Julia's Chocolates (32 page)

Fabulous
, I thought. “Fabulous!” I grabbed her hands across the table. “Absolutely splendiferous! Is the book done?”

Katie laughed, her red hair piled on top of her head in a loose twist. “No, not at all. I’ve only got the first three chapters written. I assumed that it would be rejected.”

“But why would you assume that? Editors have asked you before for your books.”

“And then they rejected the book.” Katie wrapped both hands around her mug, looked out the window. She should have been happy, but she seemed sort of defeated to me. “I don’t know, Julia. This book is entirely different than the other ones. All I’ve written before has been historical romance. This is a romance, but it’s modern-day, and there’s a mystery to it, too, and it all takes place within a week…. Anyhow, part of me wants to write it, and part of me wants to call it a day. I don’t know…” Her voice faded.

“You’re afraid of getting rejected again?”

She bit her lip, thinking. “I’m not afraid of getting rejected again. My books have been rejected many times, and I’ve become rather used to it. I’m just not sure I want to waste any more of my life with this. I want to build my cleaning business. I want to spend more time with the kids. I want to save for a house and plant a garden and see you and Caroline and Lara. I want to help Lydia.”

“But then you’ll never know, Katie. You’ll always wonder if this book could have been it, if it would be the one that sold.” I was appalled. Quit? Now? When some editor in New York had asked to see the book? “Please, Katie, don’t quit.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about quitting. I am not a quitter. But sometimes I think in life when you continue to fail, you have to take a realistic look at what’s happening. I’m taking that realistic look, and I don’t think I’m going to succeed with my writing. And it’s okay. I would far rather get to be ninety years old and look back and say, “I tried my damnedest” to succeed, rather than get to be ninety and think, “I wonder what would have happened if only I had done something different.”

I nodded, but I really thought she was insane. I would let her know that in a moment. She had even told me the plot of her book, and I loved it. I could barely wait to hear how it ended.

“And I’ve loved writing the books while I was doing it,” Katie said. “It allowed me to escape from my life, from J.D., from my own exhaustion. I could escape four hundred years into the past. I swear my writing kept me sane even though J.D. criticized everything he could get his hands on that I wrote. It was my hobby.”

I leaned forward in my chair, my hands clasped in front of me. Katie looked back, her eyes calm, which bothered me. Sometimes people told you they were going to quit something, but they didn’t really mean it. They just needed encouragement, needed to vent. But Katie’s eyes were peaceful. She was okay with this decision.

“Katie,” I said, before launching into a motivational lecture, learned from my own despair, that left her speechless and sputtering. I finished with, “Don’t be such an idiot.”

The next day she told me she’d stayed up till three in the morning working on that book.

A few days later, after Stash, Aunt Lydia, Caroline, Lara, Scrambler, and Dave took the children to their first day of school, I got a call from a man named James who operated a candy store in Portland. He would like to place an order for my chocolate, he told me, his voice high and excited. He was particularly interested in the chocolates shaped like cats and dogs because a doggie day care was right across the street from his own business.

I could barely speak.

“Ma’am?” his gentle voice prodded me back to reality.

“Yes? Yes!” I said, a bit too loudly. “Of course. I would be happy to send you some chocolates. How many?”

He named a number that again made me speechless.

“Ma’am?” That gentle voice was back, prodding again.

“Yes? Yes! Of course. I’ll have them to you as soon as possible.”

He asked what I charged, and I pulled a number out of that great blue sky and gulped.

James did not hesitate. “Wonderful! Your chocolates are scrumptious, simply scrumptious, a slice of heaven! Dean Garrett so kindly gave me a bag not long ago at all. How long have you been in business?”

“Uh, well, uh…not very long at all.”

“Good, lucky me, then! The stars are shining brightly in my direction! I owe Dean a favor. Seems like I owe him a lot of favors,” he mused, then snapped back to business. “So, I will look forward to receiving your order.”

I made the appropriate answers, thanked him while trying not to sound too overly joyous and sickeningly grateful, and said good-bye.

I grabbed the keys to Aunt Lydia’s truck and headed out the door for Dean’s ranch. On the porch I turned around.

When would I ever,
ever
remember to brush my hair before leaving the house?

“Dean Garrett, I want a word with you,” I said, loud enough so that he could hear me, as could the four ranchhands who were standing around.

He looked at me and smiled, slow and easy, and I saw his eyes run from the top of all my blond curls, then down my light blue, blouse and jeans to my black boots.

That man could turn my body to mush in no time, and because I was turning to mush, I smiled back. What else can a gal do? Mush and smiling go together.

