Jennifer longed to say, ‘Well, it’s not like the bakery will be around much longer, anyway.’ But she kept the words to herself. The previous days, she had gone over more of the paperwork and legalities of the situation with Amelia, who had ultimately said that, tragically enough, Derek Thatcher could do whatever he wanted with the property. The sale had gone through months before; the bakery was his to destroy if he wanted to. Jennifer hadn’t mentioned to Amelia or to any of the other girls that Derek Thatcher had been the one to bring her father back home when he’d been drunk out of his mind.
The story felt a little too complicated, and Jennifer wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it. She was also terribly embarrassed that she had burst into tears like that. That was unlike her. She needed to be strong in the face of, well, everything.
The bakery was just as chaotic as ever. One of the regulars pulled open the door to allow Jennifer to wheel her mother through the front door. Several people called Ariane’s name and clapped, happy and so grateful she was well enough to return. Ariane eyed the glass case suspiciously, as though Connie hadn’t arranged everything just the way Ariane always had.
“Those donuts look a little naked,” Ariane muttered to Jen. “I think she needs to add more glaze. Don’t you?”
“I think they’re already a heart attack on a plate, Mom,” Jennifer replied.
Connie stepped out of the kitchen and let the door swing back and forth behind her. “Ariane!” She rushed toward her with her arms extended.
“What are you doing?” Ariane demanded of her. “The line is near the door.”
Connie rolled her eyes and gave Jennifer a look that said, ‘Glad to see she’s almost back to normal.’
Ariane demanded to be taken back into the kitchen so that she could prep. Jennifer’s heart thudded with fear. As she set her mother up at a table with a rolling pin and a big bowl of dough, she knew it wouldn’t go as planned. Above the table hung those two old photographs, just as always: one of her and the rest of the girls, when Michelle had been alive, alongside one of the original “sisters” of Edgartown—all of their mothers.
Ariane and Jennifer began to roll and cut Christmas cookies together. The work was slow for Ariane, and Jennifer found herself stalling on her own rolling and cutting to ensure that Ariane was comfortable and able to work at a steady pace. Mid-way through, Olivia wrote the group-chat to say that she planned to stop by the bakery for a sweet treat; one by one, the other girls said they planned to join.
It had been ages since they’d all been at the Frosted Delights Bakery together at the same time.
Olivia was the first to arrive. She stood in a thick yellow coat and beamed at Ariane as the woman glanced up from the rolling pin.
“Looks like nobody can put baby in a corner,” she said, winking. She bent down and dropped a kiss on Ariane’s cheek. “You look fantastic.”
“They can’t keep me out of my own bakery,” Ariane replied with a hearty laugh. “Sit down. Have a few cookies, Olivia. You look way too skinny.”
Olivia chuckled as Jennifer turned toward their massive stockpiling of Christmas cookies and began to line a few china plates. When she turned back, she caught Olivia again analyzing that old photograph of all of them together. Her eyes were heavy with sadness.
But soon, as the other arrived, their conversation found new wind for fresh stories. Excitement for Christmas seemed to be reason enough to smile and laugh. Camilla explained that she’d been at the hospital all night long, “much longer than my schedule,” she said, “although I couldn’t just leave.” She grabbed a big reindeer cookie and snuck her teeth into the frosting as she closed her eyes.
“These are so delicious, Jen. Ariane. You’ve done it again. The whole island is addicted to these.”
Mila and Amelia arrived next. It seemed they had come together, as Amelia had been driving past Mila’s esthetician clinic and offered to drive her. Amelia collapsed in the chair across from Ariane and rubbed her temples. Jennifer had a hunch that she’d been awake all hours of the night, still trying to figure out a way that they could keep the bakery standing.
“Ariane, I’m just so sorry,” Amelia said softly. “I really tried to find something, anything, but everything is legit.”
Ariane arched an eyebrow toward Amelia, seemingly perplexed. From behind her, Jen slashed a finger under her chin. Let’s leave this thing alone till after Christmas, was her general sentiment. At least, her mother was here. At least, she could roll out, cut, bake and frost, just as she always had done. Jennifer wanted to be able to pretend that this “past” could go on forever.
“Nothing,” Amelia said with a sad sigh. She grabbed a cookie off the plate and nibbled the edge, her eyes far away.
They gathered around the table, all of them in the same chairs they’d sat in when they had been nine, ten, fifteen, and seventeen. Jennifer grabbed a candy-cane-frosted cookie and lifted it to look at the flecks of sugar, of glitter, which caught the light. She could still feel her previous self here. Maybe, if she thought about it hard enough, she could imagine Michelle there amongst them. What would her voice sound like at age forty-one? Would she and Jennifer have kept up the same hair-do, like before, and maintained the same kind of style?
Would they have always been best friends, into their twenties, their thirties, their forties?
Gosh, she felt so cheated. She should have been there. Not just for the good memories, but for the bad ones, too. She needed her.
Camilla finally convinced Ariane that the bakery had enough cookies for the day and that she could put down the rolling pin and relax. Ariane slowly eased away from her worries and even found space to tell a few silly stories from their youth. She talked about when the girls all went out for the boys’ basketball team, age eight, and ended up destroying several of the little boys at their own game.
