Better Than Chocolate

by Sheila Roberts

  She needed…no chocolate, she told herself firmly. Except she was out of fingernails. She left her office and stopped by the shop to get a salted caramel.

  Heidi didn’t say anything as she raided the display behind the glass, just looked at her sadly. Samantha took another caramel for the road.

  She was just going out the door when she met Darla Stone, Del’s middle-aged sister, and Hildy Johnson.

  Both women were notorious sugar addicts. By all rights, they should’ve been regular customers but Samantha knew for a fact that they both preferred a cheap high to the good stuff and always stocked up whenever candy bars were on sale at the grocery store. So what were they doing here?

  “Good morning, ladies,” she said, trying to sound happy to see them. She should be happy. Even though they weren’t her favorite people they were still customers.

  Darla offered her a sympathetic smile and then turned to Hildy. “Look at the brave face she’s putting on.”

  Samantha stared at them in confusion. “Excuse me?”

  Darla patted her arm. “Oh, we know, honey. I think it’s wonderful how supportive you girls are of your mother, but sometimes you just have to throw in the towel, especially now with this rockslide closing the highway.”

  “I assume you’re already marking down your candy?” Hildy added.

  “Marking down my candy?” Samantha repeated. “I don’t understand—”

  “There’s no need to pretend with us. Del talked to your poor mother.”

  Samantha’s heart stopped. “What did my mother say?”

  “Well, only that you’re about to go out of business,” Darla said. “She was hoping Del could help, but his money is all tied up. I told him the best thing we can do is buy up your chocolate, which I’m sure you’re marking down. I mean, that is what you do when you’re going out of business, isn’t it?”

  This, after all her hard work trying to keep her employees from panicking—her blood turned to molten lava in less than a second. “I don’t know what exactly my mother said to Del, but whatever it was, she’s mistaken. We are not closing our doors. And we’re certainly not having a fire sale.”

  Darla’s pudgy face grew pink. “Oh, well,” she stammered. “I just thought…” The words trailed off and the pink turned red.

  “I know what you thought,” Samantha said. Okay, don’t go any further. Get in touch with your inner Cecily. “Yes, we’ve had a few challenges after losing my stepfather but let me repeat—Sweet Dreams is not ready to close its doors. We’re an important part of this town’s economy. Surely you ladies wouldn’t want to see us go under.”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” Darla said.

  Samantha smiled at her. “I didn’t think so, and I appreciate that you’ve come to show your support and shop with us.” She opened the front door so they had no choice but to go in. “We all support one another in this town, don’t we?” she added, now turning her attention to Hildy. “My family’s been filling their prescriptions at your drugstore ever since you first opened.”

  Hildy got the hint. She pressed her lips firmly together and followed Darla into the gift shop.

  Savoring the small moment of one-upsmanship, Samantha poked her head in the door and called to Heidi, “Give these ladies ten percent off. As our thanks for being such loyal customers,” she told the women. The irony would no doubt escape them but if not, she hoped it made them distinctly uncomfortable and spurred them to spend appropriately.

  Fuming, she hurried over to Ed’s via the Riverfront Park, opting to avoid the more public streets. It was a beautiful path, playing peekaboo with the river between fir and pine trees and all manner of shrubs and bushes. Some of it was muddy and an icy drizzle did its part to make sure those spots remained that way, but she kept walking.

  The weather matched her mood perfectly. First the highway closure and now her mother. What in the name of Godiva had Mom been thinking, talking to Del Stone of all people? Del, whose sister was one of the biggest gossips in all of Icicle Falls? Had her mother been thinking at all? Probably not.

  “Crap,” she muttered with every step. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!” Her family was going to be the death of her—if Mother Nature didn’t do her in first. She marched on, sourly taking in the sodden landscape that had shed most of its sparse snowfall. What a crappy year it had been. And what a crappy new year it was starting out to be! Why couldn’t something, anything, go right?

  She could feel tears stinging her eyes and fiercely blinked them back. No way was she letting this damned rockslide take her down. No way, no way, no way.

  She remembered Trevor Brown, waiting in the wings to absorb Sweet Dreams into his company, and Blake Preston and his gang of bank thugs doing all they could to truss her up like a Thanksgiving turkey and deliver her on a platter. She wanted to run away.

  With Blake.

  Where had that come from? She wouldn’t run away with him if it was the end of the world and he was driving the last working car out of town. And if he and his cronies thought she was just going to lie down and die because of a minor inconvenience like a few rocks on the road, they could think again. She set her jaw and quickened her pace.

  She was almost at the footbridge when she caught sight of other people, teenage people, people who should be in school. Instead, they were hanging out here in the park, smoking cigarettes. Samantha frowned in disgust. She’d never tried smoking, never had any desire to. It was an expensive habit that made your clothes smell and shortened your life, so she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to suck on the nasty things. But people did all the time. And that was their business, she told herself.

