Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Well, I stopped at this delightful burger place this afternoon called Frostop—have you ever been there before?”

  “Um, yeah, I’ve been to Frostop.”

  “They had the most delicious dipping sauce—they called it ‘fries sauce.’ Have you ever tried it?”

  The girl looked a bit confused, but she nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had fry sauce.”

  Fry or fries? “Then you know how amazing it is!” Sadie pulled her purse off her shoulder and found her wallet. She removed a twenty-dollar bill. “Why don’t you and your brothers and sisters go get something at Frostop for dinner, since your mom is so busy with the cookies.”

  The girl still looked confused. “Only Bailey’s here—Kevin’s at a friend’s.”

  “Well, you and Bailey can drown yourselves in the fries sauce, then.” Still smiling, Sadie held out the money.

  The girl looked at the money, and then she shrugged and took it. “Sweet—thanks. But it’s called fry sauce, not fries sauce.”

  “Oh, well, now I know.” Sadie smiled. “I’ll tell your mom dinner is taken care of.”

  “Okay,” the girl said, skipping up the stairs. A moment later she was calling for Bailey.

  Sadie took a breath and went into the kitchen.

  There were large pink bakery boxes laid out on the dining room table. Two of them were closed and one was open, with what looked like three layers of cookies, separated by parchment paper, inside. Nikki wasn’t just baking—she was baking for an army, and apparently she’d done this before. Otherwise, she wouldn’t know about the convenience of using bakery boxes, and there would have been fifty paper plates piled with cookies instead. Paper plates were good when taking a dozen cookies to a friend—ridiculous when you were baking hundreds.

  The countertops were littered with all kinds of baking paraphernalia, so it took a moment for Sadie to find Nikki, who was backing away from the oven with a hot pan of cookies. Sadie waited until Nikki put the pan on the marble countertop—she should use a trivet or hot pad, Sadie thought—before she said hello loud enough to be heard over the music. Startled, Nikki blinked, her face blank for half a second before she managed a weak smile. Her hair, so perfectly coiffed yesterday, was pulled up in a bumpy ponytail on top of her head, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her pink apron, complete with the pink posy logo on the front, covered a white T-shirt and black-and-red-striped pajama pants. Brown leather slippers covered Nikki’s feet. By all appearances, she’d had an “undone” kind of day.

  “Hi,” Nikki said loudly. She moved to the thin stereo mounted underneath one of the upper cabinets and turned down the sound. Before she could find something else to say, Sadie complimented her on the cookies. “Chocolate chocolate chip?”

  “Um, sort of. Oatmeal chocolate chocolate chip, I guess. I call them Dream Cookies.”

  “What are they for? Do you cater or something?”

  “I said I’d make some for the vigil tonight. It was the least I could do.”

  Sadie looked at the cookies in a new light. They were for the vigil? Were they also a way to cover her crimes?

  Nikki nervously picked up a spatula on the counter and began moving the cookies to a cooling rack. She really hadn’t let them cool on the pan long enough, and, although the first one survived the transfer all right, the second one she removed from the tray broke apart. “I’m really busy right now,” Nikki said between cookies, waving her hand toward the dining room table. The fourth cookie crumbled as well. Nikki didn’t seem to notice or to care.

  “Looks like you could use an extra set of hands,” Sadie said. Nikki looked up at her but didn’t smile.

  A teenage voice called from the hallway. “We’re going.”

  Nikki stepped toward the hallway. “What?” she called—but the front door slammed.

  “I gave them some money to go to Frostop. Have you tried their fry sauce? It’s incredible.”

  Nikki blinked at her. “You gave my kids money?”

  Sadie kept her tone light and conversational. “I knew you hadn’t been able to make dinner, and I didn’t think you wanted them here when you and I had this discussion. I know you want to avoid it, but you know in your heart you shouldn’t.”

  Nikki blinked again and Sadie knew she was repeating in her mind what Sadie had just said. Nikki went back to her cookies. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Sadie didn’t know what she was talking about, either, and she searched for a way to get Nikki to fill in the numerous blanks. “I owe you an apology,” Sadie said as she arrived at what she hoped was the right way to lead into this conversation Nikki didn’t want to have.

  Nikki looked up. “An apology? For what?”

  “Something happened yesterday that I should have told you about. I’m sorry that I didn’t.”

  Nikki tensed and looked away. She went back to transferring cookies and said nothing.

  “See, when we were at the memorial service, I saw Anita and your husband go off—”

  “I already know, okay,” Nikki said quickly and sharply, obviously not wanting to hear it again and yet confirming that Tess had been a blabbermouth. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I understand,” Sadie said. “But I think we need to.”

  Nikki stared at the counter and took a breath. She looked at Sadie. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but this really isn’t any of your business, and I would appreciate it if you would please go.”

  “Did you talk to your husband about it?” Sadie pushed. If she had, it might have given him some motive, too. More motive than he already had if in fact there was something going on between him and Anita.

  “You really need to leave,” Nikki said with what sounded like the last of her polite patience. She gripped the edge of the counter with one hand and her knuckles turned white.

