She wasn’t a poacher. She should have assured Tilda that she didn’t steal other women’s men. But, frankly, that glimpse of the woman’s tough side hadn’t made her anxious to stick around for girl talk.
But how serious were those two? Because Jen remembered something else about that little Valentine encounter. The look in Garrett Armstrong’s eyes when she’d landed on top of him had said, “Sex with you? Absolutely.” If Tilda hadn’t been there, what would have happened? Who knew?
Now here he was, on Saturday, coming into Gingerbread Haus while she was working. He seemed surprised to see her, and not in a good way. Okay, after hearing about his first wife she got that he was scared of commitment. But, hey, she’d had her heart stomped on, too. That didn’t mean you closed up shop and barred the windows, for crying out loud.
This wasn’t the time to talk about his love life, though. He had someone with him. At the sight of the little blond-haired boy, her biological clock about had a meltdown.
“Hi,” she said to the child. “I’m Jen.”
“I’m Timmy. I’m five.”
“Do you like gingerbread boys?” Jen asked.
The child shook his head. “I like Snickerdoodles.”
“Me, too,” she said. “And we happen to have some of those.”
The child nodded his head eagerly. “I know.”
“We’ll take two,” Garrett said. “I didn’t realize you were working here,” he added.
He probably would’ve avoided coming in if he had. “I just started last week. I thought I should make sure I can pay my rent,” she said teasingly.
He obviously didn’t get the joke since he didn’t smile.
“Cass needed someone part-time,” she hurried on, “and this seemed like fun. It’s giving me a chance to meet nice little boys,” she said, smiling at Timmy. She handed over the cookies and Garrett gave her a five-dollar bill.
“We’re going to a movie,” Timmy said.
“New Pixar movie,” Garrett explained.
“I love those,” Jen said.
He raised an eyebrow. “They’re kid movies.”
“Kids shouldn’t have all the fun.”
He frowned. “That sounds like something my ex would say.”
What to reply to that? All Jen managed was, “Oh.” She tried to catch one of the thoughts swirling in her brain. I’m not like your ex.... You can still have fun and be a responsible adult.... You can even fall in someone’s lap.
“Uh, my change?” he prompted.
“Oh, sure.” She counted change out of the cash register and passed it to Garrett. “Well, have a good time.”
“Thanks,” he said, and shepherded Timmy out the door.
She watched as Garrett pulled a cookie from the bag and gave it to his son, smiled as the big man took the child’s hand and led him down the street, the little boy skipping happily along, eating his cookie. Too late, she knew exactly what she should have said. I’m not like your ex. Give me a chance and I’ll prove it.
But you don’t poach, she reminded herself. Oh, yeah. That.
* * *
Toni called her sister, catching Jen just as she was leaving her new job at the bakery. “How’s it going up there in chocolate land? Got any hot plans for tonight?”
“I wish,” Jen grumbled.
“Yeah, well, me, neither. Valentine’s Day was such a bust, I can’t seem to work up any enthusiasm.”
“How could your Valentine’s Day be a bust?” Jen asked. “You and Wayne were going to Canlis. You can’t go to one of the nicest restaurants in Seattle and not have a good Valentine’s Day.”
“You can when your husband’s on call and there’s a tech emergency at his company.”
“You know, I’d understand that on-call thing if he was a doctor and it was a matter of life and death.”
“Tell that to Wayne’s boss,” Toni said. “When thousands of dollars are at stake, it is life and death. At least, that’s what Wayne told me.”
“I hope you didn’t have to leave right in the middle of dinner.”
“We got through the main course. But we left before dessert. And when we got home he was on his computer for the next two hours. Talk about a buzz kill.”
Toni looked out the kitchen window at the backyard of her suburban mansion. It was all perfectly landscaped. When they lived in their old house, the smaller one in the modest neighborhood, the yard was always in a state of wear and tear due to backyard soccer games. She could still picture herself pushing the kids on the swing. This yard went ignored. Everyone was too busy with his or her own activities. Even the deck with its requisite patio table and barbecue grill rarely got used.
“It’s not just Wayne. These days Jordan would rather be anywhere than home with boring old Mom.”
Listen to you, she told herself, you sound like such a whiner. But if a woman couldn’t whine to her sister who could she whine to?
“I feel like my family is breaking apart,” she confessed.
“Well, Jordan is thirteen now. She’s going to be more into her friends.”
Than with you. Thankfully, her sister didn’t finish that sentence. Toni knew in her head that it was only natural for her daughter to separate herself, start the process of becoming her own person, want to be with her peer group instead of her parents. But Toni’s heart wasn’t all that excited about this whole process. And surely it didn’t have to be that way all the time. Mothers and daughters didn’t need to wage war constantly, to never do anything together.
“You and I did stuff with Mom when we were teenagers,” she argued.
“Yeah, but not very often,” Jen reminded her.
