The First Love Cookie Club (9 page)

“Well, speak up if you’ve got something to say.” Raylene lifted her arms over her head for a catlike stretch. “Otherwise you’ll get lost in the shuffle.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dotty Mae mumbled under her breath.

“We’ve got to finalize the menu for our cookie exchange next Friday,” Christine said. “We don’t want duplicate recipes.”

Christine didn’t talk much, and from what Sarah gathered from the conversation, she was the only one in the cookie club who was never married.

“We’re having so much fun talking, why don’t we save the housekeeping stuff until the end of the meeting.” Terri possessed a megawatt smile and the fun-loving attitude of someone who was always up for a party. Her sunny disposition showed in her choice of clothes, a bright yellow sweater and white slacks; never mind that it was months past Labor Day, she didn’t live her life by outmoded rules.

“Okay,” Marva agreed. “Let’s get to our other topic of business. Jazzy Walker.”

At the mention of Jazzy’s name, Sarah sat up straighter and studied the faces of the women in the group.

“Jazzy has made phenomenal improvement on this new drug.” Marva reached for a cookie.

“It’s a miracle is what it is,” Dotty Mae said. “The child is healthier than she’s ever been.”

“To think she was on death’s door for so long, destined to end up like her grandmother.” Belinda shook her head. “When I think about it, I want to rush home and hug my babies and make sure they’re okay.”

Marva finished her cookie and dusted the crumbs from her fingertips. “Anyway, our main concern at this point is keeping Jazzy well.”

“Um, not to be obtuse or anything,” Sarah ventured, “but why is Jazzy Walker’s condition any of your business?”

Seven heads swiveled her way. Seven mouths dropped open. They stared at her as if she’d just committed a felony.

“Sarah Collier,” Dotty Mae whispered. “Your Gramma Mia would be so disappointed in you.”

Her words stung as surely as if the elderly woman had slapped Sarah. “Wh-what do you mean?”

Dotty Mae clucked her tongue. “You’ve been in the big city too long. You’ve lost your humanity, girl.”

“There’s plenty of humanity in Manhattan,” Sarah said defensively. “Small towns don’t have a lock on kindness and caring.”

“Then why did you ask that question?”

Why indeed? Sarah wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. “Some people might resent the intrusion into their lives.”

“We’re not intruding.” Belinda looked affronted. “We’re helping. Travis needs us. He doesn’t have anyone else.”

Great, now she was offending everyone. Sarah gulped. She didn’t have the social skills to tiptoe out of this one. “Isn’t that an assumption on your part? What if he didn’t want your help? Travis has a lot of pride.”

“Twilight isn’t just any town.” Dotty Mae’s head quivered as she spoke. “It’s a community. We help each other here. And Jazzy is Raylene’s great-niece. Raylene would pay for her treatment if all her money wasn’t tied up in real estate. Her plight is the plight of us all. Jazzy’s new medication is expensive and it’s not covered by insurance. Travis is going broke trying to keep his girl alive, and we’re not going to sit idly by while that happens when we can darn well do something to help.”

“You’re right,” Sarah said quietly. No way was she going to point out that their meddlesome behavior screamed codependency. Who was she to slap a label on them? She wasn’t even spending the holidays with her parents. Just because she’d chosen to isolate herself from people didn’t make others codependent. Maybe she simply couldn’t understand what it was like to have so many people love you so much that you never had to hit potholes in the road of life without someone being there to pick you up and dust you off. Hell, it wasn’t like she had
her
head screwed on straight or anything. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“You know what your trouble is?” Dotty Mae asked. Sarah didn’t dare ask what, but Dotty Mae went and told her anyway. “Your problem is that no one ever rallied around you so you don’t know what it’s like to have a real loving community, do you, poor baby.”

On the one hand, Dotty Mae was being a bit patronizing, and that irritated Sarah, but on the other hand, she had to admit the older woman was right. She didn’t know what it was like to have friends you could count on for decades. Her relationship with her parents had always been one of cordial distance at best, silent isolation at worse. And the only person who’d ever made her feel like she was truly in Sarah’s corner was Gram.

