The First Love Cookie Club (8 page)

Damn Christmas anyway.

He extended his arm to her.

What could she do but take it? She slipped her hand around the crook of his elbow and he guidedher over to the ladder. Two men sprang to her side to hold the ladder in place, and a woman dressed in a tattered wedding gown like Miss Havisham from
Great Expectations,
reached into the cardboard box, retrieved a pink-cheeked cherub ornament, and handed it to her. The name Ashley Duncan was painted in gold in big letters on the angel’s wings; the scroll in the angel’s hand detailed Ashley’s wish list. Mittens (blue), coat size six, Bratz doll, Easy-Bake oven, Daddy home for Christmas.

Sarah’s breath hitched and she wondered where Ashley’s father was. Dotty Mae and Raylene had told her that several kids on the roster were the children of prison inmates, while others were offspring of soldiers serving in the Middle East. It didn’t really matter. Either way, Ashley was missing a daddy.

“Acclaimed author Miss Sadie Cool will now adorn the Cherub Tree with its first ornament of the season,” announced Miss Havisham to the onlookers in the park.

Sarah was a bit disconcerted to see that quite a crowd had gathered. But, thankfully, it appeared most of the attention was centered on Santa, who was joking with some of the kids and pretending to pull candy canes from behind their ears. Travis was such a natural with children. The guy had an easy air that drew people to him. Herself included.

Stop thinking about him. Get up that ladder, hang the cherub, and get this over with.

Clutching the ornament tightly in her hand, she started up the ladder on one side of the tree while Santa started up the other side, the width of the old pecan blocking their view of each other.

Until they reached the top of their respective ladders and a natural bifurcation in the tree trunk. Suddenly, she was looking squarely into Travis’s eyes just as she realized her childhood graffiti was carved into the tree between them.

Please, don’t let him look down.

He looked down.

She saw where his gaze fell.

Right where she didn’t want it to go. Right on that stupid, stupid, stupid love message she’d carved in a regrettable moment of teenage, hormone-fueled madness.

Behind the Santa beard, his lips tipped up.

Look away, look away, pretend you didn’t see him seeing it.

Sarah glanced away, but she wasn’t fast enough. Travis raised his head and his gaze sparked off hers, just before she fixed on an inscription that read:
David Loves Debbie. See there, that’s the way a heartfelt tree defacing should be done. The guy professing his love for the girl, not the other way around.

“Hmm,” Travis said.

She was not going to fall for it. She wasn’t looking at him again. No way, no how. Studiously, she searched for the perfect spot to hang the angel ornament.

“Will you look at that?” Travis’s voice was low so only she could hear.

Do not rise to the bait.

“It’s the darnedest thing,” he said.

Shut up, just shut up!

Sarah gave up looking for the perfect spot for an angel landing and just stuck the ornament on thefragile twig in front of her. “All done,” she sang out to the men holding on to the ladder for her. “I’m coming down.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Miss Havisham said, holding the train of her moth-eaten wedding gown in one hand, standing on her one shod foot and looking more than a bit like Helena Bonham Carter. “You’re just getting started.”

Sarah glanced down to see one of the men was handing her another ornament.

“We’ve got two more boxes just like this one to go.” With a flourish, Miss Havisham waved her hand at a large cardboard box.

At the same time, Travis said, “I never knew this was here.”

Sarah took the ornament from the man and looped the hanger to a tree limb, then reached down for another.
Do not react.

“Sarah Loves Travis 4 Ever,”
he read. “When did you write this?”

Play dumb.

“Huh?” Could he just let it go?

His smug smile held the wattage of the Luxor xenon light in Las Vegas. “It’s carved right here in the tree.”

She glowered at him. “You think I’m the only Sarah in town? You were a heartbreaker in your younger days. I bet there’s a whole throng of Sarahs that could have climbed this tree and scratched their undying love for you in it.”

“Uh-huh.” He grinned.

“Why are you smirking?”

“I’m imagining a throng of Sarahs climbing and scratching in unison.” He chuckled.

“Just hang some cherubs so we can get this over with.”

“Were you in on this flash mob of Sarahs that converged upon the Sweetheart Tree one mysterious night?” he asked. “All intent on scratching my name into the bark with a pocketknife?”