  But then she got a couple of steps closer and recognized one of the kids. The girl with the short hair dyed jet-black tipped with red and wearing jeans and a ratty jacket was Cass’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Amber. Cass had been worried about her. It looked like Cass had been right to worry.

  Samantha hesitated. What to do? Did she pretend she didn’t see? Did she say something? Oh, for heaven’s sake, did she even need to ask? She marched over to where Amber and another girl stood with two pimply faced gangly boys.

  One of the boys had just given Amber a cigarette and she had it halfway to her mouth when she saw Samantha. Her eyes got saucer-big at the sight of her mother’s friend and the cigarette instantly went behind her back.

  “No point hiding it,” Samantha said. “I saw.”

  The taller of the two boys eyed her with hostility. “Who are you?”

  “I’m someone who doesn’t have to be in school,” Samantha said, whipping her cell phone out of her pocket. “And you have one minute to turn your tail around and get back there before I call and tell your principal you’re all cutting class.”

  The boy raised his chin. “You don’t know us.”

  “Nope, but I know her and I bet it won’t be hard for your teachers to figure out who’s missing.”

  The boy hunched inside his coat and stalked off, flipping the old one-finger salute at Samantha as he left. She flipped him right back. The other boy and girl followed, keeping their fingers to themselves, settling instead for shooting her dirty looks as they went. She almost laughed. Like that sample of sullenness was supposed to bother her? She was doing battle with a rockslide and chocolate vultures. A little teenage anger was nothing more than comic relief.

  Amber lingered. “Are you going to tell my mom?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Should I?”
/>   Amber shook her head vigorously, making the little hoops in her row of earrings rattle.

  “You’re smoking.”

  “I was just going to try it.”

  “And fill your lungs full of tar and nicotine and end up getting hooked and wrecking your health. And your looks. Amber, have you ever noticed how many wrinkles women who smoke have? All around their mouths. It’s really ugly.”

  Amber shrugged like she didn’t care.

  Samantha tried another approach. “You know how much your mom loves you? Can you imagine how unhappy you’d make her if you took up a habit that can wreck your health? And where would you get the money to pay for those cigarettes? They’re not cheap. Oh, of course,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Those terrific friends of yours would help you get the money, probably by shoplifting. It’s hard to shoplift in Icicle Falls, though. Everybody knows everybody. You’d get caught for sure. They send you to jail for that.”

  Amber bit her lip. She looked like she was going to cry. “Please, Sam, don’t tell Mom.”

  Maybe she’d scared the girl enough, at least for now. But for good measure she decided to add some positive reinforcement. “If you want an addiction, try chocolate. It won’t make your clothes stink and it’s got endorphins to help you feel good. Come by the shop after school and I’ll have a box waiting for you.”

  Amber’s face lit up. “Really?”

  “Really. And if you bring up your grades by next report card, I’ll give you a two-pound box.”

  Now Amber was practically jumping up and down. “Oh, wow, thanks. And you won’t tell my mom?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I promise I won’t even touch a cigarette.”

  “If you do your mom will find out. She’ll smell it on you.”

  “So please don’t tell her,” Amber begged.

  “I’ll think about it,” Samantha hedged. “Just like I hope you’ll think about the kind of people you want to hang out with. You’re old enough to know the difference between a winner and a loser. Which one do you want to see when you look in the mirror?”

  Amber dropped her gaze and mumbled, “A winner.”

  “A lot of us think you’re a pretty cool kid,” Samantha said. “I hope we’re not wrong.”

  Amber nodded. Then, figuring the lecture was over, she turned and fled toward town and, hopefully, school.

  If ever there was a walking ad for birth control, it was a teenager. Yes, Samantha had a business to save but she’d take that over raising a teenager any day.

  Oh, but she had her mother, which was almost as bad. And dealing with Mom would have to be the next order of business after she finished with the festival committee.

  She found them huddled around the oak table in the private room at D’Vine Wines. The cheery Italian mural on the wall behind them, the cheese and crackers, the open bottle of wine and the glasses—it could have been a party except for the long faces.

  “What are we going to do?” Olivia moaned.

  “We’re going to continue with our plans,” Samantha said. “The Department of Transportation will have that mess cleared away in plenty of time for the festival.”

  “Have you seen it?” Ed asked.

  “Well, no.”

  “It’s huge,” he said.

  Just like the headache she was fighting. “It’ll be okay,” she insisted.

  Annemarie shook her head and pointed to the ugly headline in the newspaper. Rockslide Danger on Highway 2: Governor Urges Travelers to Stay Home. The reporter might as well have added Governor Kills Chocolate Festival. “I’ve had six cancellations in the past hour,” she said.

