by Susan Wiggs
Daisy was eerily controlled when she began to speak. “It was just before my mom was due to go overseas. Between that and the divorce, I was all messed up. And then they both started ragging on me about college, you know?”
“Sorry. I don’t know,” Jenny explained. “I grew up a lot differently than you did. Though I suppose you could say I do know what it’s like to be pushed into doing something you don’t want to. Maybe we have that in common. So you don’t want to go to college?”
“Nope. Which, at my school, is like saying I don’t want to breathe. Totally unheard of.”
Jenny got a clear picture of a very unhappy young woman, simmering away, yearning for a different life. Philip had told her a bit about his younger brother Greg’s situation. According to Philip, the divorce was torture for Daisy’s parents and that probably tortured the kids, too.
Jenny came around the desk and took her cousin’s hands in hers. Every one of the girl’s fingernails was chewed to the quick. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
Daisy lifted her gorgeous delft-blue eyes to Jenny. “You’re already helping.”
Daisy nodded. “It’s weird. I go to school, I hang out with my friends, and it feels like I have a normal life. And then, wham. I remember I’m pregnant. And that makes me feel like an alien from another planet.”
Jenny still remembered how terrified Nina had been, and how, as her pregnancy progressed, she had become...different. There was something about a pregnant girl walking the corridors of a high school that set her apart from the rest of the world, as though she existed in her own private bubble. Was it still like that in high school?
“I can’t say I have any experience in this area,” she said, “but I do in the area of being an adult. When you’re growing up, you can’t wait for the day when no one tells you what to do. Once you reach that place, though, there are times when you wish someone would tell you what to do.”
Daisy let out a glum sigh. “No kidding.”
“When I was your age, I felt the same way. I couldn’t wait to get out of Avalon when I graduated high school.”
“What happened?”
“My grandpa died, which left my grandmother and me all alone with the bakery. And still it would have been okay for me to leave because Gram had Laura to help her, and this whole town full of people who loved her. But then Gram had a stroke. She never told me I had to stay. She would have found a way to cope on her own. But how could I do that? I just couldn’t walk away.” She paused, pierced by a memory of the plans she’d made, and how everything had fallen apart for her. “I ended up living at home, running the bakery, taking care of my grandmother, and the years just kind of flew by.”
“Do you wish you’d done something different?”
Before the trip to New York, she would have instantly said yes. Now she realized the life she’d been living had been the right one after all. Even though it wasn’t glamorous or exciting, she belonged here in this small town, running the bakery, surrounded by people who cared about her. “It’s a funny thing,” she tried to explain to Daisy. “Things have a way of working out, even if they’re not what we had in mind. I remember standing in a hospital waiting room, and the doctors were asking me to make this huge decision about my grandmother, and I just felt...paralyzed. I would’ve given anything to have somebody make the decision for me. But there wasn’t anyone except me. I had to make the call and live with the consequences. Which is not such a terrible thing,” she hastened to add, and touched Daisy’s shoulder. “Whatever you decide, the experience will make you learn and grow in ways you never imagined.”
“I hope you’re right. Because I’ve, um... I’ve decided to have the baby. My parents know, and they’re, like, kind of okay with it. I mean, as okay as you’d expect, under the circumstances. No idea if it’s right or not, but I just couldn’t...destroy a life. My whole family is broken up, but I figure the baby and I—we’ll be a little family of two.”
“I see. That’s...good,” Jenny said, though inwardly she cringed. Daisy was so young, and a baby was such a huge responsibility.
“So am I fired?” Daisy asked, tucking her hand into her pocket.
Jenny gave a laugh of disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Of course you’re not fired. In the first place, I love having you work here and in the second, firing someone due to pregnancy is against the law.”
“All right.” Daisy stood up, letting out a sigh of relief. “I’d better get back to work. It’s crazy, I know. I’m scared one minute and excited the next.”
“I don’t blame you. I think everyone expecting a baby must feel that way. It’ll be all right.” She had no idea whether or not that was the truth. She wanted it to be. She knew Daisy did, too. Becoming a mother at a young age was possibly the hardest thing a woman could do. Some rose to the occasion and shone, like Nina. Others, admittedly, failed at it. Jenny’s own mother was a prime example.
Daisy opened the door, paused. “How about you? Do you think you want kids one day?”
“I’d better work on having a date.”
“Are you and Chief McKnight, like—”
“No,” Jenny said swiftly. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Just curious.” Daisy led the way downstairs. There was no one in the café. Zach was showing Rourke something on the computer.
“What are those pictures?” Jenny asked, looking over Rourke’s shoulder at the computer monitor.
“Daisy took them,” said Zach.
Daisy handed Jenny a coffee mug. “I loaded them onto the computer as a screen saver. I hope you don’t mind.”
Rourke stepped aside so Jenny could have a closer look. They were shots taken around the bakery, not just snapshots or documentary photos. These were intimate and appealing, and also unexpected—a close-up of Laura’s hands shaping a mound of dough with gentle expertise. The face of a bright-eyed toddler as he regarded the trays of shaped cookies in the curved-front display case. A rack of just-baked bread, the loaves lined up with geometric precision.
