The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2)

by Helen J Rolfe

  Molly

  ‘You should’ve seen the way he was with his own dad.’ Molly sat on the small, pale blue sofa running along the edge of the lounge room in the holiday cottage. She toyed with the conch shell on the coffee table beside her, smooth and pale on one side, spikier on the other. Ben sat on the deep blue rug on the floor.

  ‘I can’t believe you did a workshop with your birth father.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s insane.’

  Molly smiled. ‘It was totally by accident.’ And she explained to Ben how he’d come into the shop and taken her by surprise when she was browsing. Lost for words, her eyes had zoned in on a sign in the window advertising chocolate-making workshops, and the words were out before she had a chance to think about it.

  ‘Imagine. The guy has no idea he helped his own daughter make chocolates.’ Ben shook his head in amazement.

  Molly put down the shell and covered her eyes. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Like I said, I got to see Andrew Bennett in all his glory. Another lady told me there was some family argument going on, but she had no idea what it was about. But apparently the father, Louis, is on kidney dialysis, and he didn’t look well to me. How can anyone turn their back on family like that?

  ‘It makes me worry about how he’ll react to me.’ She smiled at Ben. ‘I was warned about this from the agency. I was warned I couldn’t predict his reaction.’

  ‘Are you regretting coming?’

  She almost said yes. ‘Actually, no. This way I get to see him as a person right away, with no pretence, no airs or graces, no effort on his part to make me believe he’s a certain kind of man.’

  ‘I think you’re starting to panic.’ Ben sat forwards. ‘You can’t really believe you’ve got him all worked out, surely? From that small part of the day, you figure you know exactly who he is?’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a point.’

  He dug her playfully in the ribs, which coaxed a giggle. Maybe she was over-dramatising the day, but Ben hadn’t seen the look on Andrew’s face. The look hinted at a simmering anger, something she’d not seen on any member of her own family. When they’d fallen out there’d been shouting, plenty of it, but then the air was clear. When words were unspoken they brewed for too long, and there was no chance for rage and frustration to subside. It was tantamount to disaster for everyone involved.

  Molly handed Ben a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and grabbed one for herself. ‘Apart from the run-in with Louis, he did seem nice.’ Maybe she was misjudging Andrew Bennett. Maybe he was the good guy, and the frail old man was really a bit of an arse.

  ‘“Nice” is a word I use to describe my mum’s new Volvo, “nice” is a word I say when my brother’s girlfriend talks about hosting weddings at Magnolia House. “Nice” isn’t a word to adequately describe the first meeting with your birth father.’

  Molly sipped from her can. ‘Okay, so he was friendly. That better?’

  ‘Much. Try some more … use your adjectives.’ He grinned.

  ‘Okay,’ said Molly. ‘He was polite – to everyone apart from his father. He was thoughtful.’ She remembered him helping her brush on the right amount of gold lustre dust, tender in the way he used the brushstrokes, gentle in the way he handled the truffles. ‘He was charming too. Bella was batting her eyelids at him.’

  ‘I’d heard Bella was there. My brother works up at the fire station and she came in raving about her chocolate workshop.’

  ‘So that’s how you knew I’d gone there.’

  ‘Yup. You should’ve told me, if only for moral support afterwards. Tell me next time?’

  ‘I’m not sure I could go through it all over again.’ She lay down on the sofa, a hand over her eyes.

  ‘You flew ten thousand miles to get here, Molly. You are going to go through it again.’

  Ben had brought homemade sandwiches over for lunch and handed one to Molly. They were huge doorstep wedges of fresh bread with tuna, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. He’d even added black pepper, and when she’d accused him of having his mum make them for him, he’d laughed and asked her how useless she thought he was.

  When Ben headed to his shift at the hospital, Molly set off for a walk round the lake and down through the bushland bordering Magnolia House. She’d seen signs in town advertising the Easter Egg Hunt to be held here on Good Friday, the day she was due to leave, and it brought it home to her how little time she had left. She wondered how she’d feel by then, whether she’d be on good terms with the Bennetts or whether she’d run away from Magnolia Creek crying and screaming because it had all gone so horribly wrong.

