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

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  “Well, he’s good at what he does.”

  “Yes. Yes.” She crossed her arms again but this time without the anger. This time as though she were trying to keep herself from falling down. Or falling apart; I couldn’t tell which.

  “So what happened?” I prodded.

  “Donna was four. Ever been around a four-year-old 24/7?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s not always so much fun for the adult. Suddenly you find yourself at home all the time with a little one, watching Bozo and Sesame Street and reading books with simple words and never having time for your own kind of reading or your own kind of television. Every day it’s the same old thing. And Donna . . . Donna was a whiner back then. That girl managed to find something to cry about every single day. If she couldn’t find her toys, she cried. If she wanted to watch something on television and it wasn’t on, she cried. If she wanted SpaghettiOs and all I had was canned ravioli, you would have thought the world had come to an end.”

  I couldn’t help it, I chuckled.

  “And so it just seemed to happen, Evangeline. I was lonely. I was bored. And Horace Shelly offered an adventure I thought I was entitled to. Lord knows what it got me, that adventure.”

  “I’m sorry, Doreen.”

  “Me too. Like I said, meeting that man was the worst thing that ever happened to me, even with all the other bad things that happened after he and I parted ways.”

  “Have you told Donna how you feel about those days?”

  “No.”

  “You should.”

  “Maybe I will. One day.” She stepped back. “Go home, Evangeline, and I promise I’ll think about what you’re saying. I do know I drink too much. I know I’ve got to get a handle on things.” She glanced back at the trailer again. “Sometimes, though, life has a way . . .” I saw the tears pool again in her eyes, then spill down her cheeks once more. “Life has a way of coming around to bite you in the rear end, you know?”

  I didn’t know. But I nodded all the same. “Yes, I know.”

  Doreen reached for my arm, wrapped her bony fingers around my wrist, and squeezed. “Be careful, Evie.”

  Evie. Not a name Doreen called me by. “Be careful of what?” I asked.

  She squeezed again. “Just be careful.” She stepped away from me then. Stepped away, turned her back, and then walked toward the trailer. Her head hung low between her shoulders, and her steps seemed numbered.

  How numbered I wouldn’t find out until the next day.

  Vonnie

  12

  Family Dinner

  I glanced out my kitchen window as I poured tea into five of my tall, blue tumblers. The sun had just settled behind the peaks that stood guard over our valley. The surrounding mountains glowed pale yellow while a darkening sky winked the first stars of evening. I was glad the wind had died down, though it left a cold shiver in its wake. “David, are you going to be able to stay warm on your shift later tonight? I hear it’s going to hit twenty degrees before sunrise.”

  David, who stood next to me, plopped ice into the tumblers. “Donna’s on duty too, so if I can get her to take her coffee breaks with me, I’ll be warm enough,” he said.

  I laughed as I helped David whisk the tumblers to the table, where my mother and dad already sat, waiting for me to pull my onion and cheese meatloaf from the oven.

  Soon enough, the meatloaf sat cooling on a ceramic trivet, surrounded by CorningWare bowls filled with mashed potatoes, green beans, and, of course, warm dinner rolls. Fred, who had been tending the fire in the fireplace a few feet from our kitchen table, hurried over to join us. As he sat beside me, David cleared his throat. “May I have the honor of saying grace?” he asked as if he were a shy schoolboy.

  Pleased, I nodded and closed my eyes. David reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Lord, I’m still new at talking to you, but I want to say I so appreciate all you’ve done for me. Thank you for my family and my new life in Summit View. Amen.”

  I squeezed David’s hand in return, then used my dinner napkin to blot the moisture gathering in the corners of my eyes. It was so sweet to have found my boy after all these years. I looked across the table at my mother, the very woman who had kept him from me. I was glad when I saw that she too was moved by David’s prayer.

  It was getting harder to hold a grudge against her, especially now that she regretted her role in secretly giving David up for adoption after telling me my child had died at birth.

