Better Than Chocolate

Cecily blinked. “What?”

“I heard Cascade Mutual is bringing in a new manager. I have no idea what that person will be like.” Maybe he’d turn out to be as nice as Arnie. She could hope. But realistically, she suspected that the good old days of having a community bank that cared were gone. Arnie had cared a little too much, which had a lot to do with why the bank was under new management.

Cecily twirled a lock of blond hair. “Maybe I could get a loan.”

“No,” Samantha said. “We could be on the Titanic here and if we are, I don’t want you going down with us.”

“We’re family and this is a family business. We stick together. Remember?”

“Thanks.” Her sister’s words were comforting, but when it came right down to it, Samantha was both captain and crew of this ship and steering clear of disaster was going to be her responsibility.

“I’m sure I could come up with something,” Cecily insisted.

L.A. was not a cheap place to live and do business, and Samantha had no intention of saddling her sister with a big chunk of debt. Anyway, Cecily would never be able to come up with the kind of money they needed. “I’ll manage.”

“You always do, but I just want you to know that you don’t have to do this alone. After all, I still owe you for stealing your diary,” Cecily said with a smile.

Samantha couldn’t help smiling, too, at the memory of finding her sister reading her deepest twelve-year-old thoughts to her friends. Pretty darned funny now. Not so much at the time. “You were lucky you lived to see middle school.”

Cecily sobered. “I want to do something to earn my share of the profits when they start coming in again.”

“If I think of something, I’ll let you know,” Samantha told her, but they both knew she didn’t really mean it. She’d already had one person—Waldo—“helping” and that was enough for a lifetime.

Cecily reopened the box and bit into a truffle, then offered another to Samantha. “I know things will turn around.”

“I hope you know as much as you think you know,” Samantha said. Otherwise… Oh, no. She wasn’t going down that rocky road. Not yet, anyway.

Chapter Three

Always stop and think before you act. This is the first rule of good relationships and good business.

—Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love

It was Monday, and all was quiet now that the girls were gone. In a way Muriel relished the solitude. It gave her a chance to grieve freely. But the house seemed so empty and she felt so alone. Her daughters had lives of their own to return to, though, and she couldn’t blame them for running off. It certainly wasn’t any fun being with her. She hadn’t even made them breakfast before Samantha took them to the airport.

Muriel poured herself a mug of tea and padded barefoot over to her picture window to gaze at the winter scene outside. Fir and pine trees shook off a thin blanket of snow too wet to stick. The houses on her block sat empty and unlit, waiting for their owners, who all had lives, to return. A truck sloshed down the street, making only a momentary dent in the smothering silence.

Okay, she’d seen enough. She got her tea and went back to bed, placing the mug on the nightstand for easy access. Even though she was wearing a sweater over her favorite silk pajamas the bed still felt cold. Both her husbands had been bed hogs, especially Waldo. He not only slept diagonally, every time he rolled over he pulled the covers with him like a giant ebb tide. It used to irritate her no end. No ebb tide now.

Hot tears pricked her eyes. Hard to believe she had any left after the past week. She wiped them away and took a determined sip of tea. “You can’t just stay in bed all day,” she told herself.

And then argued back. “Why not?” Who cared whether she stayed in bed or got up?

She was alone again.

Oh, stop, she scolded herself. Waldo’s sudden death was a blessing. Would you have wanted him to suffer?

The answer, of course, was no.

With that settled in her mind (for today, anyway), she drank some more tea and surveyed the room like a pioneer checking out new territory. What to do in this new territory? Where to start?

Normally by ten o’clock in the morning she’d already be hard at work on her next book for Mountain Crest Publications, a small Pacific Northwest publisher. She hadn’t made much money as a writer but she’d enjoyed the experience. It held no appeal for her now, though, not when she was back in this dark place.

Those months after Stephen died had been a nightmare, even worse than losing either of her parents—and she’d thought nothing could top that. Widowhood went beyond loneliness. It cut off half your soul.

Now, going through it again so soon was more than she could handle. All she could do was drift through the house like a wraith. With no one to cook for she had no interest in food, not even chocolate, the family’s lifeblood. Planning Waldo’s funeral had been torture. Walking past his desk and seeing all those bills had been terrifying. She had no head for money and math was a mystery, one she’d never needed to solve. After all, she’d had Stephen. When he died the only thing that kept her from throwing herself (or at least her checkbook) off Sleeping Lady Mountain had been the patient helpfulness of Arnie at Cascade Mutual.

