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Isaiah credited the uncharacteristic sentimental recollection to the cancer diagnosis.
“Perhaps you should give your body a little recovery time before playing tourist and considering an overnighter. Who knows how you’ll feel come Friday?”
Ben opened the box Carrie had left on the table, pulled out the cinnamon roll earmarked for his wife, and took a bite out of it. He appeared to mull over Isaiah’s concerns as he chewed. “Salem’s right down the road, and a shorter drive from here than Boston. If I get tired, we’ll check into the bed-and-breakfast early.”
“How about renting a scary movie and chilling out at home?” Isaiah suggested.
“I’m not asking your permission, son. All I’m asking is for you to stand in for us at an event sponsored by our family business.” Picking up a napkin, Ben wiped white icing from his fingertips. “Will you do that for me?”
Isaiah nodded.
He wanted to spend his short time in Wintersage helping his folks, and if that meant playing host at a children’s party, so be it.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_5b01193c-c55e-5d1a-a64f-da5c17def38e)
Why couldn’t she have just kept her mouth shut?
Sandra walked the short blocks to The Quarterdeck restaurant in a zombielike stupor.
Autumn was her favorite season. Yet she couldn’t appreciate the scent of firewood permeating the crisp night air or the wind rustling the few leaves still clinging to trees. The jack-o’-lanterns and campaign placards in the shop windows she passed were a blur.
Reality had set in, and all she could think about was the big fat Thanksgiving mess she’d gotten herself into. Thanks to a childish need to constantly prove herself to her dad.
She yanked open the door to the restaurant and blinked as she walked inside.
The usual elegant ambience of her Monday night haunt had undergone a transformation since last week. Paper lanterns adorned with bats and witches riding brooms hung from the rafters, while faux cobwebs, plastic skeletons and gravestones held up the corners of the restaurant’s spacious dining room.
Sandra gulped. First Halloween, then before you knew it, Thanksgiving would be upon them.
Looking up at a witch silhouetted on one of the paper lanterns, she briefly wondered if it could cast a spell that would give her Martha Stewart’s kitchen skills in less than a month.
Sandra sighed. Probably not.
She scanned the room and easily spotted her friend seated at a table near the bar. The old-fashioned, schoolmarm bun Vicki Ahlfors kept her long hair swept up in had given her away.
Sandra smiled, the sight of her friend buoying her sagging spirits.
“Sorry I’m late.” She leaned over and gave her a quick hug.
“Where have you been hiding all day?” Vicki asked. “I came upstairs to see if you were free for lunch, but the lights in your studio were off and the door was locked.”
Best friends since high school, Sandra, Vicki and Janelle Howerton were also business partners. The trio ran their complementary businesses out of a three-story Victorian located a block from Main Street.
Vicki’s flower shop, Petals, occupied the first floor, Sandra’s Swoon Couture was on the second, while Janelle operated her events planning business, Alluring Affairs, from the top floor. The arrangement had been profitable as well as convenient, and the three of them often collaborated on some of the town’s splashiest weddings and social functions.
“I worked from home today.” Sandra plopped down at the table across from her. “Then my folks stopped over.”
Vicki frowned. “But I thought they went to New York City right after Janelle’s wedding to visit friends.”
Sandra’s gaze flicked to the empty chair at their table, before turning to the waiter who’d come to take her drink order.
“White wine?” the college kid who often waited tables on Monday nights guessed.
Sandra looked across at Vicki’s white wine spritzer. She automatically nodded, but changed her mind. She definitely needed something stronger this evening.
“On second thought...” She picked up the drinks menu. Within moments she’d narrowed down her choices to either a manhattan or a red apple cidertini.
“It’s not on the menu, but this week’s special is a pumpkin martini,” the waiter suggested.
“Sounds great,” Sandra said. “I’ll take it.”
When he’d left to retrieve the drink, Sandra noticed her friend eyeing her suspiciously.
“What did your dad say this time?” Vicki asked.
Sandra’s mouth dropped open. “How’d you know he...”
“The combination of your folks dropping by unexpectedly and you ordering a cocktail make it obvious,” she said. “So what did he do? Call your sketch pad a coloring book again? Complain you were rotting your brilliant brain playing paper dolls and dress up?”
“Doesn’t matter what he said now,” Sandra said. “I’m the problem. Me and my big mouth.”
