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Authors: Elisabeth Barrett

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BOOK: Once and Again
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“Nice,” Jane said. “We’ll have to find time soon. Evelyn’s been pushing me to do a girls’ night, though my schedule exploded this spring. Still, I need to find the time or else I’m going to go crazy. I thought—” She paused. “Well, I suppose I thought that you might be fun to get to know. Outside of work, I mean.”

“Yes. I thought the same,” Carolyn told her honestly.

Jane glanced down at her watch. “Oh crap, I have to dash. We’ll schedule something soon!”

Carolyn nodded and waved as Jane hurried to her van.
Friend.
Maybe Jane could be a friend—a real one. For the briefest of instants, her heart lightened.

And then Jake’s angry face flashed in her mind.

Get a grip, Carolyn.

Whether or not he hated her, Jake was her boss and deserved her respect. If Briarwood was going to be renovated, he’d be around a lot, so she might as well get used to it and figure out a way to get him if not completely happy with her presence, then at the very least,
comfortable.

A few sprinkles of rain fell on her head—nature’s opening shot. Quickly, she slipped inside the back door just as it really started to come down.

Carolyn took a moment to look out the window at the rain on the meadow. She knew what she had to do—the same thing she’d been doing for months.

Slowly, very slowly, she smoothed out her suit. She pulled her shoulders back and tilted her chin up. She put on her game face.

And then she went back to work.

Chapter 5

Jane Pringle was not having a typical Monday morning. For one thing, she’d been able to sleep in until six thirty, nearly three more hours than she normally got. But instead of feeling fully rested, her head was strangely fuzzy, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She slid out of bed and pulled her sleep shirt off. Was it the change in her schedule? The bakery’s new schedule and hires? Her mother’s visit? She put on a bra—useless thing, since she had nothing on top worth holding in—and swabbed some deodorant under her arms.

“Mom!” her son, Andy, screamed from his room. “I can’t find my T-shirts!”

A first grader who couldn’t find something right in front of his face? Now,
that
was typical.

Jane pulled a clean blouse over her head. “Check your dresser drawer where they always are!” she yelled back.

There was a little pause and then she heard some shuffling around. “They’re not in there!” Another pause. “Mom!”

He’d keep complaining, the way only a six-year-old could, if she didn’t go in there and help. “One minute!” She pulled on some jeans and grabbed a belt—she’d lost more than a few pounds lately and it was starting to show—and padded into Andy’s room.

Andy was still in his pj’s, his auburn hair sticking up all over the place the way it did when he just woke up, punctuating his bright-blue-eyed freckle face.
Worth fighting for.

“Mom!” Andy said when she’d been staring at him a little too long. “Look!” He gestured wildly. Jane blinked and cast her gaze around. There
was
something different about his room—something she hadn’t noticed last night, likely because she was so zonked after her long day. Specifically, the space looked unusually clean. Instead of books, toys, and clothes strewn all over the room, the floor was tidy, as was the bookshelf. Even the pictures lined up on the dresser looked freshly dusted and organized.

Jane opened the drawer that typically held the T-shirts and found underwear and socks neatly folded and stacked.

“See?” Andy said.

“I see,” Jane said, shutting it and pulling out another. Still no T-shirts. She tried the third drawer. “Ah, here they are.” She took out one with the Green Lantern insignia on it. “Want this?”

“No, Spider Man.”

“Okay.” She swapped Green Lantern for Spider-Man.

“Grandma Mary cleaned my room and now I can’t find anything,” Andy complained, pulling his pajama top over his head and slipping on the Spider-Man shirt.

“We’ll put everything back once she leaves, okay?” she said quietly, ruffling his hair and making it stick up even more.

When her mom asked to come for a visit, Jane had readily agreed. After all, she wanted Andy to have a relationship with his grandmother. The only problem was that this was tiny Eastbridge, so the only two options were the Lavender Inn, a super-fancy bed-and-breakfast, or the Roadhouse, a junky motel near the highway. Her mother wouldn’t have been comfortable in either place, so here they were, all crammed together in her 600-square-foot walk-up apartment directly over Mountain Laurel Cakes, the bakery in downtown Eastbridge she helped run.

At least the place smelled good. Right now, the aromas of cinnamon and vanilla wafted up to the apartment—sticky buns, if she wasn’t mistaken, and when it came to her nose, she rarely was.

“We don’t have to put the stuff back,” Andy said. “I’ll get used to it, I guess.” He shimmied out of his pajama bottoms and dragged on a pair of jeans. “Can I come to the bakery after school today?”

“You don’t want to hang out with Grandma? She told me she wanted to take you to the library.”

Andy looked down. “I love Grandma and the library, but I miss you, too.”

