3. Violet
THREE
Violet
T he week passes, and unfortunately, I don’t see Carson or Margo again. Every time the door opens, I look up, hoping to see them walking in, but it never is. Maybe the bakery isn’t going to be a daily thing for them. Maybe it will be like some others in town: just a nice treat here and there. That thought makes me sad. I would like to see them more often and get to know the little girl I see so much of myself in, get to know her father, and become friends so that my friendship with a child doesn’t seem so weird.
I’ve all but given up on seeing them again when the door opens and Margo runs in. “Violet!” she yells, coming to a sudden stop before the counter.
I lean down with a smile. “Hi, Margo. Where you been?”
She motions toward her dad. “Home. He don’t let me leave. I’m a prisoner,” she breathes out, clearly tired of being stuck at home and it makes me laugh.
“Well, you’ve escaped today! What treat do you have in mind?”
“I want cookies and cupcakes and donuts and candy,” she starts listing off.
“Whoa, okay now. Remember what I said?” Carson says from behind her.
She takes a long breath and lets it out slowly. “Just the cupcakes, please.”
I smile and look up at him. “How many?”
“Just a half dozen, please,” he replies, already pulling out his wallet.
“Margo, would you like to pick out the ones you want?”
She runs down to the end of the display cases where the cupcakes are. “I want a blue one, a pink one, a purple one, a green one, yellow, and red.”
“Alright. Good job,” I say, grabbing one of each color.
I put them into a box and then bring them over to the counter. “Is that it? Would you like any coffee?”
“No, that’s all.” He hands over his card to pay.
I swipe it and wait for it to go through. “I bet your mommy is going to love the cupcakes you picked out,” I say with a smile.
She frowns. “Mommy is?—”
“Going to love them,” Carson says, cutting her off.
I feel like I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth, so I hand over his card and receipt. “Well, enjoy.”
He nods as he grabs the box off the counter and drags Margo to the door.
“Why you say that?” Margo asks him, but the door closes and I can’t hear his answer.
I crane my neck to keep watching them, but they’re soon out of my view, and I have to let my eyes fall back to the register I’m standing in front of. I lean against the counter and think back on our conversation. It was weird the way he cut her off like that. He clearly did not want her telling me whatever she was trying to say. Something about her mom? Is he recently divorced? Is there some kind of trouble or story there that he didn’t want her spilling? I wish there was a way I could find out for sure, but I don’t know how. This guy clearly doesn’t have any interest in me. He doesn’t seem to be looking for friends or anything more. Why do I care so much?
The door opens and Mrs. White walks in.
I shake off my confusion regarding him. “Good afternoon, Mrs. White.”
“Good afternoon, dear. Was that Carson Evans and his daughter I just saw walk out?” she asks, moving to stand in front of me on the opposite side of the counter.
I nod. “It was. They’ve been coming by about once a week to get her special treats. She’s super sweet.” I smile.
“Well, isn’t that nice. Such a shame though. That poor man and his daughter have been through too much already.”
My mouth drops open, but I snap it shut. My brows pull together. “What do you mean? You know about him?”
She nods. “Mm-hmm, I’m on the town committee, dear. I know everyone in this town and their backstory.”
“Are you going to tell me or hold out on me?” I tease as I pour her cup of coffee and hand it over.
She smiles. “Well, word on the street is that he just moved here from Chicago. He was some high-profile lawyer there and made boo koo bucks, but his wife passed away in a car accident a couple of years ago. He and his daughter moved here for a fresh start. I guess he couldn’t stand to look at their old home anymore. So sad…”
Wow, that is sad. Poor Margo. “Where’s he living at now?”
“He just bought a place on Shadow Mountain Lake on Highway 34. It’s the big cedar place with the floor to ceiling windows. You know the one.” She points at me.
I nod. “Wow, so he must have made boo koo bucks,” I say, using her term.
She nods. “What’s all this interest in him, honey? You’re not thinking of?—”
“No!” I jump to say. “It’s just a small town, you know? I know everyone that comes in here, except him. And he keeps himself so guarded that I knew he wouldn’t volunteer the information up willingly.”
She nods but offers up a sly smile like she doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Anyway, what will it be today? Donuts, croissants?”
