Her mom produced one of those here-we-go sighs. “I already told you, it’s cancer.” She pulled the pill sorter out and began filling the next day the way she might deal a hand of bridge.
“Can you be more specific?” Why was she making this so hard?
Her mother’s hand stilled and she looked up for just a moment—an icy flick of a glance. “Lymphoma. Does it matter?”
Dinah counted to ten before saying, “It helps to have more to go on. I’m trying to process this.”
Mom snapped the Morning section shut and started in on the Noon section. “It’s not complicated. You can’t rearrange the details and come out with a different ending, Bug. I’m…it’s not a recipe you can adapt.”
Mom’s nod to Dinah’s profession wasn’t complimentary. “You…well, it’s just that you’re so…resigned.”
No fewer than six pills went into the section before Mom snapped it shut. “I don’t really have a choice now, do I?”
Dinah rose up off her chair to pace the kitchen. “Of course you do. Medicine is changing all the time. There could be new treatments, alternative medicines—have you even gotten a second opinion on this?”
Mom sat back in her chair. “The chemo didn’t work.” With an exasperated look on her face, she tugged one side of her hair. Dinah watched in horror as her mother’s entire scalp seemed to move. That wasn’t a questionable gray-hiding dye job, it was a wig. “Want to see?”
It was almost cruel, the way her mother was throwing this at her, wielding the shock of it as if it were a weapon. Had it been anything but her own mother’s illness, Dinah would have been even more appalled at the treatment she was receiving. But really, can you call someone out for how they’re handling their life-threatening illness? Knock them for their post-chemo manners? Post-unsuccessful chemo? “For crying out loud, Mom, you’ve had chemo? Didn’t you think I ought to know?”
“Don’t you go there with me. Don’t you put this on me, young lady. I’m not the one who up and left. I’m not the one who didn’t come home over the summer, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas. It’s not like you don’t know the address. Or the phone number.” Dinah heard the carefully controlled catch in her mother’s voice. “I will not beg for attention from my only daughter.”
Dinah rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think this is a little bit different? Isn’t this above and beyond the family squabble stage?”
“No,” came her mother’s clipped reply. “I don’t think this is the slightest bit different. Do you think I enjoy knowing that pity and death were the only way I could get your attention?” Dinah hated how easily the word “death” rolled off her mother’s tongue. “Do you think this has been a lark for me, with your father already gone? Alone?” Her voice rose on that last word, taking on a shrill edge. Patty sat very still for a moment, her knuckles white against the dark wood of the table, and then she went back to filling the Evening section of the pillbox. The thing must have held almost two dozen pills by now; Dinah felt the sheer volume of them as if they’d piled up in the back of her throat.
She slumped back down into the kitchen chair. This was so impossibly, exasperatingly hard. “Are you…” she pursed her lips and wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans, struggling to get the words out. “Are you really…you know…dying?”
Well, yes, it was sort of an insulting question, but no one in this room was trying to be nice anymore and it had to be asked. There was so much drama that facts were the only stronghold she could find.
“You think I’m inventing this?”
“You just sound so sure you’ve exhausted all your options. I mean, come on, Mom, you’re only fifty.”
“Thanks for the ‘only.’”
“Mom…”
“Facts? You want facts? Yes, Dinah, I really am. There’s one more experimental thing they can try, but it has about a ten-percent shot at success. One in ten. It’s ugly and painful and stands as good a chance of killing me as this thing does in the first place. Frankly, it sounds worse than everything I’ve had to do already all rolled into one.” Patty looked at her. “And let’s just say this awful treatment works. Do you know what I get? Two years, maybe three if I’m lucky. And then the odds of it coming back are still high. Even if it were free, I can’t imagine taking it and it would cost a fortune. Does that sound worth it to you?”
“Living’s not worth it?”
“Living? Spending most of my time stuck in a vinyl chair while they pour me so full of poison I spend the rest of the day vomiting is living? Swelling up or drying out or losing weight or whatever side effect of whatever drug shows up this week is living?” She thrust the pill keeper back into its spot in the basket. “I took care of your father. Every day. I know what that cost him. He was dependent. Humiliated. I don’t want that.” There it was, the it-has-been-decided voice Dinah knew so well.