She quickly filled her friend in on her parents’ visit, from them dumping another designer’s dresses on her to alter, to her father’s nonstop praise of his friend’s superdaughter, and finally Sandra’s big, dumb Thanksgiving offer.
Vicki’s eyes widened to the size of Ping-Pong balls.
“But...” her friend began. The horrified look on her face matched the restaurant’s scary decor.
Their waiter returned with Sandra’s martini. When he left, Vicki leaned across the table. “I know your dad can sometimes be a bit much, but what on earth possessed you to say such a thing?” she asked. “You can’t cook.”
“That’s an understatement.” Sandra took a tentative sip of her drink, the syrupy sweetness of pumpkin and maple syrup disguising the vodka’s kick.
“Remember when you baked chocolate chip cookies for the cheerleader fund-raiser?”
Sandra rolled her eyes skyward and snorted. “Don’t remind me. I think my dad is still getting dental bills from people biting down on those hockey pucks.”
The waiter reappeared to take their dinner orders. Again, Sandra opted for one of the restaurant’s Halloween specials, pumpkin ravioli in a lobster cream sauce, while her friend ordered the broiled haddock.
“So what are you going to do?” Vicki asked after the waiter left.
Sandra sighed. “The way I see it, I only have two options. Either tell my folks I misspoke, or buy myself a cookbook, a set of pots and pans and start practicing. I could do a trial run with a small dinner party with you, Janelle and Ballard.”
“Oh, no. I’m not playing guinea pig.” Vicki put her hand up and shook her head. “And I’m sure Janelle isn’t going to subject her new husband’s stomach to your kitchen experiments.”
Again, Sandra glanced at the empty chair. “But you’re my best friends, and I need you,” she said, her tone a mixture of whining and pleading. “We’re The Silk Sisters, remember?”
She’d hoped tossing out their old high school nickname, now the name of the corporation the trio had formed with their businesses, would soften Vicki’s stance.
Instead, the florist frowned. “As your best friend, I’d suggest you swallow your pride, go crawling to your dad and beg off cooking Thanksgiving dinner.” She took a sip of wine. “Or for that matter, any meal.”
Sandra took an unladylike gulp from her own drink. “Crawl and beg, huh?”
Vicki nodded once. “Exactly.”
Fifteen minutes later, their waiter slid hot plates bearing their dinner in front of them. Sandra gazed down at her food. It looked and smelled delicious, but all she could think about was the smug expression on her father’s face when she reneged after insisting she’d cook.
“I know you’re right.” Sandra sighed. “But my dad would never let me hear the end of it. He’ll be ribbing me until New Year’s.”
Vicki speared a piece of fish with her fork. “Better than your entire family spending Thanksgiving in the bathroom, at the dentist or even worse, the emergency room at Wintersage Hospital.”
Sandra opened her mouth to protest, but knew she didn’t have a case. Instead, she helped herself to a mouthful of ravioli.
“Okay, I’ll call off the bet,” she said, having decided to see her parents first thing tomorrow morning and cancel plans to have Thanksgiving at her place. “So what’s going on with you, besides being inundated with orders for fall harvest floral arrangements?”
Vicki looked up from her plate. “Planning my parade float for the annual Wintersage Christmas Celebration. I know it’s a while away, but I still have so much to do. I got sidetracked helping with Janelle’s wedding.”
“Same here,” Sandra agreed. “But it was a beautiful wedding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so happy.”
This time they both cast a glance at the empty chair at their table. Sandra wasn’t sure how long she stared at the seat that usually would have been occupied by their friend.
“Janelle didn’t leave town for good, you know,” Vicki said. “She’s just on her honeymoon. She’ll be back next week, in time for the election.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sandra shrugged.
No way would Janelle miss the election, not with her father running against Oliver Windom in the most talked about race in the state.
“Then why that face?”
Sandra didn’t need a mirror to know she looked as if she’d lost her best friend, because no matter how Vicki put it, the reality was she had. While Vicki hadn’t come on the scene until she transferred from the local public high school to Wintersage Academy in the tenth grade, Sandra and Janelle had been friends since kindergarten.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled for Janelle,” Sandra explained. “Yet the selfish part of me is a little sad, because things won’t be the same once she and Ballard return from Tahiti.”
The waiter cleared their empty plates and rattled off the dessert offerings. They ordered a second round of drinks, and a slice of cheesecake to share.
Vicki stared at her nearly empty wineglass. “I was thinking about it earlier at the shop. You’re right. It won’t be the same. Janelle is a happily married woman now, and we’re single. It’s a different mind-set.”
