Chapter 1
Of all the things Chloe LaRue had ever dreamed she’d be doing on a fine Monday afternoon in February, folding laundry in her old bedroom wasn’t one of them.
Married to a handsome athlete of some kind? Maybe. Living in Paris? Oh, she’d hoped so. Making a name for herself as a pastry chef, maybe even owning her own café? Definitely.
She’d achieved most of these things, her dreams, until life kicked her to the curb.
Baking petit fours during the day and dancing in clubs with her gorgeous, extreme sports competitor husband all night, sure.
But thirty and widowed and moving back home to take care of her mother? Never saw that one coming.
She dropped the laundry basket on her bed and looked around.
Mom hadn’t changed much in here, other than replacing the ratty old carpet.
The walls were still a loud purple, the bookcase stuffed with her old journals, and the Jimmy Eat World poster with curling and brown edges remained taped to the closet door.
Whoever said starting over, having a clean slate, was a good thing? Probably the same wise guy who said time heals all wounds. Because neither seemed to be happening for her.
She slid open the closet door and laughed softly. There were her Doc Martens, still on the floor in the exact spot she’d left them after graduating from Rock Mill High. Her studded belts still hung from the closet hooks, and her black emo clothes remained on the hangers.
If only she could go back and tell that lonely, angst-filled teenager to lighten up, to give herself—and others—a little grace.
That girl who’d wanted to be different yet the same as everyone else had found herself in culinary school, and it was the best of both worlds.
Her emo roots—the only Fall Out Boy fan in a school of Carrie Underwood wannabes—had given her the strength and fortitude for life in a fast-paced, high-pressure kitchen. For life as a pastry chef.
Chloe pulled a black hoodie off the hanger to make room for her red wool coat.
Oh Mom, you’ve changed so few things since I left. But why would she? Mom had lost so much. Chloe didn’t blame her for hanging onto precious things. Like preserving her daughter’s room. Chloe never dreamed she’d lose a second man she loved. That she’d end up widowed, just like Mom.
A week ago, she’d been spinning hot caramel into birds’ nests to adorn cakes as the pastry chef at Bistro Gaspard, a small but highly regarded restaurant in the Bastille district of Paris.
Then Mom called. “So…I have a little bit of cancer.” Chloe had dropped everything and returned to sleepy, slow, country-touristy Hearts Bend, Tennessee.
She’d lost her father when she was eight. Then her husband ten months ago, when she was twenty-nine. She flat refused to lose her mother. She’d will her to live, or—cue the irony and cliché—die trying.
A meow rustled the silence of the room and Chloe turned to see Honey, Mom’s ginger cat, curled up on the bed. She stared at Chloe as if she understood her thoughts and spoke up to keep her from tumbling down into the familiar dark hole of pity and sadness.
“I’m working on it, Honey. I promise.”
Honey narrowed her hazel-green eyes, waited a second, then seemingly satisfied, stretched and tucked her head into the crook of a leg.
A bit of light broke through the February clouds and leaked into the room, dripping over the window seat where Chloe used to read and dream about a life beyond her tiny hometown.
Marriage. A pastry career. Maybe even her own café or bistro someday.
She smiled, breathing easy, feeling free, at least for now, of the burdens she’d brought with her from France.
The bare branches of the tree outside her second-story bedroom window allowed dim sunshine to puddle on the newly installed beige carpet.
But she didn’t have time for pondering or the heart for any more painful memories, so she tipped over the laundry basket and settled down to folding as the sun retreated behind the clouds again.
She snapped a cotton T-shirt and smoothed out the wrinkles.
Coming home to help Mom didn’t mean she was moving backward, right?
Coming home allowed her to regroup, pass Go, collect her two hundred dollars, and—in a few months—get back in the pastry chef game.
Coming home meant she was looking forward.
Her earlier life, with its hopes and dreams, had ended so suddenly.
She and Jean-Marc had talked of purchasing a café, had that odd, pointless argument about money, then she had found herself suddenly swallowed up by the dark pain of a graveside goodbye.
The confusion of their emptied bank account and papers shoved at her to sign only solidified her feelings of loss and despair.
The papers that her in-laws assured her were formalities needed to settle Jean-Marc’s shares of the family business.
