Brunch at Bittersweet Café

by Carla Laureano

  Melody laughed, a throaty sound that did strange and not altogether welcome things to his insides. “I don’t think you would have died out there. But to answer your question, I’m pretty boring too. I go to flea markets, restore antique furniture sometimes. My friend Rachel hosts this thing called the Saturday Night Supper Club at her house. So I do the baking for that.”

  “That’s hardly boring. How does one get an invitation to such a thing?”

  “Why? Do you want to come?”

  He grinned at her. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “That was pretty smooth. We’ll see. It’s very exclusive. You have to earn a spot on the guest list.”

  “Seems I’m going to have to work extra hard to make myself indispensable, then.”

  A flicker of a smile crossed her face, but she kept her eyes fixed on the road. He’d take it as a positive sign that she didn’t immediately attempt to make this into a one-time thing.

  No. Wrong line of thinking. This had to be a one-time thing.

  “So. Tell me about this flea market obsession of yours.”

  “Obsession? Who said it was an obsession?”

  “Just a guess. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  This time, he caught a glimpse of a barely there dimple. “You’re not wrong exactly. I would call it an enthusiastic hobby, not an obsession.”

  “What kind of things do you buy?”

  “Anything that catches my fancy. You’d have to see my apartment to really understand. All this beautiful furniture, either cast off on the curb or sold for a fraction of what it’s worth. All they really need is some TLC. I saved an old Queen Anne side table, for example, that was damaged and stained almost beyond repair, filled in the gouges, and covered it in chalk paint. It’s now my entryway table. A Chippendale sofa, which I refinished and reupholstered with vintage fabric I found on eBay. That sort of thing. And then of course, there’s my book collection.”

  “You collect books? I didn’t expect you to say that. What kind?”

  “Classics, mostly, 1800s to mid–twentieth century. And I look for various editions of my favorites.”

  “Do you read them all?”

  Melody laughed. “Of course I do. I also photograph them.” She pulled out her phone and tapped an icon before handing it over.

  It was an Instagram profile called Books in the Bakery, populated by a collection of pastry-and-book photos. He was no judge of photography, but they did give him a sudden craving for a huckleberry muffin, if not the urge to reread Huckleberry Finn.

  “This is pretty impressive, Melody.”

  “I don’t know about that, but it’s fun.” She held out an open palm and he placed the phone in it. “Keeps me from giving in to the mind-numbing boredom at work.”

  He hadn’t understood what she’d meant when she said her work wasn’t really baking, but after seeing photos of her elaborate, varied pastries, it seemed obvious her talent was wasted in her current situation.

  They drove in comfortable silence until Melody turned off Highway 36 onto Highway 287 toward Longmont.

  “So this is where you grew up?” he asked.

  Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “Kind of. When we were in Colorado.”

  Something in her tone warned him to tread carefully. “You moved around a lot? Like the military?”

  “No. Definitely not like the military.” Her laugh sounded brittle, and the openness she had shown earlier shut like the slam of a prison door. He would take the warning to back off, even if it made him even more curious than before.

  They were proceeding into Old Town Longmont now, a charming historical district filled with late-1800s buildings and period houses. Like any other city, the outskirts had suffered from sprawl and not a little bit of blight reflecting its poorer-neighbor status to nearby Boulder, but this part of the city was intact. The kind of place that families moved into with dreams of riding bikes down tree-lined streets and walking the dog to get a Saturday morning cup of coffee. The image of suburbia made even his relatively friendly neighborhood seem downright urban.

  Near the city center, Melody pulled up to the curb in front of an older house. It was modest, with a sunroom addition on one side of the walkway and a detached garage on the other. She put the car in park, switched off the ignition, and sat, staring at the front for a long moment. “Okay then. Let’s take a look.”

  She seemed to be bracing herself as she grabbed her handbag—some woven thing that looked like a rug—and hopped out of the Jeep. He trailed behind her on the walkway as she fished keys out of the purse and unlocked the front door. When he finally caught up, she was standing in the middle of the living room, her arms hanging by her sides.

  “Melody?” he asked softly.

  She turned and he saw the tear streaks on her cheeks. She swept them away quickly. “I didn’t expect this to be so hard.”

  He resisted putting his arm around her, instead rubbing her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting way. “Of course it’s difficult. We don’t have to do this right now.”

  “Yeah, we do.” She wandered around the living room, trailing a finger over the furniture. Some of it was antique, but most of it was typical disposable 1980s stuff that had seen better days. She stopped at an end table and lifted a silver-framed photograph. Even at a distance, he could see it was an older woman and a little girl. Melody and her grandmother.

  She slipped the frame into her purse and then threw a wry look over her shoulder. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Tell who? This is yours anyway, isn’t it?”

  “The house is. The stuff inside belongs to my mother. She won’t come back to look at it before she sells it off.”

  “Surely she won’t mind you taking photographs.”

  That look again. “You don’t know my mother.”

