Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “Wait. What? You haven’t used it, Penelope?” Layne’s finger slipped on the soda gun, spraying a bubbly stream of dark liquid onto the floor. She dropped it back into the holder and covered the mess with a bar rag.

  Penelope ducked her head to avoid meeting either of their stares, knowing the truth about her past with Noah would be written all over her face.

  “If she had, do you think she’d still be single?” Megha asked.

  “We’re talking about your love life, not mine,” Penelope said.

  “If you want to get technical, we were talking about you and Noah before you changed the subject, so…” Megha trailed off.

  Damn it. She had walked right into that one.

  Layne saved her from responding by saying, “Ooh, you should both drink it. And I totally want to be there with you when you do. Something tells me we’d have a lot of fun when I’m not at work.”

  “Yes to the hanging-out-again part,” Megha said. She plucked an ice cube from her drink and popped it in her mouth. “Maybe to the hot chocolate. I’m not that desperate yet. But you never know, my next blind date could push me right over that edge.”

  Penelope secretly loved how Megha was determined to find love on her own. Most people took the easy way. But Megha believed the surprise of finding yourself suddenly in love was the best part. “Luckily for you, I know you don’t mean that.”

  “I said it could. Technically, that is a possibility.”

  “One you’d run screaming from,” Penelope said.

  Megha just laughed in response.

  Layne tapped the counter in front of Penelope. “And for what it’s worth, I would love to see you and Noah together. And not just because it would be nice to have another girl around to even things up a bit. If you stopped trying so hard to avoid him, you might actually like him.”

  “Not you too?” Penelope asked.

  “He’s my brother-in-law. I’ve gotta pull for him,” she said.

  There was nothing Penelope could say that wouldn’t give them more reason to push her and Noah together. But she couldn’t stay silent either. “I never said I—” Her phone lit up on the bar with an incoming call. Snatching it up, she swiped across her mom’s picture to answer. “Hey, Mama, is everything okay?”

  Whatever Sabina said in response was lost in the clamor of the bar.

  “Hold on a second. I can’t hear you.” Penelope told Megha she’d be right back and went outside. When the door shut behind her, blocking the music and the wall of voices, it took a few seconds for her ears to stop ringing. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here. I’m sorry I had to pull you away from your night out with Megha.”

  “It’s okay. What did you say a minute ago?”

  Her mom hesitated, her breath crackling through the phone. Then she said, “Ella’s not feeling well. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. She’s just a little feverish and sick to her stomach. But I didn’t want to wait until you came home to tell you.”

  Penelope couldn’t pinpoint what about her mom’s voice sounded off, only that it did. It was too fast or too controlled or too something. But of course her mom was worried about Ella. That’s probably all it was.

  Penelope shivered, having run outside without her coat or gloves, and huddled against the front of the building as out of the wind as she could get. “Thanks. Have you called Marco? We’re supposed to let him know when she has an episode.”

  “I will call him as soon as we hang up. Do you think he’ll want to see her tonight?”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t that bad. If you think she needs to go to him or the hospital, I can be home in ten minutes.”

  “No, no. You should stay. Ella will be fine. I just wanted to be sure I knew what you normally do in these situations,” Sabina said.

  She was normally home and could explain to Marco in detail what Ella was experiencing. And then he’d tell her it was perfectly normal in Ella’s condition and to bring her in the following day for a quick checkup. Even with as much time as Sabina spent with Ella, she didn’t know the subtle differences in how the tumor affected Ella as well as Penelope did. Staying out with her friend while her daughter was sicker than usual was not an option.

  “It’s okay. I’ll come home and call him. You know I’d just sit here and worry until I got home anyway,” Penelope said.

  “I promise you she’s okay,” Sabina said. Her voice did the weird thing again. Like there were other words that wanted to come out in place of the ones that did.

  “Tell her I’m on my way.” Penelope opened the bar door, grateful for the rush of noise that would drown out the nervousness of whatever her mother was not saying.

  16

  She’d found Ella curled up on the bathmat in only her undies with Penelope’s terry-cloth robe bunched under her head as a makeshift pillow. Ella’s body radiated heat when Penelope lifted her. Instead of taking her to bed, Penelope sat on the closed toilet seat cradling her while the sink filled with lukewarm water. She grabbed a washcloth from the towel rack and soaked it in the water, making as few movements as possible to keep from jostling Ella too much. Ella’s eyes fluttered open as the water dribbled down her cheeks.

  It had helped to bring her fever down some. The ibuprofen she’d given Ella just before tucking her into bed did the rest.

  In the morning, Ella said she felt well enough to go to school. Penelope had already called Marco to make an appointment to have her checked out. She almost gave in when Ella whipped out her list and stabbed the paper with her index finger next to where she’d written she wanted to have a whole month at school without a sick day. But in the end, she had to be the responsible mom instead of the fun mom.

  Ella sulked on the drive to Marco’s office. Arms crossed over her chest, lips pushed out in a pout. She stared out the window so Penelope couldn’t even catch her eye in the rearview mirror. Well, Ella could be angry all she wanted. It wasn’t going to change the fact that her health came before completing items on her list. And staying quiet at least meant that they weren’t fighting.

