Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “I’m not sure he’s even noticed, being preoccupied with someone else and all,” Layne said, unable to contain her overly bright smile.

  The truth chocolates were definitely a bad idea. Before the weekend was out, the whole town would know she and Noah had kissed. And suddenly her mom’s fears about being happy when they should be focused on Ella’s well-being instead seemed not only logical but right.

  “It’s not like that,” Penelope said.

  Most people would have rolled their eyes at her response, knowing she was lying. Thankfully Layne just said, “Okay. So, what can I do to help you with festival prep?”

  Together they hauled buckets around the park, depositing them where the girls dictated. And the girls ran to the firewood truck, loaded their arms with sticks, and walked faster than their mothers would have liked to the nearest stickless bucket to jab half a dozen sticks into the sand. While they worked, other volunteers erected a canopy tent and lined up folding tables beneath it where the hot chocolate and marshmallows would be passed out.

  Someone strung up a banner full of glittered cursive that was so fancy it took Penelope two tries to realize it said YOUR FATE AWAITS. The girls made up guesses for what it said, each one sillier than the last, until they once again ended up rolling on the ground laughing.

  When they finished with the sand and sticks, Penelope was content to just let the girls play. She and Layne sat on the top step of the gazebo where the sun shone strong, and while not exactly warm, at least it wasn’t as chilly as in the shade.

  “Okay, I’ve been trying not to ask, but I can’t ignore it anymore,” Layne said. She stretched back, resting on her elbows. “Does your kiss with Noah mean you’ve changed your mind about him?”

  Penelope’s stomach tightened at his name. Of course she wouldn’t get off that easily. “Not yet.” Instead of meeting the hopeful look she knew Layne was giving her, she kept her eyes trained in front of her. She hated that one kiss could make her forget she was supposed to keep him as far away from their hearts as possible. “But I’m thinking about it.”

  “Thinking is a slippery slope, my friend. At least when it comes to a Gregory. I’m pretty sure I thought about Tucker for a good month before he finally wore me down. Granted, I honestly didn’t think he was serious about wanting to go out with me because what motorcycle-riding loudmouth looks at the introverted fangirl and thinks, ‘Yep, I wanna hit that’? But for whatever reason he did think that and after all my thinking I realized he was pretty great.”

  “I hate to tell you, but it’s talk like that that’s making me want to run in the other direction. I’m not sure I’m ready for all that letting him into our lives entails.”

  Layne jerked up, her hand flying toward Penelope as if to physically stop her from running away. Shaking her head, she said, “Oh, no. Please don’t say that. He’ll never forgive me if I chase you off.”

  Penelope laughed and said, “It’s not you. Don’t worry. I’m just not—”

  “Wow. I think I’ve just reached a whole new level of awkward if you’re giving me the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ excuse in regards to your relationship with someone else.”

  “What I was trying to say,” Penelope started with a pointed look at Layne, “was that I’m just not sure I’m ready to believe Noah’s as great as he seems. Because even if he is a perfectly lovely human being and also not bad to look at, there’s still the issue of him not living here and me having a daughter who is already falling for him. That requires a massive amount of thinking.”

  Not to mention his history of breaking her heart, which required its own massive amount of thinking.

  In the end, whether she decided she wanted Noah in her life or not, she had to be absolutely sure. Regret was not an option.

  * * *

  Layne took the girls for a hot chocolate break while Penelope got roped into a discussion with Ruth Anne about whether or not Penelope and her mom had enough time to make the amount of Kismet hot chocolate needed for the festival.

  Like making hot chocolate wasn’t their full-time job. Penelope’s face stung from holding her smile in place for so long in the cold air. “I’ve got it covered. Don’t worry.”

  “Well, I’m not worried, honey. But you know how other people get. When Delilah said you might just be pretending to go along with all of this so you can wait to ruin the festival until it’s too late for any of us to do anything about it, I told her she’d been watching too many crime shows and it had made her paranoid.”

  “I said I would make the hot chocolate. Same as always. And I’m out here decorating, aren’t I? What more can I do to show that I’m doing what everyone wants?”

  Ruth Anne waved to someone behind Penelope, as if signaling them that she didn’t need reinforcements. The half a dozen bracelets on her right wrist jingled. Smiling at Penelope again, she said, “Just wait a few more days and it’ll all be over.”

  “No, it won’t,” Penelope said. She licked her cold-chapped lips. “Because when the hot chocolate doesn’t work, everyone’s going to blame me.”

  “Well, maybe last year’s was just a bad batch or there were too many of us wishing for the same thing and we overwhelmed the magic somehow. Who knows? But I’m counting on things to work out right this year.”

  Penelope wouldn’t hold her breath for that.

  She managed a halfway sincere goodbye when Ruth Anne went jogging off across the park, hand waving high over her head to flag down someone she needed to talk to more than Penelope.

  On the walk over to the Chocolate Cottage, Penelope kept her hat pulled low and her eyes trained on the ground a foot or two in front of her. In a few minutes she could hide in her shop to avoid the sympathetic smiles and skeptical stares. And she’d have the added bonus of proving to the people in town that she was doing exactly what she said she would.