“We’re planning a cookie bake sale, proceeds go for Jazzy’s treatment. You in?” Raylene asked.

“I’ll happily donate money to the cause,” Sarah said.

Dotty Mae sighed.

“What?” Sarah raised her palms. Apparently there were hidden emotional land mines all over this bakery.

“Money is all well and good,” Dotty Mae said, “but it’s not the same as giving of yourself. I know you know how to bake cookies, Sarah Collier. Your Gramma Mia taught you.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll bake cookies,” Sarah said. “Just tell me when and where.”

“Right here, right now,” Christine said. “It’s why I’ve been heating the ovens.”

“Here you go,” Belinda said, passing Sarah a blue gingham apron.

The next thing she knew she was elbow-deep incookie dough and camaraderie and juicy small-town gossip. And she had to admit she was having more fun than she’d had in a long time. At some point, someone broke out the wine and the stories grew more loquacious, the cookies more delicious. Then somehow the talk had circled back around to Travis. She had to hand it to them. The ladies of the First Love Cookie Club were relentless matchmakers.

“You should have seen Travis after Crystal left him,” Belinda said. “It was so touching. He’d be in the grocery store, toting Jazzy on his hip, pushing the cart, stocking up on juice boxes and Fruit Roll-Ups. She’d be wearing dainty little dresses and ankle socks with lace and black patent leather shoes, her blond hair curling in ringlets to her shoulders.” Belinda put a palm over her heart. “Here was an ultra-macho guy with angular features and hawkish gray eyes, tenderly caring for this delicate child all on his own. My God, now
that’s
a hero.”

“Especially when you know he used to be such a rapscallion,” Patsy added. “When Jazzy was born he completely turned his life around. Too bad the same couldn’t be said of Crystal.”

“Trust Patsy to use a word like ‘rapscallion.’ “ Raylene rolled her eyes. “Let’s call a spade a spade. He was a punk.”

“Raylene,” Marva scolded, “he’s your nephew.”

“And who would know better? He was constantly in trouble with the police for some minor infraction or another.”

“He was just acting out after losing his mother.” Marva leveled Raylene a stern look. “We all make mistakes.”

“Honestly, getting Crystal pregnant was thebest thing that ever happened to Travis,” Dotty Mae said. “I shudder to think where he’d be now without Jazzy.”

“Uh-huh.” The entire group nodded in agreement.

Listening to them talk, seeing how moved they were by Travis and his transformation from troubled teen to doting father, struck a chord inside her. Sarah felt a thawing of the creativity that had frozen up so solidly after the success of her first book.

It was a tiny drip at first, like the first rays of spring sunshine warming an icy tundra. But as she thought of the last wish on Jazzy’s Cherub Tree ornament and how devoted Travis was to his daughter, a kernel of an idea put down roots and started to grow.

Never mind about the book she was currently struggling to get down on paper. This idea was The One. She could feel it through every cell in her body. It was the same feeling she’d gotten when she was writing
The Magic Christmas Cookie.
As if she were being swept away on a current of creativity she could neither control nor deny. She had to write
this
book and she wanted to start
now.

“You certainly gave this town something to buzz about for a few months,” Belinda was saying.

It took Sarah a minute to pull her attention from inside her head to the women surrounding her. Apparently, they’d been talking to her. Not just to her, but about The Incident. Sarah said nothing, just studiously spooned drop cookie dough onto a baking sheet.

“What was the dumbest thing you ever did overa guy?” Terri asked the group as she carefully cut out gingerbread people with green and red plastic cookie cutters. Sarah preferred the old-fashioned metal ones with their sharp edges that cut clean.

No one spoke.

“Come on,” Terri said. “You’re not going to tell me Sarah is the only one who ever did something embarrassing for the love of a guy.”

