Cedar Creek Seasons (38 page)

Joy
.

“The next day, you called, Beth.”

“No job, no place to live, a degree but nothing to show for it except school loans I couldn’t repay. Oh, Oompa, if I’d known you were in such a desperate place, I wouldn’t have called and added to your grief.”

The wheelchair squeaked as he shifted his weight. “Don’t you understand? You were my answer. I asked for a reason to live. God gave me more than one, but the primary reason was you. You needed me.”

“Yet again. At least as much as I did when you and Grandma took me in when I was just a kid.”

“You reminded me that I mattered to someone.”

“Oh, Oompa!” She bent to nestle her head on his shoulder and hug as much of him as she could reach. They held each other until Beth heard a ripping sound. Paper, not fabric.

Derrick had ripped a page from his notebook and was making a pencil rubbing of Oompa’s inscription: F
OUND
J
OY
H
ERE
.

D
id Oompa call you Bethlehem?” Derrick and Beth sat at the two-person round table in the customer area of Life by Chocolate. She sipped a foamed Mexican hot chocolate. He poured himself a clear mug of chilled apple cider. Her Oompa was two doors down, engaged in conversation with one of his buddies, no doubt recounting every sharable detail of his outdoor adventure.

Beth tapped her lips with a brownie-colored napkin, taking much longer than necessary, even if she’d had a hot chocolate mustache.

“Bethlehem?” he repeated. He could see in her eyes a confusing swirl of some emotion that registered as a mix of pride and pain.

“You wanna make something of it?”

“It’s not an ordinary name.”

She stirred her drink. “It wasn’t an ordinary night.”

“The night you were born?”

Beth stopped stirring. “Well, that, too, from what I hear. But I meant the night Jesus was born.”

He reached across the table and brushed an eyelash from her peach-skin cheek. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“Bethlehem? It’s different. When I was a preteen and embarrassed about everything in my life, the name felt awkward. But truthfully, it’s an honor to be named after the scene of such an important event. Although, I suppose if you took that to its natural conclusion, I could have been named Golgotha.”

“That would have been unfortunate.”

Her eyebrows rose into her bangs. Then her wind-chime laughter filled the room. He joined in, blessed by her sense of humor once again.

Her strength, her tenacity even when life was tough or short, her
joie de vivre
—hidden sometimes, but there—made him ask,
Lord, maybe us? Is there a future for the two of us?

Her laughter wound down and left a residue of joy.

“Derrick?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

What am I doing here? Please don’t ask that. Am I really interested in running a brownie shop for the rest of my life? Don’t ask. Am I interested in you? Don’t ask … yet
. “Personal question? Sure.”

Beth stared into what was left of her hot chocolate. “I might as well just come out with it. I’ve fallen in love …” He choked on a bubble of saliva.

“… with your ginger cookie brownies. Yesterday’s special. Do you have any left?” Her cinnamon sugar smile told him she was completely serious.

So was he. Different subject.

Beth hoped he bought her I’m-so-in-love-with-your-ginger-cookie-brownies save. What she’d really wanted to ask might have sent him running farther than the back room.
Do you see any kind of future for us? Could it be … maybe … us?

What had she been thinking? Life was on hold until …

That’s not a thought Oompa would approve of. One of his themes on the bridge trip was that no matter what the season, life goes on.

But she had a building crumbling faster than Derrick’s apple crisp topping. Any breath might be Oompa’s last. And then what would she do?

Keep going.

By God’s grace, she’d keep going. Maybe with a little help from a new friend as tall as a windmill and as dependable as power outages during ice storms.

Was he making her a fresh batch of ginger cookie brownies? He should have been back already.

She stood and walked to the glass-front display case. “Derrick?”

His recently hired staffers were gone for the day. The mixers and ovens stood silent. He should have heard her, even in the back room.

She leaned over the case. “Derrick?”

No answer.

Life by Chocolate allowed its customers a peek behind the scenes. A large stainless steel table behind the counter served as the cutting and packing table, so people like Beth could watch all the deliciousness in the journey from baking pans to gourmet boxes to her mouth.

What was that three-ring binder on the table’s low shelf? Derrick’s recipes? Ooh! What a treasure. She skirted around the counter and bent to look, not touch. No, a baker’s stash of secret recipes couldn’t be more sacred. It wouldn’t be right to—

The folder next to it on the shelf looked familiar. She’d seen it often when Derrick sat beside Oompa’s rocker. That, and his leather notebook and the comfort-grip pen he carried. If he’d brought the folder to the Yarn Shop with him, it couldn’t contain secret recipes.

The folder lay open. She should warn Derrick about how easy it would be for someone to inadvertently discover—

A manuscript? A flash of tightness zinged across the back of her skull.
Yarns from the Yarn Shop by Erik Hoffman
.

Derrick. Erik.

Hoffman. Hofferman.

No wonder the rhythm of his name sounded vaguely familiar! Erik Hoffman had showed up often on recommended reading lists in her creative writing classes at the UW. He wasn’t the world’s tallest brownie guy. He was the world’s sneakiest author!

