by Becky Wade
“Then why didn’t they simply file this one?” Mom asked.
“Because it’s unusual. It’s not garden-variety praise or criticism. It’s creepy and vaguely threatening.” When Genevieve had first read it, while standing inside her publisher’s suite of offices, a stone of foreboding had lodged in her chest.
“It’s fiction,” Mom said firmly.
“Are you sure?” Genevieve asked.
“Of course,” she answered. “Judson? Is there anything you think we should do? In response to the letter?”
Her father was famous for his reasonable disposition and cool head. In every circle he was a part of, and certainly within the circle of this family, the members looked to him for advice.
“No,” Dad said. “I don’t think we should do anything in response to this other than ignore it.”
It takes one skilled faker to recognize another, and Genevieve’s instincts were telling her that the letter had the thrust of truth behind it. The stone of foreboding doubled in size.
As soon as Dad finished his meal, he carried his plate and glass to the sink. “I wish I could stay longer, but duty calls.” He gave Mom a kiss, then squeezed Genevieve’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re home, honey girl.” His nickname for Natasha was cupcake. Hers, honey girl. “I’ll see you later today.”
“Bye, Dad.”
He let himself out the back door, and Mom rose to refill their coffee mugs.
Genevieve watched her dad’s silver BMW back down the driveway. Growing up in the Woodward house, when female tempers had flared, offenses had been nursed, or tears had been shed, Dad had retreated to his home office to read about Mercer University football, watch replays of football games, or listen to sports talk shows about the southern football conference.
As a boy, he’d hated playing the sports that his own father had encouraged him to try. But from his seat within the ranks of the band, he’d discovered that he loved watching the sport of football. His voracious brain reveled in the numbers, stats, and strategy of the game.
“Isn’t this a moment to treasure?” Mom scooted her chair next to Genevieve’s and clasped her hand. “The two of us having a beautiful breakfast together?” She smiled with heavy sentimentality. Moisture gathered in her eyes.
“A moment to treasure,” Genevieve said.
“God is good.”
“Very.”
“Last night was so scary, not knowing where you were. Terrifying. I cried all night.”
“Why don’t you head to bed? I can run errands for you today.”
“Not just yet. I want the two of us to have a long talk first.” Mom patted her hand.
By “long talk,” she meant a long, long, long, long talk dotted with laughter, tears, worry, and probing questions. Psychoanalysis. Reflection.
Mentally, Genevieve prepared herself the way she’d prepare herself for a yearlong voyage.
Mom released her hand to take a bite of strawberry. “Talk to me about how things are going with your publisher, the women’s conferences you’ve headlined recently, your friends, your dating life.”
Oy.
“Also, have you been eating enough?” Mom pushed the egg platter closer to her. “Sleeping enough?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Are you managing your loneliness?”
Because Genevieve was single, Mom constantly projected loneliness onto her. “Singleness doesn’t equal loneliness,” she said lightly.
Mom took a sip of coffee. “I want to know everything.”
Had any of Sam’s employees ever had the nerve to arrive at his restaurant before he did, he’d have taken it personally.
So far, none had.
The morning after Genevieve Woodward had interrupted his life like an unwelcome news bulletin in the middle of regularly scheduled programming, Sam approached Sugar Maple Kitchen’s front door, keys in hand.
At five in the morning, downtown Misty River was still mostly asleep beneath a comforter of darkness. Only Merrie at the Doughnut Hut down the street clocked in before he did.
In the light of a streetlamp, Sam scanned the sidewalk in front of his restaurant for rubbish. None. With the help of a designer, he’d chosen dark gray paint for Sugar Maple Kitchen’s historic wooden exterior. The gray words stenciled across the two large windows on either side of the front door read Coffee—Baked Goods—Breakfast.
