Brydie tried to stifle a giggle, but couldn’t.
“Don’t you think he’s a dish?” Pauline asked, giving one of Brydie’s arms a pinch.
Brydie stopped giggling and cleared her throat. Now the fluttering in her stomach felt like a swarm of butterflies doing somersaults. Without looking at Nathan, she said, “Yes.”
“See?” Pauline said, lifting her chin up into the air. “It’s unanimous.”
“Okay.” Nathan lifted his hands into the air. “You win, Mrs. Neumann.”
Pauline smiled, and Teddy jumped back into her lap. “Oh, my darling boy,” she said. “How I miss you.”
“I’ve invited Brydie to bring Teddy to the Halloween party,” Nathan said, stepping farther into the suite.
Pauline clapped her hands together around Teddy. “Oh! That would be lovely.”
“I’m not sure what my work schedule will be,” Brydie said. It was a lie, and Brydie didn’t even know why she was telling it. She wanted to go, and it would be a nice thing to do for Mrs. Neumann. Still, it had been so long since she’d gone out and done anything that the thought of the effort made her nervous. “But I’ll try to make it.”
“Please do,” Pauline replied. “It would make me very happy.”
“I promise I’ll do my very best to be here.”
“I should probably get going,” Nathan said. “I hope you two enjoy the rest of your visit.”
Once he was gone, Pauline turned her attention back to Brydie. “Dr. Sexy says he sees you at the dog park.”
“The first time, Teddy threw up on his shoes,” Brydie confessed. “I didn’t think I’d see him again, but then he was here when Teddy and I came to see you.”
“That’s Germantown for you,” Pauline replied. “Memphis is a big city, but Germantown can feel very, very small.”
“I’m from Jonesboro,” Brydie said. “It’s not a small town, but I know what you mean. Sometimes it seems like everybody knows everybody.”
“So we’re both Arkansas girls,” Pauline said. “Well, from one Arkansas girl to another, I think the doctor is sweet on you.”
This time it was Brydie’s turn to blush. “He’s just very nice.”
“Honey, I’ve had four husbands. I know what it looks like when a man is sweet on a woman.”
Brydie was beginning to wonder how often Mrs. Neumann was going to mention her four husbands. “Well, I’ve just had one husband, and he was sweet on me for over a decade until one day he wasn’t.”
“And that’s why he’s not your husband anymore.”
“Now he’s sweet on someone else.”
The old woman nodded. “We don’t always get it right on the first try.”
“Or the second or the third,” Brydie replied with a wry smile.
“Right you are, kiddo. Right you are.” Pauline laughed. “Although I am sorry. Husband number three was a bit like that. We never should have gotten married in the first place.”
“Why did you?” Brydie asked, unable to help herself.
“I was on the run,” Pauline said, raising one of her penciled-in eyebrows ever so slightly. “I wasn’t even divorced from husband number two when we met, but that chemistry!” She raised her hands up in the air in mock praise. “It was too much to resist.”
“You were on the run from your second husband?”
“Oh, he wasn’t abusive, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Pauline said, adjusting the blanket on her lap after Teddy jumped down to inspect breakfast crumbs under the bed. “I was on the run from Stuttgart. From his family. From mine. From tiny minds in a tiny town.”
Brydie nodded. She knew what Pauline meant. Jonesboro wasn’t a small town, not really, but that didn’t mean that after Allan and Cassandra got together people didn’t talk, because they did—especially her own mother. “I can understand that,” she said.
“I was never meant for small town life,” Pauline continued. “I wanted to experience things. I wanted to see things. I wanted to live.”
“I grew up in Jonesboro,” Brydie said. “I always lived in Jonesboro until I moved here.”
“It’s a might better than Stuttgart,” Pauline replied. “But you mean to say you’ve never lived anywhere else?”
“Not until now.”
“And this ex-husband of yours . . .”
“Allan.”
“This, Allan, was he your first boyfriend?”
