Chapter 3
Three
T he familiar hum of the little counter mixer filled the small bakery.
Lauren had spent the last several hours cleaning off the counters, wiping them down.
She had tested the large mixer and taken the bowl off to clean it, but she wasn’t using it now.
She wasn’t making enough banana bread to feed the entire town.
She was just making something for herself.
To help heal her heart. It seemed like her mom always had some kind of special baked good for whatever hurt and pain she had.
“Hello,” a voice said as the bell above the door jingled. That was another familiar sound.
Lauren spun around, her hand going to her chest.
If Cannon were there, he would castigate her for not making sure the door was locked.
After all, he specialized in security and had heard his share of stories about break-ins and robberies and even rapes and murders because people weren’t properly protected.
A lot of times, his company was called after just such a tragedy, and Cannon would shake his head and say, “Too little, too late.”
Those were some of his biggest customers though, since people who had just experienced a tragedy like that were determined that they weren’t going to experience another one .
“Hello. I’m sorry, I should have locked the door. I’m not open.”
“Lauren?” the woman said, and Lauren looked a little closer. Did she know this person? She supposed she did look familiar.
“I’m Grace Honea. Well, Grace Gillett now.”
“Grace. Oh my goodness.” Lauren looked harder at the woman who stood in front of her.
Yes, she could see her high school friend Grace in there.
The woman was older with a few lines around her face and mouth, her skin still glowing, but not with youth.
More with vitality. And honey blonde hair—a dead ringer for her memories of the friend from her high school and childhood.
“Wow. I didn’t think I’d recognize you, but now that you’ve said who you are, you haven’t changed much at all.”
“Neither have you. Older, like all of us, but still just as beautiful and with a smile that lights up the room.” Grace came over, lifting the countertop easily and slipping through like it had been just yesterday the last time she’d done it.
Grace, Lauren, Claire, and Yolanda had been inseparable ever since she could remember.
Until Yolanda wasn’t with them anymore.
Lauren blinked just a bit, pushing that thought away. That wasn’t something she thought about, because the guilt and pain of her role in all of that was all-consuming. She couldn’t stand how she felt, the guilt and how she knew that it was all her fault.
She switched the mixer off and then turned around, surprised when Grace had her arms around her and was pulling her into a huge hug.
“It’s been so long,” she said, hugging Grace back and trying to pretend that it wasn’t uncomfortable for her.
She supposed she had kind of gotten out of the habit of touching people.
Where they lived in Cincinnati, it wasn’t in the heart of the city, definitely not downtown, but she had close neighbors, and they were city neighbors.
Not the small-town kind, who hugged without reserve and talked about everything.
She wasn’t even sure what the neighbors on the left or right of them were named. And she didn’t even know quite how many people lived in the house across the street.
She supposed those people knew her just as well and probably didn’t even notice that she’d left .
“I heard about your mom,” Grace said as she pulled back.
“Yeah. That was hard.”
Grace nodded. “I kept hoping she’d get better and come back. We all miss her.”
“You live here now?” Lauren said. She was almost positive that Grace and Claire had both moved away around the time she had. They might have been back for summers in college, but according to her mom, she hadn’t seen them much at all.
“Yeah. Not that long ago. Claire’s back too.”
Lauren nodded. Not really wanting to get the gang together again. There were too many memories, and they weren’t easy ones. Although, there were a lot of good ones.
It’s just the good ones were overshadowed by all of the bad.
“That’s nice. I… I’m not sure I’m back to stay.
I needed to do something with this.” She didn’t want to get into everything.
About her mom dying, and her not being happy in her marriage, and drifting apart from her husband and leaving him.
He hadn’t done anything wrong, and she was a little embarrassed to admit that she just walked out.
It would be hard to explain to someone who didn’t understand that they just didn’t talk anymore.
It was like living with a stranger. It had to be that way for him too, and she didn’t want to hold him back.
He deserved a good woman. He was a good man.
And she felt like a shell of herself.
Not to mention the black cloud that hung over her, hot and heavy.
“Well, whether you stay or whether you don’t, I’d love to get together with you sometime.
I…don’t want to barge in if you’re dealing with memories.
” She looked around. “It feels like yesterday that your mom was standing behind the counter laughing and making her cinnamon rolls and the most delicious coffee anyone ever made anywhere. I think she always put extra caramel in mine, because I can’t get anything else to taste as good. ”
“Yeah. Mom just had a knack for those kinds of things.”
