Chapter One
Six months later…
“But that’s not fair! Whatever happened to the customer is always right?”
Beryl Ashcraft sized up the woman in front of her who was complaining about what she considered to be a trivial matter and wondered how she’d gotten to this place in her life—cornered like a rat in the cookie aisle.
She didn’t have a ready answer for the woman’s question on customers always being right, nor how it had wound up being Beryl’s problem to solve.
She briefly contemplated what would happen if she ran out of the grocery store screaming to escape this unpleasant conversation.
Likely someone in her family would drag her back inside by her big toe and force her to take care of business.
She was part-owner of the Supernova Supermarket and the new general manager. If one wanted to be entirely accurate about it, dealing with difficult customers was part of her job.
Sometimes being in charge really sucked.
Not that it mattered. The customer didn’t wait for an answer to her own question before blustering on in the kind of high-pitched voice that could grate cheese, let alone nerves.
“I truly don’t understand how you can stay in business when you won’t take a coupon that’s only expired by one day,” railed the irate elderly woman, who was so slight in stature, she’d likely be blown to the floor if the overhead ceiling fans came on, even if they were set to the lowest speed.
Beryl thought the woman might fall down without a breeze if it weren’t for the iron grip she had on her shopping cart.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules regarding coupons and their expiration dates.
The manufacturers who issue the coupons are rather strict about how they are used.
They don’t allow us to take them even one day late.
I’m sorry,” Beryl said once more, trying to be civil to this woman who had been ranting for an hour. At least, that’s what it felt like.
It was less than five minutes, but she could feel her eyes glazing over in a way that was not appropriate for the person tasked with handling customer service issues.
She needed to be attentive, especially when it came to wily customers who were trying to get away with something.
If Beryl let one expired coupon slip through—taking the money out of the supermarket’s till, since the supplier wouldn’t honor it—the next thing she knew, sneaky shoppers would be trying to cash in on their expired coupons left and right. It would be anarchy.
As if this woman cared a whit for Beryl’s problems. Barely five feet tall and possibly ninety pounds soaking wet, she launched once more into the lengthy explanation as to why she hadn’t been able to get to the grocery store the day before to use her precious coupon.
The long and winding tale involved a sick neighbor (“with shameless hypochondriac tendencies, the dear”), a husband with a broken ankle (“on the mend but helpless without me, that coot”) and a stray cat she fed each day that apparently had a sensitive stomach (“the poor little darling”).
Beryl thought it amusing that the woman sounded more worried about the cat with the sensitive stomach than she did about her ailing husband, even if he was recovering. And what this had to do with a coupon for a large box of cookies was never made clear. Whatever. People!
Beryl stifled the long, exasperated sigh that was trying to escape and did her best to focus, pay attention and look alert.
She had no interest in listening to the woman’s sad story a third time. Beryl would love to simply tell her she could slide by with an expired coupon “just this one time,” if she didn’t know for a fact that if she caved, a silent beacon would sound across the land.
Beryl had to hold the line unless she wanted every other citizen and their brother in the tri-city area formed by Alienn, Old Coot and Skeeter Bite to line up in front of the Supernova Supermarket, clutching coupons so old they’d be crumbling.
She could see that line stretching to infinity, each and every person in it with a long, meandering sob-story to tell.
Beryl shuddered. No. Just no. She couldn’t allow that to happen.
She stared over the woman’s shoulder, hoping to see one of the staff or even one of her siblings to pawn the woman off on and let this be their problem to deal with.
No such luck. She saw absolutely no one who could help.
As if taunting her, her brain provided the unhelpful information that her brother, Mica, and the triplets, Jett, Jasper and Jade, were all out at the bauxite mine getting a big shipment of fuel ready for transport to Alpha-Prime.
She wouldn’t see them for the rest of the day, let alone the foreseeable future.
And if they were in the deepest part of the mine, where the fuel shipments were being prepared to be sent off Earth, she likely wouldn’t even be able to contact them by cell phone until they returned to the surface. Beryl stifled another dispirited sigh.
The woman was about to open her mouth and start complaining again when a miracle appeared.
A choir of angels couldn’t have sounded more beautiful to Beryl in that instant than the familiar voice that said firmly, “Elmira Coventon,” and the customer’s mouth snapped shut.