When the whirlwind had settled, she’d faced the abrupt starkness of empty days without the man she loved.
Oh Jean-Marc, I’m sorry…so, so sorry.
Within weeks, the joy of blending flour, sugar, and butter into macarons, croissants, and èclairs had become a weight.
Simple things like piping icing on a petit four became a laborious task.
She battled a thick mental fog, and nothing seemed to nurse her broken heart.
Getting out of bed felt like a chore. Chloe paced all night and slept all day, calling in sick to work often.
Even when the sun was shining, her grief made it seem as though the whole world was cloudy.
She thought she was going crazy. Often, she felt as though she was dying as well.
A colleague had recommended a grief support group, which she reluctantly joined.
The leader assured her all she felt was normal.
But if this was normal, she wanted out. What was the point of living when all her dreams—a café of their own and a cottage in the French countryside—were buried six feet in the ground with her husband?
Her breaking point had come last month, when she found herself lying on the couch of her cold apartment, calling Jean-Marc’s phone just to hear his voicemail greeting.
She would end up weeping and inhaling a faint trace of his scent in the threads of the old quilt.
Then she’d remembered the good times, how he’d finally believed in her dream to own a café in Deux Jardins—and the grief started all over again.
When Mom called, it was as if life, fate, or perhaps God had taken pity on her and delivered her from the tomb of Life and Love Lost. Breast cancer, Mom said, trying to sound chipper.
Chloe couldn’t pack fast enough. She’d loaded suitcases and boxes with her rolling pins and cake pans, dishes, photos, one ridiculously expensive men’s watch, clothes, and mementos of the life she’d built with Jean-Marc.
She found herself buying a one-way ticket home.
Okay, Chloe, enough. No more dwelling on the past. Look to the future. However bleak and barren it may be.
For the next few minutes, she set up house in her old room, layering her old dresser drawers with her clean shirts, jeans and shorts, socks and undies, hanging up her coats and dresses—the remnants of her Paris life an odd juxtaposition to the girl she’d once been.
“Honey…” She held the laundry basket in her hand and smiled at the cat.
“I’m leaving now. Keep my bed warm, okay?
” Hand on the light switch, she was about to turn off the lamp when a glint of sunshine burst through the trees, bounced off the dresser mirror, and illuminated the row of pictures tucked into the mirror’s edge.
Chloe set the basket in the hallway, then crossed the room and leaned in for a closer look at the official photo of her high school cast and crew of The Importance of Being Earnest. Oh boy, that had been a fun production.
She’d been in her “I’m a unique emo girl” element as a stagehand for the high school play, working behind the scenes, pulling the curtains, adjusting props.
JoJo Castle—Mathews, now—had played Gwendolen Fairfax.
JoJo always won the female leads, but she had the talent and was always sweet to the crew, never stuck-up or snobby.
Would she still be the same since she’d married Buck Mathews, the biggest artist in country music?
Chloe imagined she’d find out since Buck and JoJo lived in Hearts Bend when he wasn’t on tour.
They were bound to run into each other in the town square.
Chloe replaced the picture in the mirror’s brown, wooden frame and pulled out the next one—a photobooth strip taken at the fair that summer before their senior year.
She and Sam Hardy made faces at the camera and each other.
Sam…with his dark hair and deep brown eyes.
Did he still have the stubborn curl that fell on his forehead?
He’d done well, really well, as a first-round draft pick from University of Tennessee to the Titans.
He’d been their franchise quarterback ever since.
Oooh, I had such a crush on you back in the day, Sammy.
She reached for the framed photo of Daddy on the dresser.
How she’d love to feel his arms around her in one of his bear hugs, to bake his favorite pound cake for him one more time, to talk to him about Jean-Marc.
She may have only known him for eight years, but Daddy had always made things better. He was her hero.
I miss you so much, Daddy. She ran a finger over the image of his hair, which was a tad too long for a hustling businessman, but he loved his ole ’70s style. She smiled and tsked.
Now you’re forever shaggy, Daddy.
A soft knock sounded at the door and Mom poked her head in. “Can I help with anything?” Her gaze drifted to Daddy’s photo. “You remember when that was taken? At his last company picnic.” She didn’t speak the obvious. A few weeks before he was killed. “Twenty-two years and I still miss him.”