“Okay, all right, I did it. When I was young and dumb and a handsome face easily turned my head, I defaced the Sweetheart Tree. I broke the rules. Happy now?”

His chuckle turned into a hearty ho-ho-ho of laughter. “You love me 4 ever,” he teased in a singsong.

“I do not.”

“Hey, it says so right here and we all know if it’s written down it must be true.”

“Things change.”

“You tell me there’s no such thing as 4 ever?”

“That’s right.”

“Aw, I’m so disappointed. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”

“Please don’t rub my nose in this.”

“What?” He sounded startled. “I don’t mean to shame you. I was just teasing, Sarah.”

“You didn’t shame me. I shamed myself, but the past is the past, and unfortunately, while I was stupid enough to carve our names in the tree, I’m hoping you’ll be big enough to forgive me.”

“I think it’s sweet,” he said, “although I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when Jazzy gets to the mad crush stage and doodles some guy’s name in the tree. Maybe you can write a book about teenage angst by then and I’ll just give it to her to read.”

The vulnerable look on his face made up for the teasing. It had to be tough, being a single father. She couldn’t imagine it. In spite of herself, she felt her heart soften. The mood between them shifted and the tension drained from her shoulders. She’d built the past up so big in her mind that she hadn’t considered she’d been nothing more than a blip on Travis’s radar. That was both a relief and a bit of a disappointment.

The workers below kept handing up ornaments to them, and they hung cherubs throughout the branches of the pecan. Pink cherubs and blue cherubs. Cherubs with devilish grins and cherubs with halos. Chubby-cheeked cherubs and thin little angels with their palms pressed in prayer. It was one of the latter that Sarah received next. Almost all the branches were filled with ornaments and as she searched for a spot, her gaze fell upon the wish list written in a familiar childish scrawl. There at the bottom of the list that contained the usual stuff, Sarah read:
I wish for a mommy so my daddy won’t have to be all alone when I die.

She’d seen that handwriting before and she didn’t have to turn over the angel to know whose name was printed there, but she took a deep breath, flipped it over anyway.

Jazzy Walker.

Instead of hanging Jazzy’s angel from the tree, Sarah slipped it into her pocket. She wanted to be Jazzy’s secret Santa. Of course, she couldn’t help her with the last wish, but she was going to make sure that little girl got everything else she wanted.

I wish for a mommy so my daddy won’t have to be all alone when I die.

Her heart reeled and she looked through the bifurcation in the pecan tree, saw Travis hanging a cherub of his own. Was Jazzy truly that sick? Did he know that his daughter did not expect to have a future? He looked so happy behind that Santa beard, a big smile on his face, his gray eyes twinkling. He stopped, caught her eye, winked.

Oh, Travis.
Sarah couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked away with a heavy heart. All this time, she’d been worried what it would be like when she met him again. How she’d react, how she’d don the successful Sadie Cool persona and pretend the humiliation of the past had never happened.

But what she hadn’t expected, what completely blindsided her, was the realization this wasn’t about her at all. Rather, Travis was simply a single dad with a sick kid who was in way over his head.

It was then that Sarah made peace with her secret shame. When it came down to it, no one really cared that she’d made a fool of herself nine years ago. All that mattered now was Jazzy. She could let the past go, stop living in her own narrow world, and open her eyes to the wondrous blessings of the present moment.

Following her revelation in Sweetheart Park, something shifted inside Sarah. She felt calmer, more at peace, and she didn’t even tense up when Raylene and Dotty Mae broke the news that they were off to a meeting of the First Love Cookie Club.

“We start meeting in mid-October,” Dotty Mae explained on the way over to the Twilight Bakery where the meetings were held. “And our last meeting is the big cookie swap event the second Friday in December.”

“It takes two months to plan for the cookie swap?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, we’re about more than the cookie swap.” Raylene waved a hand. “We’re the driving force behind all the holiday events. We bake and sell all the cookies sold during the Dickens on the Square weekend. We organize and execute the Cherub Tree event. We oversee the annual lighting of the Twilight Christmas tree the week before Christmas and bake the cookies for that as well. You can be sure that any community event you attend in Twilight, we’ve had our hand in it.”

