Better Than Chocolate

by Sheila Roberts

  Wanda sniffed and nodded. “You were all so good to him.”

  Samantha couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She hardly wanted to confess that during the past few months she’d been anything but good.

  Cecily stepped into the gap. “He was a nice man.”

  True. He was just a bad businessman.

  “He sure loved Muriel,” Wanda said. “He was so lonely after Mother died. Muriel gave him a new lease on life.”

  “And I don’t know what her life would’ve been like without him,” Samantha said.

  “I think Muriel would like to hear that, Wanda,” murmured Waldo’s brother, Walter, as he led their long-distance stepsister away.

  “I need a drink,” Samantha said.

  “Great idea,” Bailey agreed, and they all drifted over to the punch bowl.

  Samantha really wasn’t much of a drinker, but a good stiff belt sure seemed to help a lot of movie characters through stressful moments and right about now she was willing to give it a try. “I wish this was spiked,” she muttered.

  Bailey looked across the room at their mother. “I feel so bad for Mom.”

  Muriel Sterling-Wittman sat on a folding chair framed by the weak winter light coming through the window behind her, a beautiful tragic figure starting the new year alone. Her basic black dress discreetly draped her Betty Boop curves and her hair was still the same shiny chestnut it had been when Samantha was a girl, courtesy of the geniuses at Sleeping Lady Salon. The green eyes Waldo once raved about were bloodshot from crying but still looked lovely thanks to lashes thick with waterproof mascara. Half the men in the room were hovering around with tissues in case she found herself in need.

  “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about her being lonely,” Bailey said. She was the spitting image of their mother and the most like her, as well—sweet, positive and naive.

  Cecily gave a cynical snort. “Much good any of those men will do her. They’re all married.”

  “Not Ed,” Bailey pointed out.

  “He’s got the hots for Pat over at the bookstore,” Samantha said, and mentally added, Thank God.

  “Arnie’s not married,” Bailey said. “Neither is Mayor Stone. Or Waldo’s brother. Wouldn’t it be sweet if—”

  Samantha cut her off. “Let’s not even put that thought out in the universe.” All they needed was another man coming along and convincing Mom that the third time would be the charm.

  “Look at them. Waldo’s barely gone and they’re already circling around her like some old-guy version of The Bachelor.” Cecily shook her head. “Men.”

  “You know, for a matchmaker you sure have a sucky attitude,” Bailey observed.

  “Where do you think I got it?” Cecily retorted.

  “How do you manage to stay in business?” Bailey asked in disgust.

  “By staying superficial.” Cecily gave them a wicked grin.

  Cecily was the only blonde in the family and she was the prettiest of them all with perfect features and the longest legs. Samantha had been cute with her red hair and freckles, but it was Cecily the boys drooled over. Still, in spite of her good looks, Cupid had never been kind to her. So far she’d gone through two fiancés. Samantha didn’t understand how Cecily could make money matching up beautiful people in L.A. but couldn’t seem to get it right when it came to her own love life.

  Like you’re doing so well?

  Touché, she told her snarky self.

  “You’re enough to make a woman give up on love,” Bailey muttered as she nodded and smiled politely at old Mr. Nilsen, who was ogling her from the other side of the hall.

  “That would be the smart thing to do,” Cecily said.

  “Well, I don’t think Mom’s ready to give up on love. Maybe you could match her up with someone,” Bailey suggested.

  “No!” Several people turned to stare and Samantha downed a slug of punch in an effort to put out the fire in her cheeks. What was wrong with her? Could a woman suddenly get Tourette’s at thirty?

  The wicked in Cecily’s grin kicked up a notch. “I know what you mean. No one will ever be able to replace Waldo.”

  “I liked Waldo, I really did,” Samantha said. “But no more men. I’ve got enough to deal with already.”

  “Gosh, Sammy.” Bailey frowned at her.

  Samantha frowned back. “Hey, baby sister, you two get to go back to sunny California and match up lonely millionaires and cater events for starlets. I’m the one stuck with the fallout here.”

  Cecily sobered. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We’re leaving you with a mess. You’ve got the business to sort out, plus Mom’s affairs.”

  “Except if anyone can do it, you can, Sammy,” Bailey said, linking arms with her.

  Samantha sighed. As the oldest it was her job to be the rock everyone leaned on—although right now she didn’t feel like a rock. She felt like a pebble on a beach about to be swept away by a tsunami.

  And her own mother had been the one to unwittingly drop her there. She and Muriel loved each other dearly, but they often disagreed. And before Waldo died they’d disagreed a lot, especially when Samantha tried to get her mother to talk sense into him.

  “He’s not feeling well,” Mom kept saying, but when pressed for details she’d remained vague.

  Maybe the poor guy’s heart had been acting up all along. Maybe he’d been so worried about his bad health he hadn’t been able to concentrate and that was why he’d made such poor decisions. Except that didn’t explain his odd purchases. Or the answers he’d given her when she asked about them.

  “A man needs to be able to protect what’s his,” he’d said when she’d questioned him about the gun.