“They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” Ariane said with a laugh. “They thought you girls were just that. Just a bunch of little girls. But really, you were a team, and you always had been. I’ll never forget how mad some of their parents were. They stormed up to me and said, ‘Take your daughters to the girls league!’ Of course, all of you got pretty sick of basketball after the second or third week, and the magic was over.”
“That’s right,” Mila said. “We all dropped out, one-by-one. I think I went to cheerleading after that.”
“I took a painting class,” Olivia chimed in.
“So strange. Back then, it was like our entire lives were wide open for us to do whatever we wanted. It’s weird how we’re all on our own paths now and how destiny has guided us here,” Camilla said as she looked off into the distance.
“I think we might have a little bit more growing left,” Amelia said, arching her brow. Jennifer knew that it benefited Amelia to think this way. After all—she still hadn’t done so many of the things she’d planned to do.
There had to be space and time to change.
“Well, I certainly hope you’re right,” Mila said with a laugh. “If it weren’t for time marking itself across the faces of everyone on this island, I would be out of a job.”
Connie appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Jen, there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
Jennifer stood as Olivia burst into another story about one of her students. She hurried back out onto the floor, which seemed furiously loud with chatter and the sound of the espresso machine running full force. But when she spotted the person who had come to see her, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Emma stood on the other side of the counter.
Emma Thatcher.
Derek’s daughter.
Jennifer forced herself to smile. After all, the poor girl had nothing to do with the fact that her father wanted to tear down the bakery. She was just a sweet little thing who’d just lost the only thing she had cared about in the world—her fiancé.
Connie placed a large box of Christmas cookies on the counter in front of Emma. Jennifer steppe
d closer and said, “Hey there. I’m surprised to see you here again. I guess you probably know, now.”
Emma nodded somberly. She looked on the verge of tears. It seemed most people, regardless of the happenings in their life, were on the verge of tears around Christmas. There was just something about the holidays.
“Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?” Emma asked. She clutched the Christmas cookie box with gloved hands.
“Sure.” Jennifer stepped out behind the glass counter. They stood together toward the far end of the room. Beyond Emma, two little girls with red hair spun round and round in little ballerina outfits. The picture was so exactly what Jennifer and Michelle had been; Jennifer prayed that her mother wouldn’t leave the kitchen to see.
“These Christmas cookies are to die for, by the way,” Emma said. She shook the box slightly and tried out a smile.
“Thank you.” Jennifer swallowed the lump in her throat. “I guess you’ll probably share those with that dad of yours?”
Emma cast her eyes toward the ground. “I couldn’t find him this afternoon—no idea where he is. But I did go into his study, where he had the plans for the new hotel and event space. You know, the one that was meant to—”
“Destroy everything my mother has ever loved? Yes. I know.”
“Well, he tore them up,” Emma said, her voice a whisper. “The plans are in the trash. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if he had a change of heart, or if he decided on something else, or what. But I think your bakery might be safe.”
Jennifer’s jaw dropped. She looked into Emma’s eyes for a long moment studying her face as she tried to comprehend what she had just said.
“But he bought the property. There was nothing we could do about it. It is his to build on and do what he pleases.”
Emma shrugged. After another pause, she said, “Dad and I have been through a lot the past year. Maybe it just seemed too big for him, destroying someone else’s Christmas like that. I don’t know. I like to think, no matter what, my dad is a pretty awesome guy. Anyway, I didn’t mean to take you away from your little party in the back. Merry Christmas. I hope I’ll see you before I head back to the city.”
With that, Emma turned on her heel and carried her box of cookies back out into the whirling snow. This left Jennifer awestruck, her hands at her sides, and her heart in her throat.
She certainly hadn’t seen that coming. She wondered if Michelle was playing a part in this miracle if it did become true.
Chapter Nineteen
“You’re kidding.” Amelia balked in Jennifer’s living room, one foot still in her heel and the other on the floor. She looked at Jennifer like she had three heads. “He tore up the plans?”
“Apparently,” Jennifer replied. Her heart thudded strangely in her throat. She hadn’t brought up the issue of Derek and the bakery back at the bakery itself, as she hadn’t wanted her friends to attack the issue like dogs.
Amelia let her other shoe fall to the floor. She wrapped her hair into a ponytail and then let it fall again. “Wow. I mean, did something happen? Did his daughter say? Maybe he’s decided to go back to the city, or?”
Jennifer walked into the kitchen in a kind of daze. It felt strange to be off parent-duty that night. Nicholas had agreed to handle everything, even down to cooking his grandparents a “nutritious meal,” which was so needed after the heavy pizzas and cookies that had taken over their Christmas existence.
“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. She scrunched her nose as Olivia followed her into the kitchen. She poured them both a glass of water and pondered for a long moment. “To be honest, something did happen— kind of a coincidence.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Yeah. He um. He met my dad at a bar.”
Amelia’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Apparently, they talked all night about everything. And then, he took my dad home when he was pretty drunk himself. I was there because Mom freaked out and Nick didn’t know what to do and, well—then suddenly there he was. My enemy. And he said he’d just wanted to help.”
