Starting Over on Blackberry Lane--A Romance Novel

by Sheila Roberts

  But the s’mores did look good. And she hadn’t roasted a marshmallow since the last time her family vacationed at the beach. She’d been twelve. Maybe she should revisit her childhood, rewrite history. Instead of four s’mores she’d have one.

  “Roast me a marshmallow, too,” Matt said, sliding another one onto her fork.

  So she did, holding them over the coals at the edge of the fire until they were golden brown. He helped her assemble their treats, then snapped a shot of her taking her first bite. Oh, wow, that tasted as good as it looked.

  “We need a s’mores selfie,” he said and took out his phone. “Smile.”

  The sun had dipped behind the mountains, and the only lighting they had came from the twinkle lights Charley had hung over the patio and the glow from the fire, but his phone camera caught the smiles on their faces just fine.

  Caption this: Where’s the Guilt? There was none. She was enjoying herself.

  “Okay, now let’s go dance off whatever pounds you think you just gained,” he said.

  Todd was teaching a line dance, and they joined several of the others who’d formed two lines on the lawn. A fast country song started, and Griffin found herself racing through a series of grapevine steps, kicks and twirls. And laughing. And realizing that she was no longer a spectator, taking pictures from the sidelines. She was part of the picture, and she felt...happy.

  Matt walked her home from the party, entertaining her with stories about his life growing up and all the crazy things he did, everything from climbing the water tower to setting a trap for Santa with a bucket of water he and his brother had rigged over the bedroom door. “That was the last time Santa hung our stockings on our bedposts.”

  Griffin chuckled. “I can imagine. Your poor dad.”

  “He was a good sport,” Matt said. “I loved hanging out with him. Dad worked a lot, but when he was around he always made time for us.”

  “Sounds like you had a great life growing up.”

  “I did. Everything a kid could want, really. Camping and fishing, and he and Mom sent us to summer camp every year. I learned how to water ski up at Malibu. At one camp, we made the world’s largest ice cream sundae. How about you? Did you ever go to camp?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said casually. Fat-kid camp, where you ate nutritious food and there wasn’t even a hint of ice cream, let alone the world’s largest sundae.

  “Hanging out up here with friends, it kind of makes me feel like I’m at camp. I think someday I’ll get a cabin around here. Snowboarding in the winter, fishing in the summer...”

  It sounded idyllic. “You can buy this place,” she joked as they walked up the front porch steps.

  That wiped away the smile. “I wish you weren’t leaving.” He closed the distance between them and pressed her up against the front door. “You know I’m falling for you in a big way, don’t you?”

  She nodded, and that was all the encouragement he needed to kiss her.

  She was falling for him, too. This was a bad idea. She could feel her resolve to go to New York melting like that marshmallow over the hot coals. Bad idea or not, it didn’t stop her from asking, “Do you want to come in?”

  He nodded and they barely made it to the couch before he was kissing her again, tipping her against the sofa cushions, his hand running up her thigh. Oooh, more please.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In spite of a certain romance-shy handyman, Cass had a great birthday weekend. The kids hung out with her on Sunday. They all gorged themselves on burgers and garlic fries and shakes at Herman’s Hamburgers. Then they put out the ancient croquet set in the backyard and played a highly competitive game, Emma doing her part to make it a challenge by picking up everyone’s balls and throwing them, then crowing, “Did it!” That night they played cards and watched a movie. Family togetherness and plenty of laughter—the best birthday presents imaginable.

  Come Monday, though, the party was over and the kids all went back to their lives.

  Dani and her family left first. “Mom, you should move to Spokane. We could add on to the house and you could live with us.”

  “Because I had a birthday?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just that you’re all by yourself up here.”

  With a community full of friends. “I’m hardly alone.”

  “Yeah. We’re still here,” said Amber. “Where am I supposed to go when school’s out for the summer?”

  “Okay, after Amber’s done with school. Think about it—you could spend as much time as you wanted with your grandchildren.”

  There was that.

  “She’d make you babysit 24/7,” Willie cracked.

  “You two are really funny,” Dani said, insulted. “At least someone’s thinking about Mom.”

  “Mom doesn’t need anyone thinking about her,” Cass informed her daughter. At least not that way. “I’m not even fifty yet. That hardly qualifies me for a nursing home.”

  “You did say you were lonely,” Amber reminded her.

  “No, I didn’t. I said... Well, I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t that. Now scram, Danielle. You guys have a long drive ahead of you.”

  “Okay.” Dani hugged her. “The offer stands anytime you want to take advantage of it. Spokane’s a great city.”

  “If you move to Spokane, then I get the house here,” Amber said, and her sister told her she was spoiled.

  “What do you expect? She’s the baby,” said Willie, and Amber stuck her tongue out at him.

  It was hugs all around and promises to return for Willie’s graduation ceremony in June, and then Dani was off. Willie left an hour later, and then Amber, too, was gone. And the house was awfully quiet.

