Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “Because it doesn’t matter what any of us want out of life. It doesn’t matter what future we write down and burn in the bonfire. Fate has already decided how things will turn out. And I think our time would be better spent focusing on things we have control over.”

  Ruth Anne smoothed a shaking hand over her wild hair and tugged the hat on so hard a small tear split the seam. “That is a very sad way to look at things, Penelope. Especially after so many people added an extra wish last year that Ella would get better. And whether her recovery was fate or some magical intervention caused by our collective happy thoughts, we may never know. So I for one will not be discounting the good the festival does. And you shouldn’t either.”

  The truth about Ella’s condition was on the tip of her tongue. Words that would convince anyone that her feelings toward the festival were justified. That the Kismet hot chocolate didn’t do what they’d always promised. But she couldn’t let them out to ruin the little bit of normalcy Ella had laid claim to in the time she had left.

  * * *

  The restaurant Ella picked for dinner was next to Noah’s bar. Even though Penelope was purposely ten minutes late so she didn’t have to wait out front and risk running into him, she still beat her mom and Ella there. The entryway was jammed with people. She pushed her way through them, put her name on the waiting list, and shuffled back out in the cold.

  The snow had stopped, but a few flurries still clung to awnings and windshields of parked cars. A gust of wind swept down the sidewalk, swirling thicker pockets of snow into half a dozen funnels before scattering it back to the ground. She jumped when a hand settled low on her back.

  “Is your mom doing better?” Noah asked. He was close enough that his breath danced along her neck.

  Penelope forced out a breath. The cloud of white in the cold air dissipated, but her nerves continued to hum under her skin. “Yes. Thankfully it didn’t last as long this time,” she said without turning around. She hated that she couldn’t trust herself to be that close to him. That the desire she’d felt for him in the dream had lodged itself firmly in reality. She pulled her coat tighter so the collar hugged her prickling skin.

  He stepped around so he was beside her, his hand fingering the wooden button on the cuff of her sleeve. “Will she remember that she thought your dad was still alive? Or will the magic wipe that from her memory too?”

  “She’ll remember.”

  “And you’ll remember what it’s like to see her as if nothing ever happened to him. Shit, that’s gotta be hard.”

  “Every damn time.”

  Noah met her gaze. Despite their cool greenish-brown color, his eyes burned into hers until she looked away just to break the tension that hovered between them. “Are you meeting someone?” he asked after a moment.

  She nodded and smiled when his jaw tightened. “Just my mom and Ella.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” she asked.

  The feelings she’d had for him in her dream came rushing back, all warm and tingly. What if we are supposed to be together, him sleeping on my couch and me so stupidly in love I can’t think straight?

  For a second, it didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

  “Yeah. Good, you know, that your mom’s okay enough to go out.” He looked down at the sidewalk and rubbed his jaw.

  “Oh, right.”

  His smile was slow, inching up a little higher on the left side, and hopeful. It sent a tingling sensation down to her toes. When he caught her staring at his lips, his grin deepened. She flicked her eyes away from him and they landed on the bar behind him. And it didn’t matter that he was working instead of drinking, that he seemed genuinely worried about her mom, or that his smile could tie her stomach in knots if she wasn’t paying attention. He was still the guy who’d run away from the life she’d offered him, and she’d be better off if she stopped forgetting it.

  “Hey,” Noah said, pointing down the street. “There are your dates now.”

  Ella skipped ahead of Sabina when she saw them, her snow boots clomping on the concrete. She didn’t look as small and gangly all buttoned up in her puffy jacket. She waved to them, throwing off her rhythm and listing to the left. She caught herself on the trunk of one of the leafless maple trees lining the street. A dusting of snow rained down around her, making her giggle.

  “Careful,” Penelope called.

  “I am,” she yelled back.

  Noah chuckled, a deep rumbling that rocked his shoulder against Penelope’s. She took a purposeful step forward to break the contact. She caught another smile from the corner of her eye and held her breath until Ella reached them.

  Wisps of hair had pulled loose from Ella’s ponytail and fluttered around her face. She wiped them away with her mittened hand. “You’re coming to dinner too?” she asked.

  “No,” they both said. Penelope’s voice a little harsh, Noah’s a little amused.

  Ella pierced them both with her dark brown eyes before settling them on Noah. “Why not?”

  “I’m working,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re standing here talking to my mom.”

  He nodded to Sabina when she joined them before turning his attention back to Ella. “Well, I should be working. But maybe one night when I’m not we can have dinner. How about that?”

  Penelope shook her head, an excuse hot on her lips. “I don’t think—”

  “Like a date?” Ella asked. She clasped her hands and held them to her chest.

  “It’s a little awkward to have a date with three people. But you and I can go on the date and your mom can be the third wheel,” Noah said.

  “What’s a third wheel?”

  Cocking her head, Penelope narrowed her eyes at Noah. “You’re not taking my daughter out. Even as a joke.”

  “Jealous?” Noah whispered in her ear.

  “Just explaining the situation so neither of you gets your hopes up,” she said.

  “I gave up on hoping a long time ago.”

  Something about the defeated way he said it made her believe him.

