Baked with Love

by Erin Wright

  “Now you know why I renamed it,” he said with a small laugh. “I don’t think they’d thought much about their last name before they went with it.”

  “I guess not,” Cady said, still in awe of the horrific name. And, he noted, a little less cowed and angry. He felt a flush of pride at that.

  “You can get away with that kind of thing in a small town,” Gage said with a shrug, pulling his cell phone out and flipping on the flashlight app as he went on the hunt to find the phone book. “The hospital in town used to be Harm’s Hospital, named after Dr. Harm.”

  “Now you’re pulling my leg,” Cady said in disbelief. He noticed she stayed up in the front, where the bakery was lit by the light coming through the window, instead of following him around the bakery on his Easter egg hunt. She still didn’t trust him one little bit.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he tossed over his shoulder. “He was the only town’s doctor for years. They thought it was a good way to memorialize everything he’d done for the community. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that they renamed the hospital to Long Valley County Hospital.” He dug underneath the cash register through the pile of shit that seemed to accumulate all by itself, courtesy of the Random Shit Fairy, until he finally found the phone book. “There you are, you little bugger,” he said, pulling the thin volume out of the pile. “Ready to talk to the power gods?”

  Chapter 5

  Cady

  Cady’s thumb hovered over Hannah’s name on the screen of her iPhone.

  I can call her, I can call her, she’s nice, I like her, she’ll want to hear from me—

  She tapped her thumb on Hannah’s name before she could talk herself out of it. It was Saturday, which meant that Hannah wouldn’t be working at the school – probably – and might actually have time to go hang out and do something fun.

  I can do fun things. I’m a totally fun person. Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I went for a walk around the greenbelt in Boise, and visited the library! Totally living the crazy life—

  “Hello?” Hannah sounded confused and hesitant.

  Cady shoved down her knee-jerk reaction to hang up and simply pretend that the technology wires of the world had gotten crossed and certainly no, she hadn’t called anyone at all—

  “Hi Hannah, it’s Cady, your long lost roommate!” she blurted out, trying to act natural and cheerful, as if she called Hannah every weekend just to chat, even as her heart hovered right next to her vocal chords, cutting off her air supply, which totally explained why the world was going a little dark around the edges.

  It’s fine, everything is fine. You like Hannah. She’s nice.

  “Cady! Oh my goodness, it’s so wonderful to hear from you! When your number popped up on my screen, I thought for sure that I must’ve entered it wrong into my phone and it was actually a telemarketer calling me. I can’t believe you called! How are you?”

  “Good, good,” Cady said automatically. What else could she say? I know you probably thought I was quirky when I was your roommate; you should see me in action now! Hahahaha! Isn’t life grand?!

  She swallowed those all-too-telling words down. “I have a confession to make, actually,” she rushed on, before she could change her mind or hang up the phone or swallow her own tongue. “I’ve moved to Long Valley. Sawyer, to be exact.”

  There was dead silence on the phone for three very long heartbeats, and Cady wondered if Hannah hadn’t hung up instead.

  “Wha…what…are you freakin’ kidding me?! That is the best news ever! When? Why? What are you doing for a job? Cady, I can’t believe you moved here! Hold on, just a sec,” and then there was the muffled sound of Hannah talking to someone with a suspiciously deep voice, a feminine giggle – Hannah did not giggle – and then…

  Was that kissing? Hannah was kissing someone?!

  Cady pulled her phone away from her ear and stared at her screen. Surely she’d dialed the wrong number. It had sounded like Hannah before, but…Hannah did not date. That’s what had made them such perfect roommates – they’d spent their Friday nights going down to the local coffee shop and reading books while completely ignoring each other and the world around them. They had laughingly called it their socializing time, and Cady had loved every minute of it.

  No dates, no boys, no pressure…it had been heaven on earth.

  “Sorry about that!” Hannah chirped, her voice barely audible because Cady was still holding the phone away from her cheek and staring at it like it was actually an alien form in disguise.