Her mother was dying. Maybe because she had to, but mostly because she chose to. If an idea could attack a person, this is what it felt like. “But you asked me to come home.” The idea of nursing Mom through a serious illness was bad enough. The idea of being here to walk her mom to the end was a thousand times worse. “I thought…” There wasn’t even a way to finish that sentence. There weren’t words for any of this. Dinah swiped at the tears she couldn’t hold back. “I was sure you were exaggerating.”
Her mother’s voice lost all of its previous force. “You know, I wish I were,” she said softly, reaching out to lay her thin hand across Dinah’s arm. They’d hugged earlier, touched often, but there was always a tension in the touch. Now there was a quiet calm. They’d reached the worst point. It was horrible, but it was done. The tension was gone, but it left a frantic stillness in its wake. To Dinah, it felt as if she’d been swallowed by a fear so great she could only throw herself at God’s mercy. Surely, she didn’t have whatever it took to do what lay ahead. This was so beyond her. Even prayer felt impossible—as if the problem were so large and dark that words, even words of prayer, couldn’t contain it. At the moment, Dinah didn’t even know how she’d get out of bed tomorrow morning.
“You’ve had a long day, you look tired,” her mother said, plucking a tissue from the box beside the medical basket. “We’ll see Doctor Oliver tomorrow. He can fill you in on all the nasty details. Though, personally, I’d skip it.”
Mom was so calm. So hopelessly calm. She’s leaving already, Dinah thought, the stillness giving way to a cold, seeping panic. “No,” Dinah said. Information was the only tool in her control right now. “I want all the nasty details.”
Her mom stood up from the table. “Suit yourself,” she said, collecting the still-full cups of tea. “He’s handsome, Doctor Oliver. Single.”
Dinah sank against the chair. “Mom…”
“I’m on the express train now, Bug, I can’t afford to be subtle,” she called over her shoulder as she shuffled toward the sink.
She was using that snarky tone Dinah always hated—and suddenly it was precious and fleeting. She pushed off the chair and practically ran to her mother, wrapping her arms around her from behind with such force the mugs clattered against the sink bottom. “Oh, Mom…” She was so much smaller than Dinah remembered. So much bonier. Defiant and sharp and frail all at the same time.
Aunt Sandy peeked sideways at her mixing bowl Tuesday morning. “Do y’all think it’s supposed to be blue?”
“Blue?” Cameron glanced up from the spreadsheet where he was multiplying recipe ingredients.
Audrey Lupine, the town librarian, looked up from the cookie sheet she was filling. “They are supposed to be blueberry muffins.”
“Still,” Aunt Sandy said, holding up a wooden spoon full of the surprisingly dark batter, “I’m wondering.” The stuff looked like nothing Cameron would eat voluntarily. “They’re supposed to be blueberry muffins. Not blue berry muffins. I’m sure I’ve eaten these at Dinah’s and I’m equally sure they weren’t blue. Well, not this blue.”
It hadn’t ever occurred to Cameron that Aunt S
andy couldn’t bake. At all. He was beginning to wonder where Uncle George’s generous midsection came from.
“It is a rather intense blue,” Audrey offered.
It’s almost black, Cameron thought.
“’Course I know Dinah does have a unique way of doin’ things, but I did find it rather odd that her recipe said to blend those blueberries. It’s not like we’re making smoothies here.”
Audrey put the last cookie on the sheet she was filling and walked over to Aunt Sandy’s table. “Sandy, honey, where are your reading glasses?”
“Oh, I left them at home. I swear, I feel like I need six pairs of those things the way I keep losing ’em and leaving ’em places.”
Audrey read the instruction sheet beside Aunt Sandy’s bowl. Wincing, she caught Cameron’s eye. “Well, it does say ‘blend,’ but it says ‘blend in.’ I think that’s different.”
“Well, now, I suppose you could say that’s true. Kind of funny when you think about two little letters making all that difference, ain’t it?”
Funny? Cameron pressed his fingers to his temples. He should go in search of rent-a-bakers. So far half the women’s bell choir and a surprising majority of the Thursday Night Quilt Club had proved incompetent in the kitchen.