Jane drew him in for a hug. “Oh, honey, I do, too, and I’ve been working so much lately. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you and Grandma come by the bakery after school, and you can do your homework and have a snack there. And you can tell me what kind of cake you’d like me to make for your birthday,” she finished with a smile.

“Okay! That sounds awesome!”

She left Andy to finish getting dressed and went into the kitchen. Mary Pringle, her mom, was already up, reading the Eastbridge
Times,
and having her morning coffee and one of the day-old cinnamon buns Jane had brought home from the bakery last night. Mary raised her gaze from the paper in greeting, her silver pageboy barely moving, as if it was specifically cut to stay in place.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t rearrange Andy’s drawers,” she said to her mother, grabbing a mug and pouring herself some coffee. “I wasn’t happy when you messed with all my pots and pans, my dry goods, and the guest room closet, but I dealt with it. The one thing I asked you was not to touch Andy’s room.”

“And a good morning to you, too.” Her mother’s soft Georgia drawl was deliberately designed to be guilt-inducing—she was sure of it. No matter that she’d lived in New Hampshire for forty-plus years—that drawl had never gone away, forever branding her an outsider. New Englanders didn’t like outsiders, something she’d found out the hard way. There were hierarchies. Social strata. Jane used to care. Now she just cared about Andy.

“He’s six, Mom. If you mix up his stuff, he freaks out.”

“ ‘Thank you for cleaning Andrew’s room,’ is all you need to say, Jane,” her mom said, eyes back on the paper. “You know, if you hired a house cleaner to come in, at least once every couple of weeks, it might make things easier.”

Subtext: If you hadn’t divorced Dan, your life would be better.

Jane sighed and bit her tongue. Mary loved Dan—still did—and couldn’t understand why her daughter would be so stupid as to leave a man who came with a giant house, a ton of money, and plenty of security. His good looks didn’t hurt, either. The face of an angel and the heart of a devil.

Dan had been such a bastard that not only had she gone back to her maiden name but she’d legally petitioned to have Andy’s name changed, just so there wouldn’t be any reminder of him. Mary had been shocked by that, too.

And now, all her mother saw was that she was struggling. Gone were the trappings of the privileged life she’d once had. Instead of a mansion in Darien, now Jane lived in a tiny, messy Eastbridge apartment, and honestly, she wasn’t doing that well. Dan paid alimony, sure, but always late and never enough. She’d tried to get the courts to sort it out, but everything moved so slowly, and in the meantime, she had trouble making ends meet. She worked all the time, yet she barely had enough money to cover the basics, and she didn’t get to spend as much time with Andy as she wanted.

But there was no way in hell she would ever go back to Dan.

Just then, Andy burst through the door frame. “Grandma!” he exclaimed, running up and throwing his arms around her. Jane couldn’t help but smile as her son and her mother embraced. Moments like these made all the pain worthwhile.

“Good morning, sugar,” Mary said, putting down her paper. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes!” Andy pulled back and kissed her on the cheek, then flung himself into a seat at the narrow kitchen table. “Mom, can I have some cereal, please?”

“Sure,” Jane said, and went to pour him a bowl of his favorite flakes.

“Grandma, Mom says we can go to the bakery after school,” he said, his voice brimming with excitement.

“Wonderful,” Mary said, sounding enthusiastic. She had to hand it to her mother. When Andy’s happiness was at stake, Mary always stepped up. “We can go to the library tomorrow, instead. By the way, do you have your wild animal project for school?”

Andy nodded. “It’s already in my backpack. That tiger you helped me draw is so cool!”

While Andy chattered away at her mom, Jane leaned on the counter and sipped her coffee. She was glad to be able to witness this, and it wouldn’t have been possible but for Evelyn, who’d allowed her to come in late while her mom was in town. She’d deliberately scheduled one of those days for today, given that the last few nights she’d been up long after Andy had gone to bed, finishing up a special-order cake for Susumo at Briarwood. Those special orders—wedding cakes, especially—could command thousands of dollars, and even though she had to burn the candles at both ends to make it work, the extra money was sure worth it. Today’s order was for a surprise fortieth birthday party. The birthday girl was an avid gardener, and Jane had really outdone herself preparing a dozen different types of sugar flowers for the top of the cake.

“What are you going to get up to today, Mom?” she asked when there was a lull in the conversation.

“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

That vagueness meant Mary was likely lining up yet another project around the apartment.

“Are you sure you don’t want to head down to the Green?” Jane asked, hoping her mom would take her suggestion. “The spring lunchtime concert series just started. I think today they’re having a jazz band play.”

“Lunchtime is
ages
away,” Mary said. “And there’ll be plenty of time to walk downtown when Andrew and I join you later.” She smiled at Andy, who swallowed a mouthful of cereal and grinned back.

