Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Willa
It was Willa’s idea to try the new butterscotch recipe.
Their father, Frank, said it was “genius,” and he couldn’t believe they hadn’t done it before.
Frank, Willa, and Amelie set to work right away at four in the morning.
Amelie and Willa, trained in the art of making fudge since the age of nine, were focused and sure of themselves, conscious of their father’s eyes on their every move.
When they finished, they waited for it to set and ran through the rest of their chores.
It was mid-July and the busiest time of the year.
They had to be ready for the onslaught of tourists.
By noon, they knew the store would be busy.
But at eight thirty, right before they opened, they had a surprise visitor.
“Grandma!” they cried happily, running to hug their grandma Mary, their father’s mother.
She was in her sixties with gray-brown hair and wore cute summer dresses that fell to her ankles.
Previously, she and their grandfather had owned and operated the Caraway Fudge Shoppe, but when they retired, they passed it on to their mother, father, Willa, and Amelie.
“My girls!” she said, relaxing into the shop. “What is that delightful smell?”
“We invented a new fudge recipe,” Willa explained, smiling. “Want to try?”
Their grandmother followed them into the kitchen to assess the butterscotch slabs. She gasped when she took her first bite. “You’ve really got something here,” she said proudly. “Wait till your grandfather hears about this. He’ll be so proud of you!”
Willa blushed, pleased with herself. Amelie smiled and said, “It was Willa’s idea. I just helped.”
“It’s good that you girls help each other with everything,” their grandmother said. “I hope you always will.”
“We’re going to own the shop one day,” Willa reminded their grandmother, raising her chin.
“You’re going to own it together?” their grandmother asked, cocking her head. Normally, Caraway Fudge Shoppe was operated by a husband-and-wife team and their children, if they were old enough. After that, one of the siblings took over, usually the eldest.
“We’re twins,” Amelie reminded her. “One of us isn’t really older than the other.”
“I’m seven minutes older,” Willa said with a funny smirk.
Amelie rolled her eyes. “We talked about this already, Willa. We said that our husbands will help us. Our kids will be closer than cousins. They’ll be like siblings.”
Their grandmother nodded wisely. “It sounds like you have it all planned out.”
Frank washed his hands in the sink and smiled at his mother. “When they get an idea in their heads, there’s no arguing with them.”
There was a shuffle on the stairs, followed by the scream of the door that hid the staircase in the back of the three-story building. Upstairs were two floors: a tiny one-bedroom apartment and a storage room.
It was their mother, looking at them, her face blotchy. They hadn’t known she was upstairs.
“Mom!” Amelie said breathily, suddenly nervous.
Their mother didn’t smile. “What’s this I’m hearing about you taking over the fudge shop?”
Amelie and Willa exchanged glances, suddenly nervous. Their mother was in a mood, and there was no telling how to get her out of it.
“You know how it is, dear,” their grandmother said kindly, her face difficult to read. “The Caraway Fudge Shoppe has to be taken over by someone in the Caraway family. It’s tradition!”
“Traditions are made to be broken,” their mother said.
Willa’s heart cracked. Why was her mother talking like this?
Their mother fixed her face and bent down slightly to look at her daughters.
“All I mean is, you don’t really know what you want to be yet, do you?
You’re thirteen years old! All you’ve known in your life are the fudge shop and the island, and it’s been magical and good.
But what about careers? Art? Music? What about all that creativity and intelligence you both have?
Do you really want to stay here? In the fudge shop? Forever?”
Their mother’s voice sounded different from what Willa had ever heard.
She looked at her sister, who was obviously frightened, then at her grandmother and father, both of whom didn’t look entirely surprised, as though their mother had done this spiel before.
Willa clutched her elbows. She’d wanted to bring her mother a few pieces of butterscotch fudge to try.
Now she felt like her mother might throw them away or tell her the flavor was stupid.
Suddenly, Amelie burst into tears.
Their mother’s spell was broken. Immediately, she hurried toward her daughters and drew them into a big hug, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I love you. You can do whatever you want.”
Willa shook next to her sister, waiting for her mother and Amelie to calm down. She couldn’t see her father or grandmother from where she stood. She wondered what they were thinking.
