Chapter One
Present time
Charlene
“See you later,” I shouted and waved as the old man drove down the gravel road leading up to the small cabin I’d been staying in for the past month.
The cabin was old, rickety and in need of a complete demolition, but since Jonah didn’t want to do that it would get a serious make-over. I’d just agreed with him that I would live there for the next year at a ridiculously low cost, and my low-cost deal was because I’d oversee renovations and do some of it myself.
“Get builders in for the heavy work. Replace what needs to be replaced, slap on some paint. I don’t expect miracles, darlin’,” Jonah said and winked at me. “Caroline and I are just down the road if you need anything.”
I watched his car disappear, wondering if I’d gone completely insane, and decided that I probably had, but it still felt good. It felt right to stay there under the high sky, with mountains surrounding me and my little home. I did yoga on the back porch each day. Roamed the hills behind the cabin. Read a lot. Breathed.
After a month, the inactivity had started to wear on me, so I walked back inside and started planning what needed to be done to the place. The bathroom would be my priority, and then my bedroom. No, I decided. Not the bedroom. I’d spent way too much time holed up there in the past few weeks. If the wall between the kitchen and living room wasn’t load bearing, I’d knock it down to bring some light into the cabin. It would also make a nice space to have guests in, although I didn’t actually know anyone in the area, so my opportunities to entertain were highly limited. I’d spent the almost four weeks since I arrived mostly on my own and had only gone to the supermarket on the outskirts of town to fill up my pantry, freezer, and fridge, so I hadn’t really talked to anyone.
This would have to change, though. Wilhelmine wasn’t anything special, just one of many small towns most people passed by on their way to the resorts for skiing or hiking, but it seemed like a nice place. I’d decided to stay for the next twelve months, so I should make an effort to get to know people.
My time for feeling sorry for myself was up, I decided. It had gone on far too long, so I’d go grocery shopping, and this time, I’d say more than my usual words of hey and thanks to people. I was ready to start moving on with my life, and for the first time in a very long time, I also felt a little lonely.
I changed into a clean pair of jeans and was tightening the belt around my hips when I noticed that I would have to put another hole in it. I’d no clue how much weight I’d lost in lost in the past six months, but it was a lot. Soul-searching, albeit without much result, was apparently the best diet I could have been on and doing yoga daily had helped tone my body into a shape it hadn’t been in since I was a teenager, if even then. I still stopped in front of the mirrors sometimes and just stared at my flat stomach and the muscles in my arms. My hair had grown until it reached my shoulders and the sun had put streaks in it, making it a pale golden color that I really liked. I wished I had more of a tan, but it was summer so I’d work on getting one.
When I’d loaded the groceries into my car, I did not turn back toward my cabin like I usually did. Instead, I turned the other way and drove along Main Street until I found an empty parking spot. There was a small diner right in front of me, with a big sign that said, “Jenny’s” in simple red letters. Something smelled delicious, and I decided to start my exploration of the town by getting something to eat.
The bell above the door jingled when I entered the diner, and I stopped to look around. The place looked nice, and I liked the way someone had decided to keep the old-style diner atmosphere even though it clearly had been upgraded over the years. The walls were full of photographs and old posters, and there were a few tables with chairs, mismatched in a way that was charming, which also meant it was deliberately done. Four booths lined the window facing the street, and everything looked squeaky clean. The place was half full, and I smiled at the other customers as I made my way to the long counter where a young girl was sorting through menus. There were cupcakes on display, and a quick glance revealed that frosting seemed to have been slabbed onto them with a liberal hand, or quite possibly a shovel. My mother had run the bakery in our hometown and I’d grown up helping her out. I had always loved frosting, so I decided that it would be entirely suitable to celebrate my decision to stay in the cabin by bringing some cupcakes home with me.
Someone was suddenly wailing loudly from somewhere in the back, and my eyes flew to the young girl whose name according to the tag on her chest was Mae. She bit her lip and made a small face.
“Joanie left.”
“Okay,” I mumbled, wondering if I was supposed to understand what this meant.
The girl must have seen the confusion on my face because she added, “Maddie had ordered a cake.”
I blinked.
“Okay?” I repeated, making it more of a question.
“Joanie was a part-timer, just like me. She was good at decorating cakes, but Day left, and I guess she didn’t want to hang around after that. She must have split during the night. All her stuff is gone and she with it.”
None of this made much sense to me, except the fact that their main cake-decorateur had gone awol, which probably explained the frosting on the cupcakes.
“That’s too bad,” I said slowly. “What kind of cake did, um, Maddie order?”
“She promised her girl a birthday cake with a princess on it. Not gonna happen.”
“Not gonna happen,” I echoed.
“Jenny’s the best cook in the county, but she can’t decorate a cake worth shit.” She bit her lip again, and added, “Sorry. But she’s not good at it.”