Brydie thought about that. She’d dated in high school before she met Allan, but it had never been anything serious. “I was nineteen when I met him,” she said, finally. “He was older than me, and I guess you could say he was my first serious boyfriend.”
“And was he . . . your first everything?”
It took Brydie a moment to figure out what Pauline was asking her. When she did, her face turned bright red. “I, uh, I . . .”
“Oh for goodness’ sakes!” Pauline exclaimed, so loud it startled Teddy, who knocked his head against the underside of the bed. “It’s just sex. No need to be embarrassed.”
Brydie let out a laugh that sounded more like a cough and said, “My grandmother never would have asked anyone about sex, let alone said the word.”
“Bless your heart,” Pauline replied. “I’m nobody’s grandmother.”
“Well,” Brydie said, recovering slightly. “Yes. I guess you could say he was my first everything. I just . . .” Brydie trailed off, shrugging. “I thought he was perfect, you know?”
“Nobody, especially no man, is perfect.”
“I know,” Brydie said.
“Do you?” Pauline replied. “You don’t sound so sure.”
Brydie let out a breath. She knew Pauline was right. Obviously Allan wasn’t perfect. But she sometimes felt like it was her fault, everything that happened, and that if she’d just been more in some way, none of this would have happened. “I do,” she said at last, trying to sound more confident. “Of course I know that.”
Pauline’s blue eyes narrowed into slits and with a wave of her hand she said, “Well, at least now you’re in Memphis.” Her eyes were sparkling. “The city that never sleeps.”
“I thought that was New York City,” Brydie said. “And I’m pretty sure there is a curfew in Germantown.”
“Nonsense,” Pauline said. “This is the perfect city to find yourself inside when you feel like you may never recover.” The old woman took Brydie’s hand and squeezed it. “Trust me, I know.”
Brydie thought about Mrs. Neumann’s words on the way back from the nursing home. She hadn’t ever given much thought to the fact that Allan had been her first for so many things. She’d been just nineteen when they met, and was inexperienced. Elliott had been the same way when she met Leo, but many of their other friends were sexually active from the time they were in high school. Brydie, quiet and self-conscious, wasn’t the kind of girl in whom most boys were interested. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen so hard for Allan. He was an experienced man, and he was interested in her. In her! He’d taken his time with her. He’d never pushed her to do anything she didn’t want to do, and in turn, Brydie worshipped him.
She’d always thought Allan would be her husband forever, right up until the moment she’d signed the divorce papers. She hadn’t thought of her marriage as right or wrong, but rather that her marriage had been good and then bad. Now she was beginning to think that maybe it had been wrong the whole time. And if that was true, maybe she was going to get a second chance to find out for herself what was right.
CHAPTER 11
THE REST OF THE WORKWEEK PASSED SURPRISINGLY FAST for Brydie, and before she knew it, it was her last night at ShopCo before her three days off.
“If I never see another ghost-shaped cookie, it’ll be too soon,” Joe grumbled, squeezing the last of the white icing out of his icing gun.
“You say that every year,” Rosa replied, refilling his gun. “You’ll feel the same way about turkeys next month.”
“I love Halloween,” Brydie said. “Actually, I l
ove just about every holiday. It’s an excuse to bake.”
“You don’t need an excuse to bake,” Joe said. “You work in a bakery.”
“But I don’t get to bake ghosts in July.”
“No, in July it’s fucking American flags.”
“Language!” Rosa said. She wagged her finger at Joe. “You know what you have to do now.”
“I’m not putting money into that fucking swear jar.”
“That’s two dollars!” Rosa reached underneath the counter and pulled out a mason jar with “Swear Jar” painted on the side.
“No.”
“Joe.”
“Rosa.”
Rosa shook the jar at Joe’s face. “You promised.”
“Fine,” Joe said, letting out a deep sigh. He pulled off the plastic gloves he was wearing, reached into the pocket of his pants, and pulled out his wallet. “Here.”
“We started a swear jar a few months ago,” Rosa explained to Brydie as she put the two crisp one-dollar bills into the jar. “Joe swears like a sailor, and Lillian has a tendency to repeat things. She called the priest a rat bastard as we accepted communion last month.”