  Half a block away, she walked right into someone else on the sidewalk.

  Rubbing her head where it had connected with what she assumed was the other person’s elbow, Penelope swore.

  “Sorry. I thought you saw me,” Zan said.

  “No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t paying attention,” Penelope said. The pain in her head was already retreating. Zan appeared to be unharmed, though she was clearly rattled. Her fingers picked at one of the buttons on her coat as she stayed directly in Penelope’s path. “You okay?”

  “He’s here.”

  Zan hadn’t been able to outrun her fate.

  Penelope reached for Zan’s arm and tugged her a few feet farther down the street where they would have some privacy. “Your ex?”

  “Yeah. He came in the cafe and sat there smiling at me just like in my dream. It was pretty surreal.”

  “Are you okay? Did he do anything to you?”

  Zan smiled for the first time since Penelope had plowed into her. “That’s the really weird part. He apologized. For everything. And not in the way that meant he just wanted me to forgive him so he could keep me placated and under his thumb. But like a real apology. No strings attached.”

  That was the thing with magic. The hot chocolate showed people a glimpse of their futures, but without the full context, the drinker would have to choose whether what they’d dreamed was good or bad.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that it wasn’t what you thought it was,” Penelope said. She allowed them both a silent moment of victory, then she added, “Do you think you can trust him?”

  “For the day or two that he’s in town? Yeah. I can manage that much.”

  “He’s staying?”

  “It’s the festival. He overheard people in the cafe talking about it and now he wants to stay and check it out,” Zan said.

  And of course nobody bothered to tell him it wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good. Penelope caught Zan’s gaze and held it. “And after that, he’s just going to leave?”

  “That’s what he said.” Zan shrugged. “And he asked if that was okay with me. If he stayed, I mean. I think he would’
ve left right then if I’d told him to.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I’m sick of being scared of him. He can only hurt me if I let him, so I decided it was way past time to stop. It’s what I wished for at last year’s Festival of Fate. I figured it’s fitting that’s where it will come true.”

  Penelope hoped for Zan’s sake it would work out that way.

  29

  Between the festival preparation, hours laughing with River, and her body simply not being able to keep up, Ella had worn herself out. When Penelope checked on her on the way to bed herself, Ella was buried under the covers, her hair sticking out the top of her cocoon the only visible part of her. Penelope watched her for a few minutes, grateful that they’d had more good days than bad lately.

  Just as she turned away, Ella’s bucket list caught her eye on the nightstand. Ella’s favorite stuffed zebra, Pierre, guarded it, with two bean-filled legs holding it in place. Penelope hadn’t seen it since they’d checked off dyeing her hair a couple of weeks before. In fact, she hadn’t heard her daughter mention it in days. That did not bode well for either of them. The last time Ella had been so quiet about what was on her list, she had added “get a tattoo” and then spent two full days ignoring Penelope after she’d vetoed it.

  There was something to be said for respecting a child’s privacy. But preparing for the potential fallout from another crushed dream had its merits too. It only took her a second to choose. And even then it wasn’t so much a choice as a foregone conclusion.

  Penelope tiptoed into the room. She stepped on something that, in the dark, could have been a dropped fruit snack or a bug. Either way, she didn’t want to run into it again. She scrubbed the sole of her foot on the carpet to obliterate the cool, sticky sensation from her skin.

  After checking to make sure Ella was still wrapped up tight, she bent to read the list. The top of it faced out, whatever Ella was keeping from Penelope hidden under her stuffed animal’s rump. Pierre tumbled from the table as she tugged the paper free, and she caught him a few inches before he thudded onto the floor. She crouched down to read the note in the soft pink haze from the night-light plugged into the wall.

  And there at the bottom, written twice as large as the rest of the list, were two new entries that stole her breath.

  21. Fix Mama’s hart.

  22. Make Noah my DAD.

  * * *

  The list was gone when Penelope went in to wake Ella up for school. She’d wondered, for just a moment, if she’d made up what she’d read the night before. If maybe her head and heart were no longer on the same page about Noah and her subconscious was trying to push her in a new direction. Then she saw the corner of the paper sticking out from under her daughter’s pillow where she’d tried to hide it. Which meant that those two new items were real, and it was in fact Ella, not her subconscious, who was trying to redirect her.

  She waited until Ella was dressed and had stashed the list in her backpack, then she said, “We need to talk about your list.”

  Ella hugged her bag to her chest. “I’m not gonna show it to anyone, Mama. I just like to have it with me in case I come up with a new idea and need to write it down so I don’t forget.”

  “I’m okay with you taking it to school as long as you don’t bring it out during class. But that’s not what I meant. I know you added me and Noah to your list.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘oh.’” Penelope patted the unmade bed for Ella to sit next to her. “You know those things are probably not going to happen, don’t you?” And by probably she meant definitely. There was no fixing her heart as long as Ella was still sick. And Noah would only ever be Ella’s dad in the biological sense of the word. Actually being in her life day in and day out, helping raise her and love her like a dad should—that was never in the cards.

  Ella took Penelope’s hand and traced big, lopsided hearts on her palm with her finger. “They might. If your heart wasn’t broken anymore then you could fall in love with Noah and he would want to stay with us. And he could stay with you after I’m gone to make sure you’re not too sad.”

