Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “My kind of girl,” he said.

  Ella scooted closer to him, resting her shoulder against his side. Her smile was quick but instead of beaming up at him, she tucked her chin into her chest and grinned to herself.

  Penelope’s pulse stuttered. She might be willing to risk her heart with Noah, but Ella’s was a whole other story. Getting her heart broken was not an experience Penelope wanted her daughter to have.

  For once she was thankful that Ella took after Sabina in the chatterbox department. Their constant stream of conversation gave her time to wrangle her nerves into something resembling calm by the time their food arrived.

  Noah wiped the grease from his fingers onto a napkin and sat back into the cushion. He stretched his legs underneath the table, brushing Penelope’s calf. He caught her eyes and smiled, leaving their legs touching. Ella wiped the hair back from her face and streaked pizza sauce across her temple. Penelope reached for a napkin, but Noah beat her to it. He rubbed it on the side of his glass to dampen it and dabbed it on Ella’s hair. She jerked away from him, twisting her mouth into an annoyed scowl.

  “Hey! Why’d you do that? That was cold!” she said. She grabbed his hand and held it in her small fist.

  “Well, if you hadn’t gotten pizza everywhere I wouldn’t have to do it. So really it’s all your fault, not mine,” he said.

  He fought to keep his smile from spreading when she opened her mouth as if to argue but ended up grinning at him instead. She closed her eyes and let him pull her back to wipe the remaining sauce away.

  “Thanks,” she said when he released her.

  “No problem, kid.” He snagged a bit of discarded crust from Ella’s plate and popped it in his mouth.

  Ella transferred the other crust to his plate. “My mom usually eats my crusts, but you can have them tonight.” She cupped her hands around his water glass and slid them up and down to soak up as much of the condensation on her hands as she could. Then she scrubbed them clean with an extra napkin.

  “Hey, now. You’re giving away all my crust?” Penelope asked.

  “Sorry. I forgot you like them,” Noah said. Ripping the piece in half, he held one out to Penelope. “I’m willing to share. At least with people who agree to have dinner with me again ’cause those people make me happy and people who make me happy deserve half-eaten crusts.”

  Laughing, she said, “I’d hate to see what people who don’t make you happy get.” She held on to the end of the crust, her fingers overlapping the tips of his. “Will you accept a maybe?”

  “How about we talk about it after I get back?”

  “Where are you going?” Ella asked, snuggling closer into Noah’s side and pulling his arm down around her other side as if that would keep him from ever leaving.

  “Sweetie, you know he’s just here for a little while. He has to go home and get back to his life.”

  “But he can’t,” Ella said. Turning her face into Noah’s chest, she mumbled against his shirt. Her fingers fumbled with the necklace around her neck and closed it in her fist. “You can’t go.”

  Noah stiffened. After a few seconds, his fingers stroked down Ella’s hair and he said, “I’ve gotta go back at least for a little bit. My cat’s still at my apartment and I bet she thinks I abandoned her and is plotting to kill me if I ever return.”

  “I hope you left her a big bag of food. She’s probably hungry if you didn’t. That would definitely make her want to kill you if you let her starve.”

  “I’ve got a friend taking care of her for me. But I still want to go see her myself just to make sure she’s okay and tell her that I still love her.” His smile faltered.

  Penelope pictured him as she had in her dream, lying on a couch with a cat snuggled on his chest in place of Ella’s zebra. She forced herself to look away. It would be way too easy to fall for him if she kept thinking like that.

  “Why don’t you just bring her here? Then you wouldn’t have to leave again,” Ella said.

  “I wish I could, but Fish is allergic to cats, so Bombay’s banned from their house,” he said.

  “I’ve been trying to find a cat. It’s on my list and everything.” Ella pushed off of him but left her hands plastered against his ribcage. She smiled so wide her gums showed. “Hey, maybe I haven’t found one because I’m supposed to get yours! We could keep her for you. I’d feed her twice a day and give her water and pet her until she purred. And you could come over and see her anytime you wanted.”