  “Or did you talk to Anita instead?”

  Nikki’s head snapped up to meet Sadie’s gaze. She held it for a few seconds, with fear in her eyes before they narrowed slightly. She pointed the hand with the spatula toward the front of the house. “Get out of my house.”

  “Did you go to Anita’s house last night, Nikki?” Sadie pushed further. “Did you confront her?”

  “Get out!” Nikki yelled. “Get out now!”

  “I’m not leaving,” Sadie countered, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not until you tell me what happened. You went there, didn’t you? You went there to confront her about the meeting she had with your husband at the memorial service. Tess told you about it, and you couldn’t help yourself.” She could tell by the varying expressions on Nikki’s face that she was on the right track. “It makes perfect sense that you would go there, Nikki. I’d do exactly the same thing in your position. Any woman would. How did she react? What happened?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Nikki said quickly, and then she realized what she’d said and clamped her mouth shut. Tears began forming in her eyes. “I ... I ...” She looked around the kitchen as though she were trying to find an escape. Her glance landed on the boxes of cookies she’d been working on all day, and she closed her eyes, a single tear leaking out of one eye, which she quickly brushed away. “She said I was being ridiculous—as though it didn’t even matter if ...”

  Now they could get somewhere. “But you didn’t believe her.”

  “She’s beautiful and smart and successful. She spends more time with my husband than I do and helps run his business.” Nikki opened her eyes and looked down at the apron she wore and the slippers on her feet. “I’ve had six kids. I don’t understand anything about how to run the foundation or the clinic, even though Jake has asked me for years to get involved, and ... and it wouldn’t be the first time she ...”

  Sadie lifted her eyebrows. “The first time Anita went after a married man? You know about Dr. Hendricks and Anita, then.”

  Nikki’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “You thought you were the only who knew that?” Sadie asked, trying to play it cool,
even though she was making it up one word at a time. Nikki had thrown it out there as a way to defend herself, but Sadie had caught the curve ball and thrown it right back. It was imperative that she stay on her feet for the rest of this inning. “Come on—he and Lori are having problems, and six months later this beautiful woman comes to work for him. Six months after that, they’re dating, and six months after that, they get married? It’s like a script for covering up an affair and making it all appear normal and natural. How did you find out?”

  “Jake swore me to secrecy a couple of years ago, and even he wasn’t certain. When I learned about Jake and Anita going off like that, I just ... I just knew.” She blinked quickly and looked out the window to the backyard that had actual grass in it. “My family is everything to me, and to think that ... ”

  “So—your husband and Anita were having a relationship?” Sadie said, saddened that the worst-case scenario could have been the truth. “He confirmed it?”

  Nikki scratched at something on the counter. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”

  Sadie blinked, mentally backing up in the conversation. “Then how can you be so sure they were having an affair? Anita denied it, right?”

  “They went off together at the luncheon.”

  “Is that your only evidence?” Sadie asked.

  “Isn’t that enough?” Nikki responded. “And then other things made more sense. I thought she was calling him all the time because Trent wasn’t there for her to bounce things off of and that Jake avoided her because he didn’t really like her—he’d said that to me plenty of times before—but now I realize it was all an act, all part of the game they were playing.” She raised a hand to her mouth and looked out the window again as more tears came.

  “Nikki,” Sadie said, keeping her voice soft and even and calm. Dr. Hendricks suspected an affair as well, or the potential for one, but he didn’t think it had reached that point before he left. Sadie had learned the hard way to focus on facts, and that’s what she needed Nikki to do now. “Those are guesses, assumptions made based on the worst possible fear a woman can have with regard to her husband. I’m the one who found them in the classroom, and, other than working so hard to be private, there was nothing ... romantic in their actions. The whole time I was listening at the door, they were talking—no silences that could have indicated ... something else.” She felt her cheeks heating up slightly.

  Nikki turned back to Sadie and wiped at her face with the hand she’d been holding to her mouth. “But why would they do that? They work together every day—why would they need to hide like that?”

  “There could be a hundred different reasons. And the phone calls Anita made could have been to ask questions she would normally ask Dr. Hendricks, like you said. Dr. Waters avoiding her could have everything to do with him not liking her very much.” She paused as she thought of something else. “Since Dr. Hendricks’s disappearance, things have been really hard for your husband, haven’t they?”

  Nikki nodded slowly. “For all of us, but especially him. He’s tried to coordinate with other doctors in the area, but we’re a small community, and there are only so many appointment slots. He hates having to send people to Cedar or Vegas, and he’s so worried about the practice going under if he can’t keep up with payments and things. He’s working fourteen-hour days, and he’s on call almost every single night and trying to juggle Trent’s patients and his own.”

  “I bet you miss him a lot,” Sadie said sympathetically. “Even as a doctor’s wife, who understands the sacrifices, this isn’t what you expected.”

