Saturdays at Sweeney's

by Ashley Farley

  Moses settled back in his chair and wiped his mouth. “I couldn’t eat another bite. But I’d like to talk about Sean for a minute.” He glanced over at Sean, who appeared deep in conversation with Sam and Eli. “He’s not paying any attention to us,” Moses said in a low voice. “After we spoke at the hospital, I understand a little more about where he’s coming from. He experienced withdrawal symptoms after flushing his stash of Xanax down the toilet Saturday night. He didn’t know how to handle it, and he was afraid to come to you.”

  “So he started drinking,” Jackie said.

  “It’s my fault.” Bill raked his fork through his pasta salad. “You warned us about the cold-turkey side effects of Xanax withdrawal, but I didn’t think it could happen to my son. And I underestimated the extent of his usage. I was thinking like a parent and not a doctor.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Moses said. “You’re his father. The last thing you wanted is to pump more drugs in your son’s body. With that said, I think he needs to be on an antidepressant, at least for the short term, until we get him straightened out.”

  “So I was right about him being depressed,” Jackie said.

  “There are antidepressants that specifically target anxiety. I’m convinced your son is suffering from acute anxiety. He’s having a difficult time finding his way without his twin. I think Cooper looked out for Sean more than any of us ever realized. There were a lot of things Sean didn’t have to worry about because Cooper took care of them for him. No wonder he didn’t make it at Georgia. A sheltered kid like that would never have survived at a school with nearly thirty thousand students.”

  Jackie stared at her plate. “I was so proud to have one of my sons attend my alma mater, I never stopped to consider what was best for Sean.”

  Moses placed his big hands, palms down, on the table. “You guys need to stop beating up on yourselves. Sean admitted to me that it was his choice to go to a big SEC school. When it comes to picking colleges, kids don’t always get it right the first time.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Bill asked.

  “Well . . . Sean’s agreed to meet with me in my office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We will come up with a game plan then.”

  “That’s awfully early considering everything that happened tonight,” Jackie said.

  “I agree,” Moses said. “But it’s the only available appointment I have tomorrow, and Sean has assured me he would be on time.”

  “Do you want us there with him?” Jackie asked.

  “That’s your choice, but I think he feels more comfortable talking to me alone.”

  Bill shot Jackie a look. He sensed how much she wanted to attend the session. “Why don’t you call us afterward and fill us in?” Bill said.

  “I’m happy to do that,” Moses said. “Sean has given me permission to discuss his case with you. You have a strong network already in place within your family. During the three years I’ve known your family, nearly every single one of you has suffered a hardship of some sort, and you’ve survived because you have one another. Sean will be okay. He just needs a little more structure in his life. Making him quit his job at the Roost was a good decision on your part, but he needs something to occupy his time in addition to his crab business.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Jackie said, clasping her hands together. “What do you think about him taking summer school classes at the College of Charleston? We can help him choose something he’s interested in that might inspire him to think about his future. He also needs to pull up his GPA. He and I will stay at my house in Charleston on the nights he has classes. I’m in the process of relocating my business. I have plenty to keep him busy in his free time.”

  Moses smiled. “I like both these ideas.”

  “Do you think it’s too late for him to enroll?” Jackie asked. “Classes start on Friday.”

  “I can get him in,” Big Mo said without hesitation. “Sean and I will look at the course offerings together tomorrow. We’ll pick a couple of classes that suit his schedule, and I’ll give my contact in admissions a call.”

  Bill held his hand out to the therapist. “Thank you, Moses. I don’t know how we will ever repay you.”

  Big Mo flashed them a toothy grin. “I’ll remind you of that when you receive my bill.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going before my wife sends out a search party. Thank you for dinner.” He got up and walked his plate to the kitchen.

  Jackie followed and gave him a shopping bag of leftovers. “Please extend our apologies to your bride. I’d love to see her again under different circumstances.”

  “I’ll tell her.” He lifted the bag. “She’ll appreciate this.” He started for the stairs. “I’ll see you in my office at eight o’clock sharp,” he called out to Sean, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  Jamie beamed. “Cool! You get to go to Big Mo’s office. Wait until you see his shrine.”

  A tidal wave of relief washed over Jackie. With her family’s support, maybe everything would be okay after all.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Sam

  Heidi called Sam around nine on Tuesday morning. “Can you come to Charleston for lunch today? Annie and I have a proposition we’d like to share with you.”

  “Today?” Sam looked at the ingredients covering her kitchen counter. She’d planned to spend the morning in her test kitchen perfecting her marinara sauce.

  “I realize it’s short notice, but this is the only time we can meet. We’re booked solid the rest of the week.”

  “I don’t know, Heidi.” She hadn’t slept well after the crisis with Sean, and she needed to go by Faith’s house at some point to check on her mother.

  “Please!” Heidi said. “I promise to make it worth your while.”

  “Since you’re obviously not going to take no for an answer”—she looked at the wall clock and made some calculations—“I can be there by eleven. Where should I meet you?”

  “Why don’t you come to the store? I’ll text you the address. We’ll show you our operation and then go to my house for lunch where we can talk in private.”

