Union Street Bakery (9781101619292) (8 page)

The bottom line appeared to be that we weren't generating enough business based on the number of employees and the number of goods we manufactured. Today's flood of customers had been the anomaly. Most days, business was at least 30 percent less. Since firing a sister wasn't an option, the bakery needed to find ways to cut inventory and market. From what I could tell, we were totally dependent on walk-in traffic, and the only catering we did was around the Christmas holidays. We needed more catering. More weddings. Maybe even a deal with a high-end grocery store willing to carry our bread.

In my room, I kicked off my clogs, tugged off my clothes, and dropped them in a pile by my bed before slipping on a flannel nightgown. As much as I'd have liked a shower, I just didn't have the energy. I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and climbed into my sleeping bag on the lumpy sofa. One moment I was aware of closing my eyes and the next, I tumbled immediately into a deep sleep.

I dreamed of two little girls laughing.

“What game do you want to play today? It's your birthday so you can choose!” The little girl's smile was so wide, deep dimples burrowed into her cheeks.

I sat cross-legged on my bed staring at my friend Susie. The little girl wore her hair in tight, neat braids secured with blue ribbons that teased the tops of thin shoulders covered with a starched white dress. Susie had a light mocha complexion that soaked up the sun in the summer. Like me, she was about twelve.

“I don't want to play a game.”

Susie frowned. “Why not? You always want to play. I know you love I Spy.” Susie tapped her finger to her lips. “Let's see, I Spy something blue.”

“No.” My mood had been sour since I'd risen and no amount of coaxing would draw me out. My mom had grown frustrated and grumbled about me being selfish. “I don't want to play.”

Susie cocked her head. “Why are you such a Sour Sally on your birthday?”

I folded arms over my chest, trying to understand the anger that stalked me today. “I don't know.”

Susie leaned forward and in a singsong voice said, “There's always a reason. Tell me.”

When I didn't answer, Susie rose up from the bed and started to dance around the room. “Tell me. Tell me. I won't go away until you tell me, Daisy McCrae!”

Frustrated, I watched Susie twirl and twirl as she sang. Susie had been the only one today who had wanted to understand my moodiness. She'd been the only one who didn't wonder why I was so ungrateful.

Finally unable to stand the pesky tune, I blurted, “I don't know when my real birthday is.”

Susie stopped dancing and came back to the bed, tucking her legs under her lace skirt. “Of course you know. Today is your birthday.”

“It is not.”

“Of course it is! You are so silly.”

I shook my head. “Nobody knows my real birthday. Margaret told me my parents made up my birthday when I was adopted. Nobody knows when I was really born. May 12 is just a story.”

“Margaret is a sour mean puss.”

“But she is right. No one knows.”

“Except Renee,” Susie said.

“Except Renee.”

Chapter Four

D
id you find it?” Mabel said.

The old woman leaned forward in her wheelchair, tugging nervously at a loose thread on the edge of her blue crocheted blanket. She and Florence were in the back spare room of Mabel's town house, a room she'd not been in in more years than she could count.

Even as a bride, she thought the room dreary. And now it seemed danker and darker than ever before. She could have lived with the smell of dust and mothballs, or tolerated the overhead light that spit out only a miserly bit of brightness, or even the tasseled velvet floor-to-ceiling curtains, which blocked the sun and views of the river. She also didn't care so much about the piles of newspapers and boxes, old furniture, and knickknacks that covered most of the floor. All that was part and parcel of an old house.

No, what she hated most about this room were the bad memories. Every square inch of the room was soaked in sadness. Of death. This room had been her husband's when he'd been so sick. Her Robert had suffered and eventually died in this room over sixty years ago.

Florence Tillman glanced up from the deep wooden trunk filled with dusty clothes. Stirred-up dust made her sneeze. “I'm looking, Miss Mabel. I'm looking.”

Mabel leaned forward in her wheelchair, hating the craggy edge of desperation burning through her body. “Well, look faster. I ain't got a lot of time. She's already told me I don't have many more days.”

“You talking to spirits again?”

“Don't matter who. She's right: I'm out of time.”

Mabel had never figured after all the living that she'd done that she'd be so fearful of crossing over. Maybe it was because she'd always prided herself on control and of taking matters into her own hands, just as her grandmother had taught. She'd spent many hours with her grandmother learning not only listening to stories that sounded more like fairy tales but also learning the value of grabbing destiny when it was elusive.
Be anything you want but don't be no fool, Mabel Ann.

And so Mabel had never feared taking life by the horns. When she was twelve and the copperhead snake invaded her mama's garden, she didn't scream or squeal like her sisters; instead she'd gotten her pa's ax and cut its head right off. When her husband started having fits of anger after he'd been wounded in the war, she didn't reach out to anyone. She went to the medicine cabinet. A few drops of laudanum in Robert's morning coffee kept him even and steady for the last few years of his life. And when her no-good great-niece had come looking for drug money, she'd turned her out onto the street, refusing to hear the girl's sob stories.

Like a vigilant gatekeeper, Mabel Woodrow did what she had to do to keep life moving forward, just like her grandmother had done.

Whereas her grandmother had been cursed with regret, Mabel didn't have any damn regrets for the way she'd lived her life. She'd done what she'd done. Life was what it was. And only the weak fussed and fretted over spilled milk.

Still, with the time left in her life ticking down day by day or perhaps hour by hour, she'd come to see that the Lord meant for her to fix something before she left His Earth. She'd never go so far as to say any kind of penitence for her actions. She'd done what needed to be done, but she was willing to concede that perhaps a bit of mending was in order.