It’s been three days since he last came into the bakery, and each day that passes seems to go by slower than the last. I don’t know why, but I want to see him again. I want to feel that tingle that forms in my stomach when he’s near. I want the breathlessness when his eyes meet mine. I want to be close enough to smell him, to feel his heat against my skin. I know, I know. Stupid. He’s a single father who’s still mourning his dead wife, but still, something is pulling me toward him, and I don’t know what.
I’ve never been the overly friendly type. I make friends easy enough, but I’ve never went out of my way to do so. I’ve never forced myself on anyone who didn’t seem to want my company, but all that gets thrown out the window when it comes to Carson.
I bake a dozen cupcakes and put them into a box, without icing. Then I get a half dozen piping bags and fill them with different colored frostings. I put everything into a bag and tell Jane to watch the place while I’m gone. I bet Margo would have a great time frosting these cupcakes, and it will give her something to do up on that mountain range.
I get behind the wheel and start my drive to the lake. I’m so nervous that I nearly turn around three different times, but I manage to push through it and complete the drive. He’s going to be so confused as to why I’m here, why I’m doing this. What will my excuse be? Even I don’t know.
I pull into the drive, and the house is just as beautiful as I remember it. The entire house is made up of gray stone and cedar. The front door is painted a dark-forest green, and there is welcome wreath hanging on the door. I frown at that as I ring the doorbell. He doesn’t seem like much of a home decorator. Maybe the previous owners left it.
The door opens, and Carson is standing on the other side. He’s holding a phone between his ear and his shoulder. He frowns when he sees me there, but he motions for me to step inside. I do as I’m asked and close the door behind me. The entry way is fairly plan, with nothing inside but a desk and the stairwell to the second story, but the walls and ceiling are made up of a beautiful oak. The floor beneath my feet is cold stone with a rug in the center. The light in the center of the room is a chandelier made up of twisted twigs and sticks, giving it a nice country feel.
“Right, I understand that, but—” he says into the phone, motioning for me to follow him deeper into the house.
He leads me into the living room where he sits on the couch and bends over the coffee table with a bunch of documents scattered across it. He starts talking on the phone much faster, reading off whatever the papers say.
I stand off to the side, trying to give him privacy but also taking in this room. The floors and the ceiling are the same as the entry way, but this room is much more comfortable. There are soft leather couches, oversized chairs, and a big coffee table in the middle of them all. There’s a dark fluffy rug in the center that I’m sure would feel like walking on clouds. A big TV is in the corner of the room, next to the stone fireplace, and there is a big set of double glass doors that lead out to the back property and the lake behind the house. I can see into the kitchen from here, and the same oak walls and floor follow the entire layout of the house, with floor to ceiling windows all along the back wall. It’s beautiful here.
I hear him drop the phone onto the table. “I’m sorry about that,” he says, pulling my attention back to him.
“Oh, that’s okay. It’s not you knew I was coming.”
He stands up and closes the distance.
“Anyway, I had some overstock on cupcakes today that hadn’t been iced yet. So I thought that Margo might enjoy icing them. Here’s a dozen of them and piping bags full of icing.” I hold them out.
He looks from me, to the bag, and back. “Oh, okay. Thanks,” he finally says, taking them from my hands. “She’s taking a nap right now, but I’ll let her know as soon as she wakes up.”
I smile and nod. “Okay. The place is beautiful, by the way.” I motion around the house and property.
“Thanks. I really do like it. It’s a lot different from Chicago.”
“Is that where you’re from?” I ask, pretending like I have no idea.
He nods. “Yeah. As you can imagine, living in a penthouse apartment is very different from here. I almost can’t sleep, it’s so quiet.”
I smile. “I remember those days,” I agree.
“Where are you from?”
“Oh, here and there. Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City. We moved around a lot.”
“What made you want the country life?” he asks, setting the box down on the table.
I shrug. “My life was kind of hectic growing up. My mom passed when I was young, and my dad was a drug addict. Nothing was ever stable. So when he passed, I thought about how my life was and how I wanted it to be. More than anything, I just wanted a home, something stable, and warm. So I moved here and worked at the bar until I saved up enough money to buy a place. Then I opened the bakery a little while later.”
“Wow, I never would have expected that,” he says, falling back onto the couch.
