The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe

by Mary Simses

  Mom lowered her voice to a whisper. “Six million dollars. In the trust.”

  I stopped stirring and stared. “What?”

  She didn’t blink. “I’ve seen the investment statements.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, I’m not, Ellen.”

  I couldn’t speak. Gran had left me six million dollars. Six million dollars. I didn’t know what to say. I made a good living, and so did Hayden. But a six-million-dollar trust…well, that was like a security blanket. A big security blanket.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.” I pictured my grandmother in Everett’s office, sitting tall in one of his mahogany chairs, the sheaf of trust documents on the table in front of her. I could see her holding a fountain pen, her hand scurrying across the pages, leaving a trail of signatures in bright blue ink. “I wish she were here,” I said, a heavy feeling in my chest. “So I could thank her. She did so many things for me and she’s still doing them. I miss her.”

  My mother reached across the table and took my hand. “I miss her, too.”

  “I didn’t get to thank her for this.”

  “Yes, you did,” my mother said. “You thanked her by how much you loved her.”

  We sat in silence as the waitress placed our muffins in front of us. After a while, my mother began to cut her muffin into small pieces. Then she took a bite. “Mmm,” she said. “You know, this is actually quite good…although it’s not as good as your gran’s.”

  “Here’s to Gran,” I said, raising my coffee cup. Mom raised hers and we tapped our mugs together. “Here’s to Gran,” she said.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” my mother said as we finished eating. “How did you end up in that strange little…what is it, a bed-and-breakfast? The room doesn’t even have a mini fridge.”

  Next she’d be asking why there wasn’t a spa.

  She inspected the nails of her right hand. “I wanted to get a manicure. And maybe grab a massage. I pulled a muscle in my leg playing tennis last weekend and it’s very painful.” She began rubbing her calf.

  Oh, my God, she did want a spa. “I hate to tell you, but the spa is closed for renovations,” I said. “They’re going to reopen it when they reopen the fitness center…and the golf course.” I started to smile.

  My mother smirked. “Okay, I get it. No spa.” She looked around the diner and then out the window. “This really is a small town, isn’t it?”

  “It’s small,” I said, “but there are some nice things here. They have a—”

  “I’m sure it’s all very sweet,” my mother said, leaning toward me, “but I’m dying to get you back home. We have so much to do before the wedding and so little time. I can’t imagine what’s kept you here.”

  She opened her purse and removed a checklist. “Let’s see.” She ran her finger down the page. “We need to schedule the final fitting for your gown…and for the bridesmaids.” She paused. “And review the floral arrangements one more time.” She turned over the paper. “And, of course, get those invitations addressed.” She circled something with a pen and then put the list on the table. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Beezy and Gary Bridges are definitely coming. They’re postponing their safari so they can be at the wedding.”

  I struggled to remember who Beezy and Gary Bridges were as images of the wedding took shape in my mind. Saint Thomas Church, ten bridesmaids, ten groomsmen, three hundred guests, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. I could feel my throat tighten. It was all so…final.

  “That’s nice of them,” I said, trying to sound excited. And then, recalling who they were, I added, “I thought they were going to get a divorce.”

  Mom twirled one of her bracelets around her wrist. “Yes,” she said cheerfully. “They were. But they decided to get a new house instead.”

  I nodded, trying to understand that logic, as Mom placed her coffee cup on the saucer with a little clink.

  “So tell me,” she said. “Why are you still here, and why didn’t you call me back? How could it take so long to deliver one letter? And why is Hayden here? What’s going on, Ellen?”

  I wondered what to tell her and where to start. The painting in the attic? Lila Falk? Sugar? I wasn’t about to mention the dock. That would send her into a tailspin.

  I told her about delivering the letter to Roy and discovering that Chet Cummings had passed away. Then I told her about all of the paintings and the places where I had found them, ending with the visit to Sugar Hawley.

  “Did you know Gran was a painter?” I asked.

  My mother drank her coffee. “I find that hard to believe, Ellen. I think someone else must have painted them. Your grandmother wasn’t artistic.”

  I leaned across the table. “Mom, I’ve seen the paintings. Sailboat races, portraits, a blueberry farm that used to be owned by Chet Cummings’s family. She painted all of them. And if you don’t think she was artistic,” I said a little defiantly, “then you should have been there when she taught me about photography.”

  My mother listened with halfhearted interest. “I think if she was that talented, I would have known.”

  “I’ll take you to the Porters’ and to the historical society, and you can see the paintings for yourself,” I told her. “Then you’ll know.”

  The waitress appeared with a pot of coffee. “Refill, ladies?”

  “No, thank you,” Mom said.

  “I’m fine,” I added.

  The waitress glanced at me and then did a double take. She kept staring. Finally, she walked away, but a moment later she came back with something rolled up under her arm.

  “Yep, I thought so,” she said, looking at me with her head cocked. “I thought it was you.” She nodded. “I was hoping you’d come in here so I could get your autograph.”

  “My auto…” I tried to speak but my voice caught in my throat.