Dean nodded to the men he was talking to and sauntered over.

I smiled and tried real hard not to let those blue eyes devour me, and I tried not to think of what those shoulders would feel like when I gripped them or what that body would feel like on top of me or how those hips would move or how those thighs would be so strong and hard and what those lips could do to my body.

Yes, I tried real hard to stay mad at him for interfering with my life, and even when he looped an arm around my waist and pulled me into that beautiful house of his I tried to look stern and pouty, but it really hardly worked at all because I had a hard time holding his gaze for very long because I thought he would see I Want You So Bad I’m Melting in my eyes.

And when he pulled me to his length and stuck one of those sexy thighs between mine and kissed me on the mouth with such passion and warmth and possession, well, it is hard to stay mad when your breasts are throbbing and you want to strip off your clothes in record time.

But I took a deep breath and pushed away.

“I just got an order…” I breathed heavily as Dean tried to pull me closer again. “From James at Cool Chocolates in Portland….”

“Hmmmm,” Dean said, kissing my neck. I arched my neck a bit, telling myself I would let my body indulge for a few minutes.

“And he told me that you and him went way back, and you had brought him a bag of my chocolates…ohhh.” I moaned a tad, but that was because he was kissing my collarbone, and one of his hands had dropped to my hip, pressing me firmly against his very aroused self. I could not help one more little moan from escaping.

“And I wanted you to know, Dean Garrett…” Oh, the man knew how to make love to a woman, I thought, slowly, my mind becoming fuzzy and warm. “…that I think it’s wonderful that you’ve helped me, but I don’t want you to feel obligated…” I groaned.

His hands were now caressing me from shoulder to hip, his lips kissing me senseless. Yes, I had lost all brain cells to Dean Garrett. I could barely think.

“I don’t need help from a man…. I am doing fine on my own….”

He kissed my lips again, my hands pressed flat on his massive chest. I could hear his heart tripping away, fast but hard, and it gave me a little thrill, even though, of course, I was going to get down to business here, in just a second….

I allowed myself one more kiss, then pulled away, my breasts screaming their frustration. “Dean…” I wanted to tell him that I was independent, that I didn’t want to be indebted to him in any way, but I couldn’t get the words out. “Dean…”

But soon I couldn’t even remember what I had wanted to talk to him about. I simply wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back, and before I knew it we were in his bedroom and all my clothes were lying on the floor and I forgot to be embarrassed about my body.

I just acted on instinct, and as soon as I could I had that man’s shirt and his pants off and I kissed his mouth and worked my way lower until he couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled me back up and kissed me again, his hands on my breasts, my nipples, my hips, and for once I didn’t regret the size of my breasts as they filled Dean’s hands and then spilled over.

“You’re perfect, Julia,” he said, his blue eyes staring into mine as he pulled me close to him like I weighed less than a box of chocolates. “God, you’re so perfect, so beautiful.” And he kissed me hard, and my body thumped with desire, my breasts arched against his chest, my insides so wet I was sure it would get all over Dean’s manly bedspread, but I was past the point of thought as I enjoyed that big, delicious body.

And then I hesitated, ever so slightly, my lips freezing where they were.

I could hear Robert’s voice as clear as day. I was too fat. I was cold in bed. He would rather jack off on a fish than inside my body. I was clumsy, didn’t know how to make love any better than I knew how to be a ballerina. I didn’t know how to turn a man on. I, Julia, was lucky to have him because other men would not put up with a woman who felt like a middle-aged lizard in their arms.

I tried to banish that voice, and I kissed Dean again, then stopped and felt ice creep from my heart to my head to my toes, Robert’s scary, threatening, critical voice following that ice.

And I stopped kissing him again.

Dean sensed it and raised his head and studied my face. He closed his eyes, and I saw a pulse leap in his temple, and then he rolled away and I was left with nothing but the cool air covering my body.

He rolled to his side of the bed, groaned loudly, and flung an arm over his eyes. His breath was coming as fast and furious as mine.

My body started to shake, and I yanked the covers up over my huge watermelons, my humiliation totally complete, my self-esteem in threads. After about two minutes of deafening silence, I flung a leg over the side of the bed, intending to make an immediate escape and never look at the man again.

At the very thought of not seeing Dean, my heart squeezed, tight and painful. Whoever said you couldn’t really die of a broken heart was terribly, horribly wrong. I could see exactly how it happened.

The tears started to rise, and I knew this cry was going to be a doozy.

