I put a hand to my heart. “Jay sends you his devotion.”
“He suspected my identity for years. If he’d been reckless . . . if he hadn’t cared about the consequences for me, for Will and Bonnie and this valley, he’d have used me as a weapon before everything else was in place. But he protected me. He would never have exposed me without my permission. He’s a good soul.”
“He is,” I said.
She leaned heavily on her cane. Tal and I reached for her but she brushed us away. “Nona is standing just yon.” She indicated a shop doorway. “She’s got something for you. Documents. Recordings. My side of the story. Evidence. Everything George Avery says he’ll need to hand to the police.”
She looked up at us with faded eyes that went a little dreamy. “I do have a great-granddaughter somewhere. I plan to live long enough to find her. That’s another reason I’ve stayed hidden. I didn’t want E.W. looking for my heirs.”
“We’ll look for her. You know Jay and I will help.”
“Of course. But you’ll be busy getting married, and enjoying Free Wheeler. There won’t be any problem with those mining rights, not with E.W. locked away.”
With that, she pivoted gracefully and walked away, her hair moving around her, her gait slow, steady and proud.
“Can you feel all the spirits around her?” Tal whispered.
I could. An entire town, her family, John Bonavendier, they were all with her.
“We’ll see you again soon,” I called. “Caillin MacBride.”
She halted at the sound of that long-unheard name. Her shoulders straightened; her head incline regally in response.
The air seemed to shimmer around her.
Jay
The time has come
IT ALL SEEMED surreal. Anticlimactic. I lay in a hospital bed with Gabs sitting beside me, Tal and Doug and Will and Bonnie standing or sitting in the room, George and Charlie there, too. Delta and Pike were on the phone from New York, where they had a computer feed to watch the developments unfold along with us. We all watched on computer screens, live, as the police arrested my uncle at his home for the attempted murder of Caillin MacBride. It had taken forty years to put E.W. in jail for any crime at all, much less one that had stunned the city, the state, and even the country. The story of E.W. Wakefield’s downfall and the bizarre, Shakespearean history of the Wakefield family made for good gossip. Wakefield Mining and Land Development would fall into the hands of creditors and the few partners E.W. had taken on over the years.
Maybe E.W. would beat the ancient charges against him and get off with a short sentence or none at all; but I doubted it. Either way, the Wakefield name was in ruins. Dustin, Arwen and Donny were in my care, soon to be formal guardianship, God help me, though Gabs was confident we could be good parents to one normal teenager and two elves.
I’d never been happier to be an outcast.
Later, when all is quiet . . .
“GEORGE?”
“Why are you whispering, sir?”
“Gabs is asleep. Get us out of here before the nurses catch her on the bed with me, again. The night shift was just happy to see me alive and being cuddled. But the day team wants to follow ICU protocol. Can’t blame them, but I want Gabs right where she is, not sleeping in a chair in a corner.”
“I’m working on the transfer, sir. And sir, it’s so good to hear your voice. Your progress over the past few hours is remarkable, sir.”
“George?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop calling me sir. You’re like a father to me. I love you.”
Silence. Then: “You . . . what? I think my phone reception is weak.”
“I love you, George. I’ve learned a lot in the past few days. How to almost die. How to live. And to say ‘I love you.’”
“They’re still giving you narcotics for the pain?”
“I love you, George. I’m not going to hesitate to say that to the people I care about, not anymore. But let’s not get smarmy about it.”
“I love you, too, sir. Like a son. This is awkward. Can we stop, now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have you and Ms. MacBride transported by private ambulance to your loft within the next hour. With private medical staff on hand. I’ve set up Ms. MacBride’s sister and friend in condo. Your cousin Will is in another. Dustin and the twins are being moved to the Crossroads Cove. Sergeant Vance asked to be your escort. There’s quite a lot of media. We’ll bring you in through the back. The service elevators.”
“Thank you. Good job.”
“About the pickles. The decorators are finishing up, right now.”
“Gabs will love that. I hope.”
“She’ll love it, yes. Because she loves you. Her devotion to you has been unquestionable. Merry Christmas, sir.”
“You’re backsliding, George.”
“Merry Christmas, son.”
“Merry Christmas, Pops.”
“No! I’m not really old enough to be your father. And I respect the memory of your dad too much to . . .»
“He’d be honored if you’d call me ‘son.’ And I’d be honored.”
“Okay . . . son. What will you call me?”
“Paps?”
“Sounds like a beer.”
“Bubba Dadda. Covers two roles.”
“How about just ‘George?’”
“A deal. I love you, George.”
“I love you, son.”
Gabby
A yuletide of gherkins
THIS WAS THE MAN I loved: barely out of a coma after being shot and suffering a near-death experience, but already directing his minions to sweep me off to his private lair in Asheville and help me recuperate in the luxury of his manly nest. The trauma of the past several days was a wound we’d both need time to heal.