  Molly stepped over the roots of trees encroaching on the pathway – or was she encroaching on their territory? – and she walked down to where the path thinned. The sun shone brilliantly and gave the day its mild temperature. Autumn leaves littered the path, and she kicked through purples, yellows and golds, the rustly sounds of the season. She leant in to smell the creamy white spray of flowers on a fiddlewood tree. Its shiny, lush leaves showed no signs of dropping. She walked on further until the path opened out to an enormous field, the bush carrying on at the foot of it and up a hill the other side. It was hard to believe all this beauty sat less than two hours from the cosmopolitan lights of Melbourne.

  When she turned to follow the white, worn wooden sign saying Main Street and rounded the base of the gum trees to follow a different path, she saw Louis, sitting on an enormous tree stump, which made him look tinier than he really was.

  Molly scurried past and followed the path, slightly uphill. She didn’t stop until she knew she was out of sight, hidden by surrounding mountain ash trees, foliage dotting the bases of their trunks. She put a hand against her chest as the same feeling as yesterday threatened to overcome her. Ben wasn’t around to help her this time if she had another panic attack.

  She rested against one of the trees. She shut her eyes, told herself to breathe, in and out, in and out, and eventually the feeling subsided and her chest relaxed. It still amazed her how she’d reacted to flying on the airplane without any of this panic, because in reality, the flight had been the easy part. She was about to move on, but curiosity got the better of her, and Molly turned and walked back towards Louis. She stuck to the edge of the track so he’d see her approach and she wouldn’t scare him.

  ‘Lovely day,’ she said when he looked up.

  A smile reached his eyes. ‘It’s beautiful.’ He sounded more Australian than she’d expected when he dragged out the first syllable, and the ‘T’ came out more as a ‘D’, softened from his years out here. He’d been in the country more years than she’d been alive, but still she’d expected more of an English-sounding man.

  ‘Are you okay?’ She moved closer. He didn’t look well. Not well at all.

  Despite his pallor, his eyes shone out of him as though there was still hope.

  ‘May I?’ Molly gestured to the tree stump big enough for a family of four, but she wasn’t sure whether this man – her biological grandfather – wanted company.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  She listened to his breathing, the little catches every time it went in, every time it came out.

  ‘You were at the workshop yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m Louis.’

  ‘I know.’

  He nodded his head, lips pressed together. ‘Yes, I suppose you do.’

  They sat, side by side, looking out over the same area of bush.

  ‘What was the row about?’ she asked. The wind lifted her hair and when she shivered, goose bumps travelled up her arms.

  ‘It’s a long story.’ He coughed and Molly put a hand on his shoulder, to calm him she supposed. ‘My son is very angry with me.’ He smiled, kindly. ‘And you probably think you saw a strong, competent man being an arrogant bugger to his own father. Am I right?’

  Molly nodded. ‘Well—’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that. Oh, he was being an
arrogant bugger, but he has every right to be.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I did something, years ago.’ He stopped as though he’d suddenly remembered he was talking to a total stranger.

  ‘Was it really that bad?’ Molly asked. ‘What you did?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, it was bad.’

  ‘And he won’t forgive you?’

  Louis shook his head. ‘Maybe in time.’ He looked out into the depth of the bush again, and after a while he changed the subject. ‘So what brings you to Magnolia Creek?’

  ‘I needed a holiday,’ she lied. Thankfully he didn’t add, ‘why here?’

  He asked her where in England she was from, and they chatted about places they’d both visited, the beautiful English countryside, the differences between here and there.

  Molly shivered again. ‘You should get home, it’s getting chilly. Come on, I’ll walk with you. I’m staying up at the cottages.’

  ‘No, I’m fine here.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ She glanced down at his slippers, but didn’t want him to know how vulnerable she thought he looked.

