The Enchanted Garden Cafe (South Side Stories Book 1)

by Abigail Drake

  I paused at the bottom of the steps. When I heard chanting and smelled something burning, I frowned and then grimaced. Uh oh. I knew that smell. It was incense, which only meant one thing.

  I stuck my head into the front room and wished liquid bleach could have been poured directly into my eyes to erase what I’d seen. At least a dozen people had spread out their yoga mats, their bare bottoms rising high in the air in a downward-facing-dog position.

  Naked yoga. Great. Just what I needed to deal with today.

  “Mom?”

  I didn’t want the people doing yoga to turn around, but I had to get her attention somehow. Her head popped up in the front of the room. She was naked, too, of course. She waved and held up a finger.

  “One second, Fiona.”

  They went from downward dog to plank and into cobra, and I got to see all of it. The entire sun salutation. Lucky me.

  I kept my eyes directed at the ceiling as I waited. I’d just caught a glimpse of our accountant’s seventy-year-old ding-dong, not an experience I cared to repeat.

  When they finally stood up, Mom looked over her shoulder at me, and I pointed to the kitchen with a stern expression on my face. She grabbed her robe and followed me inside.

  “What was that?” I asked in a whispered hiss. “A bunch of sweaty naked people in the café. Are you freaking kidding me?”

  She looked confused. “It’s our yoga class.”

  “But they aren’t wearing any clothing.”

  “It’s hot.”

  I got a cup of coffee, needing to be completely awake for this discussion. “We can’t have nude people exercising in our shop. We’ve discussed this before. We serve food here.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “You don’t worry enough.” Those words came out a little louder than intended, and Mom looked hurt.

  “They have nowhere else to go, and we thought it would be good to come together and create some positive energy in the café after what happened to poor Moses.”

  “Couldn’t you just burn some sage or something?”

  “I already did that.”

  I took a long drink of coffee. Like an impulsive child when it came to making important decisions, Mom never considered anything beyond the needs of the moment.

  “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t hold yoga here until we got the air conditioner fixed,” I said.

  She jutted out her chin and folded her arms across her chest. She intended to be stubborn about this.

  “Hence the naked yoga. A perfect solution.”

  I glared at her. “Not a solution, a mistake. Like ordering the penises and scheduling that stranger to play at acoustic night and all of the other things you do behind my back. You can’t keep doing this. Anderson Solutions is trying to shut us down, and you’re making it easier for them.”

  Tired of being the mature party in our relationship, I grabbed an apron, stuck it over my head, and pulled out cookie sheets, banging mixing bowls around as a way to vent my anger. She watched, tapping her foot. “Someone needs to switch to decaf.”

  I opened my mouth, about to respond, when I heard the bell above the front door tinkle, and panic filled my chest. “Oh no. Were you expecting anyone?”

  Mom shook her head, her eyes huge as she probably realized the same thing I did. Our yoga people were in Savasana, the corpse pose, by this time. To anyone unlucky enough to walk through the front door right at this moment, it would look like a bunch of naked people had crawled in and died on the floor of our shop.

  We heard a startled, masculine gasp, and Mom bolted for the door in her Chinese silk robe. She came back into the kitchen dragging Matthew behind her, a big smile on her face.

  “It’s only Matthew,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  My shoulders sagged with relief, but then I got annoyed and scowled at Matthew. “Again? Are you planning to move in?”

  He didn’t look offended. In fact, he acted like he was trying not to laugh. When I gave him a puzzled look, he pointed to my apron. “Thanks for the warning,” he said.

  I’d been in such a snit I hadn’t noticed which one I’d grabbed. We sold an assortment of funny aprons and kept the samples for ourselves. Today, mine was black and read “Kitchen Bitch” in white block letters.

  “Ha ha ha. Hilarious.”

