The Chesapeake Diaries Series (137 page)

“We’re going to get in the car and drive up to the center of town and park there. We know a lot of people who live in the neighborhood behind the shops. But remember, just one hour, and then we have to go home. You have school in the morning.”

“I know, but this is special, right? I heard you tell Gramma that.”

“Being ‘special’ doesn’t mean we throw out all the rules. You know that this is usually the time we set aside for homework. The only reason you’re getting out tonight is because you have no homework.” Using the remote, Brooke unlocked the car as they approached.

“Uh-uh, we do.” Logan opened the back door and climbed in. “We’re supposed to write a story about
the best part of trick or treat and it can’t be about candy.”

“You have to do that tonight?” Brooke frowned as she started the car and, careful to watch for other trick-or-treaters, proceeded toward the stop sign at the end of River Road.

“No, tomorrow morning in school. We’re just supposed to
think
about it tonight.”

“So what’s the best part of trick-or-treating if it isn’t the treats?”

“I haven’t decided yet. We only went to one house so far.”

Brooke watched in the rearview mirror as Logan folded his arms across his chest the same way both she and Clay did when they were thinking about something, and the gesture made her smile.

“Mom, aren’t Fleur and Ally the best dogs ever?” he asked.

“They are both pretty terrific dogs,” she agreed, no doubt in her mind where this would lead.

“Mom, did you ask Uncle Clay if I could have a dog?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How come?”

“I haven’t gotten around to it.” Actually, Brooke had thought about it, and had decided that they’d take a look at the dogs in Grant Wyler’s shelter after they moved into the tenant house. She hadn’t wanted to tell Logan until they got the report back from the contractor, in case there was something terribly wrong that would prevent them from moving in. She didn’t expect that to be the case, but better to wait on good news rather than have to take it back.

“Could you get around to it sometime?”

“Sometime I will.”

“Sometime soon?”

“We’ll see.”

“I wish you’d just say yes.”

At the corner of Charles and Cherry streets, Brooke made a left and parked the car halfway up the block. The sidewalks here were jammed with kids in costumes accompanied by parents—mostly fathers—who called for their offspring to “slow down and wait up.” Brooke recalled her mother shouting the same orders when she and Clay were of the age. Some things never change, she mused as she and Logan got out of the car. He saw a friend from school and took off, but not before she called out to him to wait right where he was. She let him blend in with a small group to ring doorbells while she and the other parents remained on the sidewalk making small talk.

Every once in a while, Brooke would get a flashback from her own trick-or-treat days when she and Clay had run up the same sidewalks and rung the same doorbells of the houses Logan and his friends were approaching. Different families lived in them back then, she reminded herself. The house the children now converged on had once been owned by the Clintons. Their daughter, Patti, had been two years ahead of Brooke in school. She’d died in an auto accident her junior year of high school, and the family had moved away shortly after. Brooke wondered if anyone knew where they’d gone. She’d never heard.

She wondered, too, if any of her companions who’d grown up here were thinking about Patti as their children
ran back down the sidewalk toward the next house.

Eventually they made their way to the end of the block, where the children waited to be crossed. Logan and his group of friends crossed the street with someone’s dad serving as crossing guard and started up the other side. When they reached Vanessa’s and she appeared in the doorway to give out her treats, there was a whoop from the pack of kids, and Logan ran back to his mother waving a card.

“Hey, Mom, look what Vanessa gave us!”

“What have you got?” Brooke asked.

“A card that says I can take it to Scoop for an ice-cream cone anytime I want!” Logan handed the card to his mother. “You hold it so it doesn’t get lost, okay?”

“I’ll put it right in here and you can have it when we get home.” She tucked it into her shoulder bag and followed the group, which was starting to thin out, to the corner. The cross street was Hudson, and three houses down on the left was Jesse’s house. She stood on the corner, her hand on Logan’s shoulder, and wondered if Jesse was doing the trick-or-treat thing. A lot of single guys she knew didn’t bother.