Still, when they had it had been fun. Toni smiled at the memory of baking Christmas cookies together. And then there was the Sunday afternoon when they got bored and suckered their mother into playing a board game with them. “Remember that time we played Life with Mom?”
“How could I forget? She was always a cop.”
Toni couldn’t help snickering. “She was also the banker and she was terrible at it. She kept mixing up her money with the bank’s.”
“I still think that was on purpose.”
“I want to play Life with my kids,” Toni said suddenly. “I want to see my kids. The only time I see them these days is when I’m driving them to someone else’s house or to meet friends at the mall. I’m tired of them not being here when they’re here. They’re slipping away, Jen, just like Wayne.” She found it hard to finish her sentence. Her throat was tightening. She could feel tears rising in her eyes. Okay, it was that time of month. This was probably her hormones speaking.
“They’re growing up,” her sister said gently.
No, it was more than hormones. Her children were growing up too fast. Life was so unfair. One minute you were celebrating when the last child finally started kindergarten and you could have a morning of peace and quiet, and the next you were desperately holding on, trying to keep them close to you, wishing you could turn back the clock.
She didn’t want to turn back the clock, she told herself. She just wanted to make sure they survived these next few years. She wanted the same kind of closeness with her family that she’d enjoyed growing up. Yes, it was a different world. She understood that. But all the technology in the world couldn’t change the fact that family was still family. Darn it all! They were going to stay close even if it killed them.
“I’m going to do something about this,” she vowed.
“You guys need to get away someplace where there are no distractions,” Jen said. “Like here.”
After her weekend at the chocolate festival Toni couldn’t agree more. “I wonder what my family would do if I rented us a mountain cabin for our summer vacation,” she mused.
“Go through internet withdrawal?
Poison your coffee and leave you for dead?”
“Yes, they love me that much.”
But Toni couldn’t get the idea of a tech-free vacation out of her mind. After she finished talking to her sister she got online and did some poking around.
It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for—a website that offered rustic vacations for people wanting to get away from it all. And lo and behold, one of those places was right in the Cascade Mountains, not far from Icicle Falls. She read the blurb beneath the picture of a quaint log cabin nestled among fir trees.
Cozy cabins allow you to experience nature at its finest while harking back to a simpler time. Go hiking, fishing and picking berries. Cabins come complete with games and puzzles. No TVs, no cable, no Wi-Fi. Enjoy the simple life and connect with those you love.
Perfect. She fished her charge card out of her purse and made a reservation. This summer they were going on vacation and really getting away from it all. She could hardly wait.
“Guess what I booked for our vacation this year,” she said at dinner.
“Disneyland!” cried Jeffrey.
“A cruise?” her daughter guessed hopefully.
Her husband said nothing. Instead, he sat at the table, frowning at his pork chop.
Toni pretended not to notice. “No. We’re going to have a wilderness adventure.”
Jordan’s mouth turned down. “Like, in a tent?”
“No, in a rustic log cabin.”
Jeffrey was all for it. “Cool!”
“Sounds boring,” Jordan said.
“A cabin,” Wayne repeated, and he looked about as happy as Jordan.
“Not far from Icicle Falls,” Toni explained. “Up in the mountains.”
“At least let’s stay with Aunt Jen,” Jordan said. “I don’t want to stay in some dirty old cabin.”
“I’m sure they’re not dirty. Anyway, that would get pretty crowded.” Toni smiled. “But we’ll see her. And we can go into town and shop,” she added, hoping to sweeten the pot.
“I want to go to that bakery where Aunt Jen’s working,” Jeffrey said.
Her daughter was still looking less than thrilled. “Why can’t we stay in a motel in town? With a pool.”
Because they have Wi-Fi and cell phone reception. “This will be fun,” Toni said brightly.
“I don’t want to do it. Let’s go to Disneyland,” Jordan said.
“Too late. I already booked our cabin.”
Jordan stared at her mother as if she’d just sold her into slavery. “This is gonna be dumb.”
Her husband’s reaction was even stronger. “That was damn high-handed,” he said later that night after they’d sent the kids to bed.
Yes, it had been. They always discussed where they wanted to vacation. But this time she didn’t want the usual—a nice motel with an internet connection where Wayne could get sucked into his computer. She wanted them all to be together, really together, and she said as much.
“So you decided to be benevolent dictator. Is that it? Sorry, Ton. That’s not gonna fly. You can go do your mountain thing if you want, but count me out,” he said, and went to the kitchen, leaving her sitting on the family room couch.
This was not going according to plan. She followed him and watched while he pulled a bottle of his favorite micro brew from the fridge. “Come on, Wayne. Don’t be like that.”
He snapped off the cap and took a long draw, then regarded her, stony-faced.
She closed the distance between them. “Please do this. For me? For us?”
He didn’t say anything.
“We’re drifting apart, Wayne. We’re all drifting. We’re in the same house but we’re not together.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said in disgust. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “You spend more time on your laptop and your cell phone than you do talking to me.”