Jane chugged the rest of her coffee. “Come on, honey,” she said to Andy. “I have to get you to school.”

“I can walk him,” her mom said.

“Would you like that, Andy?” Jane asked.

“That’d be awesome!”

“All right, then,” Jane said, pushing back a little twinge of jealousy.
Where did that come from?
She got to see Andy every day. Her mom got to see him twice a year, if she was lucky. “You guys each have a spare set of keys, so I’m just going to dash.” She kissed Andy on top of the head. “Have a great day, and I’ll see you after school.”

Jane skipped down the back stairs and ended up in the back parking lot, right next to Mountain Laurel’s back door. Best commute ever. It was how she was able to work at all. She’d slip down at four thirty, knowing that if there were any kind of emergency, she and Andy could get to each other in less than thirty seconds. She’d work for three hours, go back upstairs, and wake up Andy and get him to school by eight thirty, right on time, before heading back to the bakery. She stepped around Evelyn Sigona’s station wagon and went inside.

Evelyn was working with the stand mixer, preparing cupcake batter, her long hair coiled into a neat bun. It was dark brown, with one shock of white running through it—her half-life stripe, she called it, because it had appeared almost overnight a few years ago on her forty-fifth birthday. She had an apron on over jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and as usual, she was wearing her kitchen clogs.

“Hey, Evelyn,” Jane said in greeting as she walked in.

Evelyn flicked off the mixer and gave her a smile. “Morning, Jane!” she said. “I saw the cake in the fridge. It looks great!”

“Thanks. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.” Jane took off her cardigan and pulled an apron over her head. “Did the flowers come yet?”

“The delivery was out back when I got here.”

Jane sighed. “Not surprising. Their customer service has been slipping.”

“Anyway, I put them in water to keep them fresh. They’re over there if you want to take a look.” Evelyn pointed to the pantry, a smaller side room where they kept baking supplies and sometimes did prep work.

Jane peeked her head in. One vase, only three-quarters of the way filled with puny blooms, sat on a small utility table in the center of the room.

“Their quality’s slipping, too,” she told Evelyn, who was filling cupcake papers in a large tray, “but they’ll have to do. I’ll set everything up on-site at Briarwood this afternoon.”

“Good. Thanks for taking it on.”

Jane nodded. She took any chance she got to earn extra money for Mountain Laurel Cakes. And now that Jane’s cake work was becoming more in demand, Evelyn gave her more leeway to take bakery time to manage that growing aspect of the business. Even though Jane did the bulk of the work, she was grateful. Evelyn gave her the time, space, and materials, not to mention the platform. But she was still new, and every gig counted.

Jane washed her hands in the large kitchen sink. She had been desperate for a job—
any
job—before Evelyn had hired her three years ago. When she first came to work at Mountain Laurel Cakes, she’d known nothing about baking professionally. Dan had told her that any wife of his shouldn’t be working, so despite her degree in mechanical engineering, she hadn’t worked, but she’d needed
something
to fill her time. She’d always been interested in food, so she spent hours watching the numerous food channels on cable TV. After a while, that got boring, so she started experimenting with her own baking. She took a few classes. She made a few nice cakes for friends. And that was it for a while.

Then Andy came along, and that was the best kind of work there was. She loved everything about him—the little tuft of hair on his head, the way he squinched up his face when he was hungry, the babbling sounds he made when he looked at her, and his smell—oh, that new baby smell was just heaven. She’d devoted the first two years of his life to caring for him, doting on him, and doing everything she could to nurture and grow her young family.

Boy,
had she been stupid. Andy turned out just fine, but thinking that domestic bliss would last forever was idiocy. Of course, it didn’t last. Because Dan turned out to be a sociopath. He’d been her first serious relationship out of college. He was half a decade older, and he seemed so worldly and mature. He took care of everything—the house, the car, the finances, the insurance. She couldn’t see how controlling he actually was until it was too late.

But hindsight was always twenty-twenty, right? Leaving Dan meant she needed to support herself somehow, but when she went looking for a job, she found out that her dusty engineering degree with little experience to back it up was worth exactly zilch. Except for making cake, where it turned out to be very useful. That, plus her natural artistry, helped her land the job with Evelyn.

Of course, making one-off cakes in her small kitchen was way different from the large-scale production of a professional kitchen. Evelyn had carried her for years, patiently teaching her how to bake commercially, showing her how a real business was run, supporting her flexible work schedule so she could care for Andy, and giving her a place in the community. Thanks to Evelyn’s deep roots, many of the folks in Eastbridge welcomed Jane and Andy with open arms. After everything Evelyn had done, she was glad to do some of the heavy lifting.

BOOK: Once and Again
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