“You’re like a carbon copy of your mom. You have a knack for those things too.” Grace narrowed her eyes and looked at her like she was looking over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses like a schoolmarm.
Lauren had a look like that. She’d used it in the classroom often enough.
But she didn’t like it being used on her.
Not by her friend, and not when she said something like that.
Like Lauren should be able to easily pick up where her mom left off and carry on.
It felt like the shoes that she was trying to put on were sixteen sizes too big, and she would never be able to fit into them.
“I don’t really have a knack for anything.” She didn’t even have a knack for caretaking. After all, her mama had died.
“Is everything okay?” Grace asked with far too much perception. Lauren just wanted to be left alone. To curl up and hide. Except, she wanted to be here in the bakery too. Because it was here in the bakery where she felt the closest to her mom.
“Everything’s just fine,” she lied through her teeth. “I just wanted some time alone to process. You know. Sometimes you need to do that when you have big changes in your life.”
To say the least. Change was the right word though. Not only was her mom dead, but so was her marriage. However, she wasn’t going to go into that with Grace.
“Would you at least try to be able to spend some time with me before you have to leave?” Grace asked, sounding so humble and hopeful that Lauren couldn’t tell her no.
“Sure. Say when.” It wasn’t like she had a job or anything.
“Tomorrow. In the afternoon. We could meet at the healing garden. Have you seen it?”
“No. I just got in last night and didn’t do anything more than step out back and look at the peach trees.”
“They’re so beautiful. Your backyard was one of my favorite spots in town growing up. Besides here. But you’ll love the healing garden. There are shady groves there too. And a path that walks between them. It’s…beautiful and calming and healing too.”
It was like Grace somehow knew that something inside of her needed to be healed. Although, Lauren highly doubted a garden would be able to do that.
“Sure. We’ll meet between the shady groves. What time?” she asked, wondering if she could possibly have something come up that would make it so that she couldn’t make it.
“Would two o’clock work?” Grace asked, and she nodded .
It wasn’t like she had anything planned. “Two o’clock should be fine.”
“Could I ask—would you mind if Claire came too? If she’s able to. She’s moved back permanently as well, and you would not believe who she’s with.”
“No, I probably wouldn’t,” she said, not wanting to hear it, but Grace either didn’t hear that tone in her voice or ignored it.
“She’s with Josiah McMurtry, and would you believe that Trevor and I are together? We just got married a couple weeks ago, and it was almost like Claire decided that they were going to beat us, because they got married a few days before we did.” She laughed, like it was somehow funny.
“Well, good for you,” Lauren said and watched as Grace’s face fell as though she was hurt by her lack of interest and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, Lauren just couldn’t drum up anything else. It was like her emotions were dead, along with her mom and her marriage.
“All right. I’ll leave you. I really am looking forward to getting together with you. And I know that Claire will be excited when I tell her that you’re in town. We talked about how much we miss you.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Between the shady groves.”
She didn’t want to go to the healing garden. She didn’t want to meet her friends, she didn’t want to do anything, other than just sit here and wallow in the memories and bathe in her sadness and depression and all the terrible things she wished she could change.
Grace was barely out of the door when Lauren turned the mixer back on, after scraping down the sides of the bowl.
She had mixed it long enough. She probably mixed it too long. It was going to be tough and not light and airy like it should be. But she didn’t care. It was the smell she wanted, more than the food. She probably wouldn’t even eat it. Her appetite had been fickle lately and more gone than come.
Stopping the mixer, she scraped the bowl again and then poured the batter into the pans that she had already greased and prepared.
The oven had been preheated, because she had been trained by the best, and she plopped the pans in, eager to have the scent of the Nutella bread spilling through the bakery again .
While she waited for it to bake, she did what her mom had always taught her to do. Cleaned up immediately. She could almost hear her mom say that it was easier to clean up a small mess than a big one. So she liked to keep her space wiped clean and her dishes done.
She had taught Lauren to do the same.
Lauren wasn’t sure she had learned a whole lot from her mom.
It seemed like there was so much she didn’t know and more she wished she would have paid attention to, but that was one of the things she was sure about.
If one made a mess, one cleaned it up immediately, because a fresh mess was easier to clean up than an old mess, and a small one easier than a large one.
Maybe that’s what she had done—she had waited too long to clean up the mess of her marriage, and it was just too big for her to be able to do anything with.
Cannon, I wish you were here. I miss you.