Brydie burst out laughing. She looked over at Joe, who was smiling down into the ghost cookies. “I understand why you started a swear jar, but it doesn’t sound like it’s helped much.”
“It hasn’t,” Rosa agreed. “My favorite holiday is Christmas,” she said. “It always has been.”
“Mine, too!” Brydie said. “I love picking out a tree and caroling and baking gingerbread cookies.” She paused, and then continued with a laugh, “Basically, I love anything clichéd about Christmas.”
“My parents emigrated here from Venezuela before I was born,” Rosa said. “They were devout Catholics. We had the most beautiful nativity that my mother brought over, carefully packed in one of the two suitcases she came with. She told me once that she had to leave half of her clothing behind just to make it fit. Now I have it, and it’s the very first thing Lillie and I do when we decorate. It goes up the first week of November, and we don’t take it down until after the New Year.”
“Wow,” Brydie murmured. “My nativity is from Dollar General.”
“And my absolute favorite part of Christmas is the food,” Rosa continued. “December twenty-first is El Día de los Reyes Magos, and that’s the day we prepare hallacas, my favorite dish.”
“What is that?”
“Oh, Brydie, I’ll have to make some for you sometime,” Rosa replied. “It’s usually a mixture of beef, pork, chicken, capers, raisins, and olives. We wrap it in maize and plantation leaves and tie it up and boil it. It’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”
“I would love that,” Brydie said in earnest. “My mother never cooked much, and since my father died, and even more so after my divorce, I don’t get a home-cooked meal by anyone other than myself.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Rosa said. She reached out and stroked Brydie’s cheek. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
“It’s okay,” Brydie replied, her face warming to Rosa’s touch. “It was a few years ago.”
“And now you live alone,” Rosa said, turning her gaze to Lillian. “Everybody ought to have somebody.”
Brydie followed Rosa’s eyes to Lillian, whose back was to them. She’d been standing there for almost two hours, working on cake after cake. It amazed Brydie that all Rosa had to do was read the cake order to Lillian, and she could create exactly what the client asked for. Each cake was more gorgeous than the last. Brydie had to admit that she was more than a little jealous of Lillian’s artistic abilities.
She walked over and stood next to Lillian. “That looks gorgeous,” Brydie said.
Lillian didn’t look up. She was instead swaying back and forth, from one foot to the other, whispering, “Four tulips. Red, yellow, pink, purple. Happy Birthday, Jessica. Four tulips. Red, yellow, pink, purple. Happy Birthday, Jessica. Four tulips. Red, yellow, pink, purple. Happy Birthday, Jessica,” over and over and over.
“Did you take those witch’s hats out of the oven?” Joe asked Brydie, turning away from his ghost cookies. “It smells like something is burning.”
“Shit!” Brydie ran to the back and pulled open the oven. “Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.”
“Well, at least they’re the right color,” Rosa said, nodding toward the now-charred hats.
“Great,” Joe said, throwing the door open to the back. “Just great. That’s a hundred cookies we have to redo.”
“I’m sorry,” Brydie replied. “I set the timer, but I guess I didn’t hear it go off.”
“None of us heard it,” Rosa said, patting Brydie on the arm.
“Now we’re gonna be here an extra two hours fixing your mistake,” Joe continued. “Two hours we won’t get paid for.”
“I can stay,” Brydie said. “I’ll stay and make sure they get done.”
“I don’t know if you can be trusted to fix it,” Joe said.
Brydie felt on the verge of tears. She couldn’t believe she’d made such a dumb mistake—a rookie mistake. She was supposed to be a professional. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
Joe opened his mouth to speak, but Rosa cut him off. “It’s okay,” she said. “Lillian and I will stay to help. It’s just a batch of cookies. It’s really not the end of the world.”
Joe let out a snort, but didn’t say anything else. Instead he turned around and trudged out of the room.