  Sam cleaned up the kitchen, showered, and slipped on a gray short-sleeved knit dress that flared out at the knees. She brewed a cup of tea in a to-go cup and hit the road. As they’d discussed at the party, she fully anticipated that Heidi would make a formal offer to open a sandwich shop in the new market space. She hated making hasty decisions. But she was meeting with the architect on Friday, which didn’t afford her much time to deliberate. Not knowing whether they would ever see a dime from the insurance company made her even more uncomfortable.

  But Heidi was a shrewd businesswoman in addition to being a talented event planner. Sam couldn’t help but be impressed with her operation, which included the thriving gourmet market Tasty Provisions. Sam had visited the converted warehouse on East Bay Street eighteen months earlier when Heidi was considering buying it. The worn brick walls and random-width oak floors served as a lovely backdrop for Heidi’s extensive selection of table goods. Tasty Provisions carried many of the same types of products as Sweeney’s—salads and spreads, wines and cheeses and homemade breads—but it focused more on entertaining, whereas Sweeney’s was all about the seafood. For a more upscale ambience in the new building, Sam was considering using a variety of materials, much as Heidi had done here, while keeping the same sterile environment she preferred for a seafood market.

  Heidi and Annie led her on a tour of the store, including the catering kitchen in the back and the offices on the second floor.

  “We’re booked through December,” Heidi said as she ran a pink-lacquered nail down her twelve-month whiteboard wall calendar. “We even have a few weddings already on the calendar for next summer.”

  Sam didn’t need Heidi to spell it out. She got the message loud and clear. Heidi had not known a single person when she moved to Charleston two summers ago. She’d invested every dime of her meager savings into this warehouse and built her business into
a huge success. Don’t you want to be a part of it, Samantha? was the unspoken question that hung in the humid air as they drove with the top down in Heidi’s antique turquoise Mustang to her house on Broad Street for lunch.

  Heidi’s apartment occupied the second floor of a renovated single house. The kitchen opened up into one main space divided into sitting and dining areas. Her quirky personality was displayed in her decor. A turquoise velvet sofa was the center attraction, with a painting of hot-pink lips in a prominent position over the fireplace. The sexy man in Heidi’s bed owned the house and lived, conveniently, downstairs in the ground-floor apartment.

  While Heidi set the glass-topped table on the piazza with place mats and silverware, Annie prepared the shrimp tacos and Sam poured three glasses of sweet tea.

  “I feel so bad for Sean,” Annie said as they stood in the kitchen. “Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

  “I think so. Bless his heart, he’s suffering separation anxiety from Cooper.” Sam squeezed her eyes shut when she realized her mistake. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

  “Oh please!” Annie waved away her apology. “Cooper and I are friends. We text and talk on the phone all the time. I get the impression he doesn’t know about Sean. I don’t want to tell him, but I think somebody should. He would want to know.”

  She thought about her sister’s words—“I was hiding in shame.” Would Jackie keep something as important as Sean’s addiction from his twin? “You’re right. Cooper would definitely want to know what’s going on with his brother. I’ll mention it to Jackie.”

  Sam admitted the tacos were the best she’d ever eaten, with grilled shrimp, avocado salsa, and cilantro dressing. Heidi and Annie had set a trap for her, and she’d walked right into it, but she didn’t mind as long as there were more shrimp tacos in her future.

  Annie had shown a rare talent in the kitchen when she first arrived in Prospect with only the clothes on her back and the worn-out dime-store flip-flops on her feet. Her resourcefulness stemmed from having had to raise herself in the absence of a mother and with a father who, as a commercial fisherman, hadn’t been a great provider to begin with and was ill the last few years of his life. Annie was grateful for everything she had, and she hadn’t minded working hard to get it. Culinary school had honed her skills, broadened her horizons by introducing her to a whole new culture of food, and given her the confidence to let her creative juices flow.

  Sam rarely, if ever, had lunch with girlfriends. But this day she was able to relax on Heidi’s piazza with a gentle breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and enjoy the conversation with two women she respected and had much in common with.

  Heidi and Annie nibbled like birds, which allowed them to work around food and still stay trim. Sam, meanwhile, was devouring her lunch and delighting in every single bite.

  “You can open a sandwich shop in my seafood market anytime, as long as you promise to put these shrimp tacos on the menu,” Sam said, only half joking, when they broached the subject of the sandwich shop again during lunch.

  Heidi beamed. “There are many more where that recipe came from. My daughter is a genius, and she has a brilliant future ahead of her. We talked with Lizbet over dinner last night and then well into the wee hours of the morning when Annie and I got home. We believe Prospect is an untapped market in a desirable location, and we want a stake in the game when the economy explodes.”

  Annie removed a shrimp from her taco and popped it into her mouth. “There are so many more cute shops that have opened since I was last there. I talked to Eli and Mike briefly at the party yesterday. They confirmed that your population has nearly doubled in recent years. Most of these new inhabitants are young families looking for less expensive places to live. In ten years Prospect could be the new Mount Pleasant, with more charm and less traffic. What I want to know is, why are there no restaurants? Where is everyone eating?”