As I tried to get up, Dean’s hand caught my wrist in a viselike grip.

“Where are you going, Julia?”

I didn’t face him, couldn’t face him. I thought of what he was seeing from his prone position on the bed. He would see my back, half my butt, my huge breasts. Not a pretty sight.

“Let go of me, Dean,” I said.

“Julia, we’re going to talk about this.” I could feel the bed shift as he sat up. He tightened his grip. Lord, the man was so strong.

“Please, Dean, just let go.” I could hear the exhaustion in my voice, the defeat, and I vowed to buck up. No one liked people who wallowed in self-pity.

“No.”

“What?” I said, still not turning around. He could see my crack. Just the upper half. I looked at the floor. If I wished hard enough, would it open so I could fall into it and bury my shame in the center of the earth?

“I said, no, I’m not going to let go of you.”

Dean’s voice was gruff, broken.

I turned around. He had tears in his eyes. Strong, sometimes intimidating, smart, sophisticated Dean Garrett had tears in his eyes.

He used my stunned amazement against me, pulling me toward him, cuddling me against his side, my head on his shoulder.

“Julia, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to make love to you so bad I hurt. But more than that, much more, I don’t want you to send another wedding dress sailing into a tree.”

Shocked into speechlessness, I could barely grunt out an answer. I wanted to make love to Dean Garrett more than I wanted air. But that was about all I wanted. No, that was about all I could handle. Scratch that. I wanted more. No I didn’t.

Sheesh.

I sounded blisteringly confused even to myself. I wanted Dean. So much. But I couldn’t handle being in a relationship with him. Couldn’t handle the intimacy.

“I’ll wait, Julia. But, just know”—he kissed my lips again, my cheek, my eyes—“know that every day I miss what we could have together if you’d trust me.”

“I’m trying, Dean, I really am.”

He smiled, sweet and gentle. “Try harder, love. Please, for us, try harder.”

A
unt Lydia and I both heard the car before we saw it. It grumbled and roared, alternately sounding like a wheezing possum and a mini-jet. Caroline’s car took the curve into Aunt Lydia’s a little too fast, almost hitting a pig and a flowering toilet.

We both went to greet her. Aunt Lydia had another radiation appointment the next day, so, in true Lydia fashion, we had been working our butts off. “No sense dwelling on a problem you damn well can’t fix on your own,” she told me. In the last few days, after our usual chores, we’d painted all the chickens’ “houses” red to remind the ladies to be daring with their lives, and we had painted the doors yellow, to remind the ladies to always look on the bright side of life.

We had also finished sewing three little quilts Lydia was donating to the hospital for sick babies. All the quilts had baby chicks on them.

“I plan on being out here each and every day, Julia, so don’t think I’m going to slow down a damn bit just because of this silly Roaring Radiation,” she told me that morning. She had named the radiation Roaring Radiation so she could fight it like a “real woman.”

And although she had professed to hate hospitals and doctors, she had fallen in love with her doctor on sight. It was a good thing he was thirty years younger, or she might well have dropped poor Stash. She called Doctor Ray, “Ray of Sunshine” even to his face.

Young, cute, a little shy, and the son of a minister, I had seen him brighten up every time he looked at Aunt Lydia. Even on the first day when she told him in her booming voice that she didn’t trust any man who wore a white coat, and she thought doctors were overeducated quacks, they got on well. He proved to be the only one who could convince her to start the radiation and follow the recommended schedule rather than have one dose of radiation, wait a couple of years, then do another, as she suggested.

Aunt Lydia and I had just painted Melissa Lynn’s fence a lime green so that Melissa Lynn would know that it’s best to look for the green in one’s own yard rather than to long for the green in a neighbor’s yard, when Caroline came careening around that corner.

She did not ever drive fast, preferring to take life slowly, so this was unusual. When she screeched to a halt, she flew out of her car and ran straight toward us, wearing a purple flowered skirt, white tank top, blue jean shirt, a long red scarf, and white tennis shoes.

Skinny people can get away with any kind of outfit at all and everyone thinks they’re stylish, of course. If I wore what she was wearing I’d look like a grape with a ghost wrapped around my boobs.

In her hands, she held a plate full of what looked like sliced bread. There was no foil on the top or any kind of wrapper.

“Good morning, Caroline!” Lydia yelled, although she was only a few feet from her. “Because of my radiation, Ray of Sunshine tells me that my cancer is now being eaten alive! That is a reason to celebrate! My body is a cancer-killing machine. Now, don’t tell me you made me my favorite bread.”