Logan and his friends went up the walk to the first house on Hudson. By the time they reached the second, Brooke saw that a large group of older kids was parading up the walk at number 429, just one house away. The front door opened and Jesse stepped out onto the porch. He must have been handing out something because the kids all converged on him momentarily before they turned back to the sidewalk, their calls of “thank you” drifting through the night.

Logan’s group shuffled through the fallen leaves to Jesse’s house, and Brooke followed along. She stood on the lawn near the walk while Jesse, who hadn’t bothered to go back inside after the last group, greeted the kids and invited them to select a treat from a large bowl that he held in both hands.

“Hey, there’s my favorite pirate,” Brooke heard Jesse say when he saw Logan.

Her son responded, but Brooke couldn’t hear what he said. She hoped it contained “thank you.” Jesse looked beyond the group to where Brooke was standing, and waved.

Brooke waved back, and without thinking, walked toward him. Jesse came down the steps, the bowl still in his hand.

“Candy bar?” He held the bowl out to her.

“No, but I’ll take that bowl off your hands anytime you want to part with it,” she said, relieved to have something to say besides a lame hello, and something to talk about besides last Saturday night. “I love yellow ware.”

“Is that what this is?” Jesse held up the bowl as if inspecting it. “I picked it up at that flea market off Route 50 when I moved in last year. I just thought it was a nice bowl for pasta.” He tilted the bowl in her direction. “Or Halloween candy.”

“It’s a beauty.”

The silence that followed hung between them for one beat too long before they both tried to fill it at the same time.

“By the way, I …”

“Liz told me …”

Brooke smiled and nodded. “So you know that I
did follow up and called your office to set up my appointment.”

“Late Thursday afternoon. I hope that doesn’t interfere with picking up Logan after school.”

She shook her head. “The bus usually brings him home, but on Thursdays, Clay picks him up for soccer. Logan’s playing with one of the Boys Club teams at Packer Park, so I’m good for a few hours.”

“Great.” His eyes met hers and held them for a long moment before they were both distracted by the next round of trick-or-treaters. “I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Right. See you then.” She headed toward the street, searching for her son, who, she realized, was waiting for her on the sidewalk.

“Brooke,” Jesse called to her, and she turned around. “Maybe this time we should plan on dinner.”

“All right.” She nodded. “Great. See you on Thursday.”

She caught up to Logan, a smile still on her face.

“Mom, why are you having dinner with Mr. Enright?” Logan asked.

“He’s doing some paperwork for me,” she told him, “and it might run into the dinner hour, so we’ll eat while we work.”

“Oh.” He opened his bag and held it up so she could look inside. “I have a lot of candy, see?”

Brooke peered into the bag, then groaned. “No way can you eat all that.”

“I know. But we got a note at school that said we could bring in some of our candy to Dr. Hess’s office this week.”

“Why would the dentist want all that candy?” she wondered aloud.

“He’s going to send it to soldiers in places where they don’t trick-or-treat. Like Iraq.” His voice was increasingly softer. “Like where my dad was a soldier when he died. I told my teacher that and she said he must have been a brave soldier and I told her that he was. Right, Mom?”

“Right, sweetie. Your dad was a very brave soldier.” She ran her hand over his hair, smoothing the spots where the night breeze had lifted it. “I think I’m ready to go home now. How ’bout you?”

“I think I am, too.”

Logan took her hand and they walked back around the corner and down the block to the car.

“Did you have fun tonight?” Brooke asked as she drove home.

“I guess.”

She glanced in the rearview. “Something bothering you?”

In the dark interior of the car, she barely saw his shrug.

“Was that a no?” she asked.

“I guess.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“No.” A few seconds later, he amended his response to, “No, thank you.”

“Okay,” she said, “but if you feel like talking to me about something, you know you can come to me about anything, right?”

“I guess.”

He said very little the rest of the way home, but
while she was tucking him into bed, he asked, “Was my dad ever a pirate for Halloween?”

“I don’t know.” She bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. “I don’t remember him ever talking about it. But when we talk to your uncle Jason sometime, we can ask him.”

