“They’re in the kitchen pantry, next to the his-and-hers fondue skewers,” Ida said.
“Thanks.” Emerson raced past the glass walls of wine bottles and into the commercial kitchen she subleased from Ida for her business. In order to make her mom’s dream a reality, she’d needed a commercial kitchen to secure her food licenses—and Ida had the only one on Main Street that wasn’t being used regularly. So in exchange for a few hundred bucks a month and catering a couple of events at the wine bar each year, Emerson wound up with the female Willy Wonka as her kitchenmate.
And a resident duck as her neighbor. As Emerson flicked on the light, she found Norton on the center island, beak covered in pistachios, tail lowered to the metal tabletop, looking ready to defend the baklava he’d discovered. The baklava she’d spent two hours making.
“Norton! Down!” Emerson commanded, even snapped her fingers and pointed from the bird to the floor.
Norton puffed out his wings and, tail straight back, parted his beak—duck for What? What?—then went back to pecking the baklava. In fact, the plate was practically pecked clean and he was already eyeing the other full tray.
“One more peck at my profits and you will end up a pillow. Got it?” To her frustration, all she got was a good look at the duck’s backside when Norton gave tail before going for the tray. “You want to play dirty?”
Emerson pulled a squirt bottle out from the pantry and fired. Once, twice, all the while making a psht psht sound, just like the Dog Whisperer did on the show Ida watched while prepping for happy hour. And because Norton was more concerned with proving himself a dog instead of a water fowl, he hopped off the table and scuttled his tail feathers right out of the kitchen and through the doggie door.
Quark! Quark! Quark!
Emerson slid the remaining tray of baklava onto the top shelf of the pantry for safekeeping, then located the his-and-hers skewers, which had interesting places to secure the fruit and meat. Next to them were the fondue cans. They were small, too small for what she needed, but they would have to do. She grabbed every last one, located a candle lighter, just in case, then made her way back to the front—snatching a stick of chocolate-covered bacon because, yeah, it was going to be one of those days.
“You got any duct tape?” she asked.
“Yup.” Ida set down the fresh fig she was dipping in a vat of bitter-smelling dark chocolate and walked to the register to pull out some tape. “Add some of those nautical ropes I bought for last week’s coastal wine tasting and I’d say you were looking to get lucky.”
Emerson laughed while bagging her stuff. She wouldn’t mind getting lucky right about then. With her cart, that was. “The Pita Peddler’s pilot won’t light. I think there’s something wrong with the starter.”
“Uh-huh.” Ida studied Emerson’s outfit and frowned. “Seems to me like you’re looking to be noticed. Even before you picked up that dating starter kit.”
Emerson was wearing her uniform—KISS MY BAKLAVA tee and leggings—but she’d swapped out her usual black skirt for a short denim one with a million zippers and pockets, and, because attitude leads to altitude, her American flag Converse high-tops. And okay, so she’d seen Dax jogging around the community park yesterday, all hot, sweaty, and breathtakingly shirtless. That didn’t mean she’d applied mascara for his sake.
Emerson dropped the lighter inside when Ida grabbed the bag and held it hostage behind the counter. “Lunch starts in ten minutes, Ida.”
“Promise me you’ll wear the cork costume on Saturday night, and I’ll give you the bag.”
A subtle throbbing started behind Emerson’s forehead. “What’s Saturday night? And why am I wearing a cork costume?”
“Saturday night the girls and I are throwing a party. It will be our first weekly Blow Your Cork Singles Night,” Ida said as though the words party and the girls didn’t inspire terror in townspeople everywhere.
The girls referred to Ida, Peggy, and Clovis—a blue-haired trifecta of trouble. All three were kissing seventy, stubborn as hell, and loved to stir up serious trouble. And when men and alcohol were involved, it usually wound up in someone pulling out the cuffs—sometimes even the cops.
“The dance at the VFW was a bust,” Ida said with force. “Can’t make friendly with the Johns with all of those younger Janes from the active living community sniffing around, looking for a sugar daddy.”