  But tonight, I told myself, none of that mattered. We were a family that was healing from the wounds we’d inflicted on ourselves. I reached for the rolls and took one before passing the platter on.

  As my dad put a roll on his plate, he looked up at Fred. “How’s that church remodeling going?”

  Fred ran his forefinger over his upper lip and narrowed his eyes, as if picturing the progress. “Not bad. We’ve laid the foundation for the youth wing, and so things are starting to take shape.”

  Mother, who was already buttering her roll, asked, “But aren’t you going to remodel the sanctuary too?”

  I fielded the question as I reached for my dish of green beans. “We wouldn’t dare touch its charm, at least not the front of the sanctuary. A lot of that old stone and all is original. We want to stay true to our colorful history.”

  “What kind of history are we talking about?” David asked as he helped himself to the mashed potatoes before smothering them in thick gravy.

  I sliced into the butter and spread it over my steaming roll. “Our church was founded by Father John Dyer, a circuit preacher who made his rounds here in the high country when our little town of Summit View was nothing but a mining camp. He walked his rounds in the summer, but in the winter, he snowshoed from camp to camp.”

  Mother stopped heaping green beans onto her plate and broke into the telling. “Those snowshoes, as Father Dyer called them, were really eleven-foot-long split pines.”

  “Sounds like cross-country skiing to me,” David said.

  “That’s about right.” Fred chuckled. “Our church was started by a fire-and-brimstone cross-country-skiing evangelist.”

  David laughed outright. “That is colorful.” He took a bite of my meatloaf. “This is good,” he said, glancing up at me. “It’s my newest favorite Mom meal.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “Just trying to make my own history with all of you,” David said as he blotted the gravy off his lips with his napkin. “But the history I’d really like to know is Donna’s. You were her Sunday school teacher back in the day, right, Mom?”

  I gave my mashed potatoes a fresh coat of pepper. “I was. She was in my fifth grade class.”

  “What was she like as a little girl?”

  “My heart went out to her. She was kind of shy and awkward.” I stood, walked to the hearth, and pulled out the picture Donna had recently framed for my birthday, then showed it to David. I watched him study a younger me with my class of grade-schoolers, my hand on the shoulder of then ten-year-old Donna with her tangled blonde hair and mismatched clothes.

  Mother, who sat on the other side of David, leaned in for a look. “Donna looks like an orphan.”

  “Why is that?” David asked, leaning his elbows on the table, concern in his voice.

  Mother was happy to explain. “She was motherless after Doreen took off with that old choir director. How that woman could have left her husband and precious daughter, I’ll never know.”

  I shot Mother a look, then glanced back at David. “Mother’s right. Donna certainly missed her mom,” I said gently. “Which is why I took her under my wing.”

  “That you did,” Mother replied, pointing at me with her empty fork. “You dragged that girl all over town. Still do.”

  “It was my pleasure,” I said, glancing back at David. “But my favorite memories of her are the ones of her here in my kitchen. I taught her how to cook and even make brownies. Plus, we spent many afternoons discussing our Sunday school lesson. It was here, r
ight here at this table, where she found the Lord.”

  David grinned. “Same as me.”

  “Finding the Lord didn’t keep Donna out of trouble,” Mother interrupted. “She still fooled around with that Wade boy, home alone after school. I’d see his truck in front of her house while her dad was at work. It’s a wonder she didn’t end up pregnant.”

  Fred and I stared at our plates for a second, knowing but not wanting to tell Mother that Donna had indeed gotten pregnant by Wade at seventeen, though it was a pregnancy that sadly had not come to fruition.

  David broke the awkward silence. “Mom, why did Dee Dee leave Vernon? Do you know?”

  “Doreen? She was another one who spent hours around my kitchen table. I did my best to help her, but . . .”

  “I knew you two were friends,” Mother said as if she were reprimanding me, “but I’ve never heard a thing about you trying to help her.”