She’d breathed a sigh of relief when Waldo rode into her life like a knight on a white horse, but he’d gone out like Don Quixote and here she was again, lost and adrift. Why Waldo, of all people? He’d been so sweet, and his laugh—everyone, including her, had loved to hear him laugh. Without him the house was a tomb and she felt numb. And the book she’d been working on was as dead as her husband.

Her editor had wanted Muriel to capitalize on her chocolate connection more than she had in her previous books and had urged her to do a cookbook featuring chocolate recipes. She’d resisted. She’d been so happy with Waldo she’d wanted to write about how to start over again. She couldn’t write about that now. She couldn’t write. Period.

She set the mug on the nightstand and slipped under the covers. Cocooned beneath her down comforter, she eventually drifted off to sleep and found Waldo.

But he wasn’t the only one keeping her company in her dreams. Stephen showed up, too, and there they were, all at a dance at Festival Hall, dressed in German attire.

She had just danced with Stephen, who looked dashing in lederhosen, and now Waldo was sweeping her away in a polka. “Come on, Muriel, old girl, let’s have fun. Life is short.”

Suddenly the doors to the hall blew open and a swirling black tornado entered the room, whisking Muriel off her feet and separating her from him. Salted caramels swirled all around her and she kept grabbing for them, but she couldn’t catch even one. And now the wind was whooshing her out the door. “No, I’m not ready to leave!”

Muriel’s eyes popped open. It took her a second to realize she was home in bed with late-afternoon shadows sprawled across the bedspread. She couldn’t have slept the day away. She looked at the clock. It was going on four. She had.

And what had that strange dream been about? What was her subconscious trying to tell her? Maybe that she was going insane.

* * *

Bailey gave Samantha one more hug and then followed Cecily into Sea-Tac Airport to catch their late-afternoon flight to L.A.

Once through the sliding glass doors both sisters turned and waved a final goodbye. She waved back and swallowed a lump in her throat. Not for the first time she wished they lived closer, but a girl had to follow her dreams. It was too bad their dreams had led them all in different directions.

She heaved a sigh, then got in her trusty Toyota and began the two-hour drive back to the other side of the mountains. She’d barely get home in time to bake cookies before going to hang out with her other sisters, sisters of the heart. Monday wasn’t normally a party night but tonight was an exception.

Back home, Samantha baked up the cookie dough Bailey had left in her freezer. Then she pulled on her down coat and her winter boots and walked the short distance from her condo to her friend Charley’s snug little house, which overlooked Icicle Creek. A moonlit sky speckled with stars lit her way, but she could have found the house just as easily by following the noise. A soundtrack of Gloria Gaynor singing “I Will Survive” was blasting an accompaniment to raucous laughter. Obviously the party was in full swing.

She walked around to the back of the house. The deck was lit with several strings of pink flamingo party lights. Patio chairs sprawled every which way and a picnic table was laden with salads and desserts. But the action was taking place around the fire pit on the lawn, and in the center of it all stood Charlene Albach. Charley, a slender woman in her mid-thirties with dark hair cut in a messy bob, looked fashionable in jeans, ankle boots and a faux-fur-trimmed jacket. She was holding what had to be the world’s largest wineglass and dumping a handful of photos onto a roaring bonfire.

“Samantha, get yourself down here,” she called. “We’re burning weenies.”

The symbolism wasn’t lost on Samantha and she smiled as she put her cookies on the table. She plucked one off the plate and then walked down to join the group of women gathered around the fire. One she recognized as Charley’s older sister, Amy, who had come up from Portland for the occasion. And there was Elena, Samantha’s loyal secretary; Lauren, her teller from the bank; her pal Cassandra Wilkes from Gingerbread Haus; Heidi Schwartz, who worked part-time in the Sweet Dreams gift shop; and Rita Reyes and Maria Gomez, who worked for Charley at her restaurant, Zelda’s—all present to help Charley celebrate her first official day of freedom. Earlier that morning Charley’s divorce had become final.

She set aside her glass and handed Samantha a hot dog skewered on a stainless-steel toasting fork. “Welcome to the celebration. Have a dick-on-a-stick.”

From their side of the fire Rita and Maria laughed uproariously. “I need more wine,” Rita said. “Can I get you some?” she asked Samantha.

Samantha didn’t have much of a palate for wine. She shook her head. “Nah, I’m good.”

“You have to drink something. We’re going to be toasting my future, you know,” Charley said. “Get her some of that ChocoVine. It tastes just like Baileys. You’ll like it,” she informed Samantha. “Trust me.”

“‘Trust me’—isn’t that what worthless old Richard said to you?” quipped her sister.