“You mean the active living community that requires you to be fifty-five or older?” Emerson asked, because she could either give Ida two of her rapidly disappearing minutes to hear her out or the older woman would hold her Sterno cans hostage. Worse, Ida would follow Emerson out to the cart and talk her ear off while every patron in line listened.
“At fifty-five I could dance without wheezing, laugh without wetting my unmentionables, and my nipples still pointed up instead of looking like they were beacons for finding water.” Ida cupped her ample water beacons and lifted them heavenward a good twelve inches. “Anyway, liquoring the men up only to have you pop right out of that top. Pastor Sam nearly had an aneurysm seeing you in those shells.” Ida shook her head. “We want you on the ticket to bring the guys in, but unless you’re in a cardboard box, you’d steal the ones with real teeth.”
“As tempting as that sounds,” Emerson said, dying a little inside at the glimpse into her future, “I can’t cater your event Saturday. I have the farmers’ market all day, and with so many tourists in town for the harvest, I’ve been doing a second serving out by DeLuca Vineyards.”
Crush only lasted a few months, and with the weather turning colder and it getting darker earlier, Emerson was working every angle she could get before winter made her job a whole lot harder.
“Now can I have the bag?” Emerson held out her hand.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars more than you’d make at the winery, plus twenty percent of tips if you look like a cork every Saturday and serve tapas,” Ida said as though she were back in the old country, negotiating fava beans for ten cents a pound.
Emerson couldn’t believe she was even considering spending the evening with the geriatric mafia, especially after what was going to be one exhausting week, but an extra hundred bucks was a hundred bucks closer to her goal. Not to mention the tips from the night would be huge.
She estimated how much she’d make at the vineyard, added a hundred, then said, “Six hundred bucks, you hire someone to do cleanup, I get half of the tips, and no costume. Now give me the bag.”
Ida held out the bag, but when Emerson went to take it, the older woman’s bony hands gripped tighter. “Six hundred, I handle cleanup, forty percent of tips, and the costume is nonnegotiable.”
Sadly, a cork didn’t even come close to her most embarrassing costume request, and passing on a regular six-hundred-plus-tips gig for one that would end in a few weeks’ time wasn’t smart business.
Emerson took a deep, calming breath, resigning herself to suiting up, and said, “Deal.” Grabbing the bag, she hurried back to her cart, mentally adding the mechanic’s time and estimated parts it would cost to fix the cart’s heating system, and sighed. It seemed as though every time she got a step closer to her target, there was always some kind of setback.
After taping the Sterno cans together to make two superburners, she placed them under the chafing trays. One flick of the lighter and she was back in business. Feeling very MacGyvery and a bit smug that she had five minutes to spare, she opened the blue-and-white umbrella, which was the national flag of Greece, and turned to the first customer, who was offering up a toothy grin and a twenty.
Seeing the customer, Emerson immediately went into crisis-management mode. A mode she had become familiar with over the past two years.
So much for her five-minute lead.
“What are you doing here, Violet?”
Her six-year-old sister, Violet Blake, stood on the other side of the cart in a pink fuzzy jacket, two curly pigtails, and glittery fairy wings strapped to her back, swishing happily back an
d forth. Their twenty-three-year age difference raised eyebrows, but surprises happened. And Violet had turned out to be the best surprise. “It’s Pixie Girl. And Dad said I could have some baklava.”
“Sorry, baklava is for humans only.” She ignored Violet’s pout and zeroed her gaze in on her dad, who forced an innocent grin from behind his youngest. “It’s the middle of the school day,” she pointed out.
Roger Blake shrugged as though not seeing the problem with this. His peppered hair was windblown, his Hawaiian shirt slept in, and his feet were in flip-flops. The frayed cargo shorts and sleepy eyes only added to the beach bum image he had going on. “We’re taking a field trip.”
“The principal gave me two days off on account of fairy dust landing in Brooklyn’s eye,” Violet informed the line as though she hadn’t just confessed to being suspended. “Only it’s Taco Tuesday at school, and I like tacos, so I didn’t want to leave.”
Roger rested his hand on Violet’s slim shoulder. “Who wants a taco when we can have dessert for lunch?”