  “Yeah, I saved this copy just in case.” She unrolled an issue of The Beacon Bugle and placed it on the table. There, on the front page, was the photo of Roy and me, ocean water up to my waist, white T-shirt plastered to my skin, my arms tight around Roy’s neck, my lips firmly planted on his.

  I shrank back.

  The waitress placed a pen in front of me. “You know, there’s not one copy of this issue around anywhere. It just sold right out. Isn’t that amazing?”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “Would you sign it for me?” she asked. “Could you put ‘To Dolores, with love from the Swimmer’?”

  “What is this?” Mom asked, turning the newspaper toward her and putting on her reading glasses. She covered the side of her mouth and whispered, “And why does she want your autograph?”

  “Maybe I’d better explain something,” I said. My mouth had gone dry. I could feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach.

  “The Beacon Bugle?” My mother smoothed out the crease. Her eyes darted up and down over the page.

  I held up my hand. “Mom, I really need to talk to you about this. Could we please go back to the—”

  “Right there,” the waitress pointed to my picture. “Could you sign it right there, by the photo?”

  My mother saw where the waitress was pointing. She began to read the caption. I wanted to grab the paper and run, but my feet wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. All I could do was sit there and feel the cold sweat breaking out on my back.

  Mom pushed her reading glasses farther up the bridge of her nose as she looked at the photograph. There was a frightening second of silence and then a shriek. “Oh, my God!”

  She brought the paper close to her eyes and then back to arm’s length, as if the proper distance might change what was printed or, better yet, make it disappear. “It’s you! Ellen, what are you doing in this newspaper? And who in God’s name is this man you’re kissing?”

  “I told you I needed to explain.”

  My mother’s eyes were wide with alarm and her face had lost all its color. I grabbed the pen and scrawled “To Dolo
res, with love from the Swimmer” next to the photo. “Take this out of here, please,” I said, handing the paper to the waitress. She scurried away, thanking me several times.

  “I think I need another coffee,” I said.

  “I think I need a Scotch.”

  “You don’t drink Scotch, Mom.”

  “This might be a good time to start.” She looked at me, steely gray lie-detector eyes sizing me up. “What’s going on? You were drowning? Who was that man?” With each question, her voice went up about four notes.

  I raised a finger. “Just to clarify something—I don’t think I was really drowning. They got that wrong. I was just a little—”

  “Is this why you didn’t call me? Because you’re having an affair with this man? Oh, my God.” She looked up toward the ceiling, rubbing her forehead.

  “No, Mom. Listen. I’m not having an affair. I can explain. I fell through this dock and—”

  “A dock?” She sat up straight.

  Oh, God, why did I mention that? “Yes, but I was fine, really. It’s just that there was a rip current and it took me—”

  “You got into a rip current? Ellen!”

  Somehow the truth was coming out, whether I wanted it to or not. “Mom, I told you I was fine. The guy in the photo…he swam out and brought me in.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “My first day here.”

  She leaned across the table, lowered her voice, and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Well, now I am worried.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You still should have told me.” My mother gave me an uncomfortably long look. “And what about the man? This hero, as they call him in the paper? What’s going on with him?”

  “Nothing’s going on, Mom.” I waved her off.

  “That photo didn’t look like nothing to me.”

  “That just happened,” I said. “I think I was so glad to be back on the ground that…I don’t know.” I glanced out the window, to the place where the blue drift of the ocean met the sky, and I thought about Roy setting me down in that water, my feet against the grainy sand, and how I put my arms around his neck, my mouth on his, and how he tasted like salt and late afternoon sun. “It just happened…and then it was over.”

  My mother raised her chin and peered at me through half-shut eyes. “You’re not giving me the whole story. There’s something more going on.”

  “No, no. There isn’t. We’re just…we’re just friends.” I looked down and ran my finger around the rim of my coffee mug. “Well, I think he’d like to be more than friends, but he knows I’m engaged. Now he knows, anyway.”

  My mother lifted an eyebrow. “Now he knows?”

  “He didn’t know the night at the Antler. When I fainted and he caught me…” I stopped, realizing again I’d said too much.

  My mother gasped. “You fainted? Ellen!”

  I raised my hands. “I was fine, Mom. He caught me. It was lucky he was there. And then we…kind of danced, and, well, he’s a nice guy. He really is. There’s something charming about him.” I thought about the Antler and the two-step and how easily I floated across the floor in Roy’s arms.

  “And that’s all?” my mother said. “That’s everything?”

  I glanced toward the beach and saw a boy unfurling a kite. The blue plastic shape fluttered and flapped in the wind as he gradually let out the string. I could feel my mother’s gaze boring into me. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I do find him kind of attractive.” I clasped my hands under the table. “But I think it’s just because I’m getting married in three months, and it’s nice to know I can still get attention from men.”

  My mother didn’t move a muscle. I wasn’t sure she believed me.

  I looked away, toward the beach again. The boy’s kite rose into the air as he held the end of the string. My mother didn’t say a word. A wall of silence slipped in between us.