“When I was fourteen, I had a crush on this guy who rode my school bus. B.J. Peterson his name was. He wore a black leather bomber jacket, John Lennon glasses, and scowled a lot. Probably because he was terribly nearsighted, but I thought he was dark and moody broody.” Belinda sighed dreamily. “I wanted to talk to him, but I was too chicken, plus he had a girlfriend. I’d call him up whenever I was babysitting just to hear his voice and then I’d hang up. Well, this went on for a couple of months and then one day the police came to our front door. They’d traced the call to the neighbors I was babysitting for and they put two and two together and figured out the calls happened when I was watching their kids. Everyone in school found out about it and they made fun of me for weeks. I lost my babysitting job and moody broody B.J. stopped riding the bus. I prayed the ground would open up and swallow me whole. It was awful.”

“Belinda was a stalker, who knew.” Terri laughed. “See there, Sarah, you’re not the only one.”

“I can top that,” Marva said.

All eyes swung to Marva, who was painstakingly icing the cooled Santa Claus sugar cookies.

“You?” Raylene said. “The Goody Two-shoes of our bunch?”

“When I first met G.C. he was going steady with LaDonna Dawson, the prettiest girl in school, who also happened to be a raging bitch. I have no idea what G.C. saw in her.”

“Maybe she was good at giving blow jobs,” Ray-lene volunteered.

“Do you always have to say everything that pops into your head?” Patsy scolded.

“I’m just saying …” Raylene shrugged. “Hand me that box of raisins, will you, Christine?” Christine handed over the raisins, and Raylene dumped them into the oatmeal batter. “So what happened with LaDonna?”

“This was really bad.” Marva said. “I’m sorry for it now.”

“What on earth did you do?” Dotty Mae blinked.

“I wrote LaDonna a note, pretending I was Taz Milton, the high school quarterback. Everyone knew LaDonna had a flaming crush on Taz, even G.C. In the note, I told her to meet Taz in the boys’ locker room and strip down totally naked. Then I told Taz the coach wanted to see him in the locker room. And finally, I had a friend of mine tell G.C. that LaDonna had a surprise for him in the locker room. Long story short, G.C. caught LaDonna and Taz going at it in the shower stall.”

Patsy plastered a hand over her mouth. “Omigod, Marva, that was harsh. Poor G.C.”

Marva ducked her chin, covered her face with her palms. “I know, I told y’all it was bad.”

“So,” Belinda ventured, measuring out two cups of flour. “Did you ever tell G.C. the truth?”

“I came clean right after we started dating.”

“And he was cool with it?”

“Well, he broke up with me, but then he realizedthat LaDonna was a skank and I’d only done it because I wanted him so badly.”

“Belinda was a stalker, Marva was a conniver.” Terri rubbed her palms together. “This is getting really juicy. See, all you did, Sarah, was proclaim your love for Travis. Not so bad in the grand scheme of things.”

“Well then,” Marva said to Terri, “what did you do to embarrass yourself over a guy?”

“Me?” Terri tried to look wide-eyed and naïve. “I was a good girl.”

Patsy snorted. “You were just good at covering your tracks.”

“What about you, Raylene?” Terri asked. “We know you’re bound to have some lusty locker room stories to share.”

Raylene, who was usually the first one out with something outrageous, plunked down in a chair and pretended to be engrossed in dusting sprinkles over the sugar cookies. “Y’all’ve heard my stories before. Nothing new to confess.”

“You’ve been kinda quiet this afternoon,” Belinda said. “You feeling okay?”

“Fine.” Raylene nodded. “Oh, will you look at the time. We’ve been here three hours. I’m sure Sarah’s anxious to get back to the B&B. She’s been on the go since early this morning.”

“I am,” Sarah said, although she too was wondering why Raylene suddenly seemed anxious to leave. Whatever her reasons, Sarah was grateful. She was ready to get back to the Merry Cherub and start writing the book circling her head.

“Come on, Dotty Mae,” Raylene said. “Let’s scoot.”

After a day of squiring Sarah around town, Ray-lene was ready to curl up in front of the television with Earl and just veg out. Not that she minded carting Sarah around to fulfill her obligations as honorary mayor; in fact, Raylene had really enjoyed the break in her routine. But she was used to being with her husband twenty-four/seven and to be honest, even after thirty years of marriage, she’d missed the old coot.

