Bake Until Golden: A Novel (The Potluck Catering Club)

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  I slipped mine into his. It was cold. Wax-like. As though he were dead too.

  “Allow me to express our sorrow at the loss of your loved one.” His words sounded rehearsed.

  Olivia squared her shoulders. “Thank you.” I appreciated that she was speaking for the two of us.

  “What we need to do first is look at caskets.” He pulled a binder from a shelf behind him, laid it on the desk between us, then flipped open the cover to reveal several glossy pages of orderable caskets. “I’d be happy to show you some of my personal favorites. Of course, feel free to take your time looking at the selection.” He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Dippel . . . Mr. Dippel was my Phys-Ed teacher for two years and . . .”

  I listened as the young man’s voice cracked. “Thank you, Hugh,” I said. I laid my hand against the slick pages between us. “Do you mind if my daughter and I take some time to look at these?”

  “Not at all,” he said, then stood. “Why don’t I give you two a few minutes alone. Can I offer you a cup of coffee, some water . . .”

  We both declined.

  Hugh left, then returned about fifteen minutes later. By this time Olivia had picked out Jack’s casket, something I allowed her to do. It felt to me as though she needed this last gift to her father. Hugh declared the choice to be “fine” and then walked us through the remaining items necessary for death and burial.

  He asked about Jack’s life insurance. To my surprise, Olivia whipped a large manila envelope from her hobo purse.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Dad’s papers,” she said.

  “How’d you . . .”

  “He showed me a few weeks ago.”

  It struck me then that Jack had prepared himself and his daughter for his possible death but had left me out of the mix. How could he have?

  I sat in stony silence as Olivia went over the details of her father’s insurance policies, all of them. Three total. Listened as she talked about the money in his savings account and how I would write a check from it to cover the expenses. Automatically I dipped my hand into my purse, pulled out the joint savings account checkbook, and handed it to Olivia. She scooted up in her chair, laid the checkbook open against the dark grain of the desk, then wrote the date, the name of the funeral home, the exorbitant amount Hugh had just quoted, and then slipped the book toward me as she extended the pen. “Here, Mom. You’ll need to sign it.”

  I wrote my name like an obedient child.

  Olivia tore out the check, handed it to Hugh, then folded the checkbook closed and handed it back to me. When she stood, I followed her lead. When she shook Hugh’s hand, I did the

  same.

  Hugh—who had stood, put the check in the new file with Jack’s name printed neatly on it, and placed the file atop other files—escorted us toward the door. I moved behind my daughter, feeling more like a zombie than a widow, more like a widow than a wife. I stopped as Hugh opened the door, pausing before the second desk in the tiny office. I glanced down at it, noted the nameplate sitting askew near the front left corner. I reached out and straightened it, then took a deep breath as I slowly read the name.

  Andrew J. Morrow, it read.

  The following days were a blur. Vonnie told me—in a precious private moment—that eventually it would all come back. At first I questioned how she knew, then remembered she had lost her first husband. I wondered about the details—probably for the first time since I’d learned about Joseph Jewel—of his death, his funeral, and all those two things entail. I knew she’d given birth to David shortly after hearing that her husband had died. I felt so sad to think I’d never asked for enough details to put together a complete picture.

  Widows, I decided, need to share details of their sorrow.

  When they could, that is.

  ———

  Monday evening marked a week since Jack had died. Seven days toward an endless list of days my life would be spent without him. But not without Olivia. She and Tony had somehow managed to arrange for Tony’s parents to keep the kids while Olivia kept me. She had taken to running my house and my life as though she’d been born to do it. She made certain all my family members got to the airport in plenty of time. She’d made an appointment with Chris—my boss and the attorney who would probate Jack’s estate—and then drove me to it. She then brought me back home and, while I took a much-needed nap, straightened the house and then made a supper of leftovers and fresh-made baked corn.