  Justin moved up beside her and peered at the frames still left on the table. There was a photo of three women: one he presumed was Melody’s grandmother, one who was definitely Melody, and one who surely must be the mom in question. Why wouldn’t Melody have taken that one too?

  He lifted another photo, which was of the middle-aged woman alone, wearing a stunning evening dress. Squinting, he racked his memory for where he’d seen her before. “This is your mom? I swear I know her.”

  She said nothing, simply took the photo from his hand and replaced it on the table. “She’s a country music singer.”

  “That’s why your grandmother raised you then? Because your mom was so busy with her recording career?”

  “And touring. And publicity.” Melody’s shoulders sagged in resignation as she turned to face him fully. “We lived on the road when she was on tour, and Grandma Bev and I came back here when we weren’t. Mom, of course, had her house in Nashville and just came out here to visit me.”

  An odd arrangement to be sure, especially with a little girl, but at least her mom had attempted to see her. He said as much and got a bitter laugh in return.

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? I’m not convinced it wasn’t all a publicity stunt. You know, being a devoted single mother. Oh and look, she brought her daughter up on stage tonight in front of twenty thousand people to sing a duet.”

  Melody shook her head as if she could shake away her memories. “Anyway. That doesn’t matter now. I’ll find the car keys.”

  Justin grasped Melody’s wrist before she could move away. “It’s okay to be angry, you know. That your grandmother left you. It sounds like she was the one sure thing in your life.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “She was.”

  “It might help to talk about her. They say that’s the best thing after a loss.”

  “Who is they?” Already, Melody was pulling herself together. The woman was tough.

  “They. You know, the people that go around studying these things so they can write articles about it.”

  Melody cracked a smile, but she didn’t seem to be inclined to take his advice. “Come with me. The keys are probably in
the kitchen.”

  Chapter Eight

  MELODY ESCAPED THE LIVING ROOM and Justin’s empathy before she could break down completely. She’d known it was going to be difficult to come back to this place, this house that had been her refuge for as long as she could remember. She just hadn’t expected to be slammed with memories, good and bad, the minute she walked through the door.

  She slipped through the old-fashioned swinging door to the kitchen and proceeded straight to the junk drawer. It only took a minute to find the keys to the car, attached to a green plastic dinosaur keychain. Her grandmother’s idea of a joke, probably, considering she called the car Godzilla.

  “Follow me.” She nodded to Justin, who lingered in the kitchen doorway, then unlocked the back door and cut across the yard to the garage. The leaves didn’t look to have been raked the previous fall; she’d have to get someone out to do that before she put the house up for rent. She unlocked the garage with her keys and stepped aside for Justin.

  It was a single bay, its edges packed with tools and boxes, the main floor space taken up by a chamois-covered vehicle. “May I?” Justin asked.

  “Sure. Let me open the garage so you have some light.” She pushed a cracked button and the heavy slab swept upward, flooding the space with sunshine. Justin grabbed the edge of the cover and gently pulled it back to reveal a metallic green compact car.

  Justin rubbed ancient dirt from the fender and whistled. “Original paint job, and in good condition. Nice.”

  Melody tossed him the keys. “Be my guest. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  She pulled out an old shop stool and dusted it off with a nearby rag, then plopped herself down while she watched him. He circled the car, taking note of every detail, occasionally leaning down to rub at some perceived flaw in the paint. Then he unlocked the driver’s door, popped the hood, and bent over the compartment.

  “What does it look like in there?” she called.

  “Like an engine.” He poked his head around the hood. “Come look.”

  She hopped off the stool and circled around to the front of the car. He had his hands braced on the front edge of the engine compartment. “It’s clean.”

  “Yeah, he obviously took care of it, if it looks like this now. How long has it been sitting?”

  Melody shrugged. “Twenty, thirty years? She never drove it. She might have taken it out a few times to clean the garage in the time I lived here.”

  Justin nodded and pointed to a couple of black hoses. Even she could see the rubber had deteriorated. “The hoses and belts are in bad shape. Those will all need to be replaced. But I’m wondering . . .” He frowned and then returned to the driver’s side, where he bent down and peered at something on the inside edge of the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Following a hunch.” He pulled out his cell phone and started typing something in. His eyebrows lifted. “Let me check one more thing.” He got down on his hands and knees and slid under the car until only his feet were sticking out beneath the front. She cringed to think of him on the filthy ground beneath the vehicle.

  He scooted out with a smile on his face. “You’re going to like this, Melody. There were a couple of different models of this car made. One of them was high-performance, the SC/360. The pinstriping and the hood scoop came standard on that one, but they were also options on lower models, so that doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. However, I just looked up the details on an enthusiast forum, double-checked the casting number on the engine and the model number on the door tag, and it looks like you’ve got an SC/360 with an original V8 and four-barrel carb.”

  Melody blinked at him. “What does any of that mean?”

  “It means that this car is extremely valuable to the right collector. There are probably only about a hundred of these left, and most of them won’t be in nearly this condition without restoration. Original is worth money.”

  “How much money?”