  She quickly shoved the phone back between her ear and shoulder. “No problem,” Cady said airily, as if her entire world hadn’t just been turned upside down. “Was that…did I just hear you talking to a guy?”

  “Oh, I forgot you haven’t met him yet! Elijah Morland – he’s my boyfriend, although no one in town knows it, or at least no one at the school does. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute, I promise. But you were telling me how you moved to Long Valley. Spill!”

  Hannah sounded giggly and excited and…was that an edge of authority in her voice? It took every ounce of willpower in Cady not to pull her phone away from her ear to check it again. It was Hannah’s voice, sure, but absolutely nothing else was right.

  I really, really need to meet this Elijah dude. Like, yesterday.

  “Oh. Well…ummm…you know about my parents, of course.” It was a statement, not a question. Hannah had come to the funeral last summer, an event that Cady vaguely remembered, like the wisp of a dream that hovered on the edges of her mind, not fully formed, always on the verge of slipping away. She’d been in shock that day, and the crushing sense of non-reality had made it hard for her to function. She’d been so sure that at any moment, her mother was going to sweep in and say, “Now why is everyone so sad? Darrell and I are just fine! Look! Do I look dead to you?”

  Except she hadn’t. She’d stayed dead, laid out in her coffin, her face that terrible ashen gray of the dead, and Dad did too, and…

  Cady gulped in some air. She couldn’t pass out. She wouldn’t.

  “Of course,” Hannah murmured, suddenly quiet and respectful, the way people always were when the dead and funerals were mentioned.

  “I’m…well, I’m afraid I didn’t deal with it very well.” Understatement of the century. “Actually, to be completely honest with you,” and she didn’t know why she was being completely honest with Hannah but the words were spilling out before she could stop them and it felt good to talk to someone who cared, dammit, “I spent six months hiding in their house, not going out, not working…Mom had always said that because I was an only child, she wanted to make sure that I would be well taken care of if they died, so their life insurance policy was…large, shall we say.” Stupidly, horrendously large. “Between that and the settlement with the chartering company…I guess there was a part of me that figured I had enough money to hide from the world for the rest of my life, so I was going to, you know?”

  She played with the emerald green pendant hanging from a silver chain around her neck, soothing herself with the edges of the gem.

  “And then…well, I’m not sure. I started pushing myself to do things – just little things – and one day, I made myself come up here to Long Valley and hike around, and I’m sorry, so, so sorry, that I didn’t reach out to you then—”

  “Cady,” Hannah broke in quietly, “it’s okay. What you’ve lived through…it’s more than most people could bear. Just getting out and leaving the house – that was a big step for you to take, and I’m proud of you for doing it. Calling me on top of it all? That would’ve been asking too much. So don’t feel like you need to justify yourself, because you don’t.”

  “Thanks,” Cady said, her voice quavering and she hated that – hate, hate, hate – so she breathed in deep, forcing her pain further down, until she could talk again without the tell-tale quiver in her voice. “It was right around New Year’s when I came up here, and I went hiking in the Goldfork Mountains. I loved it – so peaceful
, and no planes flying overhead, and…anyway, on the way back out of town, I saw the Muffin Man and decided to get some coffee to drink on the way home, but instead, I was drawn to the storefront next door.”

  “There’s something next door to the Muffin Man?” Hannah asked, more to herself than to Cady. “Wha…oh, right! Doesn’t it have a broken awning over the front door or something? No one’s had a business there for decades? That one?”

  “I know how to pick them,” Cady said with a strangled laugh.

  “Don’t tell me you bought that building. You didn’t buy that building.”

  “I bought that building!” Cady tried to say it as if it was funny – just a wild thing she did on impulse on a Friday night – and Hannah fell for it.

  “Cady Walcott bought the crummiest building in town!” She started laughing. “Oh Cady, when you do stuff, you really do stuff. Just a second!” she gasped. “That means…are you the one who knocked out power to the whole town?!”