  They didn’t sit in the waiting room for two minutes before they were called back to an exam room. The paper crackled as Ella climbed onto the table like a pro and sat there, legs swinging out and heels banging back into the base. That was the only sound she made until Marco entered the room, then Ella smiled and waved like there was no other place she’d rather be.

  He was like the grandfather Ella had never had, coming to their family holiday dinners and sending Ella flowers every year on her birthday. Penelope would have been happy if her mom had ever wanted to move from being just friends with him and make Marco a more permanent part of their lives. Though there had been a few months there when Ella had first gotten sick that they had seen him almost daily anyway.

  Penelope sighed, thankful that his presence could pull Ella out of her bad mood.

  He unwound his stethoscope from his neck and pointed the ear pieces at Ella. “So, you had a bad night, huh?”

  “Most of it was okay. It was just the end that was bad,” Ella said. Familiar with the routine, she paused while he listened to her heart. Then she continued, “I fell asleep in the bathroom. Right next to the toilet. That was gross.”

  Penelope hated that Ella was so used to being sick that the worst part of last night was sleeping on the bathroom floor. “She had a fever of a hundred and two last night and my mom said she’d been vomiting. But this morning it’s like nothing was wrong. So I don’t know if it’s tumor related or just a stomach bug.”

  “Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.” Marco stuck the thermometer in Ella’s mouth and made a few notes on her chart while he waited. When it beeped, revealing a normal temperature, he said, “How are you feeling now, Ella? Any headaches, dizziness, feeling like you want to throw up again?”

  Ella picked at the edge of the paper table liner. She made a small tear and tried to smooth it back into place. “No, none of that.”
/>   “Is it something else?”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Well, your mom didn’t bring you to see me because you felt great. Something was wrong last night for you to be so sick. What were you doing before you started to feel bad?”

  Penelope hadn’t thought to ask that. Leaning forward in the chair, she was suddenly hopeful that this wasn’t a result of Ella’s disease worsening.

  Ella shot a quick look at Penelope, a flash of nerves staining her cheeks pink. “Grams gave me some new chocolates last night and I don’t think the magic worked right. That’s why I was sick. I’m not getting worse or anything.”

  New chocolates. The two words repeated over and over in Penelope’s head. What had her mother done? She stood and stroked a hand over Ella’s hair. “You didn’t tell me about the chocolates,” she said.

  “It was a secret. In case it didn’t work.” Ella lowered her eyes to the tear in the paper she had made another inch longer by messing with it. “Grams said you would be upset if it didn’t make me better.”

  “I’m not upset.” At least, she wasn’t upset about the chocolate not working. She wouldn’t have expected it to. But using the chocolates on Ella without knowing what they might do was inexcusable. “But I will be much more than upset if either of you ever does that again. Okay?”

  Marco cut in, bending down so his face was level with Ella’s. “Wait a minute. Ella, your grandmother might have a recipe that can cure you?” He was almost as fascinated with their chocolates as he was with Sabina. In any other town, he would have laughed off the very idea of magic as a replacement for medicine. But having lived in Malarkey most of his life, it was impossible not to believe in it.

  “No,” Penelope said. It came out so sharp Marco moved back a step.

  “She just thought it could,” Ella said.

  “In that case, maybe it would be a good idea to not eat anything you’re not sure about, okay? Your body’s already fighting pretty hard and we don’t want to add more things it has to fight off if we can help it.”

  Ella relaxed, her hands going still beside her, when he tipped her chin up and smiled at her.

  “Okay. I’ll be careful. I don’t want my body to die faster.”

  “Don’t worry,” Penelope said to Marco, some of her anger leaching into her voice. “I will make it very clear to my mother that this cannot happen again.”

  “All right. Sounds like we’re all on the same page. Now before I let you go, Ella, tell me something good that’s happened,” he said.

  She scooted to the end of the table and dropped to her feet. Reaching into her back pocket, she extracted a folded sheet of paper and waved it in the air to open it. “I’ve done like eight things on my list already. Haven’t I, Mama?”

  Penelope smiled at her, grateful their standoff was over. “Yes, you have.”

  Marco gave Ella a high five. “That’s great. What’s been the best thing so far?”

  “My mom and I went ice skating. I wasn’t very good at it because I kept falling down, but it didn’t hurt that much. And she said as long as I didn’t hit my head we could keep going around and around. So we did,” she said.

  “I wish I could’ve seen that,” he said.

  “Oh, no. Be glad you didn’t. We’re not the most graceful skaters. But it was fun,” Penelope said.

  Ella smoothed the paper against her stomach. Then she held it out to show him what was left. “I’m working on a couple other ones, but they’re harder than I thought.”

  Marco gripped the paper to keep it steady. “Like what?”

  “Finding a kitten and going a month without missing a single day of school. I was doing really good on the school thing until today.” Ella made a little hmpf sound but didn’t blame Penelope again. “And who knew finding one little cat would take so long?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you about school. You’ve got a bit of a mess in your head. That means you’re going to miss some days.”