He’s alive. So am I. We’re together. Tal and Eve are safe and happy with Doug Firth, and Gus is . . . well . . . following the calling he loves, in the Middle East. Whatever happens next . . . we can handle it.
Jay gave me a thirty-foot-tall Christmas tree.
Made of pickles.
Jars of pickles, that is. All glossy and green, stacked and somehow secured (hot-glued? duct-taped?) into a perfect, cone-shaped pyramid that nearly touched the high ceiling of his loft. The pickle-jar tree winked with expertly filigreed white lights inside its core. I turned off all the lights in the condo’s living room. An enormous green bow capped the tree’s top. The pyramid of gleaming pickle-liciousness stood before a beautiful backdrop of darkly-wooded French doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the city.
Stars shown in the sky. A fire crackled in a copper-hooded contemporary fire pit. I sat on a fat, low ottoman next to Jay, who was comfortably stretched out on a leather couch with an IV still in one arm and pillows propping him up. One of Anna’s beautiful woven blankets, made at the old mill in the valley, covered him.
We held hands and looked at the wonderfully odd Christmas tree.
“It’s a pickle Mona Lisa,” I said. “A pickle-jar extravaganza. Tal says Santa Joe built a nativity scene at the Cove out of chain-sawed logs. Maybe next year we can build a pickle nativity?”
“The baby Jesus would be made of kosher dills,” Jay said.
I laughed until my bruised face couldn’t take it anymore.
By then, he was pulling me to him and kissing the pain away.
(Please continue reading for a Sneak Peak of The Kitchen Charmer)
Sneak Peak:
The Kitchen Charmer
Lucy
Lucy and Gus—the Valentine’s Day Turning Point
Tal and Gabby had adventures; they found true love, they fought for what’s right, they won wonderful men who adored them; they stood tall.
Me? I st
ood small.
But I was trying to get bigger.
Today, however, was not that day.
February fourteenth, Valentine’s Day. Gabby’s fiancé, Jay, was in the Cove conferring with Doug Firth, Tal, Gabby, and Tom Mitternich, the famous architect, on the future of the odd old buildings that made up Free Wheeler, the forgotten bicycle community.
In other news, rumor had it that some kind of controversy was about to bring Delta Whittlespoon home from her competition on the Skillet Stars show. No one at either the café or the berry farm was even whispering about it.
I have my psychic talents; not like Gabby and Tal’s, which are food oriented, but in a wooly, artsy way. I see colors around people; I seem to know the textures, the type of fiber that defines them.
Whenever Delta’s name was mentioned lately, I picked up two things: fire-red trouble, and scratchy steel wool. Oh, boy.
But back to the current problem. They had convinced me I could go shopping. In Asheville. A ninety minute (each way) road trip from the Cove.
I hadn’t been shopping in three years, since before the rape. The clinical term for my condition was agoraphobic. Afraid to leave home. Terrified of any situation that wasn’t confined to a narrow range of extremely familiar, highly controlled (by me) circumstances. I preferred to call it “sensible.”
But now I was trapped in the produce section of Mother Nature’s Super Soul Foods, Asheville’s biggest organic grocery store. I kept one hand in my knitted tote bag, clutching the wooden spindle Gus MacBride had sent me from Afghanistan, for Christmas. His sister hadn’t told him about my horrible history, so he thought I was normal. I liked it that way. We were pen pals. He was strong, brave, an army captain, a knitter and a cook, and very gallant. I loved the pictures he texted of him cooking over campfires while local children and burqa-clad women watched him eagerly, as fascinated by him as I was.
Okay, I loved him. From a distance. The best way. He would never come home to visit—he did not want anything to do with his memories of growing up in North Carolina, said Tal and Gabby. We’d never meet in person; I’d never disappoint him by not being sexy, confident, comfortable and again, normal.“You okay? Lucy?” Gabby asked. She patted my shoulder with a strong, freckled hand. I felt Tal watching me. I smiled.
“Fine.”
People aren’t supposed to suffer panic attacks in Asheville. It’s the South’s equivalent of your laidback hippy aunt, the one with the vague herbal smell and the subscription to Mother Jones magazine. In Asheville, people get in touch with their inner mountain spirits. They meditate. They chant. They wear crystals. They find themselves.
Not me. I’d lost myself when two men at my apartment complex robbed, beat and raped me. I was pretty certain I’d never find me again.
Breathe, stop sweating. No one can hurt you here among the vegetables. It’s safe. It’s all-natural. It’s organic.
Well, except for maybe that produce clerk over there by the rutabagas. By Asheville standards he was ordinary. Tattoos, piercings, a mass of blond dreadlocks pulled back in a clump. I stared at the thumb-sized wooden plugs in his ear lobes. Didn’t those things hurt? How did he protect the tender lobe-holes when he took his wooden plugs out to wash them?