  “Oh God, you heard about that?” Cady wanted to bury her head underneath her couch cushions and never come back out again.

  “Did I hear about that…” Hannah laughed again. “Oh, Cady. The principal talked about cancelling school, once he’d heard that someone had actually hired Watson’s Electric Service to do work in town. He was sure we wouldn’t have power back for a week. Idaho Power had to work overtime to get the power up by the next morning. I’d just heard it was some out-of-towner – I had no clue it was you.” She was laughing again, but finally, what seemed like years later or so, she sobered up. “Seriously, though, ummmm….don’t share that tidbit of knowledge with anyone if you don’t have to. It…uhhh…wasn’t exactly an endearing move, honestly, and people in small towns have long memories.”

  “Thanks,” Cady said sarcastically. “I’ll keep that in mind, the next time I have a chance to make an announcement in the town square.”

  “Sooo,” Hannah said, clearly struggling again with containing her laughter, and if Cady didn’t love Hannah and consider her to be her only friend on earth, she might’ve hung up just then on her giggly ass, “you bought an abandoned storefront and then proceeded to take out the power to the whole town by hiring the worst electrician this side of the Mississippi. What are you going to sell there, once it’s fixed up?”

  “Smoothies, combined with a health food store,” Cady said, choosing to ignore the phrasing of the question. “Natural food, wheatgrass, no sugar or preservatives…things that are good for you.” She couldn’t help the excitement in her voice – here was something she actually knew something about, and up to this very moment, she’d had no one to tell her big plans to. Trying to start this business had made her miss her mom more than ever, because her mom would’ve cheered her on, and listened to every moan and groan, and would’ve driven up to Sawyer to help her clean, and would’ve…well, just been there.

  Having someone to talk to who wasn’t a guy, and didn’t think she was nothing but a giant screw-up…she’d missed this most of all.

  She pushed herself up off the couch and began pacing around her small living room, gesturing around the featureless, mostly empty room as she went. “So, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Franklin is only growing as a tourist town, and Sawyer is on its way there, too. If you’re coming from Boise and going up to Franklin to go water skiing during the summer or snow skiing on the mountain in the winter, you’re forced to go through Sawyer. You can’t get to Franklin any another way, period. I think more businesses need to take advantage of that fact. I bet that a lot of the people coming through to play up in these mountains are fitness buffs, and they’re gonna want energy drinks to refuel and refresh after a long day of exercise.”

  “A health food store in little ol’ Sawyer, eh?” Hannah said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have thought to try that, not in such a small farming community, but you’re right – all of the hordes of tourists on their way to Franklin do drive through Sawyer. I wonder if tourists stop at the Muffin Man. Have you gone next door and introduced yourself to Gage yet, and asked him?”

  “Uhhh…we’ve met,” Cady stuttered, her enthusiasm suddenly gone. She dropped back down onto the couch – the only piece of furniture in the room – and pulled a throw blanket around her shoulders. The world was so much nicer when she was under the protection of the crocheted blanket her mother had made for her 10th birthday. “He helped me when Watson shut down the power. I…uhhh…haven’t talked to him about tourism traffic, though.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear that he helped you with the power problem. Gage is a genuinely nice guy – really, one of the good ones out there.”

  Right. Except when he’s busy sneaking around and scaring people half to death.

  Cady just made a non-committal noise, hoping Hannah wouldn’t pry any further into exactly what it was that Cady and Gage had talked about thus far.

  “Darn it, I hate to do this,” Hannah said regretfully, “but Elijah and his daughter Brooklyn are waiting for me – we were just about to head out the door when you called. Can I call you back later, when I don’t have two pairs of sad eyes staring at me pathetically, waiting not-so-patiently for me to finish up?”

  “Sure, sure!” Cady said, a part of her relieved that the phone call was over so quickly. See? You lived. This wasn’t so painful. “Tell Elijah and Brooklyn hello from me, and tell them that I appreciate their patience in letting me borrow you for a bit.”