  “Maybe we should move to Spokane,” she said to Lady Gray.

  The cat voiced no opinion. Instead, she began to groom herself.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to move, either.”

  It was sweet of her daughter to want her nearby, but Cass didn’t think she’d be happy somewhere else. Icicle Falls had been her home for too many years. She loved the people, loved the beautiful mountain setting, loved working in her bakery. Yes, there was something missing, but she probably wasn’t going to find it in Spokane.

  Grant Masters, that was what she wanted. The irritating man had gotten her all revved up the moment he walked into her bakery. He was interested—God alone knew why, but she was sure of it. Why couldn’t he get past his stupid fixation with their age difference?

  Because he was a big coward.

  He confirmed her assessment of his cowardly character by staying away all week. Finally on Thursday she left a message on his voice mail. “Cluck, cluck, you big chicken. Get over here and fix my deck.”

  Friday she came home from the bakery to discover him out there working. It was a hot afternoon and he was shirtless, showing off those well-tended muscles. He was a tease.

  She opened the sliding glass door and poked her head out. “I knew you couldn’t resist me.”

  “Just don’t want this collapsing out from under you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  And to show him how much she appreciated it, she got busy and baked a chocolate zucchini cake dense with chocolate chips. He had just finished and was packing up his tools when she took it out to him still warm and topped with a scoop of ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce.

  “You need sustenance,” she told him.

  “Where’s yours?” he asked.

  “I’m trying to be good.”

  “Being good is highly overrated when it comes to cake.”

  Being good was highly overrated when it came to a lot of things, she thought, ogling him as he took a bite.

  He nodded as he chewed. “You sure can bake,” he said once he’d swallowed.

 
“I should hope so. Actually, it’s only one of my many talents.” She was moving closer, ready to demonstrate, when her cell phone rang.

  “Saved by the bell,” she grumbled and stepped back into the kitchen to grab it off the counter.

  It was Charley and she was nearly hysterical.

  “Melody got hurt on the river.”

  “Oh, no!” The river was a source of both beauty and fun for the residents of Icicle Falls, but it could also be dangerous.

  “She’s in the hospital. Her dad just called me. I’m on my way over right now and I don’t have any idea what to say to her parents,” Charley finished on a sob.

  Charley had become very attached to her newest employee, almost viewing the girl as a little sister. She’d taken Melody under her wing and the family had been to Charley’s house on more than one occasion.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Cass said and ended the call.

  Grant stepped into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

  “Charley’s new server’s been in an accident. She’s in the hospital. Charley’s really upset.” Cass grabbed her purse and started for the door.

  Grant followed her. “I’ll come with you.”

  They climbed into his truck and zoomed their way to the hospital. They found Charley with the girl’s parents and younger sister waiting in the lobby of the emergency room, along with another girl, probably a friend. All four women were crying. The father was hugging both his wife and daughter and was barely holding it together himself.

  Grant dropped onto a seat next to Charley and put his arm around her, and Cass knelt in front of her. “What happened?” she asked.

  “She was with some kids on the river, over by the trail to the Indian petroglyphs. She dived in.”

  Charley didn’t need to say more than that. You never risked diving, even in parts of the river that looked deep enough, which that part did. The result was bound to be a spinal cord injury and possibly death.

  “I should have told her,” fretted the girl’s friend. “I know we’re not supposed to climb on those rocks.”

  They sure weren’t. There was a sign posted right there warning people. It was easy to slip and fall in.

  “She wanted me to take her picture on that big boulder, and next thing I knew, she was diving in.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Charley assured the girl, taking her hand.

  The doctor was out now and Cass could tell from his expression that this was the beginning of a very long, hard road for this family. She thought of the famous artist Joni Eareckson Tada, who’d wound up a paraplegic after a similar event. The woman was an inspiration to many. Maybe, at some point, that would be worth sharing.

  The news was even worse, though. The girl was dead.

  “No!” her mother wailed and collapsed against her husband. Both the sister and the friend started sobbing in earnest. Charley hugged the sister and Cass moved to comfort the friend.

  “I can’t believe this,” the girl kept saying over and over.

  It was surreal. And hard to accept. To die so young with her whole life ahead of her. Cass immediately thought of her own children, at the beginning of their life’s adventures. The idea of having to face what these poor parents were facing left her feeling ill and brought the tears racing to her eyes. Dear God, was there anything worse in the whole world than losing a child?

  The family followed in the doctor’s wake to see their daughter and begin dealing with the horrible business of death.

  “She was going to be a vet,” her friend said and started sobbing again.

  “This is awful,” Charley said miserably.

  Indeed, it was. The news spread quickly, leaving the entire town in shock. The funeral was held at Festival Hall because none of the churches in town was large enough to hold the crowd. It wasn’t that the girl had known so many people, since the family was relatively new. It was that in a small town, one family’s loss was everyone’s loss.