  “It was me she’d call when she was lonely for Vernon. His job took him away from her too many evenings to count. She thought having a child would ease her loneliness, but—”

  Mother interrupted, “So then why didn’t you get her more involved in the church?”

  “I did, Mother. I got her to join the choir. She had such a lovely voice.”

  “That she did,” Mother agreed as she looked around the table. “And does to this day, as I remember from our Christmas Tea.”

  “So what went wrong?” David asked, reaching for his tumbler of tea. “What caused Dee Dee to leave her family?”

  “She had an incurable case of the blues. When she started to get a little attention from Horace . . .”

  “Horace?” David asked.

  “I’m surprised no one’s discussed this with you before; Horace was the church choir director,” Mother answered for me as she dabbed what was left of her roll into her gravy. “Never liked that little weasel, myself.”

  I pushed a green bean with my fork before looking up. “She was desperate for approval, and he flattered her,” I continued. “He was around when Vernon was busy. He told her she should be singing professionally, on the country music stage, with him.”

  Mother snorted. “We know how that worked out.”

  I patted the back of Fred’s chair. “I sat right here in this chair and tried to tell her. I held hands with her, cried with her, prayed with her. I tried to warn her . . . but she wouldn’t listen. She said that, as a fallen woman, she was such a pitiful mother, Donna would be better off without her.” I sighed. “I just couldn’t get through, and the next thing I knew she and Horace were planning their getaway. That next Sunday, they stood up in front of the church and sang one last duet in front of Donna and Vernon and . . . well . . . everyone. Little did we know that was to be their farewell performance. After that service, Doreen and Horace ran off together. They never looked back.”

  “Doreen finally came home,” Mother said, pulling her brows into a scowl. “So, she did look back. And she gave us all a chance to see the mess she’d made of her life.”

  “Mother,” I said sternly. “Try to be kind.”

  Mother looked up at me as if she were stunned. “My dear, it’s just an observation. I can’t help but notice these things, you know.”

  David sliced his fork into his meatloaf and stared back at me. “Poor Donna,” he finally said. “How glad I am she found you, Mom.”

  Dad, who was not one to gossip, was ready to change the subject. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his full belly. “So, what’s for dessert?”

  “My apple pie’s still in the oven, Dad,” I said, pushing my chair back from the table, “but maybe I should check it.”

  I walked over to the oven and peeked inside. The lattice crust was still a bit underbaked. I shut the oven door and walked back to the table, where I slid into my seat, noticing that David had somehow finished his entire plate of food.

  “Help yourself to seconds,” I said. He smiled and reached for the meatloaf.

  “Now that I’ve shared a bit of history with you, I’m wondering about your history, David.”

  David looked up from heaping a large second helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

  His brows rose quizzically. “What would you like to know?”

  “About this Bobbie who’s coming in a few days to visit you. You two were engaged?”

  David shot a look at Fred, who said, “Sorry, son. That sorta slipped out.”

  David looked back at me. “Yes, we were. She left me for Derek, my former best friend.”

  I leaned back in my chair and turned to study my son. “Ah, so she’s married now.”

  He looked up at me, a bit sheepish. “Well, not exactly. It seems they broke up.”

  Mother pushed her plate back and piped up. “Is that why she’s coming to see you?”

  “No, no. She’s just a friend now. She’s coming to town to look at properties for her boss.”

  Mother snorted. “So she says.”

  David shrugged his shoulders. “It’s true. She was my mother’s personal assistant and now she’s working for Wayne Scott.”

  Fred, who was still leaning back in his chair, asked, “The big Hollywood producer?”

  David looked up from his mashed potatoes. “Yeah, and I guess he’s thinking about buying a house in Aspen.”

  “This isn’t Aspen,” Mother said as she stared over the top of her new bifocals. “So, what’s she doing coming around here?”

  “Summit View is on the way to Aspen from the Denver airport.”