  Penelope closed her fingers around Ella’s and squeezed. “My heart is not broken, Ella. And I’m not going to fall in love with Noah.” Not if I can help it. Though that was getting harder by the day.

  “But Grams said the table gave you a recipe to fix your heart.”

  “Grams should not have told you that. But anyway, it’s not for now. As long as you’re around, my heart will be very much whole so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “But what about Noah?” Ella asked.

  “What about him?” Penelope countered and released Ella’s hand.

  “If you’re not going to be in love with him, I need to ask the table for a way to make him stay.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about him, Ella. If he’s supposed to stay in Malarkey, he will. You can tell him you don’t want him to go, you can show him how good things could be if he stayed, but you cannot use magic to make that happen. It doesn’t work that way. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ella hopped off the bed and shouldered her backpack. “But I can still check the table, right? You know, not for something that will make Noah stay, but for something to show him that I want him to.”

  “You don’t need a recipe to do that,” Penelope said.

  “But what if the magic is the only way he’ll believe that he belongs with us?”

  Penelope shook her head. Reasoning with her daughter was pointless. But she tried anyway. “If he really does belong here”—she couldn’t bring herself to say that he belonged with them—“then he’ll know it all on his own.”

  Ella wrapped her arms around Penelope’s neck. With their foreheads pressed together, she said, “But can I at least try to find something? Just in case.”

  “You can try,” Penelope said.

  But fate had already made up its mind about Noah. Not even Ella’s stubbornness would change it.

  * * *

  After seven drawers, Ella’s high-pitched squeak reverberated through the kitchen at the Chocolate Cottage. She shoved her fist in the air, a white card clutched in her fingers. Her stunned smile and wide eyes lit up her face.

  “It’s cookies!”

  Penelope took the offered recipe and skimmed it. A standard recipe with ingredients and measurements and bake times. But no magic mentioned. “Dark chocolate with white chocolate chunks. Sounds yummy.”

  “But what do they do? I couldn’t read that part.”

  Sabina looked up from the mound of pretzels she had yet to submerge in chocolate. Her sleek eyebrows, still as dark and unmarred by gray as the rest of her hair, arched in question.

  “These don’t seem to do anything,” Penelope said. She waved the recipe card in front of her, attempting to deflect any criticism for letting Ella use the table for personal gain.

  “It’s just cookies?”

  “Yep.” Penelope whispered a silent thank you to the universe for not feeding into Ella’s desire for a magical intervention.

  Ella yanked the card away, slicing the skin between Penelope’s thumb and forefinger. She inhaled an audible breath at the quick stab of pain.

  “Why would it do this to me?” Ella asked, her voice teetering on tears.

  Sucking on the paper cut, Penelope leaned into the table next to her mom. She nudged her shoulder. “Maybe the table’s trying to tell you the same thing as I have been. Magic won’t make him stay.”

  “But how will cookies make him stay? He can get those anywhere.”

  “No, these he can only get from you,” Sabina said, hugging Ella to her side. Then she pressed a kiss to Ella’s head. “That’s what makes them special.”

  “Can we make them today? Maybe if he eats them before the festival, he’ll want to use his wish on us!” Her fingers automatically wrapped around her necklace as she pulled away from her grandmother and bounced with excitement.

  Even a
fter what Noah had told her when he’d eaten the truth chocolates—even after their kiss—Penelope couldn’t imagine him staying. Not when the happy future she’d once promised him no longer existed. She flicked a finger on the recipe and said, “These are going to have to wait until after the festival. Grams and I still have a lot of work to do before tomorrow night. We can make them while you’re out of school next week.” She took the recipe and hid it in the back pocket of her jeans.

  “But, Mama—”

  “No, ma’am. The only butt here is yours and it’s going to sit patiently on the sofa out front while I figure out a plan for today,” Penelope said.

  If only figuring out what to do about Noah was as easy as making a list.

  30

  Layne was a godsend. She stopped by the shop with River that afternoon and ended up taking Ella home with them so Penelope and her mom could finish all of their prep for the festival. With the influx of customers wanting an extra boost of magic before the festival, they were still working nonstop. And they had yet to make the Kismet hot chocolate.

  Penelope knew the recipe by heart, but she still searched the table until she found it hidden underneath a block of chocolate. The lavender she needed, however, was in the first drawer she opened, as if once the table knew what she was making, it couldn’t wait for her to complete it.

  “I’ll need to make at least one batch,” Sabina said.

  Penelope crushed the lavender petals she’d measured out into a bowl with the pestle, releasing the flowers’ oils. “It’s okay. I don’t plan on drinking any, so I can make all of it.”

  “You’re not even going to try this year? You’re just giving up?”

  “If you consider accepting your fate—meeting it head-on—giving up, then yes. I guess I am.” She didn’t see any other option left. “Plus, after all the fuss I made about the hot chocolate, I would be a hypocrite if I drank it expecting anything to change.”

  Sabina smoothed a hand over the handkerchief covering Penelope’s hair. “Of course the magic won’t work if you don’t open yourself up to it.”