“That’s an exaggeration. And in case you didn’t notice, I’m almost always working on that laptop.”
She stepped away and threw up her hands. “That’s my point. And it’s really pathetic if you can’t unfasten yourself from that electronic leash for even a couple of weeks. Where does that put your family?”
“Oh, so now you’re going to guilt me into doing this?”
“I’m not trying to guilt you. I’m trying to make a point. Please, Wayne. All I’m asking for is two weeks.”
He took another slug of beer. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal.”
Uh-oh. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll do this back-to-nature thing on two conditions.”
“Two!”
“Yeah, two.”
Boy, he was pushing it. “Okay, what are they?”
“One, next year I get to pick where we go.”
“All right.” She could do that. “What’s the other?”
“When we get back you stop nagging me about being on my computer.”
Nagging, that was rather a strong word. She didn’t nag.
“I mean it, Ton. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
If they came home and slipped back into their old routines, the whole vacation would have been for nothing. But if they didn’t get away, if she didn’t try to break the electronic leash, nothing would change. “Okay. Deal.”
“Fine.”
He was still looking miffed, so to soften the moment she suggested, “Seal it with a kiss?”
The stone face finally became human again and he smiled. “Good idea.”
“I still think this is a dumb idea,” he said later as they lay tangled in the bedsheets. “We’re city people. What are we going to do cooped up in some cabin for two weeks?”
Weren’t men supposed to have a sense of adventure? Where was her man’s? “We can hike and play games. And I signed us up to learn how to fly fish.”
Now he seemed interested. “Yeah?”
“It’ll be something different,” she said.
“You can say that again. You’d better hope we aren’t ready to kill one another after the first day.”
She suddenly remembered her daughter’s teenage wrath at Christmas. And that was over being cut off from her texting for only two days. Other than an occasional visit to town, Toni was about to deprive her for two weeks. And Jeffrey wouldn’t have his Wii games. Would he drive his sister nuts? What if they all got cabin fever?
Oh, boy. What had she done?
Chapter Sixteen
Sharing treasures can be even more rewarding than holding on to them.
—Muriel Sterling, author of Simplicity
Stacy’s grandmother was gone. As her mother and aunt worked their way through a long to-do list, she did her best to help. While they made arrangements with the cemetery and secured the church and minister, she put together the obituary, hired someone to sing and called friends and relatives to tell them about the memorial service.
By the time the day arrived she was wrung out. She walked into the church and was surprised to see so many flowers. The immediate family had requested that, instead of flowers, friends and relatives donate to her grandmother’s favorite charity, Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that gave food, medicine and other kinds of assistance to people in needy countries. They’d already received many notices of donations to that worthy cause, but Stacy was glad some people had opted to send flowers. They made her think of Nana’s garden in the summer.
The church was rapidly filling up, and it wasn’t just older people. She was happy to see all the members of her book club sitting in the row behind the one reserved for family. There was Juliet and Cecily, Chita, sacrificing a precious day off, and Charley, now married and sporting a wedding ring. Cass had taken time off work. Chelsea and Dot were t
here, as well, proving that although they weren’t coming to the meetings anymore they were still book club members at heart. Even Jen Heath, their newest member, was present.
“Who’s minding the store?” Stacy asked Cass as they hugged.
“We’re closed for the afternoon,” Cass replied.
Stacy was truly touched because she knew a closed bakery meant a loss of business. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Of course I should have,” Cass said. “Who lets friends walk through things like this alone?”
It seemed as if everyone in Icicle Falls (not to mention regions beyond) had felt the same way. During the service, many shared their memories of what her grandmother had done for them.
“She was my Sunday school teacher when I was in third grade,” one man said. “She brought cookies every Sunday and that was enough to make me look forward to going to church.”
“She was one of my favorite customers,” said Pat Wilder, who owned Mountain Escape Books. “She always had a plate of cookies for the staff when she came in.”
A woman Stacy’s age stood up. Stacy didn’t recognize her, but then a lot of names in Nana’s address book had been unfamiliar. “We moved away from Icicle Falls twenty years ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Erna,” the woman said. “But I’ll always remember Wednesday afternoons at her house, learning to quilt.”
Stacy felt tears welling up. Nana had taught her to quilt, too. Which reminded her... What were they going to do with all the quilts she’d made?
She had her answer to that question soon enough. Two cousins each took one, and she brought the rest of the quilts home with her, along with the Depression and carnival glass.
The quilts got piled on Autumn’s old bed. She stuffed the glassware in any closet or cupboard corner she could find. And even as she piled up possessions she couldn’t part with, she thought of her aunt’s words. I don’t want to do this to my kids.
Things could be both a blessing and a burden. If she were to get hit by a truck and die tomorrow, she knew what category everything she’d saved would fall into. You’re not going to be able to keep all this, she told herself. But then what to do with it? She couldn’t just dump it.
The Cottage on Juniper Ridge Page 18