  “But why didn’t she take a direct flight from LA to Aspen? They have those, you know,” Mother said as she folded her hands together where her plate had until recently resided.

  David shrugged. “She says she wants to talk to me.”

  Fred and I exchanged glances. “Son, do you know why?” he asked.

  David shook his head. “It’s nothing personal; it’s just one friend visiting with another. That’s all.”

  “That’s all, my eye,” Mother said before turning to me. “Is something burning?”

  I scooted my chair back so fast I almost tipped it over. As I scurried to the oven, I called to David over my shoulder. “Does Donna know about Bobbie?”

  “Yeah, I told her.”

  I opened the oven door and saw my pie was a tad dark. I reached for my pot holders and pulled it out and set it on top of the stove to cool.

  “Did you burn it?” Mother called out.

  “Not too bad,” I said, hoping a little vanilla ice cream might hide the damage. I turned and looked back at my son as I opened the freezer door and pulled out my carton of ice cream. “Did you tell her Bobbie was your ex?”

  David looked worried, and he studied the last bit of green beans on his plate before looking back at me. “Ah, no. Somehow that just hasn’t come up.”

  Before I could find my words, Mother filled in the silence. “Well, then, this is going to get interesting.”

  Donna

  13

  Stirring Disaster

  David and I sat in my Bronco over our respective mugs of hot coffee, watching the Gold Mine Bank’s digital sign blink a message that it was a cozy twenty-eight degrees at 2:00 in the morning.

  David, in his paramedics uniform, snuggled next to me as much for warmth as for affection. It had been a slow night for both of us. I was glad that no one had been injured on any of our roadways, but slow nights were dull. In between my patrol routes and a couple of games of solitaire on my onboard computer, I’d sent a few text messages back and forth to David on my cell. That’s how we’d finally decided to take our break at the bank’s drive-thru. Higher Grounds Café was closed until dawn. That meant the cab of my Bronco was one of the warmest places we could meet. I opened my lunch sack and pulled out a Tupperware container of brownies.

  “What’s this?” David asked.

  “Oh, I whipped up a batch of Gold Rush brownies for our break.”

  So help me if David didn’t look touched. “My mom taught you how to
make these, didn’t she?”

  I nodded, impressed. “How did you know?”

  Before he could answer, my cell rang. I stared down at the caller ID. “Who is it?” David asked.

  I felt my eyebrows arch as I pressed my lips together. “Hmm—it’s Wade.”

  “You aren’t going to take it, are you?”

  “Well, it’s a bit unusual for him to call so late. Maybe something’s wrong.” I clicked into the call. “Hello, Wade?”

  Wade sounded pleased to hear my voice. “Hey, Donna. I was having trouble sleeping so I thought why not make some hot cocoa and invite you over. You must be just about frozen out there tonight.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but . . .”

  “You gotta take a break sometime, right? Why not with me?”

  “Well, ah, as a matter of fact, David and I are on break now.”

  “Oh, oh. Sure. Yeah, I forgot about David.” His voice sounded cheery but forced. “Well, bring him along then.”

  I smiled at David and shook my head. “Maybe another time, okay?”

  “Sure,” Wade said, the hurt in his voice sending me a twinge of regret. “Sure, another time.” He continued trying to pretend as if feeling rejected was easy for him.

  We said our good-byes, and David asked, “What was that about?”

  I shrugged. “He wanted us to drop by for some cocoa.”

  David gave me a knowing grin. “He wanted you to drop by, not so much me, that’s what I’m thinking.”

  I had to laugh. “Maybe, but let’s not talk about Wade.”

  “Why not?” David said. “You’re not still seeing him? Are you?”

  I was glad the darkness hid my blush. I shook my head. “No, but back to your friend from LA who’s coming to visit. So, when does Bobby arrive and when do I meet him?”

  David frowned. “Bobbie will be in a rush to get to Aspen, but I’ll check into it.”