“Why not?” I ask around a smile. I almost feel like I’m standing in front of the class, giving a speech I’m not prepared for. I feel nervous under his gaze.
He shrugs. “I don’t know, you just seem so…normal. You seem to fit in here like you were born and raised here. You don’t seem like an outsider like me.”
I offer him a smile. “It’ll come. Just be patient. I was like you for a long time. People were so curious about me, where I came from, why I was here, what my life story was. But it goes away… eventually.” I laugh and he lets out a chuckle himself.
I don’t sit down because he doesn’t ask me to, so I stand, just hovering and feeling awkward. “Well, I guess I’ll take off.” I pull my eyes from his and look toward the door.
“Would you like a drink?”
I turn back to face him, surprised. “Oh, I…”
“If you need to go, please don’t let me keep you. I’m just”—he shrugs—“really bored and in need of adult interaction.”
I smile. “Of course. I can stay for one.”
I follow him into the kitchen, and he takes two beers out of the fridge. He turns to look at me. “Beer okay?”
“Sure,” I agree.
He uses the bottle opener to remove the cap, then hands it over. I take a sip, following along behind him out onto the back patio that overlooks the lake. We each sit in a wooden patio chair, and I have another nervous drink as I take in the sight of the lake before me.
“It’s beautiful out here,” I say, mostly to myself.
“It really is. I saw this place online and bought it instantly. I figured that even if the house was shit, I could tear it down and build something better. But there was nothing that compared to this lake.”
“So, what did you do in Chicago?” I ask, wanting to confirm the rumors.
“I practiced law.”
“Wow, a lawyer?”
He smiles and nods. “Yeah. It was a good job, but it kept me working over forty hours a week, and I was missing a lot of time with Margo. It was like, in the blink of an eye, she went from being a little baby to two years old. I realized how precious life is, and I was missing hers. Suddenly, working wasn’t important. Life was. Being here, being present.”
I listen intently as he talks, and I can’t help but to agree. “You’re very lucky you have her. She’s so sweet.”
When I say that, I see the corners of his mouth turn down slightly, but he wipes it away completely. “What about you? You married, have children?”
“No and no. I’ve always dreamed about it, though, finding the one perfect person who will change my whole outlook on life. Having children and watching them grow. Growing up, my family wasn’t very traditional, so of course, that’s all I want.”
“The classic happily ever after,” he breathes out.
I laugh. “I guess so.”
There’s a long drawn out minute as we both look out over the lake. “So, what do you plan on doing here? I mean, are you going to open your own law office, or do you plan on not working for a while?”
“That is the question.” He laughs out. “Nah, I’m still trying to figure it out. I don’t want anything that’s going to keep me as busy as I was before, so law is out. But at the same time, I need something to keep my hands and mind busy, something to keep me moving. I haven’t figured it all out yet.”
“I’m sure you will…in time.” I tip my bottle back and take another swig of beer. “Anyway, I guess I better get going. I left Jane at the bakery by herself. I better go check and make sure the place isn’t up in flames.” I set my beer bottle on the table between us and stand.
He joins me, opening the door to show me into the house.
“Well, thanks for coming by, and thanks for the cupcakes. Margo is going to love them.”
“You’re welcome. I thought it might be fun for her to decorate them any way she wants.”
He opens the front door now and I step out. “Don’t be a stranger,” I tell him.
“You too,” he replies, waving before shutting the door between us as I make my way to my car.
Climbing behind the wheel, my heart is racing like I’ve just run a marathon. I’m a little surprised, actually. Every time he comes into the bakery, it almost seems like he goes out of his way to not have to talk or be friendly. But here, he opened up like a blooming rose. He was warm and friendly. He laughed and smiled. He told me things about himself, though nothing about Margo’s mom, but I guess that’s to be expected, especially if he’s still not completely healed from the whole thing yet.
I almost expected for him to open the door, take the cupcakes, and then shut the door without inviting me in. I was prepared for that, but he was completely opposite of everything I thought he’d be. I wonder why he was so at ease today. Was it because I caught him off guard by showing up unexpectedly? Maybe it’s because he’s feeling more comfortable around me now that we’ve talked a few times. Or maybe it’s just because he really is starved for adult interaction. It’s just him and his daughter locked away up here. Either way, I hope he continues to open up to me.