Chapter 1 #2
The call came a little more than seven years ago.
Faced with Mom’s gradually deteriorating health and Dad’s grim diagnosis, they needed help.
As their only child, I was the one they turned to.
At first I thought it would be temporary, a few months or a year at most. But a few weeks after I arrived home, I found out I was pregnant.
Gus is six going on eighty-five now, a little old soul and the brightest spot in my life, but when I realized that the nasty flu I couldn’t quite seem to shake was actually morning sickness, it threw me for the biggest loop of my life.
“Oh golly, five minutes till we open,” I tell Mom in surprise after a glance at the clock.
I grab a tray of maple pecan fudge slices sitting on the counter and head toward the storefront.
Mom follows slowly behind me, hands empty except for her cane.
She can’t carry the heavy trays of fudge anymore.
Her joints won’t take the strain. Mr. Butters waddles behind her.
He pauses in the doorway leading from the kitchen to the storefront and tries to wriggle out of his bow tie by scraping it against the doorframe, but it won’t budge.
With a resigned grunt he trots into the store and settles onto his bed below the cash register.
Anytime Mom is in the shop, this is where he naps, waiting like a little sultan to receive pats and adoration throughout the day from customers.
He’s a local celebrity in Poulsbo. Everyone knows and loves Mr. Butters.
Someone even wrote him in as a candidate for mayor in the last election.
I open the case below the register and slide the tray of fudge onto the shelf, mentally taking inventory of the flavors left this morning.
No peanut butter fudge today due to this morning’s mishaps.
Oh well. There are still fourteen other flavors customers can choose from.
We are running low on chocolate cherry though.
I’ll have to whip up another batch today or tomorrow.
And I promised to donate five pounds of fudge for a silent auction to raise funds for a new local women and children’s shelter.
I’m going to need to make at least a couple more batches today.
I resign myself to the task. Making fudge lost its novelty a long time ago.
Now it’s just another chore in a seemingly endless list of them.
With a soft sigh, Mom shuffles to the front door and peers out.
“Looks like it might be a busy day with all the tourists heading to that music festival over on Bainbridge Island,” she comments.
Already the sidewalk is starting to fill with passersby.
It’s a sunny weekend in June. The town will be packed by noon. Fingers crossed business will be good.
“Can you open the till while I do the morning walk-through?” I ask Mom.
As she gets the register ready for business, I take a brisk little walk around the store to make sure everything is in order before we open.
Every nook and cranny of this space is as familiar to me as the palm of my hand.
I grew up in this store. I spent countless hours here finishing homework after school, nestled in a nest of blankets squashed in the corner by the bubble gum section.
I learned to read by sounding out the names of lemon drops, butterscotch buttons, root beer barrels, and horehound lozenges on the rack of old-fashioned candies, and I practiced math by working the cash register and helping out in the kitchen measuring ingredients for fudge.
How many ounces in a quart of cream? How many cups of sugar in a twenty-pound bag?
Not much has changed since I was a kid. The store has a small footprint, but my parents maximized every inch of space.
The aisles are cluttered with racks holding packaged candies from bygone eras, a section of British sweets like Wine Gums and Jelly Babies, an endcap of stick candy and rock candy in every imaginable flavor and color, and a wall of bubble gum.
While the store has grown slowly shabbier over the years, the brightly colored packages of sugar distract from the worn, dingy gray carpet and the sagging display racks.
The Happy Viking has been Poulsbo’s candy shop for decades, but its age is really starting to show.
I heave a sigh as I look around. Some days I wonder how long we can hang on.
Some days I wonder what it would feel like to be free of this constant stress and worry, the responsibility and the slow decline.
For years I’ve dreamed of opening my own shop.
It would be a bespoke chocolate boutique where I could dream and play with flavors and textures, offering people a little taste of happiness, a sliver of delight.
Crafting handmade chocolates is my passion in life.
