When the Cookie Crumbles

by Virginia Lowell

  “Paine hates doctors,” Hermione said with an exasperated flap of her hands. “He absolutely refuses to even discuss consulting one.”

  “We have some of the finest medical facilities in the world nearby—Johns Hopkins, for a start. I used to live in Baltimore, and I was married to a surgeon. I could call around.…” Focus, Livie. Remember why you are here. “But perhaps your husband is simply lonely?” she suggested. “He’s back home now, and at such an exciting time, too. He might perk up if he got involved in the festivities this weekend. In a way, we are celebrating the Chatterleys. Everyone is thrilled to have the family back here.”

  “How kind,” Hermione murmured, sipping her tea. She reached for a gingerbread cookie. “Isn’t this adorable,” she said. “It’s a gingerbread boy with a little blue crown on his head. The Chatterleys were royalty in England, you know. Although Frederick, poor dear, was the youngest of seven sons, so he decided to make his way in the colonies.” Hermione took a delicate bite of the cookie, eliminating the crown.

  “That’s just the sort of story everyone wants to hear,” Olivia said, trying to sound enthusiastic but not gushy. “I know you’re both tired and jet-lagged after your long trip, but I was wondering…it might cheer up your husband if he could meet some Chatterley Heights citizens—carefully selected, of course—and tell a few of his stories about the family. Maddie and I could provide decorated gingerbread cookies and make sure the visits are short.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.…” Hermione glanced up at the ceiling as if worried her husband might hear. “There are some individuals here who have been rather cruel to Paine. He was quite upset last evening when he saw two of them gathered in your store.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Remembering Paine’s exchanges with Karen Evanson and Quill Latimer the evening before, Olivia wondered who had been cruel to whom. “I’m sure they regret any unkindness. Besides, I’ll give you a list of potential guests, and you can cross off anyone who might upset your husband.”

  Hermione nibbled through her gingerbread boy’s head and shoulders.

  Olivia sensed it was time to back off. She had done her duty. If the Chatterleys insisted on privacy during the celebration weekend, Karen would have to accept it. “Well, I’ll let you continue to settle in, Mrs. Chatterley. I should get back to work.” Olivia picked up Spunky, who wriggled as if he wanted to stay. “If I may, I’ll call again before Saturday and show you a list of people who would love to meet you and Mr. Chatterley. You are free to alter the list or say no to the whole idea.”

  “How thoughtful,” Hermione said as she rose to show Olivia out. “And do call me Hermione.” At the front door, she added, “You know, I do think I could arrange a little visit with us. Do bring me a list of visitors and let me work on convincing Paine. I think it would be good for him to meet some people.”

  Olivia paused on the stoop for several moments after the front door latch clicked shut. She had not expected Hermione to make such an abrupt turnaround. She’d gone from timid to confident in a matter of minutes. Olivia began to wonder which Chatterley really ran the family.

  Chapter Three

  Olivia sighed with relief as she entered The Gingerbread House, having completed her obligation to “reason” with the Chatterleys. She vowed she would never again allow Mayor Karen Evanson to order her around. Although Olivia had to admit the visit had been intriguing. She’d been left with a number of questions. Such as, which Chatterley was the real force to be reckoned with in the family, Paine or Hermione? And was Paine Chatterley a smooth, manipulative character, as he’d seemed the evening before, or was he depressed and irritable? Or both? Not that these were earth-shattering issues. Interesting, though.

  Unlike Olivia, who felt energized, little Spunky was exhausted. He’d allowed Olivia to carry him all the way back to the store. As soon as his little paws hit the floor, he headed for his chair by the window for a nap. “Lazy bum,” Olivia said with a fond pat on the head. Spunky curled up tighter. Olivia reminded herself this was how he normally acted after a long walk, only…maybe she was being paranoid, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask Bertha to help keep an eye on him. If he wasn’t perkier soon, she could drive him over to Chatterley Paws and let the town’s veterinarians, Gwen and Herbie Tucker, look him over.