Sandra nodded. “Her life will revolve around her husband, and before you know it, the babies will start coming...” If their friend didn’t return home from her honeymoon already pregnant, she thought, downing the last of her first martini.
“Well, hopefully, love, weddings and lots of babies are in our futures, too.” Vicki’s tone softened along with her gaze. “Sooner rather than later.”
Sandra coughed, nearly choking on her drink.
“S-speak for yourself,” she sputtered. “I’m not in the market for a husband, and my nephew is enough baby for me.”
“Oh, come on. Aren’t you tired of having no one to come home to at the end of a long, hard day?”
“Nope, it’s why I moved out of my parents’ house and into one of my own as soon as Swoon became profitable.”
The waiter returned bearing their drinks and dessert. Sandra immediately reached for the fresh cocktail, its sugary rush reminiscent of a milk shake. However, if she thought the decadent slab of New York cheesecake at the center of the table was going to dissuade her friend from pursuing the current topic of conversation, she was mistaken.
“Well, aren’t you sick of wasting your time on meaningless dates with guys you know would never make the cut for Mr. Right?”
“Nope. At twenty-eight years old, it’s called being young and having fun. In fact, I have a date Friday night with a cute Mr. Let’s-Just-Have-a-Good-Time lawyer. We’re going to a Halloween party in Boston.”
Vicki sighed. “I’m all for fun and good times, but I want to start having them with a special someone. Janelle already has her Prince Charming. I’m ready for mine and my happily-ever-after.”
“Not me. I have goals to achieve.” Sandra picked up one of the two forks that had accompanied the cheesecake. “They don’t include being sidetracked by a needy Prince Charming and a drudgery-filled, so-called happily-ever-after spent catering to him.”
She shoved a forkful of cheesecake into her mouth.
Already a die-hard romantic, Vicki was simply swept up in the romance of Janelle’s wedding, Sandra thought. No wedding, or for that matter, no man was going to sway her from her dream of taking Swoon Couture beyond Wintersage.
If next week’s election went the way she hoped, and her design was selected by the governor-elect’s wife, it would garner her design business statewide, perhaps even national, attention.
Vicki dug into the cheesecake with her fork. “A man who’s truly your Prince Charming won’t divert you from your goals. He’ll want to be there to cheer you on as you achieve them.”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Maybe in fairy-tale land, where Mr. Right and Prince Charming reside, along with the fictitious Knight in Shining Armor.”
Her friend helped herself to another bite of cheesecake, staring at her as she chewed. “If you say so,” she said.
“I do.”
Vicki shrugged. “Back in the day, I’d have bet money you would have been the first one of us to say ‘I do’ and start living a happily-ever-after, with your high school sweetheart.”
Isaiah.
After years of not giving him much thought, Sandra found his name popping into her head for the second time that day. Again, images of the tall athletic boy with the dreamy eyes washed over her. They’d been so in love and had made so many plans for the future.
Plans that years later seemed as absurd as the notion of her cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
“That was a long time ago, and we were just kids,” Sandra said.
“Yeah, but you two seemed so perfect for each other. Do you ever wonder how things would have turned out if Isaiah hadn’t left?”
For the entire summer after he’d gone to the naval academy, Sandra had stayed awake nights asking the same question. What if... But back then she’d been a naive seventeen-year-old girl who hadn’t known squat about real life.
“Isaiah was just a high school sweetheart, who I haven’t seen since he left Wintersage,” she said. “I think about him as much as I do Mrs. Sterling’s chemistry class or after-school cheerleader practice, which is never.”
Sandra took a sip of the sweet martini. Isaiah’s mother, Cecily, was one of her private clients, but she hadn’t seen much of her lately. When she did come into the boutique, neither of them brought up the subject of her son.
Isaiah had come home to see his parents from time to time over the years, however Sandra hadn’t run into him during those brief visits.
Vicki exhaled, one of those drawn-out, dreamy, love-conquers-all sighs. “After all these years, I still remember the way he used to look at you,” she said, “like you were the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.”
Sandra rolled her eyes again. It was time to shut down the subject, otherwise her friend would continue on the path of blowing a long-ago adolescent infatuation totally out of proportion.
“I’m sure Isaiah Jacobs is somewhere on the other side of the world, with his choice of beautiful women,” she said, picking up her fork again to dig into the dwindling slice of cheesecake.
“You’re probably right,” Vicki agreed.
