10 Years Later
10 YEARS LATER
January 5
Taylor
I stand behind the big glass display case at the Sweetheart Bake Shop on a typical winter weekday morning. By the time of my college graduation, Walt had gotten no nibbles on the diner, so he offered it to me at a rock-bottom price I couldn’t resist.
Even though I didn’t have any money.
David helped me out with an interest-free loan which he kindly called a graduation present—he’s a truly awesome guy who’s been making my mom very happy for ten years now.
Crazy how time passes—it feels like yesterday that I pulled my little business together and hung out a shingle for the Sweetheart Bake Shop, where we have a very simple business model: we make only heart-shaped baked goods. Cakes, pies, cookies, brownies, cupcakes – all shaped like hearts. With pink pastel hearts painted on the walls, and pink vinyl booths and chairs, I have embraced and combined the “sweet” in Sweetwater, the Sweetheart Diner legacy, and the hearts that continue to tie me to my father—and I may not be getting rich, but it brings me joy every day.
I look up when the door opens and TJ Browerton walks in. “Morning, Taylor. Can I get three dozen cookies? Whatever you have is fine. Staff meeting today after school.” TJ, once-upon-a-time jock in my class, is now the Sweetwater High football coach and a science teacher. He’s still attractive, but in a more low- key way, now wearing glasses and sporting a tie beneath a half-zip sweater. He’s always been a decent guy, and as adults, we’re friendly acquaintances.
“Sure, TJ,” I say, grabbing up a pink bakery box and a pair of tongs. I make small talk with him about the weather—it snowed a little over the weekend, but now it’s just plain cold—as I fill the box with a mix of chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies. On the other side of the interior window behind me, Geneva is busy baking, and my other full-time employee, nineteen-year-old Kyra, boxes up internet orders.
That’s our secret sauce, how we stay in business—online orders. Using moisture-seal packaging, we mail our heart cookies and cupcakes all over the country. It’s still a challenge to stay solvent, but the website customers help. And we’ve also become a bit of a regional destination when someone wants that perfect, pretty heart-shaped dessert for a special occasion.
As for the rest of Sweetwater’s Main Street, it’s more empty than ever. My longtime best friend opened Sweet Caroline’s Deli across the street five years ago (against everyone’s advice, including mine), and she’s struggling, too. Big box stores caused the initial decline decades back, but having a new one built even closer just two years ago has made the situation worse. Other than Caroline and me, all that’s left on Main is a barber shop and an old timey drugstore barely hanging on by a thread. Every other storefront sits sadly empty.
The valentine box, currently painted pink, rests on the counter. As TJ steps over to the register to pay, he drops a business card in for a weekly chance to win a cake or pie. Once again, the box has found a use and I love that it’s on display for every customer to see.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he says. “My mom needs a T-shirt—says her old one finally wore out. Told her I’d pick it up. Large.”
“Great,” I say, grabbing a tee from a shelf behind the counter and packaging it separately in a small pink shopping bag. Back when I first opened, people kept coming in thinking it was still a diner, so as kind of a joke, but also for real, I got pink T-shirts made that say, Sweetheart Bake Shop (Not a Diner!) for the staff, and they became a hit with some of the locals as well. We still wear them even now, mainly because every now and then, someone still comes in trying to order a burger and fries.
“How’s Mags today?” TJ asks after I tell him the total. He drops a glance to my elderly pup, a curly white miniature poodle named Maggie, where she lies curled up in her pink doggie bed near the front window, fast asleep. Mags is mostly blind and doesn’t have many teeth. She showed up outside the shop one day a few years ago, and what was I gonna do, leave her to fend for herself? Knowing that life in this town can be cruel, I took her in and she’s become the bake shop mascot.
“Hanging in there,” I reply, casting her an affectionate glance. “I’m surprised she didn’t wake up when you came in.” She might not be able to see, but she knows my regular customers by scent even amidst all the sweet smells of cakes and brownies.
He slants another look her way. “Bet this’ll do it,” he says, twisting the lid off the cookie jar labeled Maggie’s Hearts near the register, then plucking out a heart-shaped doggie treat.