  Bertha Binkman emerged from the cookbook nook with a customer in tow. “Thank heavens you’re back,” she whispered to Olivia. “My goodness, it’s been busy.” Bertha had been the full-time, live-in housekeeper for Olivia’s late friend Clarisse Chamberlain. When Clarisse died, she left Bertha enough money to retire, but Bertha, who was in her sixties, was too full of energy to “sit on the porch and knit,” as she’d put it. Besides, now that she and the widowed attorney Mr. Willard were an item, Bertha preferred to be in town.

  While she asked Bertha to keep an eye on Spunky, Olivia heard the front door open behind her. She put on her customer-friendly smile and turned around. Her petite mother, Ellie Greyson-Meyers, floated across the sales floor wearing a long pink sweater over black harem pants.

  “Mom, have you been belly dancing again?”

  “So good for one’s flexibility,” Ellie murmured.

  “And you’ve done something to your hair,” Olivia said. “I like the effect; it brings out your eyes. That isn’t a ribbon, is it?”

  Ellie’s wavy gray hair, which hung below her shoulders, had a navy blue streak down the left side. “Thank you, dear. I was inspired by my belly dancing teacher, who has the loveliest pale lavender streak through her black hair.”

  “Has Allan seen the new you?” Olivia’s meat-and-potatoes stepfather, Allan Meyers, was so different from his ever-active wife that the marriage shouldn’t work. But somehow it did.

  “He was speechless, poor dear,” Ellie said. “He, too, asked if it might be a ribbon, but I assured him it is quite permanent, unless I decide to let it grow out. I don’t think that’s what he wanted to hear.”

  “How is Allan’s new Internet business going?”

  “Oh, you know how Allan is when he starts a new venture,” Ellie said.

  “Barely communicative?”

  “Exactly. I leave coffee and plates of food next to his keyboard, and I remove them when empty. It’s probably just as well, since I’m so busy with the gingerbread houses. I am worried he’ll freeze into that hunched-over position, though. Once our schedules have settled down, I’m taking him to yoga with me.”

  “Does Allan know this yet?”

  “Of course not, Livie. Yoga terrifies him. The very thought would make him start traveling again, and I want him home more.”

  A customer entered the store, and Bertha hurried to help her. Olivia glanced at her watch. The lunch hour would arrive soon, which meant another influx of cookie-cutter enthusiasts. With Maddie hard at work on gingerbread houses for the weekend celebration, Olivia would be busy.

  “I’m heading for the community center,” Ellie said, “and I promised to pick up a few items for the gingerbread house project.” Ellie extracted a torn scrap of paper from a deep pocket in her harem pants and handed it to Olivia. “But first tell me, how did your visit with the Chatterleys go? Really, Karen had no right to order you to talk to them, but since you did…”

  “You want to be the first to know?”

  “I have my reasons,” Ellie said. “I’m concerned about Paine. And about Karen.”

  “Karen? Really? And Paine?” Olivia’s astonishment caught the attention of Bertha’s customer, who turned to stare.

  Ellie cupped Olivia’s elbow and guided her into the store’s cookbook nook, a semiprivate area that was once a dining room. “I knew Paine when he was young, you know. He was…complex. In fact, I was never sure I really did know him, despite the many afternoons I spent at Sadie’s house, learning to embroider.”

  “You spent…why did I not know this?”

  “Possibly because you weren’t born yet, Livie.” Ellie’s gaze wandered to a display of gel food coloring for icing. “You do carry
rolled fondant, don’t you? I’ll need several packages.”

  “Fondant is easy to make, and it would be much less expensive.”

  “I know that, Livie, but we are running out of time.”

  It was unusual for her mother to sound testy, and she seemed disoriented as well. “Are you okay, Mom?” Olivia asked. “It’s only Wednesday, and the gingerbread houses don’t need to be finished until the celebration begins Saturday morning. Or Friday evening, I suppose, if all of you insist on getting some sleep.”

  Ellie sighed. “I realize it’s not every day a town achieves two hundred and fifty years of existence, at least here in America, which is still so young. In Europe, of course—”

  “Weren’t you feeling pressed for time, Mom?”