  10

  The next morning, hundreds of pieces of paper in varying sizes and colors covered the entire front of the shop—the windows, the door, the brick. Not one inch of surface was spared. Penelope should have expected something like this after her conversation with Ruth Anne. As a whole, the residents of Malarkey had a hard time letting go. The last time they had left notes to try and change someone’s mind it had been to convince Eileen Morley not to sell the cafe and move to Atlanta to be closer to her son and grandkids. That hadn’t worked since Zan bought the cafe not a week later and Eileen was gone within a month.

  It wouldn’t work on Penelope either.

  She located the door’s lock on the second try, underneath a piece of thick pink stationery with “SMALL NOTE. BIG THANK YOU” in letterpress across the top. She freed it from the others and scanned the dramatic handwriting that filled the small card: Just a sampling of why we need the Festival of Fate.

  She walked inside without reading the rest. Slivers of sunlight eked between the edges of the collage into the shop, brightening the room enough for her to navigate to the light switch by the kitchen door. Flipping it on, she hated how artificial everything looked without the natural light flooding the space. The golds and browns of the wall paint came across as flat instead of the usual vibrant hues. Even the chocolates in the case lacked their typical sheen. She dumped her purse and the card on the counter and headed back out front to remove the rest.

  For every one she removed, it seemed like two more took its place. It would’ve been impressive how many people Ruth Anne corralled into helping in less than twenty-four hours if they weren’t all in direct opposition to Penelope. She’d known the decision wouldn’t go over well. With anyone. But she’d hoped to find at least a few people who agreed with her.

  “Man, you sure know how to unite a community over a common cause,” Megha said from behind her.

  She t
urned just as her friend stepped out of the street and onto the sidewalk next to her. Reinforcements. That was so much better than Ruth Anne or Henry or one of the nameless other people who had offered up a reason not to cancel the festival. “It’s a gift,” she said.

  “Want some help?”

  “Do you really have to ask?” Penelope grabbed at the notes with both hands and ripped four or five free of the door all at once.

  Megha pinched the edges of one and peeled the tape from the glass in slow-motion. Then she folded the tape onto the back of the paper, preserving the integrity of the note. “You should at least read them. A couple of them really make you want to believe in fate.”

  She stared at her friend a moment, trying to decide if she’d heard her right. Megha always laughed at the idea of fate. And Penelope seriously doubted anything written here would change her mind. “When did you read them?”

  “Last night. Another blind-date bust, by the way. But everyone in the bar was all worked up about you wanting to cancel the festival. So I came to check them out after I politely faked an emergency. If anyone asks, we found your keys in the freezer.”

  “Freezer. Got it. And happy I could be your alibi. Sorry it was a dud.”

  Megha held the notes in her hand, careful not to crease them. “You’d think I would’ve learned by now. But every time my mother calls, I can’t say no.”

  “She just wants you to find the love of your life. No pressure,” Penelope said.

  “Speaking of, Noah added a note too. It’s over there. The one on the cocktail napkin. It’s about you, in case you’re wondering.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  She was.

  It took more effort than she’d expected not to look for it. She pulled another few down and added them to the stack she’d stuffed in the gold mailbox affixed to the brick. “Did you get up early just to make sure I saw it?”

  “Not just his note. I mean someone had to stop you from going all Grinch on the town and taking away our beloved festival.” Megha clutched a handful of notes to her heart and chuckled when Penelope glared at her. “Like I said, some of these are damn convincing. It even has me wanting the festival to happen this year.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point.” Penelope leaned back against the window, the remaining notes fluttering against her jacket as if trying to get her to save them from being ripped away by the wind. “All of this,” she said, holding up the handful of paper she’d collected, “is out of my control. And I can’t pretend everything’s going to turn out okay when I know that’s not always the case.”

  “Maybe not always, but all of these notes, they’re the times that it went right. Like this one that says, ‘I made the same prediction at every festival for twenty-three years. That I would become a doctor. That wasn’t something women did back then and everyone said I was wasting my wish, but I knew it was what I was meant to do. And I did.’ And this one. ‘I made a promise to myself at the festival last year that I would tell my parents I’m gay. When I did, my mom said she’d been waiting for me to admit it so she could set me up with this guy she met at her yoga class. We have our first date next week.’”

  She took them from Megha without responding. There was nothing she could say.

  Megha continued. “Or this one,” she said, removing Noah’s cocktail napkin from the window. “‘At my last Festival of Fate, the only thing I wanted to happen in my future was to kiss Penelope Dalton.’”

  He’d done that. And more. But for him to claim it was because of fate was a lie. Not to mention downright insulting.

  She snatched one side of the napkin. A jagged line ripped through the middle of the confession when Megha didn’t release it. “Was that supposed to convince me to help with the festival?”

  “Do you know how many girls we went to school with would have killed for Noah to say that about them?” Megha gave an exasperated sigh when Penelope shrugged. “Okay, fine. How about this one? ‘Last year Ella Dalton had a brain tumor and’— Shit.” She dropped her hand, letting the note drift from her grip.

  “And the festival didn’t heal her,” Penelope said.