  We ate around 6:00. Spoke little. We cleared the table and did the dishes in silence. Then Olivia said, “Mom, I’m going to run home for a little while and then I’ll be back.” She hung the limp drying cloth over the handle of the refrigerator. “Will you be okay alone or would you rather ride with me?”

  I leaned against the counter, where I stood rubbing hand lotion into the palms of my hands and around the backs. “Olivia. Seriously, honey. You need to go home to your family.”

  “But Mom—”

  “No buts, Olivia. You can’t take care of me forever. I’m a grown woman and I will have to be left alone eventually.”

  I watched her slump her shoulders and cross her arms. If she cocked her hip, we were in for a fight.

  She cocked her hip.

  “Mom . . .”

  I held up a finger. “One more night,” I said, too tired to argue. Besides, one more night wouldn’t hurt one way or the other.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  She sighed. “Okay, then. One more night. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  She left. While she was gone I decided to soak in a hot tub of water filled with bath salts. When I’d languished long enough to turn my skin to wrinkles, I drew myself out, dried off, and slipped into a favorite thick robe and matching slippers. As I ran a large-toothed comb through my hair, I heard a knock at the front door.

  I gave myself a quick glance in the mirror before walking the long hallway to the living room. Expecting to see one of the girls, I swung the door open and then gasped.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dippel.”

  I blinked several times. “Andrew,” I said. “What in the world brings you here?”

  The handsome young man shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. Unlike his cousin, Andrew Morrow was muscular. His hair was thick, blond, and sometimes unruly. His eyes were an amazing deep shade of blue. He was still unmarried, though I often wondered how any red-blooded woman in Summit View could have possibly allowed him to stay that way this long.

  “I was just wanting to come by. To check on you. It’s been a week . . .”

  I stepped back. “How kind of you. Would you like to come in? We’ve got plenty of food here. Have you had your supper? Maybe some ham?”

  He blushed. “No. Thank you.”

  “Well, would you like to come in?”

  “I’d like that,” he answered, then stepped over the threshold.

  Evangeline

  11

  Rehashing the Past

  I decided to go to Doreen’s that afternoon, after lunch. I served sandwiches with a tasty apple salad Vonnie had given me the recipe for. As Vernon and I ate, I avoided the topic of Doreen or Velvet or even Donna, keeping our conversation light and upbeat. Vernon, bless him, was none the wiser.

  Then, after lunch, Vernon returned to work. Quick as I saw his car disappear down the road, I got in my car and drove toward the trailer park where Doreen and Velvet shared a home. I half-prayed and half-hoped Doreen would be there when I arrived and not at the nearby Gold Rush Tavern, where she worked most afternoons and evenings. Sure enough, when I pulled into the short drive, I saw Doreen’s car parked alongside the trailer. Velvet’s car, however, was nowhere in sight, and for that I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted or needed was another confrontation with her.

  Before leaving my car, I offered up a prayer to God, asking for his mercy and guidance. “Give me the right words to say, Lord,” I whispered into the stillness of the car. Then I
grabbed my purse on the seat beside me and slipped out of my automobile and into the chill. It seemed to me that since I’d left home not fifteen minutes earlier, the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees, give or take. I shoved my arms across my middle, ducked my head, and marched toward the front deck.

  When I reached the door, I raised my hand to knock, then paused. Sounds from the interior of the old 1960s trailer indicated another person was inside. I listened intently, but I couldn’t make out the voices. One was definitely male, one female. But the tones were whispered and hurried, not spoken in a normal rhythm.

  I figured it was the television, took a breath, sighed, and knocked. Then knocked again for good measure.

  The whispering inside ceased before footsteps inched toward the door from the other side.

  I took a step back, knowing that the door opened from the inside, out. Just as I did, an automobile pulled into a nearby driveway. Another whip of the wind cut around the corner of the house, and I crossed my arms again as I looked over my shoulder. Wade Gage’s truck rumbled to a stop before he slid out, nodded toward me, then ran into his trailer.