Beryl didn’t have to turn to identify the new arrival, an elderly woman of an age with the irate customer. The difference was that this elderly woman was about to save Beryl’s bacon before she had to make a difficult customer service-related decision.
“You know better than to try to foist off an expired coupon on my poor niece here at the Supernova Supermarket,” Aunt Dixie Lou Grey said. “No other grocery store in the tri-city area will take an expired coupon and you know it. Stop picking on Beryl because she’s new.”
Beryl could have kissed her. Instead, she gave Aunt Dixie a brilliant smile. Equally slight in stature as the longwinded Elmira Coventon, and every bit as vulnerable-seeming to a stray gust from a softly spinning ceiling fan, Aunt Dixie pushed a grocery cart of her own down the aisle to reach them.
“I’m not picking on her,” Mrs. Coventon said, clearly indignant. “I just couldn’t use the coupon yesterday because—”
Aunt Dixie rolled her eyes and held up one hand, palm out in the universal sign of stop talking.
“Save it, Elmira. I heard your sorry excuse from one aisle over before you repeated it…again. It’s twenty-five cents off a giant box of cookies, not half off your grocery bill. Move on, for pity’s sake.”
The woman pursed her lips as if considering whether to continue this battle. Finally, she heaved out a long breath and said haughtily, “Fine. I don’t need cookies anyway.”
Aunt Dixie rolled her eyes when Mrs. Coventon, thankfully, turned on her heel and shoved her cart in the direction of the checkouts.
Once the customer was out of earshot, Beryl dipped her head to plant a kiss on her aunt’s cheek.
“Thank you so much, Aunt Dixie. I cannot express fully how thankful I am that you showed up when you did. I just couldn’t cave in to her demand to use an expired coupon, even if it was only one day late. ”
“Oh, I know. If you did, then everyone in the country would show up and want to
use ancient expired coupons every single day,” Aunt Dixie said with an understanding nod. “I get it.”
“But she’s a customer and I didn’t want to alienate a regular shopper, either,” Beryl explained.
“Now, don’t you worry about her, honey. She’s been trying that tired old ruse on every new grocery store manager for years. She’ll be back—trust me. The Supernova Supermarket is the closest grocery store to her house. You haven’t lost a customer.”
“Well, thank you again, Aunt Dixie,” Beryl said. “I appreciate you stepping in.”
“I live to serve,” she said offhandedly, searching the shelf to her left as if looking for something.
“Can I help you with anything?” Beryl asked.
The older woman’s head whipped around so fast to stare Beryl down that she leaned away in surprise.
“I don’t suppose you have any special sway with Diesel, do you?” she asked in a pointed way that reminded Beryl that as helpful as Aunt Dixie was, she could also be very wily.
Diesel Grey, the Fearless Leader of the Big Bang Truck Stop, had given Beryl and her siblings a heads-up about Aunt Dixie when they arrived on Earth from Alpha-Prime to take over the running of the bauxite mine.
The reason for their cousin’s warning became clear in short order.
Aunt Dixie was a force to be reckoned with on most days.
Diesel said she was the very definition of devious, and Beryl had seen that trait for herself several times since her arrival.
“Probably not,” she said, trying to be diplomatic. Worried about what Aunt Dixie wanted, she cautiously asked, “What do you need sway with Diesel for?”
Knowing Aunt Dixie, it was yet another outlandish idea to raise money for the old folks home she was associated with. Those ideas tended to be, according to Diesel, responsible for a significant portion of the stress in his life.
“Well,” she said, looking over one shoulder as if about to share confidential information.
“I have come up with a humdinger of an idea for a fundraiser and Diesel won’t even listen to it.
Maybe if I tell you, then you can tell him.
And if you wanted to make it sound like it was your idea, I’d be perfectly fine with that.
The important thing is helping the Starlight Old Folks Home out, right? ”
Beryl wasn’t an idiot. Diesel would see Aunt Dixie’s hand in this the moment she said the word “fundraiser.” She should have been wary of the depths of Aunt Dixie’s deviousness.
Still, Aunt Dixie had just helped her out of a sticky situation with a customer. She could hardly refuse to try.
She cleared her throat. “I’d certainly be willing to ask him about this idea, but I can’t guarantee he’ll listen to me any more than he listens to you.”