“These are incredible,” Jenny said. “You’re really good, Daisy.”
Zach gave Daisy a nudge. “Told you.”
Daisy cleared her throat. “So I was wondering if you’d let me make some prints to hang in the café.”
The idea appealed to Jenny. “You have to promise to sign each print and let me get them professionally framed.”
“Well...sure.” Daisy looked surprised, while Zach beamed with pride.
“That was nice of you,” Rourke said as they left the bakery.
“It’s mutually beneficial. She does beautiful work, and the café needs sprucing up.” It felt right, bringing more people on board at the bakery, stepping back a little. “When I left, I wasn’t totally convinced the bakery would run without me.”
“And now?”
“I’m surprised. In a good way.” She unlocked her car and brushed the snow off the windows. A group of people across the way caught her eye. She recognized Olivia, laughing as she came out of Zuzu’s Petals and—“Oh, God,” Jenny murmured.
“What is it?”
“That’s Olivia’s mother and her grandparents. Olivia warned me that they’d be coming up to help her plan the wedding. Is it too late to hide?”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve spotted you.”
Indeed, Olivia had her arm raised in greeting. Just for a moment, Jenny felt a sickening wave of resentment. There was Olivia, surrounded by her mother and grandparents, beaming as though she’d won the lottery. And she had, of course. She’d been born a Bellamy, still had both parents and both sets of grandparents, and she was planning her wedding to the man of her dreams. She was younger than Jenny. Better educated. Blonder. It was hard not to draw comparisons. Harder still not to resent her sister.
Jenny hoped none of that showed on her fac
e as she and Rourke crossed the street toward Olivia and her family. This would be as awkward for them as it was for her. With her smile frozen in place, she greeted Olivia’s mother, Pamela Lightsey, and grandparents, Samuel and Gwen Lightsey. Pamela appeared to be the quintessential Manhattan socialite, a glossy beauty who was polished from head to toe. Diamond stud earrings winked from her earlobes under a luxurious-looking broadtail lamb hat. Despite the cold, every eyelash was in place and she wore a gracious hostess’s smile. “How do you do?” she said, but her eyes told a different story. Her eyes said, “So you’re my ex-husband’s love child.”
Gwen and Samuel were a prosperous-looking couple in their seventies, silver-haired, utterly poised—or so Jenny thought at first. There was something flinty in Gwen’s gaze, a chilly disapproval Jenny understood completely. Thirty years ago, the Lightseys had a perfect future mapped out for their daughter. Pamela was to marry the son of their best friends, and they would all be one big happy family. Except that Philip had met Mariska Majesky. The affair had lasted only one summer, and he had married Pamela after all, but clearly it wasn’t a happy union. Jenny sensed that the Lightseys blamed Mariska. If he’d never met her, perhaps he would have been content with Pamela forever.
The Lightseys greeted Rourke warmly, mentioning their acquaintance with his father, the senator. Jenny and Olivia shared a look, and Olivia mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
Jenny offered a conciliatory smile. “How are the wedding plans coming along?” she asked.
“Just fine. And I wanted to ask you something,” Olivia said. “I would love for you to be a bridesmaid.”
Pamela stiffened as though someone had shoved an icicle down her back, and Jenny realized this was the first Olivia’s mother had heard of the plan. Pamela pressed her mouth into a thin line of disapproval, and nearly shook with the effort to stay silent.
Although Jenny was tempted to accept immediately, she reminded herself that it was Olivia’s day, and she deserved better than to suffer her mother’s unhappiness. “Olivia, I’m flattered,” she said. “But—”
“No buts. I only have one sister. I’d be honored if you’d be a part of the wedding party.”
“Can I think about it?” she asked. “I’ll let you know, all right?”
Samuel Lightsey was studying her. “You look so much like your mother,” he said. “It’s uncanny.”
Gwen tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. Jenny suspected she was holding him in a vise grip. She smiled politely at Samuel. “I didn’t realize you had met my mother in person.”
Samuel cleared his throat. “I misspoke. Perhaps I saw her in passing, a long time ago.”
* * *
Rourke refused to allow Jenny to drive to Camp Kioga unless he plowed and sanded the road, and she was glad enough for his help. He also insisted that she take Rufus, the eldest of his dogs, a malamute mix he’d found in an abandoned apartment. Rufus had thick fur and oddly pale blue eyes, and he had a watchful way about him. He rode in the backseat, imbuing the car with his doggy aroma as he looked eagerly out the window. The sharp vee of the plow blades cut a swath through the pristine snow on the road, and salted gravel rained down from the bed of the truck. Jenny followed slowly, keeping back far enough to stay out of range of the pinging gravel. The tree branches on both sides of the road were weighted by snow, creating a landscape so beautiful that she didn’t mind driving along at a crawl, admiring the scenery.
“‘I misspoke,’” she murmured, talking to the dog as she drove. “Well, I think the old codger’s lying.” She tried to figure out why. The answer was probably lost in the distant past.