  Megha was one of two people outside the family who knew Ella was still sick. She wouldn’t keep trying to convince Penelope to support the festival that had failed Ella any more than she would spill the secret she was keeping.

  * * *

  By the time her mom arrived at the shop, Penelope had stashed all of the notes in the filing cabinet in the small office she used to keep up the business end of things. She hadn’t been able to throw them away, though that had been the logical choice. The words—the futures that had come true after the Festival of Fate—couldn’t get under her skin if they were dismissed as nothing more than garbage.

  But they weren’t garbage. They were the truths of people’s lives. And she couldn’t ignore that no matter how much she wanted to.

  She still hadn’t told her mom about her decision to cut the hot chocolate from the festival. The longer she put it off, the less she believed Sabina would agree with her. They spent too much time at odds already, arguing over what was best for Ella, and the thought of adding another issue to their list made her chest so tight she had to step outside and gulp in lungfuls of cold, biting air.

  Penelope stayed outside just long enough to clear her head and drive the worst of the worry away. Then she slipped back inside and locked the door behind her, not yet ready to deal with her neighbors’ stories face-to-face.

  Sabina watched her with narrowed eyes as Penelope entered the kitchen. “Do you know why the table would have given me these? They’re in every drawer and more appear every time I reopen one,” she said.

  Penelope looked up and there in her mom’s small hands were the notes she’d hidden away. Or copies of them anyway, re-created by the apothecary table’s magic to show that it sided with the town and not her. She clenched her hands into fists despite the burning sensation that prickled her skin as feeling returned to her fingers. “Because it hates me.”

  “It’s a table, honey. It can’t hate you.”

  “It can. And it does. First it gave me that recipe for curing heartbreak, as if it already knows I won’t be strong enough to survive losing Ella. And now it’s giving you all of those damn notes so that you can lead the tar-and-feathering mob against me.”

  Sabina’s only show of surprise was her eyes widening into pools of brown as dark as the chocolate she worked with. “You don’t know that the recipe is because of Ella.” She thumbed through the papers as if expecting to find Penelope’s heartbreak cure among them so she could prove her point.

  “Yes, I do, Mama. You would too if you stopped living in a fantasy world where bad things don’t happen to good people. I hate it as much as you do, but she’s dying and we can’t save her.”

  Penelope had thought saying those words would get easier, but every time was as painful as the first. Like reopening a wound before it fully healed. She turned away from her mom and lifted the pan of marshmallows she’d left to set from the baking rack.

  “She’s not gone yet,” Sabina said. “So maybe the recipe cures heartbreak by stopping it before it ever happens.”

  Flipping over the tray, Penelope slammed it down on the table with more force than was necessary to remove the large block of marshmallow. The resulting crash of metal on metal made Sabina jump. Penelope set the empty pan aside and dusted the tops with powdered sugar from a sieve.

  It would be so easy to let herself get sucked into her mom’s optimism. To ignore reality and pretend everything would be okay. But blinding herself with false hope wouldn’t change anything. It would just take up precious time and keep Ella from accomplishing everything on her list. So Penelope would have to make the hard decision for all of them.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She kept her eyes focused on the slab of white in front of her to keep her mom from seeing the lie in her eyes. “I don’t have it anymore.”

  Sabina crossed t
he room and stopped in front of the table where Penelope worked. “What did you do with it?”

  “I threw it away.” The lie came out smoother than she expected. Her voice wavered only slightly. “You can throw those away too.” She motioned to the papers her mom still held.

  “What are they?” Sabina shook them at Penelope, the pages flapping and rustling against each other with every quick back-and-forth.

  “They’re an attempt to convince me the Festival of Fate is something we should keep doing. But it doesn’t matter what the notes say. Or what you say. The festival is a lie and putting a stop to it is the right thing to do, even if no one else believes me.”

  “The festival is not yours to cancel, honey.”

  Penelope matched her mom’s hard look of disapproval with one of her own. “All of the people who left me notes this morning seem to think it is.”

  “If you don’t want to be involved with it any longer, no one can make you. But you cannot stop others from celebrating their futures just because you don’t like what is in yours.”

  “This isn’t about me,” she said.

  But as she sliced the marshmallows into cubes, Penelope couldn’t tell if that was the truth or another lie.

  11

  After years of tending bar in Charlotte, Noah couldn’t quite adjust to how desolate Malarkey became on weeknights after 11:00 P.M. By this time of night back home, most people had barely gotten their nights started. And even long after last call when he crawled into bed in his downtown apartment, the streets outside never stopped whispering.

  Here, everyone was shut up tight in their houses, lights out, pretending the outside world didn’t exist.

  The upside was speed limits didn’t matter as much when there was no one else on the road.

  The fastest he’d gotten from the bar to Tucker’s house was six and a half minutes. Tonight he was shooting for five flat. Just to see if he could.

  He rounded the corner leading out of downtown and revved the engine with a quick twist of his hand, his Ducati tilting so close to the ground he half-expected his knee to scrape asphalt. Running into Penelope a handful of times had provided the bulk of his excitement since being back in town, and if he didn’t do something to keep his heart rate up, he ran the risk of turning into one of the sleepers in the houses he passed.