  When Doreen’s door creaked open, I jumped, startled. “Oh!” I said.

  Only Doreen’s head was shoved between the door and the frame. The rest of her remained safely inside. “Evangeline,” her voice croaked. “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She sighed. “Now is not a good time.”

  I crossed my arms again. “Why not?” I remembered the voices from inside. What if the voices weren’t the television? “Who’s in there with you?” An old angst welled up inside me. Doreen—who’d been my childhood best friend, who’d known my feelings for Vernon all the way back then when we’d all been no more than twelve years old and foolish with our emotions—had deliberately stolen him from me with her loose ways. She’d allowed him to kiss her on the mouth—something my mother would have whipped me for, had she found out—and with that action came what then seemed like a lifetime of his devotion to her. Now, with his marriage to me, I wondered if once again she was stealing him from me. Was it my husband who was inside this broken-down mobile home? When Doreen didn’t answer right away, I said, “Well?”

  “It’s just not a good time, Evangeline.”

  My mind searched the surroundings. Vernon’s car wasn’t anywhere to be seen; that much was for sure. Still . . . “Who’s in there with you, Doreen?”

  She sighed again. I smelled stale coffee and cigarettes on her breath. Well, at least it wasn’t whiskey and cigarettes. “No one is in here with me, Evangeline. Now, shoo on home.”

  “I heard voices.”

  “When?”

  “Before I knocked. I heard voices.”

  Doreen slipped out the door then but not without me trying my best to peek inside. She shut the door behind her, leaving me without any further clue as to what might be going on. I watched as she ran tobacco-stained fingers through her short, damaged hair. She leaned her backside against the door, pulled one foot up as though to brace it shut, then crossed her arms. “You heard the television, is all.”

  I raised my chin and tried to think everything through in as brief a time as possible. Then, realizing this wasn’t why I’d come, I said, “Doreen, I want to come inside. I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Whatever it is, say it right here.”

  I dropped my arms. “Oh, why must we always be at odds? Every time I think things are going to be okay with us, something goes wrong.”

  Doreen set her jaw even as she spoke. “And I suppose that ‘something’ is me.”

  I swallowed. “I’m not saying that. However, you and I wouldn’t have had any altercation the other night had it not been for your drinking.”

  “Leave my drinking out of this. If you had my life . . . if you were living in a tin can working day and night as a barmaid . . . without a husband to help with the finances and with your kids strewed willy-nilly . . . and if you had a daughter who hardly recognized you as her mother . . . you might drink too.” By now Doreen had one fist at her side and the index finger of the other hand pointed toward my face.

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “And maybe not.” I pressed my lips together, then said, “I’m here because I care for you, Doreen. I care about you. I want to encourage you to get help for your problems in other ways besides alcohol. Like I told Velvet—”

  Doreen’s foot slid from the door to the pine boards of the deck. “You talked to Velvet? You talked to my baby?” She crossed her arms again. “Who do you think you are?” she asked, her words clipped and precise.

  “Doreen, I—”

  “No! I don’t want you talking to my baby!”

  “She’s not a baby,” I shot back. “And she’s the one who accosted me on the sidewalk in front of God and everybody else in Summit View. It was embarrassing. Humiliating! Who did she think she was?”

  I realized too late how loud I had become. A quick look toward Wade’s trailer showed the blinds at the window facing Doreen and me being pulled up, Wade looking toward us, then dropping the blinds when he spied me spying him. I dropped my voice. I looked back at the fragile, pitiful woman standing near me. “Doreen,” I said, my voice whisper soft, “I just want to say that if you want to get help, I’m here for you. I know we’ve had our problems in the past, but they are in the past. I genuinely mean this.”

  Doreen’s eyes narrowed then relaxed before she leaned against the door again. This time both her feet stayed planted on the floorboards, but her arms crossed over the washed-out T-shirt that seemed to hang on her frail frame. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think about . . . what will you think about?” I was now a little lost. “Think about what I said? Think about my sincerity? Think about going into some kind of rehab program?”

