Dedication
This book is a love letter to my mother,
Mary Ann Stephens,
and to Susan Grad’s mother,
Jean Hulm.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note with Recipes
P.S.
About the author
About the book
Read on
Credits
Books by Georgia Bockoven
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The old woman ran her hand over the chenille bedspread, smoothing the traces of her late afternoon nap. Giving the spread a final pat, she allowed herself to enjoy the accompanying sense of accomplishment. She may not have control over the large things in her life anymore, but she could still handle the day-to-day. If only the imprint the spread had left on her cheek and hand could be erased as easily.
She glanced out the bedroom window at the brilliant red leaves struggling to stay attached to the liquidambar and was momentarily startled to see how long the shadows were on the lawn. In the next instant she remembered it was daylight savings time, not her failing body, that had upset her internal clock, and the insidious, unwelcome feeling of panic subsided.
Her hand left the bedpost, reached for the dresser, and then the door frame as she made her way out of the bedroom and into the hall. For months now the furniture and walls had provided the support her doctor insisted should come from a cane. But she wasn’t ready to let herself be stamped an invalid. As soon as she did, her life would be perceived as over. The world wouldn’t see her meandering toward the end, it would have her standing with one foot in the grave.
Well, she’d be damned if she’d let that happen.
Orange and gold shards of light cut through the kitchen window and into the hallway. The sunset would be spectacular that night, one she would sit on the porch to witness, aware the number of such evenings was finite and accepting each one like a gift from a repentant lover.
She didn’t mind. She’d been allowed more years than she’d expected when she was twenty and had believed old age to be fifty. Of course she’d changed her opinion as she neared the half-century mark and discovered age was a state of mind. The accumulation of years, the gathering of wrinkles only mattered if you let them. Now, at eighty-five, she told herself that old age began tomorrow.
The kitchen still held a lingering smell of lunch, a spicy meat loaf meant to entice long-dead taste buds. Somewhere, sometime—without her even noticing—she’d lost her desire for food. She didn’t know whether to lay the blame on the medicine she took or the realization that after a lifetime of counting calories she could eat anything she wanted without consequence.
Not even crème brûlée tempted her anymore. It seemed crème brûlée had to be a forbidden food to be fully appreciated. The richness had to be a sin, the transgression filled with guilt. Now it was a free food, like celery on a diet.
She made a cup of apple cinnamon tea, one of her remaining pleasures. She would cradle the cup between her hands and breathe in the memory-evoking aroma as she gently rocked and waited. For six months she’d waited, awakening each morning with renewed hope that this would be the day, refusing to feel discouraged when it wasn’t.
She had not been so patient as a young woman. Now she knew things in her heart as well as her mind, and it gave her a confidence she’d lacked then.
She would come. Not out of love, but out of duty. The love she’d buried too deep too long ago. Together they would find it again. This was the reason the old woman hung on to life, this one job left undone, the lone failure she could not forgive herself.
Her teacup in her hand, the woman sat in her rocker facing west. And waited.
Chapter
1
I don’t understand why you asked Jim—of all people—to run the coffee shop for you while you’re gone,” Heather called from the kitchen. “It was a mistake. You know it. I know it. From the way he sounded, I think even Jim knows it.”
Finally, after an entire afternoon discussing pregnancy, labor, baby formula, first steps, first words, throwing up, and potty training, Karla Esterbrook’s sister had said something that caught her attention. She stopped distributing silverware around the dining room table and went into the kitchen.
“You talked to Jim?” she asked. “When?”
“He called about fifteen minutes before you got here.” Heather motioned Karla out of the way and opened the oven door.
“That was five hours ago. And you’re just now telling me?”
“He said it wasn’t important, that he’d catch up with you later.”
“Was it about the shop?”
Heather ignored the question, instead breathing in the smells of the lasagna, her lips forming a small, satisfied smile. “I know I shouldn’t admit this, but I just love my own cooking, even when it is Grandma’s recipe.”
Heather had the lead. Karla either followed or made a fuss about the phone call, which would be tantamount to an announcement that her interest went beyond business. “Mom’s was better.”
“You can’t possibly remember how Mom’s lasagna tasted. You just think you do. In your mind everything she ever made was better than anything you’ve tasted since. Martha Stewart couldn’t compete with your memories.”