Earl left work early on Friday nights, leaving Linc, their main bartender, in charge of the Horny Toad. This time of year, Raylene went to the First Love Cookie Club meetings on Friday evenings, but they were usually over by eight. Raylene had images in her head of curling up with Earl on the living room sofa, popping a big bowl of popcorn, and watching a movie when she got home. Maybe one of the Monty Python classics or perhaps her personal favorite,
A Fish Called Wanda.
That silly flick always tickled her funny bone. Or maybe she’d run by a Red Box and grab a new release. She’d heard Denzel Washington’s latest thriller had just come out on DVD. And Raylene loved Denzel.

Dotty Mae dropped her off after the cookie club meeting; the rattling of her ancient VW echoed throughout Woodbury Estates as she drove away. Raylene stood a moment in the darkness, smelling the rich aroma of Twilight at Christmas. The twang of wood smoke mingling with pine rode the air, and underneath that was the faint scent of the lake.

Icicles lights twinkled from the eaves of her house, changing in colors; first red, then green, then white before starting the sequence all over again. As the sound of Dotty Mae’s Beetle died away, Raylene could hear other sounds. The tempestuous Scarpettis arguing next door, the mournful horn of the Burlington Northern train crossing the tracks near the feed and grain stores several miles away, the whisper of wind through the china-berry trees on her front lawn.

She thought of the cookies she was baking for the cookie swap the following Friday. Spice cookies. The ladies of the club gave their recipes cutesy Christmas names. To rhyme with her last name, she’d dubbed her offering Raylene Pringle’s Kris Kringle Spice Cookies, but the recipe had originated with her Swedish great-grandmother. Some members of the cookie club didn’t like spice cookies. Too spicy, they said. Well, that’s what appealed to Raylene. She liked the exoticness of spices. The tang of far-off lands mixed with plain white sugar and flour brought an extra dimension to the cookies and kept them from being ho-hum plain vanilla. That was her opinion anyway.

Arms crossed over her chest to warm her against the breeze skating in from the lake, she ducked her head and ambled up the back porch steps. She stopped in the kitchen to pour half a glass of red wine, kick off her shoes, and pad into the living room.

Earl lay stretched out on the couch underneath a blue and silver Dallas Cowboys afghan she’d knitted for him. The television was on, tuned to ESPN, and her husband was snoring soundly. But the house was cleaned, the floor freshly vacuumed, the tables dusted. Earl kept a better house than she did.

She stood in the doorway, one shoulder leaning against the wall, and studied him. Earl had a friendly, lived-in face that smiled often, laughed a lot, and angered slowly. He’d gotten a bit paunchy over the years, but he wasn’t overweight, and while his hair had slipped off the major part of his forehead, he looked good bald. Not Yul Brynner good, but attractive nonetheless.

Everyone liked Earl. He was the kind of guy who’d not only give you the shirt off his back but his pants and shoes too, if you needed them. He was nonjudgmental. A man you could tell a secret to and no one else would ever find out.

She’d known Earl Pringle since he’d pulled her pigtails on the playground in first grade. He was as much a part of her life as her own siblings had been. Carrying her books home from school, declaring he was going to marry her one day, giving Raylene her first kiss underneath the Sweetheart Tree on Valentine’s Day when she was eleven. He was her first boyfriend, her first lover, her first ev-erything. And he was her last, but he hadn’t been her one and only.

Raylene took a swallow of wine, hitched in a deep breath, and wandered back forty-one years when she’d just turned eighteen and received the news she’d been selected as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. It had been one of the defining moments of her life, and the first person she’d wanted to tell was Earl.

She’d tracked him down where he was stocking shelves at the local mom-and-pop grocery that had long since been replaced with a Super Wal-Mart. She’d been so excited it never occurred to her that Earl wouldn’t share her joy.

“I’m happy for you,” he said with the woeful face of a kicked puppy.

“You don’t look happy.”

He’d struggled to smile. “You’re gonna leave me. You’ll be around professional football players. They’ve got everything I don’t. Money, power, fame.”