  The rise of her voice startled me. “Rehab? Are you completely out of your mind, Evangeline Vesey?”

  Doreen’s shouting ceased as we both heard a door open and close. We turned to look toward Wade’s trailer, saw him bound down his front steps and then make a beeline to and into his truck. He appeared to ignore us as he started the engine and then drove out of his driveway. When his truck had disappeared down the road and around the bend, I turned back to Doreen, who said, “Wonder what that boy is thinking about the two of us out here?”

  “He’s probably wondering why you haven’t asked me inside. He’s probably wondering why two grown women are fighting outside a trailer on a front porch deck. I know that’s what I’m wondering.”

  Doreen shifted. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Evangeline. I just want to go inside and get ready for my workday.” She looked at her wristwatch. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting, and I haven’t had a shower or nothing.”

  I nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll leave. I understand you don’t want to talk about this. I was just hoping . . .”

  “Look, Evangeline,” Doreen said. Her voice was now gentle, laced with sadness. “I want to tell you something. I want to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened all those years ago.”

  I blinked. “You mean between you and Vernon?”

  She blinked back, then shook her head. “Goodness, no. I’m talking about after Vernon and I got married. I’m talking about leaving here with . . .” She swallowed, then lowered her voice. “Horace Shelly.” She took a deep breath, sighed, then continued. “I’m wishing I’d never gotten involved with that man.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “You don’t know . . . you don’t know what I know about a man like that. A man who sees your vulnerable side as a woman and then uses it. Preys on it. Convinces you to leave your husband—and Vernon was a good husband—and your little girl. An innocent little girl who didn’t deserve the mess I’d become as a person but surely didn’t deserve what I left her with. Not that I would have taken her with me. Horace wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  The air went still around me. For a moment it seemed that time was suspended, t
hat I’d been dropped into the middle of an intense scene within a movie or a book. It was as if I was supposed to know the words to say next, and yet they wouldn’t come to mind. Finally I whispered, “What did happen, Doreen? You’ve told me before about everything that happened after you left, but you’ve never talked about what went wrong between you and Vernon.”

  “Hasn’t Vernon told you?” She raised her brow.

  “No,” I said. “He has never spoken ill of you, Doreen. That much I can say for sure. You are and always will be Donna’s mother, and no matter what, he won’t say an ill word against you.”

  The tears that had lingered in the wells of her eyes now spilled down her cheeks. She pointed toward my car and said, “Let’s go down here.”

  I noticed chill bumps popping out up and down her arms. “Doreen, you’re cold. Let’s go inside and talk,” I coaxed.

  But she shook her head as she walked past me, down the steps, and toward the car. I followed like a puppy, though it was Doreen who looked more like the lost dog. “Doreen,” I said. “Doreen.”

  She kept walking. “Just come on,” she said. When she reached my car, she opened the driver’s door as though to encourage me to get inside, but I resisted, instead shutting the door and leaning against it as she’d done to her trailer door earlier. Doreen might not want me in her house, but she was not going to force me into my car.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  She shook her head but spoke anyway. “I’d never really dated anyone other than Vernon when we were in school, you know that.”

  “I do.”

  “I mean, when Vernon and me were on the outs, I might go out with this one or that one, but I was true to him all the way.” She swallowed. “Vernon and I did things we should not have done, you know, before we married, but I swear to you I was never with another man until . . .” I watched her eyes glance toward the trailer and then back to me. “Until Horace.” She laughed sardonically. “I was never so scared in my life as when he started coming on to me. Scared and excited all at the same time. Vernon was . . . Vernon was always gone, you know? Always off on patrol. Trying to earn his way to being the sheriff around here. I’ve never seen anyone in my life work so hard to get somewhere in life. He was driven.”