She was distracted by a white rabbit that leaped out from the roadside and crossed in front of her. Rufus lunged at the window, smearing it with slobber. She slowed to let the rabbit pass and watched it scamper into the woods, until the white of its fur melded with the snow and faded from sight. Rufus settled back, whining with disappointment.
She drove more carefully the rest of the way. Rourke used the plow to clear a big rectangle of space in the parking area outside the compound. Then they went to inspect the premises, and the dog bounded joyfully through the drifts.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, not for the first time.
“Enough already.” She ran through knee-deep snow as light as air, kicking up a cloud of flurries. “Don’t be a wet blanket,” she said, taking out the key Jane had given her. “Come and check it out with me.”
They stepped under the archway at the entrance, wading through the drifts of snow. The entire compound resembled a winter wonderland. The building known as the winter lodge was the oldest structure at the camp. It had been built for the camp’s founders, the Gordon family, who emigrated from Scotland in the 1920s. Jenny stood looking at the solid timber building. She wondered if Rourke was thinking about the other time they’d come here together. Maybe he didn’t even remember. “Home, sweet home,” she said.
“Looks like something out of a Stephen King novel.”
So much for him having romantic associations of the place. “Oh, hush. It’s perfect. If I can’t finish my book here, then I don’t deserve to call myself a writer.” Excitedly, she opened the door.
The place had been refurbished the previous summer and now it was spectacular, its river-rock fireplace rising two stories to the vaulted timber ceiling. Near the kitchen and dining area was a red enameled wood-burning stove. At one end under the eaves was a sleeping loft accessed by a ladder. The bedroom had the old-fashioned luxury of a bygone era, with an adjoining bath and a rustic slant-top writing desk at the window overlooking the lake.
Rourke ignited the hot-water heater and made fires in both the woodstove and fireplace. Jenny came out of the bedroom, beaming.
“I’m starting to like being a Bellamy,” she said.
“I still think you’re crazy.”
“Are you kidding? People pay a fortune for places like this up on Lake George or Saranac Lake. I wish you could be happy for me.”
“I don’t like the idea of leaving you here in the middle of nowhere.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this ‘nowhere’ is a short drive from town. It’s got electricity and phone service, so it’s not like I’ve been set adrift on an ice floe.” She had an urge to touch his forehead, to smooth away the scowl from his brow, but she resisted. “I need this, Rourke. This time away with myself—it’s something I probably should have done long ago. And it’s perfectly safe. Remember, my grandfather used to come up here ice fishing every winter. I might even try it myself.”
“I swear to God, if you go out on that ice, I’ll take you back to town in handcuffs.”
She laughed to cover an unexpected visceral reaction to the idea of him handcuffing her. “News flash, Rourke. I’m a grown-up and you’re not in charge of me.”
“Maybe not, but guess what? I’m the chief of police and this place is in my jurisdiction. So don’t be surprised if I decide to patrol—”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Watch me.”
“You’re nuts.”
“What’s nuts is you staying here. Dammit, Jenny. Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
“It’s not me being stubborn,” she said. “It’s a declaration of independence. I’ve lost everything, Rourke. And the only thing that makes it bearable is that I have a chance to start over from scratch.”
“This isn’t starting over. It’s hiding.”
“Screw you, Rourke.”
“We tried that,” he snapped. “It didn’t work.”
“That’s it,” she said, about to lose it. “You’re out of here. You’d better leave, or I’ll—”
He tugged on his gloves, one at a time. “You’ll what? Call the police?”
Food for Thought
BY JENNY MAJESKY
Comfort F
ood
There is almost always food involved in the happiest moments of our lives. Maybe not the big fireworks moments—a marriage proposal, the birth of a baby—but the quiet times, like when you’re a kid, and you bring home a good report card. Someone almost always gives you a cookie.
And then there are the not-so-happy times. That’s when comfort food means the most. As a girl, my grandmother had scarlet fever and, tucked in bed, she could smell the scent of cinnamon from her mother’s baking and forever after, the scent of cinnamon was the scent of love.
Comfort food is also important when you get together with your girlfriends to sit around and talk. It’s not possible to do that without food, if you ask me. My grandmother always baked with great joy, and she knew that food can be comforting because of the associations we make between the food and the people around us, or the emotions the tastes and smells evoke. Spiced with nostalgia, scented with love, a taste of true comfort food is like getting a hug from someone special.
POLISH APPLE STRUDEL
3-4 tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced thin
1 piecrust
2 tablespoons butter
1 (5-ounce) jar walnuts in syrup
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon cornstarch
¼ cup plain breadcrumbs
Preheat oven to 375°F. Sauté apples in butter over gentle heat until they soften. Add walnuts, spices, brown sugar and honey. Then add cornstarch and stir to dissolve. Cook until the mixture thickens.
Roll the dough into a rectangular shape and place on a piece of parchment on a large baking sheet. Spoon apple mixture down the middle of the rectangle, bring the edges up and pinch to close. Score the dough with a few slashes along the top. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top.