He neared the yellow mums and pale green potato vines he’d planted in tall pots. “How you doing there, lovely?” He tapped a flower, then rubbed one of the vine’s leaves between two fingers. “Good on ya, then.” He moved to the next pot. “Looking beautiful,” he murmured. “Excellent. Everything’s fine. It’s going to be a hot one today, but nothing to worry about. I’ll be back with water later. You’re doing well, all of you. Very well indeed. You’ve made me proud.”
He let himself inside, disabled the security system, and switched on lights.
The Kitchen had once been a pub called The Crow’s Nest, built in 1868. The eighteen foot long bar was the only original item that remained. The wall behind it that had once housed liquor bottles now housed coffee mugs, teacups, small plates, glasses of all sizes, a coffee grinder, and an espresso machine.
He slid behind the bar and began making himself a cup of espresso. The familiar movements of grinding the coffee beans into the portafilter, applying pressure with the tamper, and locking the portafilter into the espresso machine centered him.
He began every workday this way. For that matter, he executed every day of every week by following the same routine. The Kitchen opened for breakfast at seven o’clock and closed at one o’clock, six days out of seven.
Yesterday, Monday, had been his day off. Genevieve had gotten it off to such a bad start that he’d been on edge for the rest of the day. It had been difficult to relax and even more difficult to get Genevieve out of his head. In part because she stirred up painful memories of Kayden; in part because Genevieve herself wasn’t an easy person to forget. Like a frustrating itch, thoughts of her wouldn’t go away.
He intended to follow his usual schedule to a T today in an effort to recover his balance. Wake at 4:10. Put in his hours at The Kitchen. Hit the gym. Arrive home around two-thirty to work on the farm. Stay so busy that sorrow wouldn’t have a chance to swallow him. Avoid questioning what the point of his life was. Convince himself that he could stand to pass all the rest of his days this exact same way.
The first sip of coffee was always the best sip. He took his time tasting his espresso, smelling its rich scent, observing the quiet interior of his restaurant. The espresso was excellent. Everything inside The Kitchen was in order. And still, sadness swept up from the floor and curled around his legs, trying to drag him down. Angrily, he pushed it away and carried his cup to the small office in the back of house. As was his custom, he checked email while he slowly finished his coffee.
A knock sounded on the restaurant’s back door right on time, and he admitted his three sous chefs so they could begin the complicated dance of baking pastries and prepping components for the dishes customers ordered off the menu.
Sam was both The Kitchen’s owner and head chef. He’d painstakingly created the menu himself and still worked beside his sous chefs in the hours before the restaurant opened for business. After they opened, he’d spend most of his time either expediting orders or working in his office.
Thirty minutes later, he kneaded paleo cinnamon roll dough, the feel of it smooth beneath his hands.
Thirty minutes after that, he answered Mrs. Samuelson’s knock on the restaurant’s front door. She insisted on buying a coffee from him every morning at six-thirty, prior to opening. She always thanked him before placing $1.75 on the bar. Coffee cost $2.50. A fact he never mentioned to her.
Fifteen minutes after that, the waitstaff and baristas arrived.
Star, with the dyed black hair and tattoos on her neck, stopped before him, waiting until she gained his attention. “How was your day off?” she asked.
&n
bsp; I had to deal with a long-haired addict who was sleeping in my guesthouse on a pile of her own clothes. “Pretty good, thanks. Yours?”
As she answered, she regarded him with the sort of frank admiration that communicated romantic interest.
He didn’t reciprocate.
He helped behind the bar with the coffee rush. The espresso, the emails he’d answered, the food prep, Mrs. Samuelson, even Star’s infatuation. The morning went exactly as expected.
His world had narrowed to include only two things. Sugar Maple Kitchen and his farm.
It was considerably less traumatic to wake to her alarm clock than to a stranger who riffled through women’s purses.
Regardless, anxiety jumped on Genevieve like a sharp-clawed cat the morning after her homecoming. She’d taken the last Oxy she’d ever take last night. Today she’d start to get clean. Which was absolutely the right thing to do.