“When will that be?” Logan’s eyes closed slowly, and though he reopened them again, he was fighting a battle he was clearly going to lose.

“I don’t know. But I am hoping to talk to him soon.”

“Good.” Logan yawned and turned his head toward the pillow. “I like Uncle Jace …”

Brooke turned off the lamp on Logan’s dresser and closed the door halfway when she left the room. She took the steps quietly and went to the kitchen. Before they left for trick-or-treating, she’d taken butter and eggs from the refrigerator to warm so they’d be ready for her baking when she arrived home. She rolled up her shirtsleeves, turned on the oven, and proceeded to bake. Once she got the first batch into the oven, she could work on that paper that was due on Friday for her business accounting class. It was satisfying to know she only had a few more weeks before final exams, and then she’d have her degree and several hours more each week in which to bake.

She was happy to be over the Halloween theme—she’d had enough of spiders and bats and witches’ hats over the past few weeks. For the next two weeks she’d concentrate on autumn themes—pumpkins rather than jack-o’-lanterns, colored leaves, and cupcakes that looked like apples with red frosting and fondant stems. After that would come the Thanksgiving
cupcakes, with turkeys and cornucopias, before she turned her attention to Christmas. She had a dozen or more different ideas for that holiday, and already she’d agreed to bake for several private parties, three company parties, and three buffets with Deanna. St. Dennis being a small town, there was no way she could serve the same cupcakes for similar events, which meant she needed to play with the fondant a little more.

“Right,” she muttered. “In my spare time I’ll figure out how to make little Christmas trees for the top of the cupcakes. And of course, people will expect those trees to have lights that actually blink.”

Okay, that was an exaggeration, but not by much. It seemed the better you got at something, the better people expected you to be.

She picked up her recipe cards and debated which to make first. Since she’d been delivering to the three places in town every day, it made the most sense to make triple batches of three varieties, and give each of the establishments some from each batch so they’d have a variety to offer their customers. Tonight she was too tired to be inventive, so she settled on an apple spice, a chocolate peanut butter, and a plain yellow cupcake with chocolate frosting. She returned all the cards to the box except the one for chocolate ganache. She’d make them on Wednesday night so she could take a few with her to Jesse’s. He could order dinner, but she was bringing dessert.

The first batch in the oven, she settled at the kitchen table and resumed writing. She couldn’t wait until her classes were finished. There’d be that many more hours each week to bake, to experiment, and eventually, to
sell her cupcakes directly to the public. Frank from Krauser’s had left a message for her earlier in the evening that the van was finished and she could pick it up first thing in the morning. She couldn’t wait to see it.

Around noon the following day, Clay appeared in the kitchen. He walked to the window that overlooked the drive and pointed outside.

“That van out there,” he said. “The one in the driveway …”

“I just picked it up a little while ago from Frank.” Brooke was all smiles.

“Please tell me that’s not my van.”

“That’s the van you said I could use.” Brooke looked up from the little leaves she was tracing onto fondant and smiled happily. “Isn’t it glorious?”

“It’s pink,” he said. “Why is my van pink?”

“You said I could paint it however I wanted,” she reminded him.

Clay continued to stare out the window. “And there’s a great big cupcake with bright pink frosting painted on the side.”

“The color is called hot raspberry.”

“It says ‘Cupcake’ in big letters.” He turned around and looked at her. “Brooke, I can’t drive around St. Dennis in a van with a big pink freaking cupcake on the side.”

“I asked you if I could have the van painted to use for my business and you said you didn’t care what I did.”

“Sorry, but it never occurred to me to specify any color other than pink and nix the cupcake.”

“I’m sorry, Clay. But you said
you didn’t care.
”

“I have an orchard full of apples to deliver this week. I can’t deliver all those apples in a pink girlie-van, Brooke.”

“Afraid your masculine image will suffer?”

“Damn right.”

Brooke lowered her head and resumed working on the fondant and tried not to laugh. Clay had looked so bewildered when he looked out the window. He’d been blinking as if to clear his vision. Finally, when she couldn’t hold it in any longer, she began to chuckle.