  “I can’t wait for you to meet them! You’ll absolutely love them.”

  It was on the tip of Cady’s tongue to point out that Elijah was a male and thus Cady really, really doubted it, but she just said goodbye to her former college roommate instead and hung up.

  “That,” she said to her empty living room, “was weird.”

  Skittles, asleep in the deep basement windowsill and enjoying the spring sunshine, lifted his calico head to stare at her quizzically. Deciding that she wasn’t offering anything of interest, like fish or tummy rubs, he promptly went back to sleep.

  “You’re a great listener, you know that?” she asked him sarcastically.

  This time, he didn’t even twitch an ear.

  With a sigh, she dropped the fluorescent-pink-and-purple blanket off her shoulders and pushed herself up off the brown-and-gold lumpy couch. The decades-old couch wasn’t any more attractive than her well-worn throw blanket was and the two items together were especially hideous, but bonus points – the couch came with the furnished basement apartment that she was renting, and that made it perfect. She’d left most everything behind in Boise when she’d moved up to Sawyer. New start and all that. It made for a rather…white existence – white walls, white doors, white ceiling – but there were also no memories here to haunt her.

  She headed to her bedroom to change. Part of her wanted to crawl back into bed and laze the day away, but she fought the urge to give into her depression again. It was a sunshiny day – cold but not bitterly so, and in the patches of sunlight between the pines, the snow had completely disappeared, leaving behind tiny tufts of brilliant green as the world struggled to come back to life again.

  In other words, it was a great day to go back up into the Goldfork Mountains again and go for another hike. See how different the world looked now that spring was making an appearance.

  She scratched Skittles behind the ears as she bade him goodbye. “If I had a dog, he’d be a much better listener than you are,” she told him as he ratcheted up the purring volume, clearly thrilled with her choice to pet him while talking to him. “It’d serve you right if I came home with a dog in tow.” She wondered for a moment how Rochelle, her landlord, would take to the idea of her having a dog, too. She’d convinced her landlord that Skittles was well-behaved and wouldn’t cause any problems, an argument that was “helped” along by a healthy pet deposit, but a dog…she’d probably have to double her pet deposit, or more.

  But a dog would go out hiking with me, something I’m never going to convince Skittles to do.

  C
hoices, choices…

  She grabbed her water pack, filled to the brim with snacks, water, and a windbreaker in case the wind was stronger up in the mountains, and headed out into the brilliant spring sunshine, squinting at the brightness of it all. Going for a hike was an excellent idea. If she kept this up, she just might get back into shape again.

  And wouldn’t that just be something.

  A hike and a phone call, all in one day.

  She had to admit, she was pretty damn proud of herself.

  Chapter 6

  Gage

  Gage tucked his cell phone between his cheek and his shoulder, typing the column of numbers into the adding machine as he suffered through his younger sister’s masterful guilt trip. “C’mon, Gage, you gotta come home,” Emma said in her best wheedling voice. “The party is about to start. Well, it will as soon as you let Sugar leave and come over here. It’s bad enough that you’re going to be late for the party – you better not hold the other half of the party hostage, too.”

  “Sugar’s just cleaning a few things up,” Gage said distractedly as he compared the two tapes against each other. He was off somewhere and he was damned if he could figure out where. “She’ll be over at the house for the dual birthday party soon, I promise.”

  “I drove all the way from Denver for this,” Emma reminded him, as if he was in danger of forgetting where his only sister lived.

  “And I’m excited for it. I’ll see you soon.”

  “But—” And then her voice was gone as he tapped the red phone icon.

  It never ceased to amaze him how people’s minds worked. They wanted him to do well as a business owner, sure. They supported him wholeheartedly. Cheered him on when he posted a profit or was able to hire another part-time employee.

  But if that work ever interfered with him spending time with them, or taking a vacation, or just hanging out for an evening…well now, he needed to sort out his priorities. He should stop being such a workaholic. Didn’t he know how important family and friends were?