And indeed, the telltale sound perks Maggie awake, and a second later she’s on her feet, lifting her front paws to the wall of her little gated area. Her tongue lolls from her mouth and her tail wags eagerly as she waits.
For purposes of cleanliness, we avoid petting her during business hours and leave that to the customers, so I’m pleased when TJ not only slips her the bacon-flavored treat, but also reaches down to scratch beneath her chin. I know she’d survive at home during the day, but I suspect she was abandoned more than once in her life, so I don’t like to leave her alone for long stretches if I don’t have to.
As TJ walks out, Caroline whisks in. Still a few dress sizes bigger than some consider the ideal, my beautiful friend came into her own after high school. She loves to dabble in makeup and piercings, is dating three different guys from out of town, and every New Year declares what her signature color of the year will be.
Shrugging free of her new purple coat (that’s this year’s color), she greets a tail-wagging Mags with a belly rub and baby-voiced, “There’s my Maggie girl,” then parks herself at the table nearest the door, her usual spot when she drops by before opening the deli for lunch.
That’s when her normally cheerful expression—apparently only for Maggie today—transforms into an all-out scowl as she flips long, dark hair over her shoulder and addresses the shop at large. “Did you hear the news?”
I exchange glances with Geneva and Kyra through the window behind me. It would seem none of us have. “What news?”
“Well, rather than tell you, I can let you just see for yourself. Across the street, at eleven o’clock walking briskly toward ten.”
I look—and can’t believe my eyes.
Behind me, the other two crane to see, but the angle isn’t right, so Geneva asks, “Who is it?”
I’m stunned by the words that leave my mouth. “Jasmine Dupree is walking down the street in a salmon-colored pantsuit.”
“Oh dear,” Geneva says.
As Kyra asks, “Who’s Jasmine Dupree?”
Caroline answers, “Taylor’s high school bully and nemesis. Mine, too, kind of, but she stole Taylor’s man.”
“Whoa,” I say, holding up both hands, glad the attention-grabbing sight is now out of my vision. “He was, in no stretch of the imagination, my man.” Then I look to Kyra. “Just a boy I had a crush on.”
“And she looks ridiculous, if you ask me,” Caroline adds, eyes back on Jasmine.
But I counter, “No, actually, she looks amazing. I could never pull off that outfit, but on her it was incredible.”
“Well, it looks ridiculous here ,” Caroline clarifies.
Fair enough. I meet her halfway with, “It’s a bit much for a dying Kentucky river town, I agree.”
“And she also looked as miserable as ever, didn’t you think?”
“She did always seem kind of miserable for a girl who had it all, didn’t she?” I concur, scrunching my nose up slightly. “What on earth is she doing back in Sweetwater?”
Caroline presses her lips together in a flat, straight line, her eyes going I’ve-got-the-scoop wide. Then she holds up one finger. “Wait. First, a little backstory for Kyra. What we last knew was that Jasmine and Luke—that’s the guy—were a couple in college, but he was in Utah and she was here. I’m not sure how that worked. But anyway, at some point—we don’t know when—they broke up and she ended up in L.A. as some kind of assistant at a high-profile talent agency. She became a social media influencer because she was always at Hollywood parties, posting pictures of celebrities, and of herself looking fabulous. But then, scandal .” The word comes out in a tone of salacious wonder.
“What happened?” Kyra asks, her hazel eyes as big as Caroline’s now as she shoves back a tendril of long brown hair that’s escaped her ponytail.
“According to my mother,” Caroline says, “she got fired from her job after fooling around with an older, married guy at her company. She lost a lot of her following, and she’d spent all her money on her lavish lifestyle, so she was bordering on broke and had no choice but to come home. At first it looked like she was just here for Christmas—but then she didn’t leave and word starting getting around. Mom says she’s doing admin work at her mother’s office.” Janet Dupree’s real estate agency is down the street and around the corner in a well-kept colonial-style home and is probably the only business in Sweetwater that continues to thrive, because most of her listings come from other communities.
“That’s quite a story,” Geneva remarks, having joined the wide-eyed crew.
“All I can say,” Caroline adds more quietly, “is that this town was a much nicer place without her.”