  I stood behind the large marble island in the center of our kitchen. The island had been a splurge but worth every penny. I rolled out pastries, kneaded dough, and baked to my heart’s content on it. Mom called it my therapy, and today I definitely needed it.

  Matthew gave me an assessing look. “Maybe you should do yoga too. You’re very tense.”

  “You both should,” said Mom. “It’s wonderfully freeing.”

  For a minute, I imagined Matthew doing yoga naked, and immediately dropped the metal mixing bowl I’d just pulled out of the cupboard. It clattered to the floor, most likely snapping the yoga people right out of their deep, meditative state. I winced and put it in the sink, trying not to make eye contact with Matthew.

  Mom ignored my clumsiness and gave him another sunny smile. “You’re always welcome to join us, Matthew.”

  I muttered something under my breath about the department of health, but they ignored me. My phone rang, and I knew it was Scott. He usually called on his way to work, another adorably predictable thing about him. That and the fact he’d never, under any circumstances, do yoga.

  I took my coffee and snuck out the back door and into the garden. “Did you get my messages?” I asked. “Someone attacked Moses. He’s in the hospital.”

  He was silent for a second. “Moses? The old man with the saxophone?”

  “Yes,” I said as the emotions rose to the surface again. “Someone beat him up right outside the door to our kitchen. He’s in a coma.”

  I had to squinch up my face to keep from crying, remembering the feeling of Moses’s fragile bones when I’d touched his shoulder on acoustic night. He was entirely too breakable.

  “Don’t you keep that door locked?”

  It seemed like an odd question. “We do, but Moses may have decided to slip out that way instead of going through the shop.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “People get mugged in that part of town all the time. It’s a bad area.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not right next to the café at least.” I paused. “And Moses isn’t people. He’s my friend. He’s also old, and he’s been through so much already.”

  “Sorry, Fiona. You know how I feel about the South Side. It isn’t safe.”

  I didn’t want to get into it right now. “Did you stop by on Saturday night?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mom said she thought she saw you when she was closing up.” When he didn’t respond, I continued, a little confused. “Never mind. She must have been mistaken. It was busy.”

  He sounded befuddled as well. “We went to a bar downtown but didn’t stay long. I went home not long after you did, although I had more to drink than I realized.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t find my shoes.”

  “Your shoes?”

  “My custom-made Johnson and Murphy’s.”

  “The ones with your name printed inside?”

  “Yes. Thank goodness I bought two pairs, but I can’t understand what happened. I’ve looked all over the apartment. They aren’t here. And the bar we went to must have been filthy. I got splattered with something gross and had to take in my suit to get dry-cleaned this morning.”

  He sounded upset, but it really was his own fault. And his night of drinking paled in comparison to the night I’d experienced. “Poor you.”

  He must have heard the hint of irritation in my voice. “Is everything okay?”

  “Nothing is okay, Scott. Do you want to hear about my morning?”

  I told him about the naked yoga, and he had the decency to get upset on my behalf. “She’s breaking about a million health codes with that one.”
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  “I know,” I moaned. “But she won’t listen to reason.”

  “Has she given any further thought to just selling the place?”

  I sighed. “Not an option.”

  “Think about it. No more worries. No more dealing with your mom and all her craziness. You could lead a normal life.”

  A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled its way up my chest. “Normal is highly overrated.”

  “What did you say? I’m going through the tunnel, babe. I can’t hear.”

  “Nothing. It’s fine.”

  “Consider what I said. Your mom should be reasonable.”

  I hung up the phone. Mom was never reasonable, and now my Monday had been ruined. I was sick with worry about Moses, I hadn’t done the crossword, and now I’d be baking at the hottest time of day. Matthew sat on a stool in the kitchen eating breakfast when I stomped back in. Mom had disappeared.

  I pulled out ingredients to make chocolate crinkles. “Why are you here?”

  He laughed. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  I shot him a look as I cracked eggs. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I’m not sure I trust you.”

  “Are you naturally distrustful, or is it just me?”