“Jesus,” Amelia breathed.
“I know. So he probably knows everything. All about my messed-up life. All about how nothing really went the way it was supposed to. Who knows what kind of thing Dad says when he gets going?”
Amelia shifted her weight. Her eyes seemed to say something, something that Jennifer wasn’t fully ready to hear.
“What is it?” Jennifer demanded.
“It’s just that—hmm. I don’t know. I don’t know why it should bother you that some strange developer knows anything about you.”
Jennifer felt ripe with anger. “Why don’t you get this? I mean, it’s so obvious. I don’t want him to know anything about me. He’s—he’s evil. He stormed in here to take my family’s bakery. I—”
Amelia’s face continued to reflect that strange feeling.
“What?” Jennifer demanded.
“I just think there’s more at play here, is all. I mean. There’s clearly something that gets to you about this guy. Something you could maybe explore. If you wanted to, I don’t know.”
“Say it!”
“Just go over there. Bring him some Christmas cookies; I don’t know. Ask him what’s up. And um.”
“What?” Jennifer demanded.
“Wear one of your pretty sweaters. You know—the one with the cleavage.”
JENNIFER STEWED ON Amelia’s words after she left. Obviously, there was nothing about the situation that screamed “romance” to her. She generally hated men from New York City, especially ones like him, who stormed the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard and demanded property of their own. They were a different breed altogether.
Still. If Emma was right, and the guy really had decided to back away from his initial plans...
Jennifer was curious, terribly curious. Curious in a way that made her cheeks flush and her heart race and her brain start to concoct little dreams and visions of a reality in which they—
No. She couldn’t think about it.
But there she went. She could see herself performing each action: putting on a very revealing sweater, pushing her feet into the fancy boots, putting on a little lipstick (and not the kind she normally reserved for business meetings, either!). She put on one coat, then changed it out for a prettier one, then piled a plate high with Christmas cookies, which she had brought back from the bakery.
What the heck was she doing?
Seriously, it was as though someone had possessed her. She stepped out into the gorgeous Christmas evening and lifted her chin high. In all her years, she’d never taken a risk on anything. In high school, Joel had been at her beck and call always — even when she had dumped him a few times and forced him to come crawling back. Obviously, the pregnancy had led to their marriage. And with motherhood, she’d had to take necessary steps to make sure everyone was safe, loved, accounted for.
But now? Now Joel had someone else, and Nick was dashing toward the altar, and the world kept on spinning toward some kind of conclusion.
She shoved all thoughts aside the second she reached Derek Thatcher’s door. She felt her knuckles rap on the door, and she braced herself for whatever would happen next.
Derek Thatcher himself opened the door a few moments later. He looked every bit handsome and casual; he wore jeans and a dark yellow sweater, and his dark hair was tucked back behind his ears. His eyes glittered curiously, and his lips formed just the slightest hint of a smile.
Was it possible that he’d wanted to see her again?
“Mr. Thatcher,” Jennifer said. She lifted the platter of cookies. “I um. I came to sort of make amends. In the spirit of Christmas, you know?”
What the heck was she saying?!
“I see.” Derek furrowed his brow and stretched his hand out beneath the platter of cookies. His finger brushed over hers for just the slightest moment, just long enough for Jennifer’s heart to jump into her throat. “I don’t think I’ve
ever had more Christmas treats than this Christmas. Something about the Vineyard, I guess.”
“We know how to celebrate,” Jennifer replied. “It’s actually one of the only things we’re really good at. That and sailing.”
They studied one another for a long moment. Jennifer, frightened by the heaviness of the silence, lifted up on her toes and peered behind him. “Is Emma here?”
Derek shook his head. “She got a little sick of her old man, I think. She headed down to a little wine bar to read her book in peace.”
Jennifer chuckled. “What kind of horrors were you putting her through?”
“I guess I wouldn’t shut up,” Derek admitted with a shrug. “Shame on me for missing her when she’s not around.”
“They can never really know how much they mean to us, can they?” Jennifer said softly. “It’s the tragedy of life.”
“Well said,” he affirmed.
Again, they held one another’s gaze. Jennifer shifted her weight. A tiny voice in the back of her head said, ‘Get out of there. You’ve done what you came here to do. He won’t like it if you stick around like this.’
But suddenly, Derek said, “Why don’t you come in?”
And Jennifer said, “Just for a second,” even as her heart screamed with joy. And panic. And unadulterated fear.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as Derek pushed the door closed behind her. Back toward the living room, there was the sound of a Christmas movie — Love, Actually — which had always been one of her favorites.
“I see you’re digging into your feminine side?” she teased.
Derek laughed. “Are you saying that only women are allowed to like Love, Actually? Because if you are, I have a big bone to pick with you. That movie is a lot of things, but mostly, it is magical.”
“And gut-wrenchingly sad,” Jennifer added.
“Yes. Of course.” He allowed his shoulders to drop. “My wife was a big fan of it before she died. I didn’t bother to sit down with her and actually watch the thing until a few years ago. Of course, she teased me for crying through a lot of the end.”
2142 Green Hollow RD (Sisters of Edgartown) Page 14