  Yep. Ground rules were a must. Number two on the list: No offering to take in Noah’s cat without asking permission.

  “I think we need to take a step back there, Ella,” Penelope said.

  Noah ruffled Ella’s hair like he always did with River. “As much as Bombay would love that, I’m not sure your mom wants to take on my kid too.”

  “She’s not your kid. She’s your cat.”

  “It’s close enough to the same thing,” he said. “It’s a little pathetic how much I miss that cat. She has these big sapphire eyes, and when she looks up at you, it’s like she hypnotizes you and the next thing you know you’ve lost an hour just scratching under her chin and between her ears.”

  “I want to lose an hour that way,” Ella said. She poked a finger into his side, making him squirm. “Will you bring her back with you, Noah?”

  He flicked his eyes to Penelope’s as if looking for a clue as to how he should respond. “Maybe on one of my trips I will.”

  Penelope held his gaze and asked a question of her own. “Are you planning on making a lot of them, even after Tucker’s back to work?”

  “I guess that depends on you,” he said.

  Her stomach lurched. Did what she wanted really matter to him now? “That’s not a lot of pressure or anything.”

  Noah’s lips tugged to one side. “Don’t worry, it’s not only on you. I already promised Fish I would come visit more often. But knowing you want me around too would definitely factor into the frequency.”

  “I don’t know what I want,” she said.

  And the not knowing scared her almost as much as Ella’s certainty that he should stay.

  26

  Penelope beat her mom to work and was grateful for the quiet. There was something magical about the shop in the early morning, when the scents of the candies had been shut up together for the night, blending together and creating a perfume so sweet and engulfing she couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.

  In the third drawer down, second row over, where she normally found the dried anchos, sat a leather pouch the color of burning butter. The thin straps formed a knot at the neck of the bag. The outline of some kind of flower had been branded onto the top side. Penelope traced her finger over the soft leather as she removed it. The knot unraveled with minimal effort and she lifted out a metal tin of black salt crystals and an airplane bottle of an Irish whiskey she’d never heard of before. She reached back in for the recipe she knew would be waiting. Ink so dark it almost looked wet covered the crisp, white card.

  Truth Drug.

  Holding the card by the edges, she read the rest of the elegant script that flowed onto the back to complete the directions.

  She glared at the dark whiskey. The gold-and-black label shimmered in the light as she carried it to the work table. “Of course the recipe for truth is based on alcohol. Could you have been any less subtle?” she asked the table.

  She gathered the remaining ingredients but couldn’t make herself combine them.

  “What is that?” her mom asked when she came in twenty minutes later and found Penelope still staring at the paper.

  “A new recipe,” she said, not looking up.

  Sabina unwound her scarf and hung it up along with her coat in the alcove by the office. “Yes, I can see that, honey. I meant what is it for?” Her usually dreamy voice held a hint of worry that sharpened it.

  Penelope heard her mom’s unasked question: Will it help Ella?

  She flicked her finger on the thick paper. “It’
s for salted whiskey caramels that force you to tell the truth.”

  “Well, the table doesn’t offer up gifts just because. Do you think someone’s been lying to you?”

  She pinched the base of her neck to relieve the tension that knotted in her muscles. Sabina still hadn’t mentioned her date with Marco. But that was a truth to tackle another day. “No. I think it’s more that I want answers to questions I’m not ready to ask.”

  “Are you afraid you won’t like them?”

  I’m afraid I will. After her conversation with Noah the night before, Penelope was pretty sure she already knew some of the answers. Despite her resolve to remember why she shouldn’t like him, some buried-deep part of her yearned for them to be true. And she didn’t yet know what to think of that.

  “If I know the answers then I’ll have to do something about them. And I’ve gotten really good at ignoring this particular situation. I’m not sure I’m ready to change it,” she said.