“So Dad brought you here, after getting suspended, to celebrate with dessert?” Emerson asked and both dad and daughter nodded. Emerson dropped her head and took a calming breath. It didn’t help.
This wasn’t the first fairy-inspired incident, and because she was afraid it wouldn’t be the last, she resisted the urge to high-five her sister for giving Brooklyn a dose of her own medicine—an act that would be as irresponsible as buying her a dessert to celebrate her first elementary assault charge. Emerson knelt down and looked her sister in the eye. Long and hard.
“Want to explain how glitter wound up in Brooklyn’s eyes when you were banned from bringing glitter to school?”
“Fairy dust,” Violet corrected while toeing at the ground with her pink Converse. “And Lillianna Starlight gave me some this morning.”
“Imagine that.” Emerson looked Lillianna Starlight right in the eyes—and he had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t know you still talked to Lillianna.”
Chocolate-colored pigtails bobbed. “I sent her a message through fairy mail yesterday and told her how Brooklyn told the whole class that fairies weren’t real. Then this morning a letter was under my pillow that said all nonbelievers needed was a little love and a lot of fairy dust.”
Eyes never leaving Lillianna’s, Emerson piled some lamb into a pita and rolled it up. “Take this and go wait over there while I talk to Dad.”
Violet looked from the gyro to Dad and back to Emerson. “What about my baklava?”
“You’re lucky it isn’t tabbouleh. Now go, before I change my mind.”
Horrified at the thought of being forced to eat something green, she hustled her little fairy butt over to the bench and sat down, wings flapping in the breeze.
“Not you.” Emerson caught Lillianna by the cuff of his shirt. “I thought you had an interview today at Bella Vineyards.”
Roger shifted back on his feet. “It was for a delivery manager, which means I’d miss breakfast and seeing her off to school.”
“The last job offer was a nine-to-five, and you passed because you’d miss picking her up from school. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up passing on your whole future, Dad.” The once sought-after vineyard manager had found a logical, rational, mature-sounding reason to pass on every opportunity that came his way. When in truth Emerson knew that going back to work meant finally letting go, admitting they’d lost the battle, the fight, and the most important person in all of their lives.
“Plus I’d miss twilight walks with Pixie,” he said quietly, and Emerson sighed. The soul-deep kind of sigh that started in her toes and moved its way out through her heart. Her dad was so busy making sure he took the right steps in moving forward, he was stuck in the same place he’d been the day his soul mate died. And he’d kept Violet right there with him.
“Violet,” she gently corrected. “And I thought we were done with this.”
“We were,” Roger said, running a hand though his hair. “Then that Brooklyn girl started giving Violet a hard time.”
“Because she wears wings to school, only answers to Pixie, and talks to daisies and grass blades at recess,” Emerson said with a quiet intensity to ensure Roger finally got it. “The only thing worse for a first grader would be a ‘Kick me, I’m socially inept’ sign on her back.”
Roger winced. “I thought about throwing those damn wings out when she was sleeping, but then I remembered your mom made them for her that last Halloween.” He shrugged helplessly, looking as lost as he had the day the real Lillianna had died. “I figured, what could it hurt?”
Emerson felt her throat tighten. “A lot, Dad. She can’t mourn someone she is convinced lives under a toadstool. And it isn’t healthy for her to only socialize with imaginary friends.”
“She socializes with me.”
Which was the equivalent of hanging with Peter Pan. And they both knew it.
Violet had been an unexpected miracle baby, and her parents had embraced that every day of Violet’s little life. When her mom’s ALS had taken a fatal turn, Lillianna had been determined to make every day she had left with her girls magical. And she had, sharing every family recipe with Emerson, taking Violet on backyard fairy hunts at twilight, making sure that when she was gone her daughters would have a lifetime full of happy memories to combat the heart-wrenching ones.
After her death, Roger had taken on the responsibility of Violet’s happiness. Leaving every other responsibility to Emerson. Not that she would change it for the world. Emerson loved taking care of her family, knew that she was the only thing keeping them from falling completely off the grid. And she wanted Violet to experience some of what she’d had as a child, but sometimes being the only realistic one in a family of dreamers made things difficult.