“No,” Caroline said. She ran a hand through her hair, breathing hard. She must have forgotten that she had pulled her hair into a bun because her fingers got caught in the ball of the bun for a second. “No. This is just bread-bread. Only bread.”

She took a deep breath. “Hello, Julia.” Her eye was twitching pretty fast, and she pulled at the hem of her shirt with the hand that had been freed from her hair.

“Well,” Aunt Lydia said, a little confused. “Would you like to come in and eat it? We could all sit down for a cup of coffee—”

“No, no,” Caroline said, and then stood there. Staring at both of us. The tip of her tongue wet her lips, and she took another deep breath.

What in the world is she so nervous about?
I thought. If she didn’t stop breathing so hard, I was afraid she might, by suggestion, give me an attack of the Dread Disease.

“No coffee. Um.” She looked at me, those murky green eyes huge, begging.

“Can we help you then with something, Caroline?” I asked.

“Well. I don’t need any help…. No,
I
don’t.”

I could feel Lydia freeze beside me.

“But you’re a little upset today,” Aunt Lydia said.

“Oh, just a tad. People have problems sometimes. We all do. Our friends, Lydia, sometimes have problems.”

“Yes, they do. Problems abound for us women, and we must strike back at them with our full arsenal and not wallow in self-pity!” Aunt Lydia stomped her foot.

“But, of course, well, you know I have always had that one concern about that one particular person that I talked about with you that one particular time,” Caroline rattled on, the hand holding what I knew now was regular sliced bread shaking a bit.

“Yes, I do know,” said Aunt Lydia, her face grave.

“And you know, I try not to interfere with other people’s lives unless it’s life or death but…”

“I see,” said Aunt Lydia.

“Well, I don’t see,” I protested. “What’s going on?”

They both looked at me. Caroline nodded. So did Aunt Lydia.

“It’s best if she goes with something, don’t you think?” Caroline asked Aunt Lydia. “Then no one thinks that, well, that I’m spying on them, prying into their lives. It would be just a little visit.”

“With plain sliced bread?” Aunt Lydia shook her head. “You’re losing it, Caroline. Stay right here. I’ll get some of my jam.”

“No!” Caroline’s cry made both of us jump. “There is no time to get any jam.” She shoved the plate of regular white sandwich bread at me.

“Julia, take that bread on over to Lara’s house,” Aunt Lydia said. “Now! Quick! It will give you an excuse to be there. Tell her you wanted to bring her some bread.”

“But this is sandwich bread….”

Aunt Lydia and Caroline looked like they were going to explode.

“It doesn’t matter, Julia! Breathe in, and capture your woman’s strength and grace as you will need both for this situation. Go, go, go.”

Caroline handed me the bread, then grabbed my elbow and started leading me to Aunt Lydia’s truck. She did not stop when two of the bread slices fell to the ground.

“I must have missed something,” I said to Caroline and Aunt Lydia, even as I was being hauled away. “I couldn’t quite understand your English!”

“Go see Lara,” Caroline said, her voice high-pitched and tight. “Go to Lara’s house.”

I looked into Caroline’s eyes. My stomach clenched.

“Go, Julia. Now.”

I went.

Lara was in that sad place all of us get to in our lives when we’re sobbing and hiccupping and gasping all at the same time. Her eyes were swollen like two miniature grapefruits, her cheeks red.

“You’re leaving for New York? Today?” I asked. I deposited the plate of sandwich bread on the counter. Lara had stared at it for a moment, perplexed, then apparently decided not to deal with it. She hiccupped and walked to her bedroom.

The bedroom was as neat and tidy as the rest of the house. Blue flowered bedspread. Two crosses. Another portrait of Jesus. Old brown dresser and desk. Tired-looking blue flowered curtains that matched the bedspread. No dust anywhere. It was so devoid of Lara’s personality, I felt like I was in a hotel, and a not so nice one at that. She opened another suitcase, tossed in socks, underwear. She pulled out a red negligee.

Now, the red negligee was more like the Lara I knew—fun and daring and lively.

Then she took that fun, daring negligee, wadded it into a ball, and cried her eyes out. I rushed over, put my arms around her.

“Lara, tell me, please—”

“I can’t live like this.” She brought the red negligee up to her face. “I’m trapped. Every day I feel like I’m acting the part of someone I’m not. Do you know what my schedule was like yesterday?” she demanded. She stood up, paced the room, hitting the wadded red negligee with one hand.