Oompa’s stories! He was using Oompa, using
her
to get to him. What was a nice, godly word for rat fink?

Beth slammed the folder shut without viewing more than the title page. She’d seen enough. Had enough.

She was halfway to the exit when she heard, “Beth?” She turned on her heel, hands on hips.

Derrick stood in the doorway to the back room, plate in hand. “Are you leaving?”

“You could say that.”

“Sorry it took so long. I’d frozen the leftover ginger brownies to take to a women’s shelter in Milwaukee. I don’t have a microwave here in the shop, so I ran down to the café to use theirs. I guess it took longer than I thought, but …”

“But you always go the extra mile, right?” The sarcasm in her voice tasted sour in her mouth.

Derrick glanced briefly at the confection in his hands, frowning as if it had betrayed him somehow. “Did I do something to offend you?”

Beth dropped her hip pose and let her shoulders slump forward. “I’m not going to answer that for fear it will show up in your
book
.“

She was within a step or two of the Yarn Shop before the door to Life by Chocolate finished swinging shut.

Oompa, he’s using you! And me. I know it looked like Derrick or Erik or whatever his name is seemed genuinely interested in us. In you. But he’s been pirating your stories like people pirate a WiFi signal!

If she didn’t calm down, she could boil dinner without using a stove. And she didn’t dare say those words out loud to a man whose heart was as fragile as spun sugar and who could stop breathing by choking on a reply. Her fuming had to stay internal.

Now what?

Lord, now what?

If she tattled on Derrick, the disappointment could spread a pall over Oompa’s remaining days. He lit up when Derrick came into the shop. Oompa animated—a heartwarming sight. Like the glow of the Christmas bulbs up and down Washington Avenue.

If she snitched on Derrick, who would suffer? The one man who didn’t deserve it, the one who was entitled to all the shiny flecks of joy he could collect this side of glory.

She’d started to hope, these last few weeks. She’d dropped a few pounds of junior high baggage and bad memories. Derrick’s attention seemed so real.

Now she knew the answer to her “Maybe us?” question. No. No way. His interest in her wasn’t genuine. And apparently her scars weren’t all the way healed. Raw, they stung at the memory of kindness Derrick showed her. His arms around her while they waited for Oompa’s doctor. His “Here, taste this” chocolate gifts. The way he made her laugh just by being himself.

Whoever
that
was.

Beth checked on Oompa, who snoozed in his chair, then slipped into the adjoining apartment at the back of the shop. How pathetic! She couldn’t find anything to do with her angst except take it out on the dirty dishes in the soapstone sink.

He could see her through the window in the rear door of the apartment, back hunched over her work as if trying to scrub the handles off a spaghetti pot. She deserved an explanation … the one he couldn’t give her.

Not for a few more weeks.

He leaned his forehead against the door. A little too hard. The clunk made her turn toward the sound, dishwater dripping from her hands and venom dripping from the look in her eyes. No, that wasn’t venom. More like liquid pain.

She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her one-sided squint told him the dishwater still had plenty of suds power, adding insult to injury. Or rather, injury to his insult.

He had to tell her. Both things. About the book and about his true feelings for her, as if she’d believe anything he said now.

“May I come in?” he shouted through the glass.

Squinting and blinking, she mouthed the words, “Go away.”

She’d told him to go away. And he
did!

Beth blinked again. Still gone. What did that say about him? He didn’t even have the courage to defend his actions, to insist, “Hey, Beth, hear me out.”

She turned back to the sink, slapped the dishrag on the surface of the water like a beaver might swat his tail, and dodged the tsunami she created.

Splatters of dishwater fell on the devotional book she’d propped on the low shelf above the sink.

Like spit
, she thought. She remembered her morning reading, the verse from the book of James, and the punch line author’s quote:
Those who receive grace by the bucket and dish it out with an eyedropper fail to understand the vast measure of God’s grace
.

Her anger had spit on the page and the concept. As far as Oompa knew, Derrick was a fine young man who loved to listen to his stories, add a few of his own, and make him laugh. Derrick/Erik Hofferman/Hoffman might have a plan to profit from her grandfather’s yarns, but whatever his intentions, he’d blessed Oompa. She could fight that other battle after …

“Beth?”

Oompa’s voice barely reached her in the apartment, though she’d left the door between it and the shop open. He needed her.

She wiped her hands on the towel lying on the counter and headed toward his voice, knowing she’d keep hers silent rather than risk coloring his final days with the kind of disappointment that now weighed like a millstone on her heart.

A
n awkward, Beth-less Thanksgiving—a slow cooker turkey leg and boxed stuffing—bent over his laptop led into three weeks on tiptoes. His arches should be in fine shape by now. Every day he tiptoed around the issue he didn’t dare talk about, its pages long edited and fired off to the publisher. Still, they burned an irreparable hole in the fabric of his relationship with Bethlehem Schurmer.