They were on the brink of an old, never-to-be-won argument. Heather had been eight when their parents died, too young to have carried any but the most profound memories of their mother and father into adulthood. Karla had been twelve and believed without reservation that she remembered everything—from the softness of her mother’s hair to the smell of her father’s aftershave.
“From the wonderful smell, I’d say you’ve added your own touches to Anna’s recipe,” Karla said in conciliation. She wanted this to be a good visit for them, not like the last time when they’d just learned Anna was dying and had gone from one argument straight to the next as they tried to sort through feelings and decide what needed to be done. She adored her sister and wished they lived next door to each other. As it was, they spent half of every visit working through emotions and misunderstandings before they got to the fun of just being together. “I can hardly wait to eat. I’m starved.”
“Good. I made twice what I usually do, and Bill hates leftovers.”
“Back to Jim’s call.” Karla had played the game long enough. “Did something happen at the shop?”
“Would you cut it out? You’ve only been gone for three days. What major catastrophe could happen in that time that Jim couldn’t handle?”
Karla looked at her watch. If there really was something wrong, she could be back in Solvang in a little over four hours. “I’m going to call.”
“Dinner’s ready.”
The dinner thing took Heather’s evasiveness a step too far. Something was going on. It seeme
d Heather hadn’t been playing coy before, she’d been trying to avoid the subject altogether. “Bill and the kids aren’t even back from the store yet. Were you planning to eat without them?”
“They’ll be here any minute.”
“And I won’t be long.” She was testing to see how far Heather would go.
Heather put her hands against the maroon tile counter and leaned into them, her belly protruding as if she were nine months pregnant instead of six. The easy-care pixie hairstyle she’d chosen for this pregnancy made her look as if she were just entering her twenties instead of on the verge of leaving them.
“I shouldn’t have said anything. At least not until after dinner. Now everything will be ruined—and I’ve been working for days to make tonight special.”
Guilt. Heather was really good at it. “Nothing will be ruined unless you insist on dragging this out through dinner. If you want me to wait to call Jim, tell me what he said.”
“It isn’t about the coffee shop—at least not the important part.” She ran a possessive, protective hand over her rounded belly. “There’s something you need to know before you talk to Jim. . . . Damn, I really don’t want to be the one to tell you this.”
Despite Heather’s dramatics, Karla managed to focus on the “at least not the important part.” For the past two years she’d put her heart and soul into The Coffee Shop on the Corner, using work in place of therapy to get past a sense of personal failure. The business she and Jim had once owned together had become everything to her, her only constant relationship, her substitute child.
“Enough,” Karla said. “If you wanted my attention, you’ve got it.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that this is so hard. You tried to hide it, but I know what you were hoping for when you asked Jim to take over for you while you’re gone.”
“For cryin’ out loud, Heather, would you please stop beating around the bush and tell me what’s going on? Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as I’m imagining.”
Still Heather hesitated, her lips moving as if practicing what she would say, but no words coming out. Finally, in a monotone rush, she blurted, “Jim isn’t running the shop by himself.”
The statement was so far from what she’d anticipated, at first Karla didn’t know how to respond. “You mean he’s hired more help?” But that didn’t make sense—she’d only been gone three days, and it was the off season in Solvang. October was the month she set aside to catch up on the paperwork she’d let slide during the tourist rush of summer. There was hardly enough work for the two women she had working part-time.
“He brought a woman with him.”
Karla was sure she’d heard Heather wrong. “What do you mean with him?”
“I don’t know for sure, but my guess would be that he had her hiding out at one of the motels while you were still there, then moved her in as soon as you left.”
“Moved her in?” she repeated inanely. “Are you saying Jim has someone—a woman—living with him? At my house?”
Heather nodded. “The story he’s telling is that she decided she couldn’t be without him for a whole month so she quit her job in Los Angeles and showed up on his, uh, your doorstep this morning. He didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else, so he called to tell you himself. Only you weren’t here, so he told me. Of course, if he’d really wanted to tell you himself he would have waited until tonight to call.”
She was such a fool. Hanging on for two and a half years believing Jim would wake up one morning and realize he couldn’t live without her. Asking him to take care of the shop had been a stupid, desperate ploy to bring him back into her life. Her only sanctuary from the embarrassment was that she hadn’t told anyone, not even Heather, how she felt.