  “Or a lot of days,” she said.

  “Yes, or a lot of days. And there’s not much any of us can do about that. But I can help you with your cat problem. I saw an article in the paper this morning about how the animal shelter has a dozen or more cats that need homes.”

  Ella folded the list, careful to align the creases so she didn’t make new ones. “I’ve tried all of them already.”

  Penelope met Marco’s confused glance. “Don’t ask.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Ella,” he said.

  “I will. It’s on my list, so I have to. And there are still a lot of other things on my list too so I can’t die until they’re all checked off.”

  Do you hear that, Universe? Penelope thought. Wanting to finish the list was such a small request in the grand scheme of things. Ella should be given enough time to do it.

  Marco whistled. “Sounds like you’ve got a busy schedule ahead. Why don’t you run out front and see Miss Ruby. She’s got a tin of shortbread cookies at her desk. I bet if you asked nicely she’d give you a couple.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Marco,” she said and raced out of the room.

  Penelope waited until she could hear Ella and Ruby talking out front. Then she sat on the table Ella had vacated. “I’m sorry about my mom. I should’ve known she would try something like that. She’s convinced I’m making the wrong decision.”

  “She believes in her magic. We can’t fault her for that,” he said.

  He didn’t get to defend her mom. Not on this one.

  “We can when it hurts my kid,” Penelope said. She tugged on the strip of paper on the table that Ella had ripped and tore it free. “I know you care about my mom, but you can’t honestly tell me you think this was okay.”

  He covered her hand with his. His large, warm fingers squeezed hers. “No, of course I don’t. I can try to talk to her if you want.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but this is something I need to make her understand on my own. She doesn’t have to agree with it, but I need her to respect my decision.” If she couldn’t, there was no way anyone else would.

  “You still haven’t told anyone about Ella’s condition?”

  “Only a few people. I’m sure you’ve seen how upset they all are about the festival. What do you think they’d do if they knew that we’d stopped Ella’s treatment?” she said.

  “I would hope they’d understand that this is the last option any of us want. I wouldn’t have recommended it if there was anything else I could do to save her.” He released her hand and gave her a sad, understanding smile. “But you are probably right. People around here tend to think everyone’s business is their business. They would make this even harder for both of you.”

  And that kind of judgment would haunt her the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Penelope left Ella on one of the shop’s sofas with a group of regulars and ushered her mom into the back where they wouldn’t make a scene. Waiting until the place was empty—or better yet, when they weren’t in the shop at all—would have been a better option, but she wouldn’t be able to work beside her mom all day, acting like she wasn’t fuming. Her emotions were too raw for that today.

  Half a dozen drawers on the apothecary table were open, just an inch or two of the insides showing. Penelope picked up a recipe card from the top of the table. Witch hazel and dark chocolate toffee. She’d never seen that recipe before. The toffee they sold was the nonmagical kind.

  “Mama,” Penelope said, the card trembling in her hand. “Is this what you used on her?”

  Sabina twisted her hands together and stared at the table instead of her daughter. “It was supposed to make her better. I didn’t think she’d get sick from it.”

  “Well, she did. I can’t believe you would do that to her.”

  “I thought it would help.”

  Penelope slammed her fist down on the table, rattling its contents and making a couple of the drawers bang shut. “Help? You gave my sick daughter something you’d never tried
. Something you had no idea how it would affect her. And you did it all behind my back. How is that helpful?”

  “I had to do something. You weren’t willing to try more aggressive treatment and I knew you’d say no to the recipe.”

  “Apparently for good reason. Your chocolates didn’t make her better. All you managed to do was give her a really bad night and keep her out of school for the day so now she has to start that bucket list item all over again.”

  Sabina rubbed a hand down Penelope’s arm, her fingers tightening hard when they reached her wrist. She only loosened her grip when Penelope met her eyes. “You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. I spent all night trying to get an antidote from the table, but it’s being stubborn.”

  “That’s because there isn’t anything that can fix her. How many times do we have to have this argument before you will listen?” Penelope jerked out of her mom’s grasp. She held her hands in front of her to keep her mom from touching her again.

  “What good does it do us to have magical chocolates if we can’t use them when we need them?” her mom asked.

  “I honestly don’t know, Mama.” She threw the recipe card onto the table. It slid across the surface and slipped over the back edge, lost between the table and the alcove wall. Too bad the damage had already been done. “I’ve always thought this magic was a gift. But lately all it seems to bring is pain.”

  Sabina shook her head, her dark curls whipping around her shoulders. “No, no, no. You know that is not true. Our chocolates help so many people, Penelope. You do the books every month. You know how busy we are. If we were hurting people, we would have gone out of business years ago. They would have run us out of town. The only one who is second-guessing the magic is you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not right,” Penelope said.

  “And it doesn’t mean that you are.”

  Ella stomped into the kitchen, hands on her hips and her best scolding look pinching her face. “We can hear you out there, you know.” She stared them both down and after a few seconds she whirled around and left.