She’d swatted his shoulder. “Don’t be silly. I love you, Earl Pringle, even if you do have the same name as a potato chip. I’m not going to leave you.”

But she had.

He’d been right. When those football players had flirted with her, she’d melted like a bee into honeysuckle. She’d hurt Earl. Hurt him badly.

On the television, the program shifted to a prerecorded talk show with Roy Firestone sitting behind a desk musing on the Cowboys’ possibility of making it to the playoffs as a wild card team. Their season had been a mixed bag. In Raylene’s opinion the Cowboys hadn’t been the same since Tom Landry retired.

She took another swallow of wine and almost choked on it when Roy Firestone’s guest sauntered on stage. Lance Dugan, former Dallas Cowboys running back, was still drop-dead handsome at sixty-something with his salt and pepper hair and lean, muscular body. Once upon a time, he’d stolen her breath. Now, looking at her ex-husband stole her mellow mood.

Because Raylene had a secret so big that in thirty-six years she’d never told another living soul. It ate at her sometimes, in spite of the carefree attitude she projected. The things she’d done. The lies she’d told to the dear, sweet man sleeping on the sofa. The man she’d loved since she was six years old.

Feeling suddenly blue to the bone, she poured herself another half glass of Merlot and walked to the sliding glass door that led out onto the back patio. She plucked her cell phone off the kitchen table where she’d dropped it when she came in and took it outside with her, along with the glass of wine.

The night air had a slight nip to it, but it wasn’t bad since she was wearing a thick Aran sweater she’d knitted for herself when she was pregnant with Earl Junior. She plunked down in the chaise longue and dialed the number of the only friend she was certain would be up at this hour. Patsy had insomnia as bad as Raylene. Damn menopause. They were both fifty-nine. You’d think that crap would be over with by now.

She hit the fifth number on her speed dial, took a swallow of wine along with a big sigh, and looked up at stars sprinkled across the night sky. “Hello, Patsy.”

“Um … is that you, Raylene?”

“Don’t pretend that I woke you. I saw your lights on when we drove past your house.”

“No, I wasn’t asleep,” Patsy said, but she sounded weird.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“I was just wondering how you were holding up since Jimmy died,” she said, referring to Patsy’s husband who had recently passed away after a long bout with Alzheimer’s.

“It’s been almost a year. Why did you really call?”

Why indeed? Mainly because she just wanted to talk but she wasn’t about to admit her loneliness to Patsy. “What do you think about Mia’s granddaughter?”

“Sarah turned out very pretty.”

“I’m not talking about her looks.”

“She was always a serious girl.”

“Pretty standoffish if you ask me.”

“We can’t all be as gregarious as you, Ray.”

“Is that a jab?”

“Only if you take it as one.”

“Why don’t you like me?”

“I like you fine.”

“No you don’t.”

Patsy paused.

“You still there?” Raylene took another slug of the wine.

“I’m here. I might not always like you, Raylene, but I always love you. You know more about me than anyone walking the face of the earth today.”

“Except for Hondo.”

Patsy said nothing.

“Do you think we made a mistake bringing her back to Twilight?”

“You’re talking about Sarah?”

“Who else?”

“No, I don’t think we made a mistake. Did you see how happy Jazzy was at the parade last night? “

“I saw how Travis kissed her at the party. He’s moving way too fast. I never expected him to move this fast.”

“Raylene?”

“Yes?”

“Finish your wine and go to bed.”

“How did you know—” In the background, Raylene heard a masculine voice murmur something low. “Omigod, you’ve got a man over.”

“I don’t,” Patsy denied.

“You’re lying through your teeth.” Raylene sat straight up in the chaise.

“It’s the television.”

“Oh, don’t even try pulling that bullshit on me. Is it Hondo Crouch? Patsy Calloway Cross, do you have the sheriff in your bedroom?”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Yes, you hang up and go make love to Hondo. This reunion has been forty years in the making.”

“It’s not a reunion it’s just—“

“So it
is
Hondo,” Raylene crowed. “I knew it. Oh Patsy, I’m so happy for you.”