  “In Icicle Falls?” she’d countered. The biggest crime they’d had all year was when Amanda Stevens keyed Jimmy Rodriguez’s Jeep after he’d cheated on her with another girl. And Jimmy hadn’t pressed charges.

  “You never know,” Waldo had hedged. “I saw someone. In the parking lot.”

  “Doing what?” she’d asked.

  “He was following me. And don’t tell your mother,” he’d said. “I don’t want to worry her.”

  Like he’d just worried his stepdaughter? Then there’d been the water.

  “We could have an avalanche and be trapped here for days,” he’d said.

  She’d let that slide, too. Until things started getting really bad. And then, just when she’d decided she and her mother would need to have a very unpleasant conversation, Waldo had walked from their house on Alpine Drive into town and keeled over dead right in front of Lupine Floral. Poor Kevin had dropped the roses he’d been storing in the cooler and run out to give him CPR while his partner, Heinrich, called 9-1-1, but Waldo was dead within minutes.

  And now she was stuck dealing with the mess he’d left behind. Her sisters were leaving on Monday and she was the one who’d be dealing with their mother and figuring out how to pay the people who depended on Sweet Dreams for their livelihood. Great-grandma Rose, who’d started this business on a dream, was probably turning in her grave at what her descendants had done to it.

  Samantha frowned at her half-empty punch cup. The glass is half empty…the glass is half full. Either way, “This stuff needs booze.”

  Chapter Two

  Your biggest asset is your family.

  —Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Work and Love

  Two hours later, friends and extended relat
ives had exhausted themselves on the topic of Waldo and consumed all the potato salad and cold cuts. The party was over. Sent on their way with one final hug from Olivia Wallace and a paper plate containing half a dozen lemon bars, the three sisters and their mother stepped outside to a cold, cloudless night.

  Mom looked as drained as Samantha felt. Only Mom’s exhaustion was from pure grief. Samantha’s was contaminated by a less pure mixture of feelings.

  “I’ll follow you guys back to the house,” she said, and went in search of her car.

  It was now five-thirty on a Friday afternoon and the old-fashioned lampposts along Center Street stood sentinel over a downtown shopping area about to go to sleep for the night. Nearby restaurants like Zelda’s and Schwangau would open for business, but here, on what the locals dubbed Tourist Street, the shops were closed and only a smattering of cars remained.

  Samantha loved their little downtown, its park with the gazebo and multitude of flower beds, its cobbled streets edged with quaint shops, the mountains standing guard over it. Normally this time of year the mountains would have worn a thick blanket of snow, and both cross-country and downhill skiers, as well as snowboarders, would be in town for the weekend, shopping, eating in the restaurants, enjoying the little outdoor skating rink and admiring the Bavarian architecture. But these days there were few visitors. It had been a lean year for snow. Heck, it had been a lean year, period, and several once-thriving shops were now shuttered.

  Businesses going under—don’t even think about that.

  Too late. That was all it took to make her angry once more about her own company’s troubles and she had to remind herself that her world, unlike her mother’s, had not come to an end. Somehow she’d manage to pull the business from the brink but Mom would never have her husband back. This was the second one she’d lost in five years. What was that like, to be in love and happy and lose it all not once but twice? Samantha thought back to her own romantic troubles and realized she had no point of reference. She could only imagine.

  She needed to be a supportive daughter, lock any negative thoughts inside her head and keep her big mouth shut. Mouth shut, mouth shut, mouth shut. She chanted it for the last several steps to her car. Then she got in, closed the door and said it one more time. “Mouth shut.” Okay. She was ready.

  She got to the house to find Cecily starting a fire in the big stone fireplace, the sound of crackling cedar already filling the great room. Bailey was arranging cards along the mantelpiece where Waldo’s ashes reposed in a brass urn, while in the kitchen Mom made tea. The plate of lemon bars sat on the granite countertop. It was a regular postwake party.

  Bailey turned at the sound of the door and knocked the urn, making it wobble and their mother gasp. Fortunately, Cecily grabbed it before it could tip.

  “Sorry,” Bailey said.

  Mom shot a look heavenward. “Put him on the hearth, honey.”

  Cecily nodded solemnly and moved Waldo to safety.

  Samantha shed her coat and hung it in the closet, then forced herself to walk to the kitchen and ask her mother if she needed help.

  Mom shook her head, her gaze riveted on the mugs lined up in front of her on the counter. “Would you like some tea?”

  The offer came out stiffly. No surprise. The way they’d been not getting along lately, she could almost envision her mother lacing hers with arsenic. “No. Thanks.”

  She suddenly longed for the comfort of her little one-bedroom condo at the edge of town, where she’d find no emotional undercurrents and the new man in her life would be waiting to welcome her—Nibs, her cat. Everyone would be fine here without her. Mom had Cecily and Bailey to keep her company and listen to her Waldo stories. And they could do it guilt-free.

  “I think I’ll take off.”

  “Stay for a little while,” Mom said.

  Or not. Samantha nodded and went to slump on the couch.