“At seven o’clock I led a prayer group for working women at the church. At eight-thirty I brought out the tables and made lemonade for the women’s ministry group. At nine I led a Bible study for another group of women which lasted until eleven. While the ladies ate lunch, I went to the church office and did paperwork, ran to the bank to deposit money, came back and did three counseling sessions, one right after another with parishioners. One couple is on the verge of divorce because the woman is gay and has a girlfriend in the city. Her husband thought she was going to a twice-a-month Christian Women’s Workshop.

“Another woman was in because she just can’t seem to stop herself from stealing licorice from the local pharmacy.” Lara tossed the red negligee into the trash can, then yanked a dresser drawer open and pulled out two other negligees. I saw lace and satin go flying right over my head to the trash can.

“And another woman was in because she doesn’t think she believes in God. She’s been going to church her whole life, she told me, and believes in God because that’s what her parents believed, it’s what her husband believes, but she says that in her mind there is either no God, or God is someone who is powerless, or God is someone who doesn’t care about the suffering that goes on all the time. She says she has little faith in a God that doesn’t step in and help those who are in huge need, and she’s beginning to think that people believe in God because they need a crutch.”

“She came to you, a minister’s wife, and told you that?” I was aghast. This did not seem like the type of thing to admit to a minister’s wife.

“She did. And you know what, Julia? All I could do was cry. I related to what she was saying too much. I couldn’t even counsel her. To tell her to open her Bible to find her answers sounded pathetic. She ended up comforting me.”

She grabbed a couple of sweaters, one beige and one gray, from her closet, dropped them into the suitcase, then said, “I hate these ugly things,” and tossed them back into the closet. She did this with five other sweaters, four pairs of slacks, and two pairs of shoes.

“I don’t even know if I believe in God, Julia,” she whispered, finally collapsing beside me on the bed. “Look at Lydia and what’s happening to her. Why her? She has helped more people in this town than I can count. Do you know how many people she gives free eggs and garlic to? How many times she has given me bouquets of her cut flowers to give to people in town who are having troubles? She doesn’t deserve it. And she’s not the only one. Look at the whole world. It’s falling apart. Look what happened to Shawn and Carrie Lynn. Why didn’t God intervene there? Of all things, why doesn’t God at least protect the children?”

Lara sobbed again, hiccupped, then slid to the floor, her arms wrapped around her legs as she rocked. I slid down next to her.

I couldn’t think of anything to say that would help her. It would sound trite and sanctimonious, and she sure wasn’t in a place where she wanted to listen.

“All I do all day, seven days a week, except for Psychic Nights, is talk to people about God, about trying to pattern their lives after Jesus, about living a life of servitude for God. I pray all the time, with others, with my husband, and yet I don’t even feel God in my own heart anymore. There was a time when I did, but not now. Not for so long. Is there a God, or did people invent God because we want to believe in heaven, want to believe that someone can make things right? Do we simply, desperately, stupidly want to believe that some other being is in control because if we don’t, we won’t be able to stand living on this planet any longer?”

I put my arm around her as her voice crescendoed again. “I can’t stand this any longer. I can’t stand the hypocrisy, the constant work. I can’t stand not being me.”

“You’re not just going on a trip, are you, Lara?” Why did I ask such a dumb question? I already knew the answer.

“No. I’m not going on a trip.” She got to her feet, took a coat and two pairs of jeans out of the closet, put them in the suitcase, and snapped it shut. “I’m leaving.”

She pointed to a pair of boots next to the bed, and I handed them to her. She wiggled her feet into them.

“You’re leaving? Does Jerry know?”

She cried then, made great, gasping, choking sounds, then shook her head.

“No? Aren’t you going to tell him?”

“I can’t stand it,” she choked out, barely able to talk. “I can’t stand the thought of what his face will look like. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“I’ve always thought you loved Jerry.” Heck, if I had met Jerry before her, I would’ve loved him and if he wanted me teaching Bible lessons all day long while doing cartwheels and tossing around crosses, I would. The man was good-looking and smart and kind and funny. The whole town loved him.

“I do, I do love him, but look at me, Julia, I’m a nervous wreck. I can’t live like this any longer. I work all the time, I handle people’s problems, teach Sunday school, run Bible studies, organize the teenagers’ activities, and I’m the choir director. I can’t do it anymore.”

She stared at the lingerie in the trash can as if she couldn’t quite remember how it had gotten there.

Oh God, please don’t pack that
, I thought.
Who would you wear it for?
For a moment I wondered if there was someone else Lara was running off to, but dismissed the idea. Lara was not the type to cheat on her husband.

Then again, Lara was not the type to leave her husband, either.