She made a small movement with her hand, indicating the cupcakes and since these were irrefutable proof of incompetence in the decoration area, I grinned at her and decided to step into the mess to see if I could help out. This would be my home for the next a year, so I might as well start making friends.
“I decorate a mean cake,” I told her. “I can give it a try.”
Then I closed my mouth, wondering what the hell I was thinking. I hadn’t actually done anything like it in years, and I might have been good at that sort of thing a long time ago, but I might have forgotten. Also, surely the unknown Jenny wouldn’t want a complete stranger to barge in and spread frosting.
“Jenny!” the girl bellowed. “There’s a lady out here who can decorate cakes.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” a female voice bellowed back. “Send her back.”
I blinked. Apparently, the unknown Jenny did want a complete stranger to barge in and spread frosting.
The girl motioned with her hand again, this time toward an opening to what I assumed was the kitchen, and I stared at it for a beat.
“Alrighty,” I said and moved.
A girl at least twenty years younger than me was sobbing uncontrollably as she looked at a white cake with a very strange decoration. They had used store bought frosting in various shades of pink and purple to create something which I assumed was meant to be the aforementioned princess, but it looked more like a troll. Or a unicorn. Or a pile of dog-poo.
A woman my age was also looking at the cake, with a scowl on her face that made me wonder if the cake-business wasn’t just a tad bit more important in this town than I’d realized.
“Hey,” I said apprehensively.
“Can you do better than that?” the older woman asked and turned the scowl toward me.
“Well, yeah,” I said because surely anyone with more than two fingers could do better than what was in front of us.
“I’m Jenny. Salvage what you can of the cake and dinner is on the house.”
“I’m Charlene, and I’ll do my best,” I said, surveying the equipment available as I started opening tubs of frosting.
Then I set about fixing the cake in a way I hoped a little girl would appreciate and even more, in a way which would impress the pretty damned scary woman called Jenny.
I scraped off everything that had been done and started from scratch by covering the cake with a thin layer of pink frosting.
“Weren’t these okay?” I asked and looked at two ready-made sheets of marzipan with princesses on them. A bigger Cinderella on one and a smaller Snow White surrounded by several dwarves on the other.
“They’re too small,” Jenny said between clenched teeth, and I could see that they were indeed smaller than the cake.
The sheets were also torn at the edges as if someone had put them on the cake and then removed them again. I looked at them for a beat, took a small sharp knife and swiftly cut out Cinderella and placed her on the cake. Then I put white, swirly piping up and down all around the side and added flower shaped dots of frosting in various colors around the top and bottom edge. The area around Cinderella, I decorated with thin, swirly ringlets.
“What’s your girl’s name?” I mumbled.
“Maria.”
I piped the name in curly letters above the princess and stepped back to survey the result. Then I added a few more flowers and ringlets and sprinkled some sparkling glitter over the whole creation. It was far from fantastic, but it was lightyears better than what I’d started out with.
Huh, I thought. It seemed I hadn’t forgotten how to decorate a cake after all.
“Jesus,” Jenny said hoarsely.
“Effing Christ with a cherry on top,” the younger woman added succinctly.
“You like?” I asked with a grin that must have looked smug as all get out because that’s how I felt.
“Uh, yeah,” Jenny said, still staring at the cake.
“Excellent,” I said
Then the younger woman suddenly squealed loudly and got to her feet.
“I’m Maddie, and I’m so incredibly grateful, and I have to go. The birthday party is ongoing, and they’re eating burgers right now, but I have to get home with this for dessert.”
Before I could say anything at all, they’d boxed up the cake, and she left, holding the cake-box in front of her as if it was made out of delicate china.
Jenny and I stared at each other, both grinning widely.
“That was fun,” I murmured.
“You’re not looking for a part-time job by any chance?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t look like a Charlene,” she said suddenly. “You look like a Lee. Anyone ever call you that?”
“Way back when,” I said, suddenly remembering my girlfriends in high school.
“Good enough. So, Lee, not really isn’t the same as a firm no. I’ll work on that and perhaps you’ll work part-time here while I do?”
I started laughing, and told her, “I rented a cabin in the area for a year and thought I’d celebrate with some cupcakes. Let’s start with them, shall we?”
“Girl, you don’t celebrate something like that with cupcakes. We’ll go to my brother’s.”
I stared at her, wondering what in the heck she meant.
“Bar across the street. Oak. We’ll have tequila.”
Oh. Yeah, I could totally do that, and she was right. One didn’t celebrate huge life decisions with a few lonely cupcakes. That, one did with tequila.
***
We were on our third shot and had shared the abbreviated versions of our lives, our divorces and how we loved being our age, but hated how everything on our bodies seemed to move slightly downward with each year.