  “Not even close,” Nikki said, wiping quickly at a tear and sniffling. “I don’t talk to him about stuff with the kids because he’s just so overwhelmed, and I’m doing everything at home. That sounds so selfish—it’s been way harder for him, I know, but I’ve had to kind of put all my focus here at home and let him do what he needs to do with the clinic. And then this.”

  A clearer picture was opening in Sadie’s mind. “No wonder you’re feeling so anxious about your relationship—no one falls in love and gets married so that they can live separate lives. And then you hear about them meeting up at the church. I am not the least bit surprised that it felt as though they must have been having an affair—if that were true it would make sense of everything else and explain the distance in your relationship.”

  Nikki stiffened. “You think I want to believe my husband cheated on me?”

  “Not at all, but things aren’t great between you—maybe sort of like they weren’t great between Trent and Lori before the divorce—and maybe you resent the time he’s been spending with Anita, the way she can get his attention when she asks for his help, and then you heard—third person, remember—that they were found together. Can you see how circumstances have you primed to believe the worst?”

  Nikki swallowed, staring at Sadie as her words sank in.

  “What happened at Anita’s house last night, Nikki?”

  Nikki seemed almost to be in a trance when she started talking. “She denied it. I told her I needed her to tell me the truth, and she told me to leave, that I was crazy.”

  “Did the two of you argue about it?”

  “I kept demanding that she tell me the truth, and she finally yelled at me to get out of her house and go back to my husband that ... loved me. I-I thought she was mocking me.”

  “Did you leave?” She held her breath, waiting for the answer, praying that Anita was alive and well when Nikki left the house.

  Nikki nodded, and Sadie could breathe again.

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Nikki said, nodding again. Sadie searched her face for any duplicity or falseness, but the sincerity of a woman who just realized there might be fresh hope in her marriage was all that was reflected back at her. Please let that hope not be wasted, Sadie thought. Nikki’s chin trembled. “I don’t know what happened after I left. She had a glass of wine when I got there. Maybe she was drinking heavily—the police said they think it was an accident.” There was a pleading quality to her voice. “But my fingerprints might be in the house—on the door, on the glass of water she offered me. I accepted it because I needed something to hold on to. They’ll think I did something. They’ll know I was there.”

  “You need to tell all of this to the police.”

  Nikki went even paler. “I’d have to tell them my suspicions about Jake.”

  “Nikki, you’re a woman of faith, are you not?”

  She nodded.

  “Then have faith in yourself and your family and your husband. Not faith that everything is fine and that appearing perfect means everything is, but faith that whatever lies ahead can be faced together. That’s what marital vows are about—that in times of difficulty you will remember the promises you made and find a way to soldier through. Beyond that, God tells us to be honest and helpful and good. You need to talk to the police about what happened last night—only then will you be able to move forward and will they be able to find out what happened to Anita.”

  “You sound as though you don’t think she fell.”

  Sadie paused for a moment, but she’d thrown caution to the wind so many times that she couldn’t think of why to hold back now. “I don’t.”

  “You think someone ... killed her.”

  Sadie nodded and watched Nikki carefully. “I do.”

  Sadie wanted to ask if Nikki’s husband had been home last night, but she felt certain that would close the conversation. Nikki going to the police would automatically open that line of questioning, and the police already had an interview with Dr. Waters. Sadie hoped he didn’t have anything to do with Anita’s death. Relief over Nikki’s innocence had transferred her thoughts to Nikki’s husband. Nikki closed her eyes slowly and dropped her chin.

  “The sooner the better,” Sadie said. “It shows you’re interested in doing the right thing.”

  “There really isn’t a better way, is there?” Nikki’s eyes filled with tears again, and Sadie’s heart
ached. Nikki Waters was used to being respected, even admired, and to find a chink in that armor of belief, one that was so potentially heart-wrenching, was a very difficult thing to face. Sadie could understand that, and she was glad that, despite all of the difficulty, Nikki had accepted that going to the police was necessary.

  Sadie crossed the kitchen and put her arms around the younger woman’s shoulders. Nikki fell into her embrace, sobbing with the enormity of what was happening and perhaps some relief for the hope Sadie had given her. Sadie held her for nearly a minute before pulling back. “One more thing,” she said with a motherly smile. “Do you happen to know how I can get into the clinic?”

  1/2 cup shortening

  1/2 cup butter, softened

  3/4 cup granulated sugar

  3/4 cup packed brown sugar

  1/2 teaspoon baking powder

  1/4 teaspoon baking soda

  1/4 teaspoon salt

  2 eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

  1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

  2 1/2 cups rolled oats

  1 cup semisweet chocolate chips*

  1 cup white chocolate chips

  1 cup chopped macadamia nuts or pecans

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease baking sheet; set aside.

  In large bowl, beat shortening and butter together with electric mixer 30 seconds at medium to high speed. Add granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Beat until combined, occasionally scraping sides of bowl.

  Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. Beat in flour and cocoa powder. Stir in oats, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and nuts.

  Drop by heaping tablespoons or 1-inch scoop 3 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. Flatten dough slightly. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until just set. Let stand 1 minute on baking sheet. Remove to cooling rack.