Starting Over On Blackberry Lane

The doctor’s final prognosis was, indeed, a broken wrist. “I’ll prescribe something for the pain, and we’ll put it in a cast to make sure it stays immobile.”

“A cast?” Griffin repeated weakly. “For how long?”

“Plan on six weeks.”

“Six weeks,” she groaned as they went to the pharmacy for her painkillers. “My house will never get painted at this rate.”

“Not unless you hire someone,” Stef said.

“Looks like I’m going to be bidding on that handyman, too,” Griffin said with a sigh when they got back to her house.

That made three of them, Stef mused as she mopped the spilled paint off the floor for her friend.

“Just leave the rest,” Griffin said. “Maybe I’ll be able to at least paint the bottom half of the wall.”

“Okay, but I’m thinking you’d better leave this for the handyman. I wonder how many people are going to be bidding on him.”

“Probably a lot,” Griffin said with a frown.

“This could get ugly.”

* * *

Sure enough, on the night of the Raise the Roof fundraiser at Festival Hall, a day’s work provided by Grant Masters, owner of Honey Do, was a popular item. In fact, it seemed there were more people mingling by the two long tables filled with silent-auction items than there were over at the table with all the cupcakes and cookies for sale. The majority of them were women, many of whom kept circling the table and checking the numbers on that sheet of paper beside the gift certificate with the graphic of the hammer.

“This place is a mob scene,” Brad grumbled as Petey bounced between him and Stef, clamoring for a cookie.

“That’s good, since it’s a fundraiser.”

He scowled at the paper where her name already appeared three times, each with a higher bid. “That’s too much.”

“Nothing’s too much to get my house back,” she retorted.

“Mommy, I want a cookie,” Petey begged.

“All right, let’s get you one,” she said. She left her husband standing at the silent-auction table frowning and walked with her son over to where the goodies were being sold.

Next to that two more tables displayed the baked items that were competing for a first-place ribbon and a dinner for two at Schwangau. All these items would be going up for auction later. Janice Lind, the reigning queen of this competition, had entered a three-layer cake that made Stef’s mouth water. She heard that Janice won every year, but some of the other entries looked good enough to give Mrs. Lind a run for her money. Cass had created an entire gingerbread town, a miniature of Icicle Falls, with colorful icing murals on the shops and a gazebo downtown. Maddy Donaldson had entered some kind of cream pie topped with coconut, and Bailey Black had entered a three-layer cake labeled as Chocolate Orange Delight that was decorated with chocolate-and-orange-tinted roses. Pies, cinnamon rolls and elaborately decorated cupcakes all cried out for attention. How did the judges manage to pick only one grand prize winner?

She bought Petey a snickerdoodle cookie and herself a brownie, then wandered back to see if anyone new had outbid her. Brad had drifted away and was talking with Blake Preston, manager of the local bank. His wife, Samantha, and her sister Cecily were both checking out a gift certificate for a day spa treatment at the Sleeping Lady Salon.

“Of course, we’re driving up the price by bidding against each other,” Samantha confessed, “but it’s for a great cause.”