  “Tea is ready,” Mom announced. Cecily and Bailey both picked up their mugs and returned to join their sister, Cecily taking up a position on the couch next to Samantha and Bailey settling on the hearth beside Waldo.

  Mom followed and sat on the yellow leather chair she always read in. She took a sip of her tea, then set the mug on the coffee table, laid back her head and sighed deeply. “I just want you girls to know how much I’ve appreciated the moral support. I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Waldo is gone.”

  “He’ll be missed,” Bailey said.

  “Yes, he will,” Mom agreed, giving Samantha a look that dared her to say any different.

  No way was she taking that dare. “I need a lemon bar,” she muttered.

  “Never mind that. Let’s get the hard stuff,” Cecily said. “Break out the chocolate.”

  But there wasn’t so much as a shaving of chocolate in the house. Mom had gone on a binge. So Bailey stayed with her while Samantha and Cecily made a run to the shop.

  Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company occupied prime real estate a few streets back from Center Street on a block the locals nicknamed Foodie Paradise. Across from them was Gingerbread Haus, Cassandra Wilkes’s fantasy bakery, specializing in fanciful baked goods. At Christmas she was swamped with orders for her gingerbread houses and shipped them all over the world. Next to that was the Spice Rack, which carried every exotic spice known to man. Every time the door opened, the scent of lavender or sage drifted out to tickle noses and tempt shoppers inside, and whenever she was in town Bailey practically lived there. On the other side of Gingerbread Haus sat Bavarian Brews, where everyone went to chitchat and indulge in great coffee—very convenient when Samantha needed a quick pick-me-up. Down the street they could see Schwangan’s, a five-star restaurant and another popular destination. Its owner and head chef, Franz Reinholdt, made a mean schnitzel.

  The Sterlings had the biggest piece of land, though—so far, anyway—and an inspiring view, with their second-story offices looking down on the town from one side and out over the Wenatchee River from the other. The factory and retail store occupied a full block. The warehouse, part of the company’s pre-Waldo expansion, occupied another. It should have been full of a lot more supplies and inventory than it currently was. Sigh.

  Samantha unlocked the store, flipped on the light and turned off the alarm as Cecily strolled in.

  “Sometimes I miss this place,” Cecily said, taking in the gift shop with its various shelves and display tables of treats. There was plenty to drool over—goodie bags of enrobed fruit, chocolate-dipped apples, potato chips and cookies, boxes of mixed chocolates, gift boxes of salted caramels, cognac truffles made from Great-grandma Rose’s secret recipe, fudge and hot fudge sauces (Mom’s contribution to the line) that ranged from spicy Mexican to chocolate mint. Over in the corner under the TV that played a video feed of the gang in the factory hard at work, shoppers could find all manner of nonedible goodies, including candy dishes, chocolate scented candles, little kitchen signs with chick-centric statements like “The Best Kisses Are Chocolate” and “I’d Give Up Chocolate but I’m No Quitter.”

  “You can take the girl out of the chocolate company but you can’t take the chocolate out of the girl,” Samantha teased, snagging a box of truffles and walking over to the cash register. “Have you got any money? All I have on me is a five.” And she was lucky to have that.

  Her sister looked at her in shock. “Since when do we have to pay?”

  “Since we went broke.” Samantha held out a hand, palm up.

  Cecily
frowned and dug out her wallet. “I have to pay for chocolate from my own company? This sucks.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “Keep the change,” Cecily said, and handed over a twenty.

  “Thanks. I will.”

  “It really is bad, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Samantha said firmly. Maybe if she said it enough she’d believe it.

  As a little girl she’d loved hearing the stories of how Great-grandma Rose started the company in her kitchen, of the recipes that literally came to her in her dreams, how she and her husband, Dusty, used their life’s savings to buy this piece of land and build a modest shop back when Icicle Falls was nothing but a rough-and-tumble collection of mismatched buildings. Sweet Dreams wasn’t just a company. It was a family legend. It was also a source of income for thirty families and she was going to pull them out of this tailspin no matter what it took.

  Cecily leaned on the counter and gave her an assessing stare. “Are you lying to me?”

  “Yes, but things could be worse. We still have inventory.” Samantha stowed away the money, then opened the box, pulled out a truffle and popped it in her mouth. It hit her taste buds like a drug and she let the sweetness travel over her tongue. She could almost feel a troupe of endorphins doing a happy dance through her body. A girl could bite off even the biggest challenge if it was coated in chocolate.

  “So what are we going to do besides eat the inventory?” Cecily asked.

  Cecily had been the one dissenting voice way back when they’d talked about taking out a loan and expanding the company, ignoring both Samantha’s charts and Dad’s confidence. At the time Samantha had accused her of a lack of vision.

  That was both ironic and stupid, she now had to admit, since Cecily had uncanny instincts. In high school she could always sense a surprise quiz lurking around the corner, and she knew when her sisters were going to break up with their boyfriends long before they ever had a clue. After Dad died, she’d predicted Mom would be remarried within the year. She’d only been off by a few months.