  “Keep in mind you’ll need to put a little cash into it first. I’d need to get it started to know how much, and the carburetor’s probably gunked up with varnish. It’s going to need to be taken apart and cleaned before it will start.”

  “Assuming we do all that . . .”

  Justin held up his phone. “According to what I’ve found so far, maybe twenty grand.”

  “You’re kidding me. For this old thing?”

  “There’s a strong secondary market for American pony cars, and AMC collectors tend to be pretty obsessive. This is far rarer than my Mustang, I’ll tell you that.”

  A smile lifted her lips. Twenty thousand dollars. Her grandmother had left her enough money to put in an even amount of capital as Rachel, split the business fifty-fifty, but this would ensure that she could afford to eat and pay rent while they were waiting to turn a profit.

  But there was a catch. “How hard will it be to find someone to fix this up? And how much would it cost?”

  “Well, assuming I did it myself, a few hundred for the parts. Plus new tires. Less than a thousand total, I’d think.”

  She caught her breath. “Justin, I can’t ask you—”

  “You didn’t. I just volunteered.” He grabbed a rag from a nearby shelf and wiped his hands. “It’ll be fun. The Mustang’s pretty much done, so I’ve been thinking I could use a new project anyway. Unless of course you don’t want me to. I won’t be insulted if you don’t want to trust something this valuable to a stranger.”

  Melody bit her lip and felt tears prick her eyes. She usually wasn’t a crier, but her emotions floated dangerously close to the surface right now. “No, I would be grateful if you would. Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”

  Justin’s face broke into a smile, as if he’d been hoping she’d agree. “We’ll have to get the car down to Denver, of course. It’ll go to my dad’s, where I keep all my tools. Pretty sure he’s not going to be able to resist helping.”

  “I’ll arrange for the tow, whatever you need. This is amazing, Justin. Thank you.”

  He was looking at her seriously now, gave her a little nod. “You’re welcome.” Then he cleared his throat. “Should we lock up and go grab lunch? I’m starving.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that.” Melody closed the garage door while Justin put down the hood and slipped the cover onto the car. Then they walked together back into the house. Melody pocketed the car keys and pulled out her cell phone.

  “I need to take some pictures first. I haven’t decided what to do with the house.” She started with the kitchen, snapping photos from every angle. As she lowered her phone, her eyes lit on her grandmother’s KitchenAid mixer on the counter, its white enamel nicked from years of use but the stainless-steel bowl gleaming as bright as ever. Impulsively, she hefted it off the counter and handed it to Justin.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “I never saw this.”

  “I’ll claim a small-appliance burglar got to it.” There was no way she was letting her mom liquidate the mixer that represented the time she’d spent with Grandma Bev. The mixer in which Melody had made her first dough, the one that had cranked out batches of Christmas cookies in February after they’d missed cookie season because they’d been on tour.

  The soft look in his eye said he understood, and she avoided that expression as she sped through the photos in the rest of the house.

  “I know it might sound silly to want to keep this old place,” Melody said when they were settled back in her Jeep. “I mean, I definitely don’t want to live here. But—”

  “It has a lot of sentimental value.”

  Melody pulled out on the street, following the directions on Justin’s GPS app. “It’s more than that. See, I only went to real school in second and third grade. The rest of the time, my grandmother homeschooled me. It was easier, more flexible, and we could travel with my mom. But there were times that we lived here for a few months at a time, and it felt . . . normal.” She threw him a self-deprecating smile. “Nowadays, I’d take normal as a
n insult, but back then it was my highest goal.”

  “Every kid wants to fit in. It’s only when you get older that you realize it’s boring.”

  His understanding lifted her heaviness. “It is. Maybe that’s why I never seem to keep a job for more than a couple of months. I get restless. Once upon a time, I thought I was going to be a literature professor like my grandmother. I went to Saint Mary’s College outside San Francisco—my mom’s choice, to be honest—but even with her picking up the tab for tuition, the Bay Area is an expensive place to live. I needed a job, so I got a position as bakery assistant at Noelle Patisserie.” She paused, waiting for his reaction. When he just stared at her blankly, she said, “It’s arguably one of the best bakeries in the country, even if back then it was still making a name for itself.”

  “Ah.” She could tell it still meant nothing to him.

  “Anyway, by the time I got through my undergrad degree, I realized that critiquing literature was destroying my love for it, and I was just getting through the day so I could go work at the bakery. I’d intended to go straight into a master’s/PhD program, but instead, I shredded my acceptance letters and went to work full-time at Noelle.”

  “I’m sure that went over well.”

  “My mom was furious, of course, especially considering Saint Mary’s costs upward of forty grand a year.”

  Justin’s mouth dropped open.

  “I know. I graduated ten years ago, and I just recently paid her back the last dime.”

  Had the memory not still been so painful, Melody would have enjoyed the horrified look on Justin’s face. “She actually made you pay her back?”

  “Oh no, nothing so obvious. She just liked to throw it in my face as one of the ways I’d disappointed her. So I said I would repay it and she ‘generously’ agreed not to charge me interest.”