  “I’m naturally cautious. I have to be.”

  “You need to relax. Enjoy the moment.” Matthew took a sip of coffee and raised his mug to me. “I’m certainly enjoying this moment and this coffee. It’s fabulous.”

  “It is. Mom makes the best coffee in the whole world.”

  “Whoa. Did we actually agree on something?”

  I tried to frown at him and failed. “Don’t get used to it.”

  He grinned, looking delectable once again. He wore an unbuttoned faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a white T-shirt beneath. His hair was in a ponytail, and he achieved the perfect level of scruffy without being messy. He had on khaki shorts instead of jeans and Converse sneakers. It was the first time I’d seen his knees. He had such nice-looking knees, which said a lot because most people had ugly knees, but nothing about Matthew was ugly.

  “I’m not just here for the coffee. I wanted to see if you’d heard anything more about Moses. Do they have any leads?”

  The tears threatened again. “The police think it’s a random thing.”

  “Do you?”

  I shook my head. “Someone has to know something.”

  “Let’s ask around.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You’d do that?”

  “Of course.”

  I wavered between taking him up on his offer and telling him I didn’t need his help. I decided to settle for middle ground.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He stood up, putting his dishes in the sink. “Are you leaving?” I asked.

  “Don’t sound so hopeful. I told your mom I’d look at her PA system. She’s had some issues.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  Matthew worked on the PA system as I baked. When he came back into the kitchen to wash up, I offered him more coffee and a plate of warm cookies. “This is a peace offering because this morning I was a . . .” I pointed to the words on my apron. “Kitchen Bitch” seemed pretty appropriate.

  “Apology accepted,” he said. He took a bite and moaned. “Fiona, you are a genius. A true artist. These are little chocolate balls of happiness.”

  “Balls of happiness. We could sell them with the fertility charms.”

  He laughed. “You do stock an eclectic bunch of items.”

  “A nice way to say ‘weird.’ Thank you. I hear it all the time, about the shop, about my life, about my mom . . .”

  “Your mom isn’t weird. She’s unique.”

  “She’s also irresponsible and pathologically impulsive,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t spoken. I normally didn’t discuss her shortcomings with strangers.

  “Maybe because you’ve always been the responsible one,” he said.

  In the middle of making gingersnaps, I stopped the mixer in midstir. “I’m an enabler?”

  He pointed to the yin and yang symbol he wore around his neck. “There’s always balance.”

  “If I were irresponsible, it would make my mom more responsible?” I shook my head. “It would never ever happen.”

  “Because you hold it all together?”

  I nodded. “I have to.”

  “That sounds exhausting.”

  “It is.”

  “You can’t control the universe, Fiona.”

  “I don’t try to. Only my little corner of it.” I held up my wooden spoon and pointed it at him. “I bet you have a tattoo of a Chinese character somewhere on your body. Am I right? Or is it a yin and yang symbol like your necklace?”

  He looked affronted. “What makes you think I have a tattoo?”

  “Your type always has a tattoo.”

  He took another long drink of coffee. “My type?”

  I added the spices to the batter, making the room smelled like ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, and gave him a long, assessing look. “Musicians, artists, dreamers. You’re all the same. You’re gypsies. Free spirits. You don’t like commitments, and you can’t be counted on. Thanks to my mom, I’ve met a million people exactly like you.”

  I was mad at my mom, and Matthew happened to be a convenient scapegoat. I regretted my words as soon as I said them, but there was no taking them back. I squared my shoulders, preparing for Matthew to launch an angry, defensive, verbal assault, but he simply looked at me with those sad, dark eyes.

  “Or maybe you’re wrong about me. Maybe you’re wrong about a lot of things.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  He came closer. His proximity disturbed me, but I couldn’t move, not even when he brushed my cheek with the back of his fingers, removing a bit of flour from my face. “Maybe you need to figure it out,” he said, walking out the door.