Anxiety over what was to come wouldn’t help a thing. Anxiety was a wasted emotion!
Yet, stubbornly, dismay pooled in her stomach.
She sat up, hair falling heavily over her shoulders. Her attention fixed on the charming painting opposite her equally charming bed in the room her mom had decorated and redecorated for her over the years.
After the soul-purging with Mom yesterday morning, she’d spent the rest of the day trying to make penance by cleaning the already spotless house, running to the grocery store to secretly stock up on the fluids and foods that would help her survive detox, bringing her mom flowers, and making dinner for the three of them.
The prospect of staying here during withdrawal was appealing because this house was the lap of luxury and because her mom would make an extremely attentive nurse. The downside: Mom would be so attentive that she’d insist on taking Genevieve to the doctor or ER when Genevieve claimed flu, at which time a doctor would tell her mother that her beloved younger daughter was suffering from opioid withdrawal.
Her only other option was to race back to Nashville and fight through withdrawal in her apartment—just like she’d done the last time when her attempt at detox had crashed and burned.
She made her way to the adjoining bathroom (charming), piled her hair on top of her head, and stepped into the shower once it grew agreeably steamy. She scrubbed juniper body wash against her limbs. Perhaps she’d find God in the physical misery that was coming for her—
A knock sounded on the bathroom door.
Genevieve stuck her head around the shower curtain’s edge. “Yes?”
“I brought you breakfast in bed, sweetie,” Mom called.
“I’ll be right out.” She turned off the water and toweled dry.
Before the earthquake, her relationship with Mom had been simpler. Nowadays? Complex.
Their interactions tended to follow a well-worn path. Mom smothered her, which frustrated Genevieve, which led to guilt, which eventually concluded in irritability, despite the fact that Genevieve knew she didn’t have the right to feel irritated.
She and Natasha had been blessed with a mom who loved them and fed them and cared for them and picked them up from school and bought them new clothes and said prayers with them and cheered for them at every event and served on the PTA and sent them to private Christian school.
Genevieve cinched the belt of her pink robe around her waist and exited the humid bathroom for the cooler air-conditioned bedroom.
“I was hoping to catch you before you got up.” Mom held a breakfast tray.
“No worries. I can slip back under the covers just as quickly. See? Ready.”
Caroline settled the tray over Genevieve’s legs as if Genevieve were the recent victim of a spinal cord injury. “I made your favorite. French toast with cinnamon-spiced apples and pecans.”
“Amazing.”
“Butter. Maple syrup.”
“Really amazing!” She’d have to eat the majority of this or she’d hurt her mom’s feelings. “Thanks so much.” A plate inscribed with You Are Special Today held the French toast. A cloth napkin cushioned sterling silverware.
Caroline held out a hand. Genevieve proffered her own so her mom could give it a heartfelt squeeze.
“Isn’t this a moment to treasure?” Mom asked.
“Yep!” Squeeze. Meaningful eye contact. Squeeze. Tender smile. Squeeze. Honestly, Genevieve didn’t need any more mother-daughter moments to treasure. What she dearly wanted were plain old ordinary moments. The pressure to make every moment extraordinary was sapping her life force.
“Here you are.” Mom shook out Genevieve’s cloth napkin, then stretched toward her as if to tuck it into her robe.
“Got it.” Genevieve intercepted the napkin and laid it across her lap. She was thirty years old. She didn’t require her mom to tuck napkins beneath her chin. And just like that, with absolute clarity, she saw that she could not stay here while detoxing. What had she been thinking? Of course she couldn’t. Mom made her want to swallow pills like Kool-Aid.
Back to Nashville, then. Which was such a lonely prospect that she wanted to cry—
A third option slipped into her mind in the form of an image. A white cottage near a pond. Hills rippling with leaves.
If Genevieve went through withdrawal inside Sam’s cottage, she could continue to hide her secret from her family. Yet she wouldn’t be entirely, horribly alone. She’d have someone nearby who knew the truth about the Oxy but wouldn’t smother her.