“Mom, why did you say that?” Amelie cried. “Does it mean you don’t want us here? Does it mean you don’t want us to live on the island?”
Amelie sounded younger than thirteen, but really, they were just children. They’d only very recently become “teenagers.” As much as they wanted to be respected as grown-ups, there was so little they didn’t understand.
“Shh,” their mother said. “I love you. I want you near me always.” She wet her lips. “I didn’t get a chance to leave the island when I was younger. I didn’t get a chance to dream. I want you to know that you can write your own stories. You can be whatever you want to be.”
“Does that mean that you don’t want to be on the island? Does it mean you want to leave?” Amelie asked, sniffing.
“No,” their mother breathed. “I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. I’m here with you.”
Much later that day, long after the fudge store had closed and the fireworks had exploded over the Straits of Mackinac, Willa and Amelie were in Amelie’s room, brushing their hair and listening to the boom box.
Their house was up the hill from downtown, a fifteen-minute walk from the fudge shop.
They had three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a backyard that stretched into the woods. It was their paradise.
They hadn’t talked about their mother since that morning.
They’d been consumed by work, helping their father and their mother tirelessly until they’d been “let go” for the day around four.
They were exhausted. They’d avoided their friends and returned home, where they’d eaten popsicles and walked through the shade of the woods.
Now, their parents were both home, winding down in the living room, watching television.
“Do you think Mom was lying today?” Amelie asked then, pausing with her hairbrush halfway down her red wall of hair. “About wanting to stay here?”
“I guess she wasn’t born here, like Dad was. Right? She moved here when she was, like, sixteen or something?” Willa said. “Maybe she wanted something else before she met him?”
“But she loves Dad,” Amelie pointed out.
Willa nodded, thinking about Derek at school, about how his parents had gotten divorced. His father moved to Detroit, and his mother worked three jobs to keep up the payments on their house, which was down the road from theirs. Derek suspected that they’d have to leave the island soon.
How did any kid know if their parents were really in love?
Willa had never been in love, not really, not if you didn’t count her obsession with James Mills, who sat three seats away from her at school and had a poof of curly hair that she wanted to run her fingers through.
She was thirteen, and she imagined that true love would come her way sometime soon.
Their mother and father had met when their mother had moved to the island. At the time, they were sixteen years old and immediately decided to spend the rest of their lives together. If that wasn’t romance, Willa didn’t know what was.
When Willa went down the hall to brush her teeth, she overheard her parents talking in soft tones downstairs. She overheard both her name and Amelie’s and snuck to the top of the stairs, listening hard. She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but she also knew that knowledge was power.
“I know your mother isn’t happy. I know that,” her own mother was saying about her grandmother.
“But I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what came over me.
I panicked. You know how I feel about the girls.
I want them to have everything better than I had it.
I want them to know every experience. I want them to love life in ways I never could. ”
“I don’t want to read too deeply into that,” their father said quietly.
“I love you! You know I love you,” their mother said, too loudly.
“Please, keep your voice down.”
“I do, though,” their mother whispered.
“My mother is asking if it’s happening again,” their father asked.
Their mother was quiet. Willa tried to picture her face and couldn’t.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” their father said.
“It is,” their mother said.
They changed the channel.
Willa decided she’d heard enough. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth for a full two minutes, thinking all the time about her mother, wondering what she was thinking.
Had her mother wanted something else for herself?
Had she had dreams beyond the fudge shop?
It was true that her mother had never had an idea for a new fudge recipe, and she never lit up when she entered the shop.
For the first time, Willa wondered if the fudge shop—a paradise for Willa and Amelie—was a kind of prison for their mother? Had she known she’d be working there when she married their father? Had she known this would be the extent of her life?
Willa closed her eyes and tried to imagine her own future.
But just as she and Amelie had said, all she could picture were their husbands (handsome, sort of like James Mills), the fudge shop, and their babies (sort of peachy blobs).
She told herself that once they took over the fudge shop, she’d send her mother on a trip. She’d help her explore the world.
But right now, Willa was only thirteen years old. She didn’t know how to save her mother. She could only hope that she wouldn’t need saving. Not really.