I’d told her about Ms. Skanky and how my ex-husband Bob now fell asleep on the couch with her in the house instead of me. She’d shared how her husband had used his hard hands on her and how she’d thrown him out of the house before her brother found out because, she said, he’d surely kill him and end up in prison for life.
She had a dry, sharp sense of humor, and I liked her a whole lot more than the kind of women I’d spent time with back in suburbia.
“Crap,” I said when we debated whether we should go for a fourth tequila or not. “I have a car.”
“I’d imagine you do,” she said and made a gesture toward the waitress which I assumed meant we’d get another shot.
I’d planned on having one more, so I grinned but moved my arm in a wide arc to indicate the general outside, and said, “It’s there.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s where it would be.”
Our eyes met, and we both started laughing loudly.
“I don’t know how to get home,” I shared. “My rickety shed is far away, and this town doesn’t strike me as a place which has a taxi service.”
It took fifteen minutes to drive to the town limits, so I was perhaps exaggerating the distance a little, but it was still too far away to walk, especially since we’d been sitting in a corner of Oak for quite some time and dusk was well underway, so I knew it’d be dark soon.
“You live in a rickety shed?”
“No,” I said with a small dismissive wave of my hand. “I’ll call Jonah; he’ll pick me up.”
“Jonah?”
“Anderson.”
“You’re renting Jonah’s cabin?”
“For a year. I’ll fix it up.”
She leaned forward slowly and put her forehead in her hands. She knew about the state of the cabin, apparently.
“What?”
She slowly raised her head and looked at me.
“Lee…” she said. “You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I’ll do some of it myself, but Jonah said I could bring in builders for the heavy stuff.”
“We’ll talk to Paddy,” she said.
“Paddy?”
“Callaghan construction. They do good work. Joke will help you. It’s a pity Day left, but Mac will pitch in, and of course –”
“Jenny.”
She ignored me and kept mumbling names, and was in the process of pulling out her phone.
“Jenny,” I said again, this time louder and with a snap in my voice. “Who are these people?”
She froze.
“God, I’m sorry. It’s so weird, Lee, because it feels like I’ve known you forever and I forgot that you don’t know anyone here.”
“So, who are they?” I asked again.
“Right. Joke is my brother. His name is really Zacharias, but no one calls him that. Day is one in their group of friends, but he’s away for a while. Mac’s another one, and he’s the goddamned chief of police. They all hang with Paddy and –”
“Jenny,” I cut her off again.
My belly had turned to ice because I recognized one of the names. Joke. One of the men from the horrible night in the mountains six months earlier had been called that, and it was too unusual a nickname, so all the names she was throwing at me had to be the group of gorgeous men I’d seen.
Shit.
“What?” she asked when she saw my face.
“I’m calling Jonah now. I have to leave. I’ll… Oh, God. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’ll let me out of the contract. I’ll offer to waive the depos –”
I had started to get up, escape the only thing on my mind but she grabbed my arm and pulled me down again.
At the same time, a waitress put two shots on the table with a murmured, “Looks like you’ll need these.”
“Lee?” Jenny said, ignoring the waitress.
“Your brother? Joke?” I swallowed and whispered, “Does he ski?”
Her head reared back a little, and she nodded.
“I’ve kind of met him.”
“Fucked him,” she said calmly.
“No!” I shouted and looked around the half-empty bar. “Of course not.”
“Day?” she asked, and I shook my head and opened my mouth to protest. “Mac? Paddy? Or –”
“I haven’t fucked anyone at all,” I hissed.
She blinked, and added with a small smile, “You were married for twenty years, so I doubt that’s entirely true.” When I kept staring at her, she said softly, “Tell me.”
So, I did. I told her about the weight I’d lost, and my weekend with Marianne and the barracudas. About the stupid shots. And what I’d heard outside the restrooms.
Her eyes widened as I spoke, and by the time I finished, her mouth had fallen open. Our eyes held and there was kindness in hers, but slowly it was replaced by… mirth?
Then she started laughing.
I glared at her.
“I know, Lee, but it’s not you anymore, and you have to admit that it was kind of funny?” She laughed some more and added, “Grandma Myrtle!”
Suddenly what had seemed so insulting and hurtful wasn’t such a big deal. I’d had helmet-hair, no makeup and layers of ski-clothes which were a couple of sizes too small. The description had probably been quite apt.
She raised her glass and slowly I did the same with mine.
“To the death of Grandma Myrtle!” she called out, and I started laughing.
We downed the shots, and I shuddered a little as the alcohol burned its way down my throat and warmed my belly.
“God,” I said. “Which one was it?”
She turned her head toward the door and murmured absentmindedly, “Which one was what?”
“The smoking hot guy with the muscles who called me Myrtle,” I said, with a rueful grin. “I don’t want to meet any of them, but I especially never, ever want to lay my eyes on that dude again.”
She started laughing and turned back to me.
“That was Gibson. And he just walked through the door.”