  “At home unless they belong to the country club,” Sam said. “And from what I hear from Jackie, their food is not very good.”

  “We’d like to test the market with the sandwich shop,” Heidi said. “If it does well, we’ll consider opening a waterfront restaurant in a couple of years.”

  “Are you thinking of moving to Prospect?” Sam asked Annie.

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet. I will if I need to. But I see myself overseeing the operation and hiring someone else to be my hands-on person.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?”

  Annie tucked a thick hank of honey-colored hair behind her ear. “Lizbet, maybe. Or Sean. Once he gets his act together, he’s going to want a piece of the action.”

  “What if the sandwich shop fails?” Sam asked, reaching for a lemon bar from the plate in the center of the table.

  Heidi snickered. “Failure is not a term in Annie’s vocabulary.”

  Annie cut her eyes at her mother. “That makes me sound unrealistic, and I’m not. In the event some unforeseen catastrophe happens—which is what it would take for the sandwich shop to fail, considering the success you’ve already experienced at Sweeney’s and the obvious need for more places to eat in Prospect—you will still have the space to use for wine tastings and small events. Having a bigger kitchen will help with your take-out catering. And think of the potential for full-service catering if you decided to venture down that path.”

  Annie was saying all the right things. Clearly she’d given her proposition plenty of thought.

  Heidi folded her arms on the table. “The way I see it, Sam, you are sitting in a pretty position. I advise you to buy the stationery store and build as big a building as you can afford. You won’t be disappointed when all is said and done.”

  “Would you be interested in investing in the building?” Sam asked.

  “Not unless you need us to,” Heidi said.

  “But we will in order to make it happen,” Annie added.

  “It’s a cleaner deal for both of us if we operate the sandwich shop and pay you rent,” Heidi said. “In the meantime, we will be putting money aside to invest in the restaurant.”

  “We know it’s a lot to think about,” Annie said as she refilled their glasses with tea. “And we don’t mean to overwhelm you. We have plenty of time to sort out the logistics while the building is under construction.”

  “But the decision to buy the stationery store must be made before my architect can start working on the plans,” Sam said. “And I’m meeting with him on Friday. It wouldn’t hurt to show him the store to at least see what he thinks.”

  Without the insurance money, she would have to use every dime of her rainy day mad money. And she was hesitant to do that. Knowing she had her own money made her feel secure. Even with her retirement fund, she would still have to borrow a significant sum from the bank. She could always pay herself back if they were to settle with the insurance company later. But if something happened and Sweeney’s went bankrupt, they would have only Eli’s pension to live on as they grew older.

  Annie said, “We want to partner with you, Sam. And with Jamie. And any other Sweeney who enters the picture down the road.”

  “I know you’re worried about doing business with friends,” Heidi said. “But that’s old-school thinking. We are modern women capable of working together despite any differences of opinion that arise. Mark my words, some will come up. But we’ll deal with them in a professional manner because, at the end of the day, we have one common goal. We want to satisfy our clients by offering them cutting-edge cuisine. We want to build a dynasty for the generations in our families to come. We want our clients to get more out of their gatherings, their family holidays and cocktail parties, by taking away their stress.”

  “That’s way more than one common goal, Heidi,” Sam said, and they all laughed. “How’s this? We strive to enrich our clients’ lives with a twenty-first-century spin on traditional southern cuisine, while building a sustainable empire for our families by doing what we love the most.�
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  Annie clapped. “Yay, Sam!”

  And Heidi let out a whoop. “That pretty much sums it up.”

  Sam stood up and walked over to the railing. “Seriously, though. I’m flattered you are interested in going into business with us, and I think we’d make a good team. But I can’t make this decision without talking to my son.”

  Heidi came to stand beside her. “And we totally understand that. We want you to take all the time you need.”

  Annie joined them. “In the meantime, I made up a list of items, including shrimp tacos, that we should consider for the menu.” With a mischievous grin, she handed Sam a folded sheet of card stock.

  Sam looked into her big brown eyes. “I’m proud of you, Annie Dawn,” she said, referring to the name Annie had used when she first came to Prospect. “I always knew you had talent. But you’ve become a mature, lovely young woman with a mind of your own. You will go places in life.”

  “That means a lot coming from you.” Annie rested her head on Sam’s shoulder. “You and Mom are the best mentors a girl could have.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Jamie

  Jamie was trimming the ligustrum hedge in the Hornes’ backyard when his mother’s red Wrangler pulled into the driveway. He set down the hedge trimmers and went to greet her. “This is a surprise. What’re you doing here?”

  “I hope you don’t mind me stopping by uninvited. I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer your phone. Now I see why.” She eyeballed the ligustrum hedge. “Looks like the Horne sisters have finally put you to work.”

  He wiped the sweat off his face with his T-shirt. “Those two have no clue what’s involved in maintaining a house and yard. Once I started looking around, I was surprised at all the things that needed trimming and fixing and cleaning. So I started doing them. I’m not even sure they’ve noticed. But that’s fine. It gives me something to occupy my time during the day while they’re all at work.”