Once he was gone, Brydie let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Thank you,” she said to Rosa. “I thought Joe was going to fire me.”
“Ignore him,” Rosa replied. “Well, don’t ignore him. He’s our boss. But you just have to know when to take what he says to heart and when to ignore it.”
“He seemed pretty angry.”
“He’ll get over it,” Rosa said. “He burns cookies all the time. He’s hard on everybody at first.”
“You really don’t have to stay and help me,” Brydie said. “This wasn’t your mistake.”
“Lillian and I don’t mind. Besides, you won’t get any help from that morning crew, that’s for sure.”
“Thank you.” Brydie felt the tears welling up again. “I’ve just been kind of distracted tonight.”
“You got family troubles?” Rosa asked. “Man troubles?”
Brydie grinned, despite her embarrassment. “That would take longer to explain than those cookies will,” she said.
“Kid, we’ve got all night.”
“I got invited to a Halloween party,” Brydie said. “By this guy I kind of know.”
Rosa clapped her hands together. “Oh, it is a man!”
“It’s not like that,” Brydie replied. “It’s at a nursing home.”
“Your man lives in a nursing home?” Rosa asked. She wrinkled her nose. “You got a thing for older men? I thought you said you had an ex-husband, not a dead husband.”
“No!” Brydie said. “The guy is a doctor at the nursing home. I’m dog-sitting for a woman who lives there. Last week the doctor invited me to the Halloween party at the nursing home.”
“Oh.” Rosa was visibly relieved. “Do you like this doctor?”
Brydie shrugged. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve done this,” Brydie said. “I can’t tell if he’s interested in me or if he’s just being nice.”
“Honey, a man doesn’t invite a woman to a party if he isn’t interested,” Rosa said.
“Even a party at a nursing home?”
Rosa chuckled, covering her mouth with her hands in an effort to stop. “Even at a nursing home.”
Brydie was encouraged. “Well, if I go, I’m going to need to find a Halloween costume for me and Teddy.”
“Who’s Teddy?” Rosa asked. “The doctor?”
“He’s the dog,” Brydie said. “But I don’t even know where to get a Halloween costume for a dog.”
“You can get one of those here,”
Rosa said. “There’s a whole aisle dedicated to pet costumes at the back of the store with the rest of the Halloween stuff.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” Rosa replied. “I’ll show you after we finish with the cookies.”
“You two are wasting my time!” Joe bellowed from the front. “Chat later!”
“I’d better not waste any more of Joe’s time tonight,” Brydie said, rolling her eyes slightly. “Thanks for being so nice to me, Rosa.”
Rosa smiled. “Don’t thank me just yet,” she said. “You still owe a dollar to the swear jar.”
CHAPTER 12
FOR THE MOST PART, TEDDY SEEMED TO ADJUST TO THE new schedule, but Brydie thought it was more because Teddy slept twenty-three hours a day than from anything she was doing to keep him happy. They’d continued their routine of baking after work, and Teddy was usually satisfied enough after his snack not to root around in the trash.
“So you’re liking your job?” Elliott asked on Saturday morning, easing down onto the couch and resting her hands on her belly. “I told Leo we’d order Mia’s birthday cake from you.”
“Mia’s birthday isn’t for another six months,” Brydie replied. She squinted at the recipe for peanut butter dog treats she’d printed out. For the last week, she’d been experimenting with a couple of different recipes to take to the party. So far, this recipe had been Teddy’s favorite, Brydie thought because of the combinations of peanut butter and mashed banana. “And yes, I like it. It’s nice to be baking again, but it’s not been easy getting used to staying up all night.”
“Have a kid,” Elliott joked. “You’ll learn how to be up twenty-four/seven.” Then, as she realized what she’d said, her cheeks turned pink. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“Oh, I could just kick Allan in the balls,” Elliott said. “I could just kick him for what he did to you.”
“It’s not his fault I never got pregnant,” Brydie replied, but she knew what her friend meant. She wished she could kick Allan, too.
“I guess it ended up being for the best, anyway.”
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