Yes . . . But was she prepared for the “someone nearby” to be Sam Turner? After the introduction they’d had, it would be more than a little mortifying to see him again. Was she willing to endure mortification in order to gain access to his cottage?
The sweetness of French toast filled her mouth as she chewed.
She would make Sam’s cottage very, very cute. Once she finished with it, the cottage would be worth a little mortification.
Also—other than riffling through her purse—Sam hadn’t been rude. He’d seemed decent. He’d seemed like the type of person who’d treat her like a grown-up and give her space but who’d also respond if, in the case of an emergency, she called him. He wouldn’t let her shrivel up and die.
At least she didn’t think he’d let her shrivel up and die. Would he?
No doubt, Sam wouldn’t consider her to be an ideal renter after their previous interaction.
But Genevieve could be persuasive.
She returned her focus to her mom, who had launched into a verbal list of all the treasured moments she had planned for the two of them today. “After lunch with Belle and Margaret, we can head to Gloria’s, and you can get your roots done.”
“I have dark roots on purpose, Mom. I like it like this.”
Mom’s brows elevated. “It’s so pretty, sweetie. Very flattering. But I . . . are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
“I suppose I can call and cancel the appointment I made for you and hope Gloria hasn’t turned anyone else away. Maybe I’ll just pay her because I hate to cancel. . . .”
“Mom, have you met Sam Turner? He lives out at Sugar Maple Farm.”
She appeared perplexed by the swift change in topic. “I’ve chatted with him a few times. He’s the Australian man who owns Sugar Maple Kitchen.”
Ah. So Sam was Australian, not British as she’d first guessed. “I’m not familiar with Sugar Maple Kitchen.”
“It’s a breakfast restaurant downtown.”
Genevieve moved the tray to the middle of the bed and crossed her legs. “He mentioned to me that he has a cottage on his property.”
“Hmm? When did he mention this?”
“Yesterday when I stopped to get gas near his farm.” More lies. Her conscience flinched. “I think I’m going to rent the cottage from him during my stay here in Misty River.”
“Why would you want to stay on a farm when you can stay here?”
“Because I have a tremendous amount of work to do, and I feel like I’m ignoring you and Dad when I close myself into my room in order to get everything done
that I need to get done.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“I’m going to talk to Sam about renting the cottage.”
“Your father and I completely understand that you’re busy, sweetie. You’re always very, very busy.” Chiding crept into her voice. “But you’re working for the Kingdom, and so when you’re here, we don’t take it personally. Even though you’re not here often.”
“I love and appreciate the fact that I’m always welcome here. You and Dad and Natasha and this house are precious to me.” She looked Mom straight in the face. The situation she’d gotten herself into was so serious that she simply could not afford to cave to mom guilt. “Even so, I’m going to stay in Sam’s cottage this time around.”
Natasha
The building is wailing and shaking. It’s going to come down around us. On us.
I’m going to die. My sister’s going to die.
“Yell so I know where you are,” a boy—Luke—shouts.
“H—” My mouth has gone dry and no sound will come out. I swallow and try again. “Here!”
Hands roughly yank me forward into a dim room. Dust is falling like rain. I meet Luke’s eyes and dig my fingers into his arm. “My sister!”
Genevieve and I were close when we were little, but I’m in eighth grade and Gen’s in sixth, and she’s been annoying me the last few years by borrowing my stuff and coming into my room and talking too much. I haven’t been nice to her lately, and now I can’t stand that thought. Because we’re both going to die.
Chapter Three
His trespasser was back.
Sam recognized the white Volvo parked in front of his house and groaned. What did Genevieve want with him? He was just beginning to regain his equilibrium after their last meeting.
His old truck bumped along the familiar gravel-covered dirt road that led from the farm’s entrance gate, past the guesthouse, and eventually to his white two-story farmhouse. He parked and exited the cab. His gaze latched on to her as he approached.