  “Not only that,” Ellie said, “but I can’t tell you how many activities I have missed to help Maddie’s crew with those gingerbread houses—like my reading group, yoga, two weekly nature walks, and I haven’t had a minute to help with our protest march on Washington. It takes a lot of planning to occupy Congress, you know.”

  “I’m surprised you aren’t running for Congress.” Olivia was sounding a bit testy herself.

  “I’ve thought about it, dear. Maybe later.” Ellie frowned at the scrap of paper in Olivia’s hand and sighed again.

  Olivia scanned the list. “Five packages of rolled fondant, two boxes of confectioners’ sugar, gel coloring…dried tagliatelle pasta?”

  “Maddie’s idea for quick and easy windowpanes,” Ellie said. “We’re getting desperate.”

  Olivia finished reading the list in silence. “We have most of this stuff, like the cookie cutters and pastry bags, and I can give you some of our baking supplies from the kitchen. You’re on your own for the dried tagliatelle. Although it’s an interesting idea.”

  As they gathered the items, Olivia asked her mother, “Why are you worried about Karen and Paine?”

  Ellie gazed off into space as if trying to find words to express her concerns. “Paine Chatterley…such an endearing little boy, for the most part. But sad, too, which is hardly surprising. You’d think his parents would have been thrilled when they discovered they were pregnant, after all those years. His mother was over forty, as I remember. However, not all couples are meant to be parents.”

  Olivia unlocked a small room that had once served as a pantry. Olivia had hired Lucas Ashford to move the door so she could access the room from the sales floor, and now the store’s inventory lined the old wooden shelves. Selecting a box, Olivia said, “I think the vegetation cutters are in here.” She skimmed a list taped to the front of the box. “Yes, here they are.” Olivia lifted a cookie cutter out of the box and handed it to her mother. “This is an elm tree shape I had custom made. If it gets lost, I will be most unhappy.”

  “I will guard it faithfully,” Ellie said. “I used to love the old elm trees. Such lovely shade.”

  “You know,” Olivia said, “from what I saw of Paine yesterday evening and this morning, the word ‘endearing’ isn’t the first that would spring to my lips. ‘Cranky,’ maybe, or ‘haughty.’”

  “Sad can look like a lot of things,” Ellie said, “including cranky and haughty. However, I do see your point.”

  “Here’s a shady oak tree shape,” Olivia said as she handed her mother a shiny copper cutter. “Hermione seems to think Paine is depressed, although she didn’t use that word.”

  “That would not surprise me,” Ellie said.

  “And Karen?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Our esteemed mayor, the other person you’re worried about. Although if Karen is sad or depressed, I’ll eat an entire gingerbread house, dried tagliatelle and all.” Olivia found the last cookie cutter on her mother’s list, a rosebush. The cutter was no more than a lumpy oval shape, but Maddie would recognize it. Olivia slid the box back on the shelf before correcting the attached list to reflect the change in its contents.

  “I wouldn’t call Karen sad, exactly,” Ellie said, “but she does seem overwrought. It isn’t good for her. She’s taking this town celebration far too seriously. History is important, of course, and our young people do need more exposure to the idea that time did not begin with their births, but still, one can become too involved in something.”

  “This from the woman who takes yoga classes seventeen times a week?” Olivia escorted Ellie out into the cookbook nook.

  “A gross exaggeration,” Ellie said. “Anyway, yoga is only yoga.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  Ellie tilted her head and smiled up at her daughter, who was taller by a good eight inches. “You’d understand if you would come to yoga class with me. I tried to get Karen to come along, but she insisted she’s too busy. She said yoga would only increase her stress, which is absurd. Karen is well into her forties. I told her, now is the time to lay the groundwork for a more flexible and graceful aging.”

  “And did she take that well?”

  “Not at all, dear.”

  Olivia scanned the display of add-ons for decorated cookies and selected a large jar of white sugar sprinkles for snow on the gingerbread house roofs. “Mom, what’s your impression of Quill Latimer?”

  “Quill, yes…” As Ellie tilted her head, the navy blue streak in her hair shone in the light, reminding Olivia of deep blue luster dust. “I’ve got it,” Ellie said. “Misplaced.”

