took the bus. They summered in Europe, pierced their ears, and never missed a salon appointment. They were girls who up until now hadn’t said so much as hi to Rebecca in the halls.
Normally she liked trolling thrift stores for clothes, watching their town go by from the window of the bus, and she truly enjoyed her yearly trips to Miami to see her grandparents, (anywhere warm was better than Buffalo in the winter time!), or trips to Gettysburg to see ancient cannons. Of course she was dying to go to London, or Paris, or Rome. But there was time. She would tour Europe when she graduated college. Or so she thought.
But here she was, in New Orleans, with ACG. She felt a rush of joy that buoyed her to a whole new level of happy. Why not take crazy risks for your new best friends? Perhaps she had always wanted to be popular, but since it never seemed remotely possible, she shoved the desire into a secret room in her heart and locked the door. Now the lock had been sprung and she was free. It was surprising how easy it had been to pull off.
She told her parents it was a school-sponsored band trip. Rebecca had grudgingly played the clarinet for years. She even forged a fake permission slip and watched guiltily as her mother lovingly applied tags to her suitcase and peppered her with questions about the trip. She vowed she would never lie to them again; she didn’t have the stomach for it. It wouldn’t be long before the Ryans found out that no one else in the band had gone to New Orleans, but by that time Rebecca would be back to face her punishment.
And now here they were, just hours off the plane from Buffalo, and Bourbon Street was already spinning under the influence of apple-green and berry-red drinks appropriately named Hurricanes and Hand Grenades. The four beauties linked arms and danced down the street, laughing loudly, exposing a breast here and there even though it wasn’t Mardi Gras. And perhaps the rebelling would have ended with the three of them passing out in the Friends Motel, waking up with a wicked hangover and watery recollections of the phone numbers stuffed in their purses, had it not been for the scavenger hunt.
The
first two items on Rebecca’s list looked harmless enough:
1. Drink three more Hurricanes. Bartender must sign and swear you drank them, plus you must show us all three glasses.
2. Get a psychic reading from the old witch at the Voodoo Shop. Tell us what color the witch’s eyes are so we know you’ve seen her. Tell us your fortune.
3. Kiss a stranger in a cemetery. Have someone take a picture of the two of you making out by a headstone.
The third item stopped Rebecca in her tracks. Make out with a stranger in a cemetery. Like she would. Like she could. Were the other girls really going to do that? Making out with a total stranger was worrisome enough. But a cemetery? At night? There was absolutely no way. As Rebecca made her way to a little jazz club she read about in a local paper, she obsessed about how she was going to fake that one. And maybe the creepy graveyard wasn’t the worst bit. Rebecca was sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Juvenile games of spin the bottle didn’t count. Neither did Joey Garden sticking his tongue in her ear. But really, really kissed? She’d dreamt of it, of course, but guys didn’t look twice at girls like her. She didn’t want to do the scavenger hunt anymore. This wasn’t why she came on the trip. She didn’t want her first real kiss to be some kind of silly game. And why was she suddenly all alone? That hadn’t been part of the plan. It struck her that it probably wasn’t particularly safe for a sixteen-year-old to be roaming tipsy and alone through the streets of the French Quarter. If her mother knew, she would be out of her mind. Here she was, a trusted daughter, Reliable Rebecca, doing something incredibly stupid. She’d never even had so much as an overdue library book. She was suddenly ashamed. If anything happened to her, her parents’ lives would be ruined forever. All because of her lies. All because she wanted to be liked and win a scavenger hunt. She didn’t even ask what the prize was. How crazy was that? Should she turn around? Try to find them? Go back to the hotel? No. She was here, wasn’t she? She had to at least listen to some local music. After all, that’s what the band would have done if they really had come on a school trip.