  The rest of the day passed by more smoothly. I baked my cookies and went to the hospital to check on Moses. Nothing had changed. He was silent and still, but I held his hand anyway and told him about my day. He would have laughed about the naked yoga if he’d been awake, and he would have said something wise and philosophical about understanding my mom and loving her quirks and all. He couldn’t talk, though, and I doubted he heard a word I said.

  I kissed his cheek before I left. “Get better soon, Moses. I miss you.”

  I got back to the shop and had time for a quiet lunch in the garden with my crossword. Mom forgot she’d been upset, and we put together several batches of soup for the rest of the week. I also made cornbread for the vegetarian chili and sour cream biscuits for a hearty stew.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t get Matthew off my mind. I was embarrassed by how I acted. He’d been right about my apron choice today. I had been the kitchen bitch.

  I thought about the way he touched my cheek, and it caused an odd flutter in my chest. I concluded I was a horrible person. I had a perfectly good boyfriend, someone I might actually be able to build a future with. I couldn’t let myself get distracted by a handsome face and a pair of warm brown eyes. Matthew Monroe, through no fault of his own, was getting under my skin. He was like a nasty, infected splinter, and I needed to yank him out as soon as possible.

  Scott came over after work with a bouquet of roses, and we sat in the garden eating chili and munching on cornbread. He removed his jacket, loosened his tie, and put a handkerchief embroidered with his initials on his knee. I bit my lip to keep from smiling at both the handkerchief and the row of initials. SAL. Scott Anthony Lipmann.

  I loved the fact he carried around a linen handkerchief. It seemed adorably old-fashioned to me. I also loved the way he always looked perfectly pressed and polished, even in the heat of summer. He was solid and dependable in a way that melted my heart.

  After we ate, he leaned back, and I snuggled up to him. He smelled like a mix of expensive spices from his cologne with a bit of starch from his dry cleaner. I
inhaled deeply, my head on his shoulder.

  Scott took my hand. “My parents want to meet you.”

  “When?” I sat up and put my hand on my chest, feeling oddly nervous. This had never come up before. Ever. And I wasn’t sure about it. His parents lived an hour outside the city and owned a meatpacking plant. The irony Mom was a vegetarian was not lost on me.

  Scott kissed the tip of my nose. “Don’t worry, silly, they’ll love you. How would Thursday work?”

  Thursday was usually a quiet night, and this Thursday we’d scheduled a poetry reading. Mom wouldn’t need my help. I’d just make sure Chad could cover the kitchen.

  I nodded, still worried, and Scott smiled. “It’ll be fine. Stop frowning.” He massaged my shoulders, and I relaxed with a sigh. “Have you talked to your mom about selling this dump yet?”

  I tensed up again immediately. “Dump?”

  His hands grew still. “Sorry, but I noticed the paint peeling off the back, and you’re going to need a new roof. This is a money pit.”

  I looked around at the bright flowers and the gurgling fountain. Scott was right; it did need repairs, but there was beauty here as well. I wished he saw what I did.

  He put his hands on my cheeks. “I’m trying to help you because I love you.” He leaned forward, brushing his lips against mine. The sun had begun to set, and the twinkle lights came on in the garden. Mom had gone to visit a friend, and the shop was quiet and dark.

  I slid my hands around his waist, enjoying the feel of Scott’s firm muscles under his white shirt. The kiss deepened, and I ran my hands across his back, wanting him closer.

  “Where’s your mom?” he asked, his lips working their way down my neck.

  “Out. She’ll be gone for hours,” I said, unbuttoning his shirt.

  I was about to grab his hand and pull him up to my room when the fountain made a loud, strange noise. We looked at it in surprise just as a stream of water shot out of the finial, drenching us completely.

  “What the . . .” he said, but another stream of water shot out of the fountain and hit him directly in the face. He stood up and backed away as water dripped down his nose and all over his pristine suit.