And I can’t argue the point. In fact, all the mean girls in her group eventually left for parts unknown, lifting away a certain veil of resentment that can persist over such things even in adulthood.
But surely Jasmine Dupree and I can co-exist peacefully—or at least avoid each other for however long she’s here. Even if the sight of her out my plate-glass windows did send a little jolt of teenage PTSD skittering through my body.
That’s when my phone buzzes with a text notification. Checking it, I say to the group, “It’s Mom. She wants to know if I’ve seen yesterday’s Sweetwater Times .” Despite no longer living here, she still subscribes to keep up with town happenings. “And I haven’t.”
A glance around tells me no one is aware of whatever this news is, either—not even Caroline.
“She says to look on page ten.”
Geneva leaves what she’s doing and a moment later walks around front, Kyra behind her, with the newspaper in hand. It must have landed on my desk around the corner with other mail. I press it flat on the counter before me and shuffle to page ten—to see it’s the obituaries.
Geneva catches that, too. “Uh oh—who died?”
I scan the few names listed and, understanding immediately why Mom texted, I announce, “Dr. Montgomery. Dr. Montgomery died.”
The others gasp as Kyra says, “Oh no, he’s my doctor.”
“He’s everyone’s doctor,” Geneva reminds her.
“Not anymore,” Caroline remarks quietly.
Around seven years ago, Dr. and Mrs. Montgomery returned home to their still unsold farm and he bought back his old practice from another doctor who apparently didn’t love small town medicine, either. Never a friendly man—more straightforward and all business—Dr. M. was still respected and valued in the community.
We all stay silent until Kyra asks, “How did he die?”
I scan the page and tell her, “It doesn’t say. Obituaries usually don’t.”
“I’ll text my mom,” Caroline announces.
Meanwhile, assuming everyone is interested, I read the obit aloud.
It gives his age as sixty-seven, reminding me Luke’s father was older than the rest of our parents—he didn’t start a family until after graduating from medical school and getting professionally established.
It then touches on what a beloved member of the community he was. A strong word, beloved , and though none of us say that, I suspect we’re all thinking it.
It goes on to list his survivors, naming his wife as well as Luke’s older brothers, who now have wives and kids of their own. Both are attorneys, and I learn that one lives in Cincinnati, the other in St. Louis. The paragraph ends with the words, “and Luke Montgomery, thirty-two, of Springdale, Utah.”
Okay then. He’s not married with kids. But I know nothing else about him. I once casually asked Dr. Montgomery during a checkup how Luke was doing, mentioning we’d been in high school together, and all he rewarded me with was a surly, “He’s fine,” that made me give up the quest.
“Mom heard it was a pulmonary embolism in his sleep,” Caroline interrupts me grimly to report, looking at her phone.
We all nod, then I finish the obituary by sharing the funeral date and time. “Followed by burial at the Sweetwater Cemetery.”
“That’s tomorrow,” Caroline points out when I’m done.
“Yeah,” I say, then realize they’re all looking at me. “What?”
“This means Luke is in town,” she says, like I haven’t made that leap on my own.
I merely shrug. “So what? I haven’t seen him in nearly fifteen years.”
“Don’t you want to? I mean, most of the town will go to the visitation, so it’s only normal you would, too.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
The last time I saw him, he made me feel like dirt. Then waltzed off into the night with Jasmine—or at least I assume he did, all things considered. I don’t even like being taken back to that awful night in my memory.
Of course, much later I found out why he acted so mean. But no matter the reason, our last meeting hurt and embarrassed me. He has a life far away from here and surely won’t be in Sweetwater for long. I simply offer another shrug. “It’s water under the bridge.”
Of course, the truth runs deeper than that, and is a little more complex.
Despite some dating along the way, I’ve never had much of a love life. Instead, I’ve thrown myself into my work. But despite the lack of romance or riches in my life, I’m happy. I make a living—however meager sometimes—doing what I love. I’ve actually come to appreciate my little cottage not far from the shop—I’ve fixed it up, painted it with fun colors inside and out, and even have a lovely flower garden in back every summer. And I’ve grown dedicated to supporting this town and trying to keep it alive, no matter how hard that might be getting.
So why would I want to upset my perfectly happy life by revisiting the past with Luke Montgomery?