Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Amelie
Amelie Carway was a full two inches shorter than her twin sister, Willa, and she was tired of asking Willa to reach the kitchen equipment on the third shelf.
Willa, who’d just had a growth spurt at the end of October, sauntered past her, flipping her long red hair.
She easily grabbed the whisk and passed it over with a glint in her eye.
Amelie hadn’t had to ask. But she still felt the sting.
“It’ll happen for you too, Sis,” Willa said. “You’ll be just as tall as me. It’s in your genes.”
Amelie rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Come on. Don’t be dumb.” Willa hurried over to the boom box in the back corner of the kitchen and put their overused Britney Spears CD in, then started shifting around, snapping her fingers in time to the beat.
As she danced, she reached for the kitchen thermometer, dropping the tip into the vats of chocolate.
The trick to making exquisite Mackinac Island Fudge was to monitor the temperature to a T.
It was essential not to stir the vats too much after they started to simmer.
It was like a science experiment, but the stakes were high.
Each of the vats was labeled with its assigned flavor: chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, chocolate mint, chocolate raspberry, white chocolate, and so on.
The air was sugary, decadent, and mouthwatering.
But Amelie and Willa were used to it, this being their family’s fudge shop, a place they’d always known.
Their father entered the kitchen, untying his apron and smiling at his daughters. “Hard at work, I see? My perfect girls!” He kissed Willa on the forehead and Amelie on the cheek, then sped upstairs to find their mother, Georgia. “We’re going to be late!” he called.
Their parents were the heads of the Christmas Festival Committee this year, roles that alternated from couple to couple on the island so that nobody was too overwhelmed for multiple years in a row.
Now that the girls were twelve and fully capable at the fudge shop, the Caraways had decided to keep the shop open, with Willa and Amelie at the helm, as they went to Christmas Festival meetings and decorated downtown Mackinac Island.
Amelie and Willa took on the responsibility with confidence.
They were thrilled to handle Caraway Fudge Shoppe on their own.
After all, one day, when they were older, they planned to take control.
Caraway Fudge Shoppe had been in the family for generations. Their great-great-grandfather had founded it, and their great-great-grandmother had perfected numerous of their top-selling recipes. They were secret recipes that Willa and Amelie had sworn never to repeat.
Their mother appeared, blinking sleep from her eyes and following their father into the swirling snow outside. “We love you, girls!” they called before they closed the glass door behind them.
Willa and Amelie finished a batch of fudge and wandered into the front, where a long glass counter was filled with twelve flavors.
Usually, even in the winter, tourists came into the shop, sampled the fudge, and purchased large boxes of it to take home to their families and friends.
But today was too windy and cold for wandering through downtown and fudge shopping.
Sometimes tourism on an island as bone-chillingly cold as Mackinac Island felt silly to Amelie. She knew that most people didn’t have her cold tolerance. Being raised in Michigan meant she could handle everything winter threw her way.
Willa opened the glass container and removed a slab of chocolate-raspberry fudge.
“What are you doing?” Amelie asked, checking the time.
It was only eleven thirty, and they hadn’t had lunch yet.
Their mother, Georgia, had a rule: real food first, then they could have a sliver of fudge.
Not every day, but most days. Having “a little something sweet” in life was their business model.
Their mother said that life could be bitter, so it was good they had fudge.
“Come on,” Willa said mischievously. “Mom and Dad will never know!”
Amelie’s stomach sloshed. She looked out the window, which displayed a sheet of flowing white snow. It felt cozy to be in here with her sister, listening to Britney Spears and watching the snow. And Willa could be really persuasive.
“Just a little,” Amelie said. She watched as her sister sliced two pieces of chocolate-raspberry fudge, then slotted the rest of the slab back inside the glass case. Amelie took a bite and felt the chocolate melt across her tongue, gritty in texture and sinfully delicious.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Willa groaned and rolled her head back.
Amelie laughed and sat cross-legged on the little chair they kept behind the counter. They weren’t supposed to sit when they were working, but nobody was here. Willa slouched down against the wall, bending her knees in a squat for as long as she could stand.
“This is boring,” Willa said finally.
“Totally,” Amelie said, although she wasn’t bored.
Willa made a clicking sound in the back of her throat. “When do you think they’ll let us be in charge of the Christmas Festival Committee?”
“Us?” Amelie was taken aback. Being in charge of the fudge shop for a day was one thing, but being adult enough to take on the Christmas Festival Committee felt like entirely another.
“Sure. We’re twelve. We’ll be adults in six years,” Willa said.
Amelie felt a surge of fear. Adults? Would it really happen for them?
“What would you do for it?” Willa asked. “I think we should try to get a Ferris wheel. Or maybe like a wooden roller coaster.”
They’d gone to Michigan’s Adventure theme park two summers ago and ridden roller coasters until they’d almost thrown up.
They talked about going back, but it was rare to ever get off the island during the summer, since someone always had to be at the fudge shop.
It was the time of the year when they made most of their money, the time that had to be lucrative if they were to survive the rest of the year.
It meant summers were intense. Beautiful but stressful.