“Put the wine down, Ray, and go to bed.”

“Patsy’s got a boyfriend.”

“This is it, I really am hanging up now. Good night.”

Raylene sat there, shivering in the darkness anddrinking her wine. A part of her wanted to go inside, shake her husband’s shoulder, wake him up, and tell him what she should have told him thirty-six years ago. But when you’d hidden a secret this long from the one person you loved most in the world, how did you go about revealing it? And if you brought it out into the light, that meant you had to do something about it. She wasn’t prepared for that step. Not by a long shot.

Still, she couldn’t shake the guilt. Talking with Patsy—who served as Raylene’s conscience— hadn’t helped. In fact, she felt worse. Her heart ached for the mistake she’d made, for her wrong choices.

She picked up her phone again and punched into the keypad a number she hadn’t called in a very long time. A sleepy male voice answered on the fifth ring.

“Hello,” she said, “it’s me. I hate to call so late, but I’ve been thinking about the past. It was thirty-six years ago today.”

“I know,” the man said.

“So tell me, Lance, how is she?”

Sarah’s mind churned with a story idea about a little girl with a terminal illness who was given a magical toy soldier just before Christmas by a mystery stranger—an angel actually—who told her that if she just believed strongly enough, then the toy would grant her most heartfelt wish on Christmas Eve.

After Dotty Mae and Raylene dropped her off at the Merry Cherub, she hurried up to her room with a bag of assorted cookies tucked under herarm and went straight to her laptop. The need to write was an urgent, driving force as primal and basic to her as the need for food or sex. She felt that if she didn’t write soon, there was a very real possibility she might die. Desperately, hungrily, she kicked off her shoes, curled up in the middle of the bed, and began to work.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She could barely keep up with the thoughts, phrases, and images pouring from her head. Jazzy and Travis and the women from the cookie club and the town of Twilight had kicked her muse into high gear.

On and on she wrote, working far into the night, eating cookies and getting swept up into the story playing out like a movie in her mind. Inside her head, Sarah became the little girl she’d named Lillian and called Lily for short. All Lily’s emotions welled up in her own heart. Seized by the power of the narrative surging through her like blood through her veins, Sarah tasted heaven far beyond the goodness of the cookies. When she wrote like this she felt completely free. No restraints, no restrictions, just a wild happiness like catching lightning in a jar and illuminating the whole world for one vivid flash of inspiration.

Dawn was peeping through her window when she finished two-thirds of the first draft. She needed more noodling time before she could write the ending. Her process had been like this with
The Magic Christmas Cookie
as well. She hit a wall just before the ending and that’s when uncertainty set in.

Time to put it aside and get some rest.

When she woke up, she’d call Benny and tell himto relax, that this time she would be making her deadline.

Smiling, Sarah turned off her laptop, slipped underneath the covers, and then realized she hadn’t checked her itinerary for tomorrow. She got out of bed and crossed the room to retrieve the schedule from her purse. Reading it, she groaned. In three short hours, she was expected to be master of ceremonies for the children’s activities including pony rides, jugglers, magic acts, mural painting, and a Scrooge scavenger hunt.

Clearly, the citizens of Twilight expected her to earn that four-figure honorarium.

At five minutes to nine on Saturday morning, Travis waited in line with the rest of the parents at the Piccadilly Circus façade set up in Sweetheart Park. Jazzy was holding on to his hand, wriggling with excitement.

“Settle down, jumping bean,” he said tenderly. “You don’t want to get the asthma acting up.”

“But Daddy,” she protested. “I feel grrreat.”

“So now you’re Tony the Tiger?”

“Yep.” She bobbed her head. “I can’t wait for the scavenger hunt.”

“Maybe you should try something a little less strenuous than running around hunting for treasure. How about mural painting?”

“Treasure hunt, please Daddy. I promise I’ll stop if I start getting wheezy.”

“But by the time you start getting wheezy it’ll be too late.”

“I’ve got my inhaler.” She held it up for him to see. Although she hadn’t needed it since she’d started on the new drug.

He wanted to tell her no, but how could he refuse a face like that?