  If she didn’t think the shock could kill him, she’d tell Louis who she was, but one step at a time.

  She held out her arm.

  ‘You’re very kind, taking pity on an old man like this.’ Louis took her arm as they walked slowly up the path to Main Street.

  ‘You shouldn’t go walking down there on your own alone,’ Molly admonished. ‘If you fell, you could be there for hours before anyone realised, and with the weather getting chillier—’

  ‘You sound like my daughter-in-law.’

  Molly smiled. She’d met Gemma and liked her. In fact, it seemed she liked everyone she’d met so far, and the only person she had doubts about was the one she was really here to meet.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Andrew

  ‘I heard what happened at the shop.’ Gemma put a cup of tea in front of her husband.

  So much for coming home to make amends with her. This was likely to result in either a full-blown row, or at the very least a tense conversation.

  ‘Who told you?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Gemma sat opposite, her fingers wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate. ‘You can’t go on like this. Neither of you can.’

  ‘Louis shouldn’t have come to the shop.’

  ‘You won’t talk to him here.’

  ‘So this is my fault?’ Andrew swigged his tea, wincing at the heat of it.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  He looked up at Gemma, into those brilliant blue eyes. She was as beautiful as the day he’d first seen her, as lovely as the day he’d asked her to be his wife, in sickness and in health; for richer, for poorer. What about when the shit hit the fan? Here she was, putting up with all of this, and she didn’t deserve to.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but even to him his words sounded weak. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise.’

  He reached for her hand and pulled it from the hot chocolate, squeezed it firmly in his own. ‘I do need to apologise. In all of this I’ve only been able to see me, to see my father, to see what they did to me back then. I haven’t once asked about you. And I’m sorry.’

  Tears sprang into her eyes, and she wiped a finger beneath one and then the other, sniffed lightly and looked upwards to stop any more tears falling out. He reached for her other hand, gave it a squeeze too.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel,’ he said. ‘I can’t see past what happened to be able to even think about what I’m going to do.’ He held her hands a little tighter. ‘I wrote to Julia, told her everything.’

  ‘Has she written back?’

  ‘Not yet. God knows what this will have done to her. I don’t even know if she’s on good terms with her mother, whether her mother is even alive.’ He laughed briefly. ‘Julia had a right temper on her sometimes. She threw a shoe at my head when I was late to meet her once. I think she’d been scared, waiting alone at the railway station, but I’d been held up at school and couldn’t get away.’ His eyebrows knitted to a frown. ‘If her mother’s alive now, then I’m pretty sure all hell will break loose over this.’

  ‘I thought you were going to hit Louis when he told you everything.’ Gemma gripped his hands tightly in return.

  ‘So did I, and it scared me. I never knew I was capable of being that angry.’

  ‘He’s running out of time, Andrew.’

  Andrew looked at the kitchen table, the knots beneath the varnish, the weathered corners and the chips that had happened over the years without even noticing. ‘I know he is.’

  ‘Did you mean what you said?’

  His silence confirmed the answer.

  ‘Andrew, you’d never forgive yourself if you let him wither away in front of you. Does seeing his pain every day really make up for the pain he caused you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’m worried, Andrew. I love both of you so much and I know you’re going through hell, but I know Louis, and I really think he was doing what he thought was best for you all those years ago.’

  When a tear finally crept its way down Andrew’s cheek and he sniffed, Gemma was there by his side. He’d never cried in front of her before.

  Gemma wrapped her arms around her husband as she stood behind him. ‘You’re not a malicious man. You’re kind, loving and you have a heart. Don’t let this take all of that away.’

  He held her arms against his chest.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to try to find your daughter?’

  ‘That’s the other thing. Dad lied to me, but it kills me to know I’ve got the one thing you so desperately want. The child we both want.’

  Gemma let go and came to sit on his lap. She rested her forehead against his. ‘I don’t think it’s ever going to happen for us.’