“That would be cool,” Amelie said. “Or maybe we could bring a ton of huskies and have dog sled races.”
Willa’s eyes lit up. “That would be perfect. Yes! Imagine hundreds of huskies on Mackinac! It would be a big event! Everyone would come!”
Amelie laughed, pleased that she’d made Willa excited about something. “Where could we race?”
“Across the ice, maybe. Around the island?” Willa suggested.
“I hope we can keep some of the huskies for ourselves,” Amelie said, suddenly sad. She’d always wanted a puppy growing up, and now, Willa had just told her that they were actually almost grown up. It was over! Did Amelie need to mourn her childhood already?
Suddenly, Willa opened the glass case and removed the slab of chocolate-peanut butter fudge. “Just a little bit more,” she said. “It’s helping me imagine our Christmas Festival.”
“Better creativity?” Amelie said.
“Yeah. Don’t you feel it?”
Willa sliced two pieces of chocolate-peanut butter, and the twins ate them in silence, rolling with sugar.
Suddenly, they were off to the races, talking about their visions for their Mackinac Island Christmas Festival.
Each fresh version became more ridiculous than the last, until they were suggesting that their favorite actors and actresses come and be the “Mackinac Island Christmas King and Christmas Queen.” It was 2000, and they were obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio, as was every girl their age.
They liked Brad Pitt, too. Who didn’t? Their favorite actresses were Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, and Nicole Kidman, although they loved the redhead Julianne Moore as well, just because her hair was the same shade as theirs.
Redheads had to stick together, they thought.
Nobody else in their family had had red hair since their mother’s grandmother, also named Georgia, whom they’d never met. Genes were weird, they always said.
As they discussed the future of the Christmas Festival, the future of Mackinac Island, and their own futures as Willa and Amelie, in charge of the Caraway Fudge Shoppe, they continued to slice off pieces of fudge from the counter, sampling every single available flavor.
Their sugar rush mounted, then crashed, and mounted again.
It was around four thirty, long after they’d skipped lunch in honor of more fudge, that Amelie’s stomach sloshed with nausea. Outside, the light was dimming fast, casting an indigo gleam to the snow.
Willa touched her gut. Her face was turning green, although Amelie knew better than to point that out.
“When did Mom and Dad say they’d come back?” Amelie asked quietly.
Willa shrugged and sat on the floor with her head between her knees. Amelie looked hard at the glass case, trying to find a way to hide the fact that they’d eaten so much fudge today. But it was clear: a lot of the fudge was gone, and nobody had paid for it.
They were going to be in big trouble. Stress pounded in her chest.
Amelie went to the kitchen to check on the fudge they’d made that morning, pleased that at least that had worked out. She pressed her face against the cold counter and took a deep breath, her legs shaking hard beneath her.
Suddenly, the front of the fudge shop opened, and their parents’ laughter filled the space. Amelie winced. She’d hoped that they could heal up over the next hour. There wasn’t time.
“Hi, honey,” their mother said to Willa. “Are you all right?”
Amelie crept to the door between the kitchen and shop, watching as Willa clambered to her feet, clutching her stomach. Rather than look twelve, she looked like eight or nine. Like Amelie, she was shaking.
It was obvious what they’d done. Georgia closed her eyes and tried to suppress a smile. “Frank,” she said to their father, “I think we have a situation.”
Their father had been reading something on his notepad, not looking up. When he did, his eyes went to his wife’s face, down to Willa’s, and then over to Amelie’s in the kitchen doorway.
“Oh dear,” he said, shaking his head.
Amelie searched for the disappointment etched in his features. But she read only love and worry.
Things sped up after that. Their parents closed down the shop and bundled their girls in numerous layers of winter clothing.
In a flash, they were outside, strolling through the newly fallen snow.
The precipitation had stopped, and the sky was clear, spackled with stars.
Amelie watched her sugary breath, steaming out in front of her as they went along the edge of the frozen lake.
Amelie had the sense that this was the final day of her childhood, that everything would change after this.
“I did it once,” their father was saying, smiling as they crunched through the snow.
“My brother and I ate pounds of fudge when we thought our parents wouldn’t notice.
We both spent all afternoon getting sick in the bathroom upstairs.
My mom grounded us both for a week. We couldn’t do anything.
And it was the summertime! We were miserable. ”
Amelie and Willa were too sick to laugh. But their mother did, taking their father’s gloved hand.
“I think how you feel right now is enough punishment,” she said. “I just want you girls to get better. Fresh, cold air is the perfect antidote.”
When their father was sure it was safe, the three Caraway women followed him out onto the ice, where they stood beneath the starry sky and watched the frozen moon.
Amelie took her sister’s hand, and Willa squeezed it.
Amelie knew that Willa wanted to grow up so badly that she was ready to date boys and have womanly opinions.
She wanted to own the shop and buy a house and get married and have kids.
Amelie wanted those things, too, but she also wanted to treasure the here and now. She didn’t want to let time speed past.
She didn’t want her parents to grow older. She didn’t want to lose anything she loved.
“Christmas is coming,” their father said to the night sky. “It’s the most magical time of the year.”