Take Lillianna Starlight, for example, the fairy who slept under daisy petals and traveled by shooting stars. Emerson wanted Violet to remember their mom, remember their walks and the love she had for make-believe and magic. Unlike her father, though, Emerson worried that the make-believe was holding Violet back. Keeping her from moving on.
Her heart a little heavier than it had been moments ago, Emerson made up one of her mom’s famous lamb gyros with extra tzatziki, just the way Roger liked it, then packed up two pieces of baklava to go. “At least stop giving her things she can assault her classmates with.”
He took the bag and smiled. “Will do.”
The Sterno didn’t last as long as Emerson had anticipated. Neither did her lamb, since she was only two hours into the lunch shift and nearly sold out. At this rate she’d have her food truck by the end of next month, a thought that had her smiling as she greeted the next customer in line.
“What can I get you?”
Mrs. Larson, the refurbish part of St. Helena Hardware and Refurbish Rescue, looked at the nearly empty dessert tin and frowned. “Two wraps, and please don’t tell me you’re out of baklava. I’m having an old pipe organ from a condemned church in Colusa delivered today and I was hoping to put Walt in a sugar coma for a few hours while I had it moved to the back warehouse. One look at the size of those pipes and he’ll start sputtering up a storm.”
Emerson reached under the cart counter into her secret-stash cabinet and pulled out a bag with “Larson” written on it. “I know how much Walt loves his baklava, so I set aside a few pieces for you.”
“Aren’t you a sweetheart?” Mrs. Larson took the bag and clutched it to her chest, her silvered bob bouncing as she wiggled with excitement. “I know the second Walt sees how lovely the pipes will look in the ceiling-to-floor headboard, he’ll fall in love with it. He just doesn’t have the same vision I was blessed with.”
Emerson wasn’t as confident in Walt’s ability to call what sounded like a bizarre twist of taking it to church “lovely,” but she was certain his love for his wife would overcome his need to toss the organ out.
Walt had made it clear to the entire town that even though his wife had turned half of
his hardware shop into a scene from a Dr. Seuss story with her eclectic rehabbed furniture, he was still her biggest fan.
To Emerson, that kind of unwavering support ranked a solid fifteen on her swoon-worthy scale.
“Anything else?” Emerson asked.
“Well, yes.” Mrs. Larson looked around first before lowering her voice. “Walt’s sixty-fifth birthday is next month and I’m throwing him a small family party. I was hoping to surprise him with that cake your mom used to sell at the farmers’ market. The orange one with the liqueur frosting?”
“Orange sponge cake with Metaxa frosting?” she asked, her throat suddenly going tight.
Mrs. Larson snapped her fingers. “Yes, that one. It’s Walt’s favorite.”
It was Emerson’s favorite too. Her mom had made it for her on every birthday.
Emerson held her smile firm, but her insides sank at the idea of replicating her mom’s special-occasion cake. “I can try, but I can’t promise it will taste exactly like my mom’s,” she admitted. It was one of the few recipes Emerson didn’t know by heart, and it had sadly gone missing, along with the journal her mother had made for her.
Its disappearance was one of life’s mysteries Emerson couldn’t seem to get past. She’d racked her brain, torn up the house, interrogated Violet. Then sadly realized that just like her mom, the journal—her journal—had been reduced to a collection of memories.
Last year, when it seemed that the memories were starting to fade, Emerson had tried to re-create it—without luck. The result was a delicious cake. Just not Lillianna’s-orange-Metaxa-cake delicious.
“I’m sure you’ll make it magic, just like your mom.” Mrs. Larson reached over the cart to pat Emerson’s hand. She had complete faith in Emerson’s ability, but Emerson wasn’t so sure. She continued smiling anyway.
Mrs. Larson smiled back, turned, then did a double take as she realized something. “My, don’t you look pretty today, wearing lipstick and serving your mom’s man-bait lamb wraps.” Hand to her chest, her eyes twinkled with intrigue. “Why, Emerson Blake, who are you trying to trap?”
Need You for Always (Heroes of St. Helena) Page 3