  The tears came from both of them. Tears for the past, tears for the present and tears for what might have been.

  ‘We still have a chance,’ he told her. ‘We’ll try IVF.’ But he’d already seen the IVF leaflets tossed in the recycling with an empty box of muesli and knew she was giving up on their dream of a house full of kids.

  ‘Will you try to find her?’ Gemma asked, the topic of IVF shut down, at least for now.

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  When they heard the back gate go, Gemma got up, dried her eyes.

  ‘Is it Dad?’

  ‘Yes. He must’ve been for a walk.’ Gemma blew her nose into a tissue. ‘He shouldn’t be going without one of us. He’s not strong enough.’

  Andrew didn’t say anything until Gemma had stood there watching through the window for another couple of minutes. ‘Go to him,’ he told her. ‘Despite what he’s done, I still want him to be okay.’ He pushed the chair back and left the table.

  ‘Andrew,’ Gemma stopped him. ‘Please think about the operation again, for all our sakes? You might not like him much at the moment, but he’s your dad and we know this is his best chance to be with us for the foreseeable future. He’s got another dialysis session in the morning. It’d be good to know I won’t be driving him to those appointments for much longer.’

  When Andrew dropped down onto the bed upstairs and turned on his side, he wondered how he could go back to thinking of his father in the same way, the way he had before all this had been thrown into the mix.

  *

  Gemma must have taken his socks and jeans off for him and tucked him beneath the covers, because when Andrew woke the next morning, groggy from a sleep filled with dreams he’d rather not be having, he was only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. He dragged himself to the shower, went downstairs for breakfast and left the house, all without waking his wife, all without seeing his father.

  At the shop, Andrew adjusted the thermostat in the kitchen. The days and nights were cooling down now, and the ideal temperature was a prerequisite for perfect chocolates. He systematically made
his way through his to-do list and lost himself in the job he loved. Two hours later, after he’d turned the sign on the door from Closed to Open, he carried the blackboard outside, and using coloured chalk he drew a picture of a cup with steaming liquid, purple chalk creating curls of steam, and wrote Couverture Hot Chocolate along with the price for the winter warmer, which should start gaining in popularity now the days were cooler.

  He turned to walk inside but looked twice when he saw the young woman across the street. It was Molly. And she was staring at him, or the shop, he wasn’t sure, but he raised a hand to wave to her. He was quite taken aback as she waved across to him and smiled. She was a beautiful young woman, and he was sure it wouldn’t be long before she captured some man’s attention.

  Andrew went back inside the shop and continued with the order for the Easter Egg Hunt. This time, he used a little melted chocolate to fix together two halves of chocolate eggs he’d made earlier. It was an intricate job, required a delicate touch and a firm press to keep the halves together long enough so they’d set and not fall apart. But by lunchtime he’d made another hundred.

  ‘Those can all be wrapped, Emilio.’ He patted Emilio’s shoulder and indicated the first few batches that were set by now. He liked Emilio, who had more expertise than he’d given him credit for when he first employed him. He had vision too, and Andrew liked that in his team. Emilio had come up with a good range for Halloween already even though they were way off the season, but it’d given him a chance to buy in some special moulds in readiness.

  When Andrew replenished the white chocolate discs on the shelf towards the front of the shop, he looked up and saw Molly, again. But this time she wasn’t alone. She was talking to Louis. They were sitting, side by side, outside the vet’s surgery, and she was chatting away, her face tilted to the gunmetal clouds lurking in the skies above, announcing autumn was well underway.

  He disappeared out back again, anxious not to be spotted, and there he pulled another batch of mint milk chocolate hearts from the fridge where they’d been finished off. The fridge was set to a special temperature – for cocoa crystals to form the correct pattern, the temperature was vital to avoid fat blooming, which resulted in the fat in the chocolate rising to the surface and ruining both the appearance and the taste. And once he’d done that he figured the coast was clear, so he pulled out a sandwich from the mini fridge in the office, along with a bottle of water, and went down to the lake.