“Wow, you guys got a lot of power.”

“Your grandmother did too,” Raylene said. “She was one of us.”

“And people think we’re just little old ladies who knit and quilt and bake cookies.” Dotty Mae winked as they walked around the back of the bakery. “If only they knew.”

Raylene stepped forward to open the side entrance door. “Welcome to the inner sanctum. Command central.”

A blast of delicious aromas wrapped around Sarah, teased her nose, and drew her forward. She paused in the entryway, both as an introvert nervous upon entering an unknown place and as a writer, absorbing the lush sensory experience coming at her.

The fragrance of yeast was the strongest scent. It rolled over her, thick and rich as homebrewed beer. A march of other smells trooped behind— the sharp slice of cinnamon cleaving through the yeasty envelope, the slick slap of butter, the friendly embrace of vanilla. And bringing up the rear, the subtle but undeniable whisper of almond.

Sarah inhaled deeply, swished the scents around inside her nose like a wine connoisseur savoring a bottle of 1982 Château Mouton-Rothschild, let-ting it linger in her head, felt the texture, sniffed the bouquet, tasted the burst of fragrance, heard the echoes of all the food prepared here with loving hands. In her mind she tasted everything the bakery had to offer; flaky scones and grainy sugar cookies, light but crispy baklava, powdery doughnuts and complicated strudel, sweet soft kol-aces and puffy sopaipillas.

And cakes.

Lots of cakes. German chocolate and red velvet, carrot cake and pineapple upside-down cake. Pound cake and angel food cake. Lemon and strawberry and banana cake. It was a cascade of culinary excess and Sarah reveled in it.

Aromatic memories bubbled up inside her, transporting her back to the delights of Gram’s kitchen. She could see herself with Gram, baking in that quaint little kitchen, wearing an apron too big for her, standing on a stepstool stirring kismet cookie dough. In that moment, the peace she’d felt in Sweetheart Park crested over her like a breaking wave, drowning her with emotions so strong they contracted her heart.

Feeling so much, so quickly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t process the sudden rush of joy mingling with bittersweet sadness that seemed so much like a real homecoming. She stood rooted to the spot, half inside the bakery, and realized everyone was staring at her curiously.

Move, dimwit.

With a determined shake of her head, she threw off the memories, dispelled the emotions, forced a smile, and walked all the way inside.

She’d met most of the women the night before, but it had been sort of a blur and she still hadn’t put all the names to faces, and she knew she hadn’t met the pale-faced woman in the apron who stood at the bank of ovens with a potholder in her hand. She was younger than everyone else in the group, around thirty, with soft brown hair and even softer brown eyes, and as she moved from one oven to another, Sarah noticed she walked with a limp. Immediately, she felt a twinge of kinshipand empathy. One defective woman to another. Lightly, she fingered her abdomen, felt the hard ridges of the scar through the soft material of her sweater.

“Come in, come in.” A plump, smiling woman gestured her inside. Sarah recognized her as the person who’d been in charge of the floats during the parade. “I’m Belinda Murphey in case it got forgotten in the haze of yesterday.”

“Hello,” Sarah said. The shyness she’d battled all her life was back, nipping at her heels. Determinedly, she stiffened her shoulders and muscled through it.

“Have a seat,” the woman at the ovens invited. “I’m Christine Noble, by the way, and this is my bakery. Welcome.”

The back door clicked shut, sealing off the exit, closing Sarah in. “Thanks,” she murmured.

Dipping her head, Sarah took the empty chair closest to the door while Dotty Mae and Raylene flanked her, going for seats of their own. The chair raked across the startlingly white tile floor with an embarrassing squawk.

The other ladies greeted her, reintroducing themselves and telling her how happy they were she’d returned to Twilight.

“I wish Mia was here.” Dotty Mae sighed. “I miss her so much.” Her gaze met Sarah’s. “Your grandmother would have been so proud of you. Writing that beautiful children’s story. Honoring her kismet cookie tradition. I hope you know that.”

Sarah nodded. She missed her grandmother deeply. She could almost see her sitting at the table, laughing and joking with her friends.

“We all miss Mia something fierce,” Marva said. “Your gramma was special.”

“She was,” Sarah agreed past the lump in her throat.