It’s why after high school I left Poulsbo to train at a prestigious chocolatier program in Switzerland and then apprenticed with Jacques Genin, a premier chocolate maker in Paris.
I’d always planned to turn that passion into a business and open my own storefront somewhere far away from Poulsbo.
Someday, maybe I will. But increasingly that day feels far off.
“Hey!” Someone raps firmly on the glass door, making Mom and me both jump. Mr. Butters raises his head and gives a single lazy whuff of alert.
“Dot, you scared the daylights out of us,” Mom scolds, unlocking the door and letting in her best friend of many years. She flips the sign on the door to OPEN.
“Where’s our birthday girl?” Dot booms, glancing around until she sees me.
At almost six feet tall, Dot is broad-shouldered and larger than life, with a chopped pixie cut dyed a shade of burgundy usually reserved for red velvet wedding cake and a gravelly voice that sounds like bottom-shelf whiskey on the rocks.
She’s loud, opinionated, and unapologetically herself.
Today Dot is wearing a tight T-shirt that proudly proclaims “Part-Time Mermaid.” People tend to assume the shirt is a joke since Dot owns the Salty Mermaid, the boutique next door where she sells all sorts of seaside-themed home décor and personal apparel.
However, Dot is quick to whip out a business card for her side business, Mermaid Tales.
A two-hour session costs two hundred and fifty dollars, and Dot will come to your chosen location dressed as her alter ego, a mermaid named Serene, and entertain guests with clean or bawdy (your choice) stories from the sea.
Or if you have a pool, she also offers a one-woman aquatic show.
If it’s an adult party, she can also bartend, either in the water or on land.
When Dot turned fifty, she had a mermaid tail custom made for her by a woman in California, bought a long tangerine-and-teal-colored wig from Etsy, and somehow mustered the breezy and brash self-confidence to pull the whole ensemble off.
Serene is especially popular with bachelorette parties, or so I’m told.
“Happy birthday, baby girl,” Dot announces, holding out a package wrapped in the starfish paper from her shop. I tear the paper off carefully, revealing a silicone spatula with the words “Getting older is a beach” printed on the handle, below a row of starfish whose arms are embedded with crystals.
“To replace that ratty old one you have in your mom’s kitchen,” Dot explains. “Figured you could use a new one. This one’s good quality. Plus, you know I love a naughty pun and a little sparkle.”
I’m touched that Dot noticed my spatula, which is old and falling apart.
It’s also one of the only things I brought back with me from France.
It holds so many good memories from my training days in Switzerland and bittersweet recollections of long-ago evenings with Romaine in the Jacques Genin workshop kitchen in Paris, talking and working side by side, gradually falling in love.
I can’t bear to part with that old spatula, even though the handle tends to fall off every now and then at inconvenient times.
It reminds me of a time of life that is now gone.
“Thank you. I love it,” I tell her, pressing a quick kiss to Dot’s leathery cheek. “I have to hide it from Gus though. He gets puns now.”
Dot chortles. “Glad you like it, baby girl. You know I love you like you’re my own.
” I squeeze her hand. Dot and her partner Jude never had children, and after Jude passed away almost a decade ago, Dot was left with just us and her brother Walt as her family.
She’s like an aunt to me, and she has always loved me to bits.
“Any news from around town this morning, Dot?” Mom asks as she opens the till. Dot manages to know everything that goes on in Poulsbo, a mysterious talent that often comes in handy.
Dot shrugs. “Same old, same old. Nothing much to report today. Although I noticed your doorknob is loose. Felt like it might come off in my hand when I came in just now.”
“I’ll take a look. Probably just the screws are loose again.
” I grab my little tool kit from its place on the shelf below the cash register.
As I tighten the screws on the doorknob, I try not to think about the long list of old and worn items that need to be replaced around here, starting with the gas burner for heating the fudge.
A new, modern system costs thousands of dollars, so I’ve been making do with the finicky burner, watching it like a hawk in case it acts up.