  “This is it for our festival,” Cecily said, pushing away her glass untouched. “So what’s the plan now?” she asked Samantha.

  Everyone was looking at her expectantly. “Okay, here’s what we do.” We panic! That was hardly a productive option. “We keep moving forward,” she said again. “Cecily, call D.O.T. and see if you can find out when they think this will be cleared. Then we’ll take out another ad in the Seattle paper, full page.” She looked apologetically at Ed. “I’ll figure out a way to pay for it, Ed.” Right. How? With chocolate?

  “Good idea,” Annemarie approved.

  “And, Cecily, try to get hold of the producer for Northwest Now again. We’ve got a great story angle. Town versus rockslide. Or something like that.”

  Cecily nodded, making notes in her tablet.

  “Anything else?” Olivia asked. “Surely there’s something else we can do.”

  “Yeah,” Samantha said. “We pray like crazy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When a woman is in trouble, that’s when she learns who her true friends are.

  —Muriel Sterling, Knowing Who You Are: One Woman’s Journey

  Motherhood was the world’s hardest job and being a mother to grown daughters was right up there with trying to turn straw into gold. Now, once again, it would appear that Muriel had made a poor choice.

  “Mom, you can’t tell people we’re in trouble,” Samantha scolded over the phone. “Perception is everything.”

  “I’m sorry,” Muriel said. “I just thought I could get a few people who might have some money to help us out.”

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Her first and only call had been to Del and she’d realized almost immediately that it hadn’t been a good idea. He’d offered to help her come up with a solution, which seemed encouraging. But then she’d heard his bigmouthed sister talking in the background and knew Darla was over there and decided she’d better pull back from this plan until she’d considered all the possible ramifications. Of course, she’d pulled back too late. She’d known even before she hung up that Del would spill the cocoa beans. Darla knew all her brother’s business and, sure enough, now she knew the Sterlings’ business and Samantha was not happy.

  “Mom, please, don’t try to help. I can’t afford to have people like Darla coming in and panicking our employees all over again. And we don’t need the whole town thinking we’re going under when we’re trying to boost business.”

  “I understand,” Muriel said. She was close to tears and it was hard to keep her voice steady.

  Samantha softened her tone. “Look, I appreciate your efforts, I really do, especially after everything you’ve been through. But if you can just stick to the creative end of things I’ll keep working on the money angle. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Muriel said. “And I’m sorry this created more problems for you, especially with the rockslide to deal with.” She wasn’t so ignorant that she didn’t understand what this fresh trouble could do to her daughter’s festival and, consequently, their business. And here she was, adding to the problem rather than helping. So much for motherly good intentions.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way around it,” Samantha said, and her tone of voice dared fate to go ahead and keep messing with her.

  Her eldest was nothing if not efficient, but the deck was certainly stacked against her.

  They said their I-love-yous and goodbyes and Muriel sat staring out the living room window at the mountains, hemmed in by gray skies, contemplating the disaster that currently passed for her life. Most parents, if they lived long enough, became something of a burden to their children but she was too young to be this big a burden.

  So, she asked herself, what are you going to do about it?

  She was going to quit being so ignorant. She called Mountain Es
cape Books.

  “Isn’t this rockslide business awful?” Pat greeted her. “It’s certainly not helping our festival.”

  Or our company, thought Muriel.

  “But you probably didn’t call to talk about that.”

  She certainly hadn’t. If she started talking about the rockslide and the festival, that could lead to other topics that were verboten. “I need a good money book. Or two. Have you got some kind of Money Management for Dummies book I can buy?”

  “Personal finance? Or business?”

  “Personal.” After her faux pas she’d be lucky if her daughter ever let her cross the threshold of Sweet Dreams.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Pat promised. “Do you want me to bring it to dinner tomorrow?”

  “No, I’ll come by this afternoon,” Muriel said. The way her life was going she couldn’t afford to wait even another day.

  * * *

  Samantha had just finished talking another worried B and B owner down from the ledge when Elena buzzed her on the intercom. “You’ve got a visitor—Amber Wilkes.”

  Samantha had set aside a box of candy for Amber but hadn’t been sure Amber would take her up on her offer, since it meant coming by the shop and possibly having to face her again. Never underestimate the power of chocolate, she thought.

  “Send her in.” Hopefully, Amber was just stopping by to thank her and not to draw her into any teenage drama. She already had enough drama in her life.

  A moment later the door to her office opened and Amber entered, clutching a box of Sweet Dreams salted caramels to her chest and looking back over her shoulder as if expecting…what? Her mother? The chocolate police coming to see if she’d paid for that candy?

  “I, um, wanted to thank you for this,” she said.

  That wasn’t all she wanted. With her uneasiness and sudden shyness, Amber was the picture of a teenage girl with something sitting uncomfortably on her mind.