“Maybe retail’s just more your thing,” Cameron said, doubting the baked blue muffins would come out any more appetizing than the inky batter looked. “You can work the cash register better than anybody.”
“Well, that’s hardly a secret. This morning Shirley Bronson looked like the thing might spring up and bite her hand off.”
That was true. Cameron had never worked a cash register, and even he knew to expect the cash drawer to automatically open at the end of ringing up a sale. Poor Shirley hadn’t and that young woman let out an ear-piercing shriek when the drawer first slid out—and had nearly yelped every time after that. For the sake of all within earshot, Cameron reassigned her to cookie frosting after the first half hour. His worst day in real estate didn’t hold a candle to his first day in retail baking.
It’s only temporary, Cameron groaned to himself. Today and tomorrow. Somewhere in that horde of grandmothers had to be two or three master bakers. This was Kentucky, after all. Land of fried chicken and corn muffins. The baking country grandma stereotype had to come from somewhere—couldn’t it be from Kentucky? Maybe he should just call the Grill and have owner Gina Deacon save the day—she could probably do this with one hand tied behind her back.
Still, there was something amazing about the sheer volume of people willing to help out. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. Audrey Lupine was so happy to be spending her Tuesday—her day off—sliding frozen precut cookie dough squares onto baking sheets; she’d been humming show tunes for the last hour. And she’d burned only two of her eight batches.
If God laughed—and Cameron firmly believed He did—He was surely laughing now. Just what spiritual gifts are You developing here, Lord? Patience? Self-control? Oh no, this most certainly had to be a lesson in humility. Cameron Rollings, real estate magnate, the clever man who was now a full twenty days behind on his construction schedule, was currently inventorying chocolate chips. Cameron decided he would spend several hours next week pondering all the ways Howard Epson was going to make this up to him.
Chapter Eleven
Cameron didn’t have to wait even one hour to give Howard his due.
Half an hour later, the entire “Coots” Bible Study arrived at the bakery in a group show of support. Whether it was for him or Dinah, Cameron didn’t know. He didn’t care. But it was just as he caught a whiff of yet another cookie batch burning that the idea came to him.
“Howard!” Cameron called, coming out from his managerial perch behind the counter. Even though his role was to organize and not to bake, he was dusted with flour and his jeans were smeared with…well, various baking ingredients. He’d switched to pen and paper an hour ago, fearing the migrating mess would spell the end of his laptop if he kept it down here any longer. “You’re just in time.”
“I am?”
Cameron walked up to Howard as if he’d been waiting all day to see him. “You remember telling me how much that horse of yours liked burned cookies?”
Howard gave him a puzzled look. “Not really.”
Cameron clasped Howard’s hand. Hard. “Sure you did. You went on and on the other day about how you are always buying Dinah’s burned batches off her. Personally, I think it’s brilliant of you. Treats your horse nice and makes excellent use of local resources. It’s practically ecocommerce—keeping food waste out of the landfill and all. I know I was impressed.”
“Really.” Howard was smarter than he looked. He saw what was going on. With the slightest grin and a look out of the corner of his eye that said “Touché, kid,” Howard clamped a beefy hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “I plum forgot we had that conversation until you mentioned it just now.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all morning. Since I got up at the crack of dawn—before dawn, actually. Being up before the sun gives a man time to really think, don’t you agree?” Cameron addressed that last question to the other four “old coots” who, having seen Howard’s original “recruitment” of Cameron, were catching on and grinning themselves.
“Yep,” agreed Vern. “Big fan of early rising myself.” The quartet moved in around Howard, chiming in with “certainlys” and “oh, yeses” and other agreements. Cameron was pretty sure Vern winked at him over Howard’s shoulder. “I heard charcoal’s good for horses. That’s mighty smart of you, Howard.”
“I like to think creatively,” Howard said, looking around the room. “Keeps me on the cutting-edge, I think.” He drew his words out just a bit, putting his hand in his pocket as if he’d already guessed this was going to cost him something. “Always on the lookout, that’s me.”