Today’s burnt fudge is a stinky reminder that we need more reliable equipment. We need a lot of things.
Every time I turn around something is going wrong in this tired place.
A leaky faucet, a wobbly shelf. I always try to fix small problems by watching YouTube videos.
I give it my best shot, and I’ve learned to do more than I thought I could.
And sometimes I swear things seem to repair themselves in the night.
More than once I’ve come in after something breaks to find it seemingly miraculously working again, like we have elves helping us as we sleep.
I wish that were true. I want it to be true.
But those little repairs—my own and the inexplicable ones—do not even begin to touch the renovations this old place needs.
Those are going to require far more than YouTube and elbow grease or handy elves.
I shudder to think of the cost we could be facing eventually.
So far we’ve avoided having to make the more major repairs, but word around town is that new county standards are going to be enforced soon, and that all businesses are going to have to bring their plumbing and electrical systems up to code.
At least that’s the scuttlebutt Dot has heard.
I try not to think about what that might entail, not just for us but for many of the small businesses that surround us downtown.
I think we’re all just trying not to worry until we have to.
As Dad used to say, “No use borrowing trouble. It’ll come knocking soon enough. ”
I stash my toolbox back in its spot and grab the last tray of fudge from the kitchen. I’m just coming back with a tray of orange dreamsicle slices in hand when the bell on the door jingles.
“Freeze! Police!” A petite woman with a cascade of dark curls, wearing a navy blue uniform and a shiny gold Poulsbo Police badge, pops into the shop. She spots me and says with mock sternness, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out from behind the counter and come with me.”
I grin and quickly slip the tray of fudge into the case. “Why, Officer Diaz, have I done something wrong?” I blink in faux innocence, playing along.
My best friend shakes the handcuffs at her waist and frowns.
“Failure to comply will result in police action,” she announces, trying to look stern and failing.
She beams at Mom and Dot, her smile such high wattage it looks as though it could power the sun.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to take this suspect in for questioning,” she tells them.
To me she says, “Come on, birthday girl. Let’s hit the bakery before they run out of raisin buns.
” Then she notices Mr. Butters, who has left his dog bed and waddled up to her, wriggling his stump of a tail so enthusiastically that his whole body shakes.
He’s standing beside her, making whining noises, trying to get her attention.
He adores Dani because she breaks the rules for him every time she thinks we aren’t looking.
“Ooh, Mr. Butters, you handsome devil.” She pauses and fishes a doggy pot pie out of her pocket, feeding it to him on the sly.
He swallows the pot pie whole, then licks her hand, grinning happily.
He’s supposed to be on a diet, since he’s gotten a little pudgy and looks like a Twinkie or a Tater Tot.
But Dani indulges him. She’s also been known to pocket more than one of his more humiliating accessories (here’s looking at you, twinkling Christmas light doggy headband), for which I think Mr. Butters is eternally grateful.
She looks at the bow tie. “It’s not that bad,” she whispers to him, scratching him affectionately under the chin. He pants and grins happily.
“Ready to go?” she asks me.
I glance at Mom, who makes a shooing motion.
“Go,” she urges. “Enjoy your birthday treat. It’s tradition.”
It is tradition, but I thought Dani would bring something yummy to the shop. I don’t like to leave Mom to manage the store by herself. What if someone needs help reaching a high shelf or buys something heavy? What if the shop is suddenly overrun with customers?
“I’ll help keep an eye on things here,” Dot promises. “You go celebrate. Bring back a bear claw for me.”
I hesitate a moment longer, torn between a feeling of responsibility and the desire to sink my teeth into a delicious fresh Scandinavian pastry. It’s my birthday so the pastry wins out. Barely.
“I’ll be back in half an hour,” I promise, heading out the door after Dani. “Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.”
“Sorry, we can’t hear you,” Dot shouts as the door swings closed. “We’re too busy planning all the crazy things we’re going to do while you’re gone.”