“It's in the bottom of the trunk,” she said. She twisted the edge of her lap blanket tighter.

“I heard you the first time.” Florence's words snapped with irritation.

“Move that wide bottom of yours so that I can see into the trunk.”

Florence straightened and turned her full attention to her employer. “Now, if you want to drag your bony ass out of that chair and look for yourself, I'm more than willing to sit on the sidelines and criticize while you hunt through fifty years of mold and dust.”

Old eyes narrowed to priggish slits. “Don't you get smart with me, Florence Tillman.”

“Don't you be bossing me, Mabel Woodrow. We are way beyond that now. Now, you gonna be nice?”

“You gonna move a little faster?”

Florence shook her head. “I swear I wonder why I stayed with you all these years.”

Mabel clicked her false teeth. “'Cause you like me.”

Florence shook her head and went back to digging as Mabel settled back into her chair, irritated and frustrated that so little time remained for this important task. She'd put one ball in play over a month ago but had begun to fear that her efforts would fail. This would be her last chance. “Fine.”

Florence snorted and returned to digging in the trunk again. She tossed out an old quilt and a stack of newspapers onto the floor beside her. “Beyond me why you got me hunting and digging through all these dusty old trunks. I swear it's those damn sweet buns you ate this morning. The sugar has diddled with your mind and made you a little crazy.”

The sweet buns had not been the culprits. She'd barely taken a bite or two. Food didn't much interest her anymore. Nothing much except this last task interested her.

The cauldron of worries had been stirring for months with each new dream that came to her. And last night's dream had been the clearest and most vivid of all, once again churning up matters she'd buried long ago. The dream had made her rise early and demand that Florence take her first to the bakery and then to her lawyer's office.

“It's in a box,” Mabel said. “And the box is wrapped in fabric.”

“You told me that twice already. I just wish you could remember which trunk and what kind of fabric.”

“How many books could there be?”

“Quite a few.”

Mabel glanced around the dusty room at the three other trunks that Florence had unpacked, searched, and repacked. Her grandmother had given her the book and bade her to keep it close and hidden until the time was right. “It's got to be in that one. It's the last wooden trunk, and I know I put it in a wooden trunk.”

Florence dug through more layers of clothes. “I don't think . . . wait a minute.” Her lips flattened with determination, and then she pulled out a book wrapped in a faded blue calico fabric. “Is this what you are looking for?”

Nervous energy snapped through Mabel's withered limbs as Florence rose and laid the box on her knees. Mabel's hands hovered over the book. She'd not felt such a tremor of excitement in years. It had been so long since she'd seen it, so long since she'd even thought about its significance.

She tugged at the twine that held the fabric but quickly discovered her aged hands couldn't breach the bindings.

Florence shooed her hands away. “Hold your horses. You're going to break a finger. I got my nail clippers in my pocket.” She fished the clippers from her jacket pocket and easily clipped the twine. The brittle twine popped free as if it had been waiting to be released for years.

Mabel's hands shook as she watched Florence peel away the fabric and then faded newspaper dating to 1922, the year she and Robert married. When she'd removed all the layers, she found the small leather-bound book, which wasn't much bigger than her outstretched hand. Though scuffed and worn, the leather exterior appeared whole and true.

Gently, Mabel ran her hand over the fabric covering the book. Carefully, she opened it, amazed how time had faded the ink in the last eight decades. She flipped to a page and marveled at the precise handwriting she'd not seen in so long.
To S.
With love, J.

Mabel closed the book.
S.
Dearest S. Dead so long and yet if Mabel closed her eyes she could see her now smiling as the two churned butter. Mabel smoothed gnarled, bent fingers over the soft texture of the cloth cover.

Seeing the inscription magnified her regret and made it hard for her to pull in a breath. Tears glistened in long-dry eyes.

“You'll see that she gets this,” Mabel said.

Florence sat beside her. “Why on Earth do you want her to have it? Makes not a bit of sense.”

Mabel smiled. “She'll figure it out. She's a smart one. Just promise me that she'll get this.”

The blanket on Mabel's lap had slipped and Florence tugged it back into place. Carefully she tucked the edges under the seat of the wheelchair cushion. “I'll deliver it first thing in the morning.”

“Don't tell any of my damn relatives about it. Those nephews of mine might see some value and take it. I don't want it getting mired in my estate. And if she needs anything, you see that she gets it.”

Florence softened the edge in her voice. “Miss Mabel, you can give it to the child yourself. I'll take you straightaway in the morning.”

Bent hands, lined with veins and wrinkles, gently stroked the book. “I don't think I'll be seeing morning.”

Florence frowned. “Now, don't be talking like that.”

“I'm nearing a hundred, Florence. I've had a good run but it's time for me to leave.”

Florence's gaze softened. “What you gonna do if you wake up in the morning and you're still kicking?”

“I won't be.” She raised a brow and met her old friend's gaze. “But if I am, I'll deliver the book myself.”

Florence nodded. “That's more like it.”

Mabel closed the book. “Just promise me, you will see that she gets it after I pass.”

“You ain't gonna pass for a good while.”

“
Promise
me.”

Florence stared at her a long moment, and then she nodded. “I promise.”

Mabel eased back in her wheelchair and closed her eyes. She sat so quiet and still that Florence thought she might have died then and there.

“Mrs. Woodrow.”

The old woman nodded but didn't open her eyes. “And the second letter?”

Florence patted the old woman's arm. “I mailed it four days ago, like I said.”

That prompted a resigned smile. “Good.”