“But we’re so glad you’re here. In you, your grandmother lives on.” Belinda reached over to pat Sarah’s hand.

They made her feel like she belonged, and that scared the hell out of Sarah. Why were they so nice to her? Sure, she was Mia’s granddaughter, but Gram had been gone for almost nine years. Twilight had never been her hometown. She had no real connection to these people and yet they acted like she was one of them. What did they want from her?

To settle her nervousness and get back the equanimity that had come over her in Sweetheart Park, Sarah flicked her gaze around the room. It helped to catalogue things. The exercise made her feel more grounded.

The kitchen was largely professional, filled with spotless stainless-steel sinks and appliances, but there were personal touches here and there that hinted at the personality of the owner. An old-fashioned butter churn sat in one corner next to a milking stool decorated with a blue gingham appliqué. In fact, there was lots of gingham around, from the festive red gingham kitchen curtains framing the windows to the green gingham pot-holder Christine held in her hand.

The antique, sturdy-legged wooden table where they were all sitting was a throwback to the farming days when large families gathered for massive noonday meals. Eight chairs fit comfortablyaround the table, with plenty of room to accommodate more. The wall just below the ceiling had been hand stenciled with cows and ducks, pigs and chickens, to form a bucolic border. The effect was a comfy, soft-place-to-land feel that Sarah distrusted. The Twilight Bakery felt too happy, too gentle, too cute by half.

“We’re just so tickled to have you here,” said a tall, muscular woman with cocoa-colored skin and attractive cornrows. “I’m Marva by the way, Marva Bullock.”

“I remember you from the party last night.” Sarah smiled.

“Did you have a good time?”

“It was very nice, thank you,” Sarah said, and prayed no one would bring up the fact that Travis had danced with her and kissed her underneath the mistletoe. Unbidden, she reached up a hand to trace her lips at the memory, but then immediately stopped herself when she realized what she was doing.

Luckily, the women turned back to the conversation they’d apparently been having before Sarah, Raylene, and Dotty Mae had come in.

From the knitting bag Marva had slung across the back of her chair, she pulled a bridal magazine. “I brought the picture of the dress Ashton’s bride-to-be picked out,” she said to the group and then to Sarah she said, “Ashton’s my son. He’s getting married in May.”

“Is this the dress she’s going to trash?” A fifty-something blond who looked a bit like Debbie Reynolds asked with a disapproving note in her voice. “I hate that trend. It’s so disrespectful.”

“You’re just getting old, Patsy,” Raylene said. “Face it, this isn’t the world you and I grew up in, nor should it be. Things change, keep up or get out of the way.”

Patsy narrowed her eyes. “Respect shouldn’t be something that goes in and out of fashion.”

“I tend to agree with you, Patsy,” Marva said. “But Sheniqua is going to be my daughter-in-law and I’m not about to rock the boat on something like this. You’ve gotta pick your battles. Her mother, who’s paying for the dress, is cool with it. Who am I to dissent?”

“I don’t know,” Patsy said. “It seems like a risk to me.”

“Risk?” asked a Latino woman with a short, chic hairdo. She looked like a contestant on a reality show Sarah used to watch. “What are you talking about?”

Patsy wagged her head. “Trash the dress, Terri, trash the marriage.”

“That’s superstition,” Belinda Murphey pointed out.

“Aren’t weddings all about superstition?” Patsy reached for a cookie from the communal plate sitting in the middle of the table. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

“Trash the dress sounds like fun. I wished they’d done that when I got married.” Terri rubbed her palms together and then grabbed a cookie for herself.

“Oh my gosh,” Patsy said. “These pecan sand-ies are scrumptious. Rich and crispy. Who made them?”

Christine raised her hand.

“Well of course you did, you professional baker you. This is the recipe you’re making for the cookie swap, right?”

Christine nodded. “Weddings are about taking risks,” she said. “And Marva, you’re going to make a wonderful mother-in-law. You’re fair and balanced in your dealings with people. You’re helpful and concerned but not nosy. Sheniqua is a lucky girl whether she knows it or not.”

“Thank you, Christine, that’s kind of you to say.” Marva handed Terri the bride’s magazine, a dog-eared page indicating the wedding dress in question.