  The citizens of Icicle Falls closed in around the grieving parents, pouring out love and condolences. A memorial was set up at the river—a stone plaque in her memory. The hall itself became a garden of flowers with wreaths and overflowing vases everywhere. The entire high school turned out to support the younger sister, teenagers crying and horrified by the stark reality. A volunteer choir formed to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Mothers organized to make sure the family had dinner provided for the next month.

  Cass closed her bakery for the day, and she and Bailey Black catered the reception after the funeral. Sometimes, if the person who died had been older, there were smiles and occasional laughter during this portion of the affair as people shared fond memories and funny stories. There was no laughter this time, no smiles. This was a tragedy and there was no way to lighten it.

  Cass couldn’t help asking herself how it was that some people died so young, while others got such long lives. One error in judgment and a young life was snuffed out. She thought back to some of the dumb things she’d done at that age. Drag racing on the highway, hitchhiking one night when her car broke down. She could’ve been picked up by a serial killer. Instead, an old man had given her a lift, as well as a lecture about the danger of hitching rides from strangers.

  The one thing she heard people murmur over and over as she set out platters of cold cuts and cheese—“You never know. Life is short.”

  In some cases, unfairly short.

  * * *

  “It’s awful,” Griffin said as she and Stef sat at their usual corner bistro table in the bakery with Cass. The girl had only waited on Stef and Brad once and Griffin had never met her. Still, it was horrible to even think about.

  “She was a sweet kid,” Cass said. “It always seems so wrong when someone dies that young.”

  “My cousin died of a drug overdose when he was nineteen,” Griffin said in a small voice. “I was only thirteen, but it sure made a lasting impression. Made me afraid to even try marijuana.”

  “You know, you read in the news about people getting shot or killed in car accidents, and it sort of doesn’t make your radar,” said Stef. “Something like this...” She bit her lip.

  “Well, ladies,” said Cass, “this drives home a very important truth. None of us knows how long we have on this earth, so we need to live life to the fullest.” She shook her head. “It always sounds so trite when you say that, but it’s true.”

  Griffin had read a similar message in Muriel Sterling’s book earlier. Pursue those dreams now, Muriel had written. “Don’t put off till tomorrow what you need to do today to make them come true. If you wait for too many tomorrows all you’ll have is a pile of yesterdays, and you’ll be no closer to reaching your goals.”

  Or maybe you’d never live to reach them. She’d heard that the girl who died had wanted to be a vet. She never got the chance.

  Griffin had a chance to do something; she needed to take it. Icicle Falls was a wonderful place to live, but in her case it was also a wonderful place to hide. She’d come here with Steve and settled into a safe little routine. Now she had an opportunity to take her own road and it was wide open. She needed to do it.

  Except what about Matt? If she left Icicle Falls, she’d probably be leaving behind what they’d started. It was one thing to come from Seattle to visit her here in the mountains. Quite another to go clear across the country.

  Relationships were fragile. Look how easily what she’d had with Steve had broken. Of course, that had been slowly cracking over the last few months. Surely, if you really had something it wouldn’t break so easily.

  She needed to stick with her plan, put the house up for sale and move forward. Maybe, if she was lucky, if Matt really cared, he’d move forward with her.

  Either way it was time. She got her cast taken off the following day and that felt somehow symbolic. The house painti
ng was finished, and Matt had replaced the broken step on the back porch when he was up for Memorial Day weekend. All that remained was to upgrade her appliances.

  She went home from the doctor’s office and ordered a new stove and fridge from the Home Depot website. Then she called Nenita Einhausen and told her she was ready to list her place.

  When Matt came up to visit on Sunday, the for-sale sign was already in the front yard.

  “Jeez. You didn’t waste any time.” He didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

  She wasn’t particularly happy herself.

  “It’s normal to be a little fearful before you take a leap,” Muriel’s book had explained. “I was nervous about getting married again after having lost my first husband. But in the end, I was glad I moved forward.”

  Griffin would be glad she’d moved forward, too. Or so she hoped.

  “So you’re really leaving,” Matt said.

  “I am, as soon as the house sells.”

  He nodded, taking that in. “You’re good at what you do. You can probably go a lot further in New York than if you stay here. But damn, I hate to see you leave.”

  Then ask me to stay. Or, better yet, say you’ll come with me.

  He didn’t. And of course, why would he? It was way too early for him to take that kind of leap. Instead, he said, “I’ll come visit you.”

  People always said stuff like that. Maybe he would. Once. They’d text, talk on the phone. Then, gradually, the texts would taper off, the phone calls disappear.

  “You’ll be back for Christmas.”

  Christmas was a long ways away. You could come to New York with me. Say it! She didn’t.

  She couldn’t even work up the nerve to tell him how she felt. If she couldn’t do that, how was she going to make it in the competitive big-city market?

  By hard work. She had confidence in her talent.

  Relationships were a different animal, one in which she had little confidence. Anyway, maybe her judgment was clouded. They were both rebounding. Maybe what they had wouldn’t last.