  “Um…could you use a few more words, Mom?”

  A thought furrow formed between Ellie’s bright blue eyes. “Poor Quill always seems to me as if he isn’t where he ought to be, and he is terribly unhappy about it. Some years ago, I took a class taught by Quill at the community college. It was called the History of Chatterley Heights: Pre-Revolution to the Present. Although, as I recall, the present ended at World War II, which is significant, I think.”

  “Misplaced, Mom? Quill?”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, Livie. The class content said it all. Quill is obsessed with the past.”

  “Aren’t most history professors focused on the past?” Olivia handed her mother the last jar of chocolate pearlized jimmies.

  “Of course, Livie, just as literature professors are focused on literature, but most of them have other interests as well. One of my friends specializes in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. She goes into a trance when she discusses his work, but she is equally delirious when she bowls a strike.”

  “Bowls a strike? Mom, I’m—”

  “Confused, I know,” Ellie said. “What I’m trying to say is that Quill is happy only when he is lost in the past. He was a different person in the classroom—entertaining, good-natured, approachable. But when I visited his office to correct an error in my registration, he’d turned sullen and grumpy.”

  “The Quill we all know and—”

  “Exactly,” Ellie said. “Quill belongs in a previous era. He doesn’t fit in the twenty-first century. It makes him very uncomfortable.”

  “That makes a kind of tortured sense, Mom.”

  “Thank you, dear. Now, about the rolled fondant?”

  As Olivia led the way to the store kitchen, she noticed several customers browsing while Bertha rang up purchases at the sales counter. “Let’s get the remaining items from the kitchen,” Olivia said. “Then I need to help out on the sales floor.”

  “Can’t Maddie help me? She said she’d be back here in the afternoon.”

  “Maddie is as frantic as Karen, but she handles it much better. You know she’s trying to finish all the gingerbread window scenes before heading over to the community center this evening to help decorate the houses.”

  Olivia held open the door and followed her mother into The Gingerbread House kitchen. They found Maddie looking worried all right, but not about her gingerbread window scenes. She wasn’t paying any attention to the partially decorated gingerbread cookies that covered the worktable.

  Lucas Ashford, Maddie’s almost fiancé, sat in a kitchen chair with her arm around his shoulders. Lucas looked as angr
y as Olivia had ever seen him. In fact, she couldn’t recall seeing him even mildly miffed. Now his chiseled features were tinged with red, and she noticed his jaw work as he ground his teeth. Maddie flashed her a concerned frown. Even her wildly curly hair had deflated.

  “Maddie dear,” Ellie said, dumping her baking items on the kitchen table, “what has happened?”

  Olivia noticed the Mr. Coffee was empty and started a new pot. She could tell this was a time for cookies and coffee.

  “Lucas just called his team off the mansion renovation,” Maddie said. She hesitated a moment, turning to Lucas to tell the story. When he said nothing, she added, “Paine Chatterley demanded that Lucas renovate their kitchen and put in all new appliances, free of charge.”

  “What?!” Olivia and Ellie said at the same time.

  Lucas sprang from his chair and leaned against the kitchen counter, his muscular arms folded tightly across his chest. “Paine said it’s the town’s fault the mansion was in such bad shape. He said that Harold and Sally’s will made us responsible for upkeep, in exchange for the use of the house as a tourist attraction after their deaths.”

  “That’s absurd,” Olivia said. “Updating the kitchen has nothing to do with maintaining a historical building. If anything, the kitchen should be left as it was a hundred years ago.”

  “Tell that to his lordship,” Lucas said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He isn’t letting the town show the mansion this weekend, so I pulled my guys off the job. I wouldn’t care except…well, I’ve invested a lot of time and money in that restoration, and so has the town. Now it’s all down the drain.”

  Maddie hitched herself up onto the kitchen counter next to Lucas. “Here’s the deal,” she said. “Lucas agreed to offer free labor and some of the materials in exchange for the opportunity to do a video of the restored house, inside and out. He wants to expand his business. In this economy, a plain old hardware store can’t really survive. Plus Lucas still has some debt from his parents’ medical care.”