  “Sometimes you don’t get a choice.” Sabina uncapped the salt, plucked out a few chunky crystals, and dropped them on her tongue. “And sometimes you’re just too stubborn for your own good. At least when the table tells you something, you listen.”

  “Will you let me test them on you?” Penelope asked.

  “I doubt I’d have anything interesting to tell you.”

  Not true. But she let it slide. “Don’t worry, you’re not the one I’m trying to get information out of. Just be my guinea pig. I need to see how they work so I know what I’m looking for when I give them to Noah.”

  Shaking her head, Sabina said, “If you want to know if he’s the one, you could just drink the hot chocolate. You don’t need to charm the boy.”

  She wanted to tell her mom it wasn’t about that, but the lie wouldn’t form. Instead she said, “I know you want me to settle down and be happy, and some days I think I want that too. But it’s not that easy when it comes to him, Mama.” She rapped her knuckles on the table, the sound echoing in the silence.

  Everything Noah had done since he’d been back in town suggested he was interested in starting something with her again. And at dinner the night before, he’d said where things went from here was up to her. Now she just had to figure out what she wanted.

  “That’s all I get?”

  “Until I know what to do about him, yes. If there’s more to tell at some point, I promise to tell you whatever you want to know. For now, can you just trust me to handle this on my own?”

  “I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Sabina snatched the recipe off of the counter and read it, her mouth moving with each silent word.

  They worked in relative silence for the next half hour, with only Sabina’s soft whistling filling the air. Penelope measured each ingredient with a preciseness she’d honed over the years. Eyeballing it and hoping it was close enough was not an option. Her mom stood to the side, reading the recipe again over her shoulder as Penelope worked. They were so used to each other’s movements in the kitchen, it was like a dance. When Penelope shifted to melt sugar on the stove, her mom turned in the opposite direction to line the bar pan with parchment. When they came back to the center worktable, their arms never crossed as Sabina held the pan and Penelope poured the bubbling golden liquid into it.

  A few hours later, when the caramels had finally thickened into a semihard, pliable state, Penelope turned them out onto the cutting board and sliced them first into strips and then into squares. Then she tempered the chocolate and dipped them one by one, until the dark chocolate settled into an even, shiny coat. She sprinkled three crystals of salt on each caramel before the chocolate cooled.

  Her mom had a sixth sense about candies and instinctively walked into the kitchen as soon as Penelope finished. “Ready?” Sabina asked. She reached for a caramel, but Penelope snatched it out of her reach.

  “Are you ready? I don’t know how these’ll affect you. You could just be compelled to answer my questions or you might spill everything unprovoked. Is there anything you don’t want me to know before we start this?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe not, but if I can steer clear of certain topics, I will.”

  “Just promise me you won’t probe too deep if you don’t have to and we’ll be good.”

  Penelope kissed her mom’s cheek. “I promise. And thanks.”

  Sabina took the caramel Penelope handed her, her long nails sinking into the still-soft sides. She bit it in half and let the chocolate and sugar melt on her tongue instead of chewing. Her pupils darkened, contracting for a few seconds, and then returned to normal.

  “How do they taste?”

  “The whiskey’s got a bitter kick, but the chocolate mellows it some. It almost feels like it’s coating my throat, making it smoother. I can feel it in my lungs too, like a warm tingling, almost a tickle.” Sweat glistened on Sabina’s brow and beaded on her top lip. She lifted the mass of curls off of her neck and fanned her hand around her neck.

  Shit, this was a bad idea. What if it was too much for her? What if there’s a limit to how much magic one body can take before it breaks? Penelope poured a glass of tap water and pressed it into her mom’s hands. “Come sit down, Mama.” She led her by the elbow to one of the cushy wingback chairs out front.

  A few of the customers sitting at tables and on the couches smiled at them before averting their eyes. Her mom had served them all while Penelope worked on the caramels. If she was lucky, no one else would come in until her experiment was finished.