“I don’t see what difference it makes whether he has someone with him or not.” Karla almost choked on the words. “I hired him to take care of the shop. That’s all I have any right to expect.”
“He’s got her in your house, Karla. They’re sleeping in your bed.”
“Thanks for pointing that out. I doubt I could have figured it out for myself.”
“She didn’t just show up, they had this planned all along.”
“You’ve said that twice now. What’s your point?” All her life she’d used anger to hide pain. It seemed so obvious to Karla, but no one had ever made the connection. Everyone, her sisters included, simply believed her short-tempered and humorless. “If you’re right, and I’m not saying you aren’t, what do you suggest I do about it?”
“Throw him out. Make him find someplace else to stay.”
“And what if he says it would be a pain in the ass for him to have to find another place and that if I insist he move out, he’ll pack up and go back to Los Angeles? What would I do then, Heather?”
“There has to be someone else you could get to run the shop. It’s only a month.”
It was useless to try to explain. In her entire twenty-nine years, Heather had never had to face a crisis alone. There had always been someone ready to help with any difficulty encountered. From the moment she’d let out her first scream in the delivery room she’d attracted problem-solvers the way a full moon attracted crazies. Heather couldn’t conceive of how hard it would be to find someone reliable to run the shop for “only a month.”
“I don’t have the time to find someone else. It’s not as if Anna is going to wait around while I get my life in order. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now.” Finally, a point Heather couldn’t argue.
“You could put a sign on the window saying you’re taking a well-deserved vacation and will be back before Thanksgiving—four weeks isn’t that long. I’ll bet most of the people around there wouldn’t even know you were gone.”
“What if you’re wrong? Then what? Are you going to come down and haul my regular customers out of the other coffee shops they’ve switched to and back into mine? People are creatures of habit, Heather. Four weeks is a long time.”
“You don’t have to get nasty. I’m just trying to help.”
Heather’s world revolved around Bill and their two children. She’d gone straight from college to marriage, her work experience outside the home limited to the part-time jobs she’d taken for spending money. Karla softened her tone and tried to explain. “I’ve worked hard to build a base of repeat business. I can’t take a chance that I might lose it and have to start all over again.”
“No one switches loyalties that fast. Once they see you’re open again, they’ll come back.”
Heather didn’t have a clue what Karla was up against in her business, and there was no way to make her understand. She gave up and moved on. “You may be right, but it doesn’t matter. As long as Jim doesn’t try to charge me for her time, I don’t give a damn who he brings in to work with him.”
“Yeah, right. And you don’t give a damn that he’s screwing her brains out in your bed either. That’s assuming she has any brains, which I doubt, or she wouldn’t have gotten hooked up with Jim in the first place.”
“The way I did?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s past history. He can do whatever he wants in my bed. I’ve—”
“That’s not the way you felt three years ago.”
“Please—don’t hold back,” Karla snapped. “Let me know what you really think.” If Heather hadn’t shown up for an unexpected visit the day Karla and Jim split for good and he moved out, Karla would never have told her about his affairs. She would have said something about irreconcilable differences and left it at that. But she’d been vulnerable that day and had needed someone to talk to. She’d told Heather everything, knowing it was a mistake the minute the words were out of her mouth.
Karla hadn’t wanted or needed her friends and family to take sides after the divorce. She’d never believed any marriage survived or failed on the actions of one partner alone, and she refused to accept what appeared to be the obvious and easy answer when it came to Jim’s infidelities.
Jim was bright, and caring, and had been unfailingly loving and considerate with her. He’d worked as hard at making the coffee shop a success as she had. Only, as she’d discovered three years into the marriage, when he’d taken off in the afternoons to attend community affairs, there had been no community, only an affair.
What she’d never shared with Heather were her personal doubts. Maybe if she’d tried harder to please Jim, had been more adventuresome in the bedroom during the marriage, he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere to fulfill his needs. But when she came home and discovered him in their bed with another woman, there was no turning back.
“As I was about to say,” Karla went on. “I’ve been thinking about trading my king-size bed in for a double anyway. It would give me more room, and the sheets are cheaper. Jim bringing his girlfriend just gave me the push I needed.”
Things Remembered Page 1