Terri took a bite of cookie. “These are amazing, Christine.” Then she looked at the magazine. “It’s Vera Wang. Please tell me she’s not going to trash Vera Wang!”

“Who’s Vera Wang?” Dotty Mae asked.

“Just the best wedding dress designer who ever lived,” Belinda rhapsodized, and spread her arms in an expansive gesture as if trying to hug the entire world. Sarah had seen Oprah Winfrey use a similar gesture on television. Belinda had a zaftig figure and an irresistible smile. Sarah could tell her relationship with food was different from her own struggle. Belinda ate from a hearty zest for life, as if she couldn’t get enough. Sarah had overeaten as a way to quiet her emotions, to fill up the emptiness. Nowadays, she sublimated that emptiness with writing. But writer’s block threatened to upset the balance she’d struck with food that had kept her at a size eight for over a year. She eyed the cookies in the middle of the table and her stomach grumbled.

“I bet you’re getting excited,” Terri said to Marva.

“It’s nerve-wracking is what it is. I’m just glad I’m the mother of the groom.”

Then they were off, talking about weddings and their kids.

Sarah studied the group dynamics like an anthropologist, mentally noting the subtle clues— body language, the words not spoken, the slight shifts in tone of voice—piecing together the history of these women and their relationships as an expert quilter might piece a quit. People fascinated her, even as she stood apart from them. If she could figure them out, then maybe she could understand her own impulses. She glanced around the kitchen, assessing all seven of them.

There was Patsy, the authoritarian and the group’s moral compass. If she disagreed with something someone was saying—and from what Sarah could gather that was generally Raylene—she’d raise her brow and look over the top of her reading glasses in a look of domination. She had a tendency to point her index finger in a scolding gesture. Her clothes were no-nonsense: black slacks with classic lines that camouflaged her rounded middle, a white linen long-sleeved shirt, neatly pressed, a Christmas wreath brooch pinned to her collar. Everything about her said this woman was ordered, planned, and structured. When Sarah looked at her, she thought of Martha Stewart. She had the feeling that Patsy excelled at everything she did.

Raylene sat beside Patsy. Travis’s aunt was the most colorful one in the bunch. She possessed all the subtlety of a freight train jumping the tracks,but you sure as hell knew where you stood with her. Raylene—as her grandmother had often said—was full of sass and vinegar. Even though she wore her skirts way too short for her age, she had the legs to pull it off. She was blunt as a club, but she made you feel like you were part of the action. Wherever Raylene went, energy flowed. She was opinionated, brash, and fun-loving, and apologized for nothing.

“We’re doing too much talking and not enough preparing. Let’s get this meeting back on track,” Marva fretted, and tugged at her earlobe, an involuntary habit, Sarah noted, she used to reduce anxiety. Was the fact the group had wandered from their appointed agenda worrisome to her? Or was there something else bothering her? Fascinated, Sarah studied the older woman. Beside her chair she had a tote bag stuffed full. Had she once been a Girl Scout and taken their always-be-prepared credo to heart? Or was she simply a natural hoarder, loath to be caught in need. Whatever it was, Sarah had the feeling that if she was stranded on a deserted island, Marva was someone she’d want to have along.

“Were we off track?” Dotty Mae asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“If I didn’t keep us in line, we’d forever be off track,” Marva said, “but since you go with the flow, you’re always happy with wherever we end up.”

“Not always,” Dotty Mae said, “but I’m not one to grumble.”

Dotty Mae had been Gramma Mia’s best friend and Sarah knew her better than any of the others. Dotty Mae had a tendency to go whichever way thewind blew. Her cornflower blue eyes had a sweet, faraway look that had nothing to do with her age and everything to do with her easygoing personality. She wore oversized housedresses that gave her a comfy, lived-in look. When the conversations got heated, Dotty Mae would lower her eyelids as if taking in only half the scene to soften the friction. But Dotty Mae was deeper than mere surface appearances. She also had a penchant for peppermint schnapps and clove cigarettes (which she smoked only in secret), and win or lose, she loved playing bingo. To Sarah’s knowledge, Gramma Mia had never smoked or gambled, and the only time she’d ever seen her imbibe was when Dotty Mae enticed her with the schnapps.