  “I’m fine,” Sabina said, straightening her skirt around her ankles once she sat. “It was just a tad strong there for a minute. I’m okay now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.” She pressed her fingers to her lips, the bright-red nails almost an exact match to her lipstick. She sipped the water before setting it on the table. “Looks like the recipe works.”

  Penelope gripped her mom’s shoulders and forced her to meet her scrutinizing stare. Sabina’s eyes contracted again, the brown of her irises marbled with flecks of gold and green. “Yeah, that’s not comforting at the moment. If you’re not okay, I need to figure out how to fix it. Do you want to go see Marco?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, no. It’s just a hot flash. These chocolates aren’t going to kill me, so you can stop worrying about that. And, for that matter, the others aren’t either. I know what I’m doing. I never take too much.”

  Now that the truth was out there, she couldn’t ignore it. “So, it’s always on purpose?” she probed.

  “Don’t act surprised. You and I both know you’ve thought it for years. You just didn’t want to know the truth so you didn’t ask outright. That seems to be a recurring theme for you, doesn’t it?” Sabina paused and patted the armrest. “Oh, my, I think these chocolates might work a little too well.” She kept her voice low, conspiratorial.

  When Penelope sat, her mom’s arm snaked around her waist to hold her in place. She rested her head on top of her mom’s and hugged her back. “Would you have told me the truth without these chocolates?” she asked.

  Her mom stiffened and mumbled something under her breath. “Probably not,” she said louder.

  “Why not?”

  Sabina released Penelope and shifted to the far side of the chair. She was small enough that the move put a few inches of cushion between them. “I know it upsets you. But sometimes I can’t help it. Sometimes reality is too much to bear.”

  Penelope knew that struggle all too well. But happiness was a choice, and she was determined to be grateful for each day she got to spend with her daughter. “It doesn’t have to be. I had really hoped your date with Marco would help you to see that.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw you at the cafe. You looked happy.”

  Sabina shook her head as if to deny it. “I was,” she whispered.

  The sadness in her voice broke Penelope’s heart. “Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?”

  “How is i
t fair that I get to have something to look forward to when Ella is so sick? At least with the Bittersweet chocolates I don’t have to feel guilty about being happy because everyone knows it’s only temporary.”

  Penelope took her mom’s hand and laced their fingers together. “There’s not a person in this town who would blame you for finding something good in the middle of all this. Not one.”

  “I would blame me,” her mom said.

  “Well, you’d be wrong.”

  Sabina gave a small laugh. “I feel a little sorry for what Noah’s about to go through with these chocolates. But I hope you find out what you want to.”

  “Me too,” Penelope said. Though suddenly she wasn’t so sure she could go through with it.

  27

  Rehab was only a few blocks down the street, but Penelope was shivering by the time she reached the carved wood front door that had been salvaged from a church. She’d called in a to-go order to keep from chickening out. Curling her fingers tighter around the bag of chocolate, she went inside. Tucker waved her over to the bar where he sat with his cast propped up on the lower rungs of the stool next to him. A pair of crutches leaned against the dark-stained bar top on his other side.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” he said, his mouth tugging hard to the left in an amused smirk. Shifting his attention away from her, he said, “You might not be as rusty as you think, bro.”

  “Being flirted with by high school girls is not what I was hoping for,” Noah said from somewhere behind the bar.

  Penelope sat on a stool two down from Tucker and said, “Oh, c’mon, I thought that was every guy’s dream.”

  Noah stayed crouched, restocking the beer on the lower shelves of the cooler, his back to her. His gray thermal rode up an inch or so, revealing a smooth strip of skin above the top of his jeans. “I’m not looking to go to jail, Penelope.”

  She heard the smile in his voice even though he didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to think about what it meant that he recognized her voice immediately. “Smart move.”

  “Yeah,” Tucker said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair that was a few shades darker than Noah’s. “I’m not bailing your ass out if you do something that stupid.”