Cameron couldn’t hide his smile. “Wait right there. We’ve had a bit of a…learning curve this morning and I think today we have a bumper crop for you.” Cameron offered up a chorus of thank-you prayers as he walked back to the kitchen for the garbage bag of burned cookies God had somehow prompted him to save. This was going to give a bigger jolt to his morning than two whole pots of coffee.
Howard gave a little whistle as Cameron plunked down the sizable bag. “I bet you’re the kind of man who’d double his price if I told you I’ll donate these as a pre-Cookiegram pledge,” Cameron said. As Howard raised an eyebrow, Cameron pretended to go through his notebook of instructions from Dinah. “Dinah said you paid five dollars a pound. I’d say there’s six pounds of burned cookies in this bag. That’d raise sixty dollars for the Community Fund in one transaction.”
Vern began clapping almost immediately and within seconds the entire bakery—customers and volunteer bakers—broke out in applause.
“It’s a mighty fine thing to donate to a good cause, isn’t it?” Howard said, pulling his billfold from his pocket. “Bet you’ve been feeling that way all morning, helping out your new community in such an outstanding way.” He peeled six ten-dollar bills off his billfold and laid them on the counter one at a time. “You’re a regular tycoon here.”
Aunt Sandy came up behind Cameron. “Oh no, Cam, honey, you just told me to man the cash register. Let me take care of that for you.” She winked at Cameron and tapped his foot with hers behind the counter. The Bible Study “coots” were making unsuccessful attempts to hide their smiles, but Aunt Sandy wasn’t even bothering to pretend she wasn’t enjoying every second of this. “And let me just take this moment to publicly say,” she said as she picked up the bills with all the drama Howard had used to lay them out, “how glad we all are to have such an enterprising young man as the newest member of our little town.” She nodded toward the men behind Howard. “I think he’ll go far, boys, don’t you?”
“Amen!” said Pastor Dave. “He’s a tycoon. Oh, wait, maybe he’s not—maybe he’s a tycoot.” The room burst into laughter. “Now, what about the rest of us coots? You got anythi
ng back there that isn’t burned?”
“Oh, I think Aunt Sandy and the ladies can set you up nicely,” Cameron replied. “We haven’t seen any smoke for at least half an hour.”
It’s Tuesday. They’ll open my bakery today. Dinah hugged her knees to her chest in the post-midnight darkness of her mother’s living room. Her living room, once. Her living room again?
She’d slept in fits and spurts last night. The doctor appointment had only applied clean, clinical terms to the horror of it all—her mother was right in that respect; the details didn’t change anything. And yes, Doctor Oliver was handsome and charming in a way that surely impressed her mother, but how Patty had ever thought Dinah could see that man as anything other than the harbinger of doom, she’d never know. Even under the best of circumstances—which this was anything but—sane women just don’t date their mother’s oncologist. The fact that her mother had even considered fixing them up, and had even made broad, embarrassing hints to that effect during their appointment, still had Dinah shaking her head.
Oh, God, I can’t do this. How can I get through this? This is miles beyond me. Don’t do this to me. I know I have no right to say that, but You already know that’s what I’m feeling. I’m begging You—don’t do this to me. I’m not strong enough to take it.
A tear—the hundredth of the night—trailed down her cheek and she pulled out the packet of tissues she’d stuck in her back pocket. I’ll be keeping tissues in my pocket for a long time, won’t I? Oh, Father, there’s no way out of this, is there? I’m trapped, I’m trapped.
I’m here, I’m here, she heard from down deep somewhere. I’m here in the dark, I’m here in the fear. I will not leave you.
“‘Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death…’” she quoted to herself.
She got up and walked the house, wrestling with the challenge ahead of her. She loved the life she’d built in Kentucky. How can You take that away from me now? How can You give me all that, all those people, and rip me away from them now? And yet, the other choice facing her was just as compelling. How can I leave her? I know we fight like cats and dogs, but how can I go now? This is…the thought hit her like a physical sensation…my last chance. I have to try. What kind of human being would walk away from this? It was going to cost her everything she thought she loved. Don’t You know what You’re asking me, Lord?
Bluegrass Blessings Page 9