  “Maybe that’s not quite true,” I finally said. “Maybe something else is going on. But I don’t know what it is. I’m not in love with him or anything…I love Hayden. But there’s something about Roy…and I can’t…”

  My mother’s face had gone white. “Oh, dear God. Ellen, who is this man? Where is he from? Who are his family?”

  “He’s from Beacon, Mom.”

  “He’s from Beacon?”

  “He’s Chet Cummings’s nephew.” I told her how I’d gone to Chet’s house several times, finally running into Roy and finding out that Chet had died and that Roy was his nephew.

  “And what does this man do?” my mother asked.

  “He’s a carpenter. He builds houses.”

  She blinked. “A carpenter. With a tool belt and a pickup truck? That kind of thing?”

  “That pretty much covers it.”

  She looked away, as though she were staring at something far down the shoreline. Maybe it was the yellow dog racing into the water or the woman and the little girl at the ocean’s edge. Or maybe she wasn’t looking at anything.

  Finally she got up from her chair and moved to the empty seat beside me. A patch of sunlight flickered against the Formica table. My mother put her hand on mine. Her eyes were soft, like blue sea glass. “Do you love Hayden?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Of course I do.”

  “And do you still want to marry him?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  My mother nodded. “Okay, sweetheart, I see what’s going on here, and it makes total sense.” She had that all-knowing-mother look, which made me feel like I was six years old again. “I can tell you that you’re having a perfectly normal reaction.” She pushed a lock of my hair over my shoulder and smiled. “Thank God, because now we can both breathe a sigh of relief.”

  “What are you talking about? Normal reaction to what?”

  She sat back in her chair. “Didn’t I ever tell you the story about Cici Baker?”

  “Who?”

  “Cici Baker. My old tennis partner. Don’t you remember her?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so.”

  “Well, about five years ago she found out she had cancer.” My mother squinted at me. “I’m sure I told you this.… Okay, anyway, she went to a doctor…oncologist in Manhattan…Sloan-Kettering. He absolutely saved her life, and after that she developed a mad crush on him.”

  “On her oncologist?”

  “Yes, of course. And he wasn’t at all attractive—short, stocky, and I think he had one of those hair weaves.” My mother grimaced. “But Cici didn’t see any of that. He saved her life. She worshipped him.”

  “So what happened?” I asked. “Did they end up getting married?”

  “Married? No! Turns out the man was gay.”

  I crossed my arms. “Well, what’s your point?”

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Two months later she’d forgotten all about him. My point is that it’s normal to become infatuated—maybe even think you’ve fallen in love—with someone who saves your life. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

  I watched the color return to my mother’s face as I reflected on the sequence of events from my fall through the dock to hitting the water to the moment Roy appeared to finally feeling the sand beneath my feet when he pulled me onto the beach and I gave him that…kiss. Was my attraction to Roy just based on what he’d done to help me that day? If Cici Baker thought she had fallen in love with her oncologist…I mean, the man had a hair weave.

  My mother stared at me. “Ellen, you are not in love or interested or anything else with a carpenter from Beacon, Maine. Believe me, you’re not.” She smiled. “You’ve worked far too hard to get where you are. This is a momentary infatuation with a person who helped you out of harm’s way. Don’t give it any more stature than that.” She put her hand under my chin. “Everything is going to be fine. Trust me.”

  Chapter 17

  Chet

  I followed my mother up the walk
to the Victory Inn, thinking about how clever she was. Whatever attraction I felt for Roy was surely the result of his helping me the day I’d fallen through the dock, just as Mom said. It had to be. Someone saves your life and you’re in awe of him. I could see how that could certainly lead to…well, infatuation, even with a man as wonderful as Hayden in my life.

  “Now,” my mother said, stopping at the front steps. “Why don’t you pick the nicest restaurant in town…or anywhere up here,” she added with a flick of her wrist, “and I’ll take you and Hayden to dinner tonight.”

  The nicest restaurant. I wondered what that would be and if my mother were really up to the task. She was used to a certain level of…well, a certain level. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go out to dinner. Not that I didn’t appreciate the invitation and the fact that she’d come all the way to Beacon. But I needed to be alone with Hayden, to get things back on track, and I thought we could start with a romantic dinner in the dining room at the inn. Candlelight, a corner table, a nice bottle of wine—well, anyway, a bottle of wine…

  “Mom, we’ll at least have drinks together, and tomorrow night we’ll take you to dinner, okay? Tonight I think I need to spend a little time alone with Hayden.”

  “Good idea,” she said, her eyes dancing.

  My cell phone began to ring just as my mother opened the door to the lobby. The area code looked familiar, but I didn’t recognize the number.

  “I’ve got to take this out here,” I said. “No bars in there.” I nodded toward the building.

  She gave me a little wave and walked inside.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?” There was a second of silence.

  “Ellen?” It was a man’s voice. “Hey. Roy Cummings.”

  Roy Cummings? I felt something skip around inside me. It was strange hearing his voice over the phone. Strange and almost intimate. “Oh…hello,” I said, ready to bite my nail. Why did he make me so nervous?

  “I got your number from Paula,” he said.

  So Paula had given him my number. Hmm.