Stop thinking those thoughts. Breathe. Find your comfort zone. Besides, Tal and Gabby are nearby. They’ll kick the behinds of anyone who threatens you.
I said behinds. Not asses. I was a hopeless goody-two-shoes. I belonged a hundred years ago. I was a little old lady at thirty. A secular nun in long peasant skirts and oversized blouses. Hiding my skinny but obviously irresistible body from a dangerous world. Hiding me.
I struggled to breathe. My hands shook on the cart.
“Lucy’s stalled in the tomatoes,” Tal said to Gabby, sidling up to me and my made-from-recycled-plastics grocery cart. Tal casually set a thirty-pound bag of whole-wheat flour in the cart then put a warm, ruddy hand over my icy white knuckles. “Let go of the handle. You’re going to pop a finger joint, Luce.”
“I m-miscalculated,” I stuttered wearily. “I thought I could make it all the way to the parsley.”
Gabby closed in on my other side. She wrapped one strong hand around my forearm then cupped her free hand to her mouth. “We need the price of Xanax on aisle two,” she intoned in a perfect imitation of the store’s PA system.
Very funny. I wished I could laugh. I wished I could breathe. I wished I could leave Rainbow Goddess Farm without hyperventilating. I wished I were a MacBride pioneer woman, brave and enormous, instead of little Lucy Parmenter, a squishy little Melanie Wilkes to their Scarlett O’Hara’s.
Tal and Gabby towered over me, tall redheaded Amazons in jeans and funky-cool t-shirts. They propped me up, a short blonde dressed like an extra from Little House On The Prairie.
Tal pried my hands off the cart. She rubbed them as if I needed thawing. “Remember what Macy said. Don’t give up. Let the sensations roll over you and just be patient. Then go on with your shopping.”
My teeth chattered. I gasped for air. “The shadows s-set me off. I should have come earlier in the day. When there’s more sunlight.”
It was always something. Bad vibes. The moon wasn’t right. I was pre-menstrual. Name your poison. Panic disorder has no rules. “What if I just go wait in the parking lot?” I said.
“You’re blocking the aisle,” a woman said loudly. “You people need to hold a counseling session somewhere else. What’s wrong with her? Not my problem.”
“Lady, why don’t you kiss . . .” Gabby began.
“Gabby,” Tal said. “You promised Jay to practice patience.”
The woman rolled past, eyeing us. “Bitches,” she said.
“I’ll pray for you,” Tal told the woman.
“I won’t, Cruella,” Gabby added.
The woman hurried out of range. Gabby arched a red-brown brow at Tal’s frown. “I like my way better.”
I just stood there, shaking. “I’ll wait outside while you guys challenge some more women to a throwdown. Yes, I’m a coward.”
The sisters took me by each arm again. “No, you’re going to master the produce section today,” Tal insisted.
“We’re going all the way to the kiwi,” Gabby promised. “Maybe even the okra.”
Tal’s phone chimed. She plucked it out of her tote and frowned at the screen.
“Gus calling,” she said, holding up the phone for Gabby to see, her green eyes worried. “Why is he calling in the middle of the night, there?”
The sisters traded a stark look. Gabby took the phone. “I’m older.” They had a joke. Bossy Gabby, the older one. I’m older, she’d say whenever she claimed something out of Tal’s hands.
“Hello? Gabby MacBride here.” She cocked her head, listening to a voice that Tal and I couldn’t hear. The color drained out of her beautiful face. Gabby took a deep breath. “But the bomb didn’t kill him. He’s going to live, correct? He’s going to live?”I sank to the tiled floor, pulling the beautiful Afghani spindle from my tote, holding it to my chest, and hunching over in sweaty, shaking terror for Gus’s sake.
Gus.
Author’s Note
In 2013 we had a rainy season in Georgia that rivaled the monsoons of Kuala Lumpur, thus creating vast jungles where my garden used to be—stunting the sun-loving peppers, rotting the garlic, and inviting legions of slugs to feast on the pathetic survivors of Veggie Land. Despite that, the PICKLES triumphed. (In their pre-pickle state, that is.)
Those cucumbers ruled! I plucked so many cukes by early August I began to transfer hungry slugs to the plants to slow the avalanche. No success. Cukes must give off some kind of slug repellent. Also mouse, crow, raccoon, ’possum and bear repellent. When even ’possums won’t steal a veggie off the vine, you know it’s a kick-ass plant.
I understand why the art of pickli
ng can be traced back as far as ancient Egypt: during a rainy summer, cucumbers threatened to take over the pyramids. At some point, Cleopatra wandered into a palace kitchen and shouted to her chefs, “Serve me one more cucumber salad, and I’ll open up a can of whup-asp on you!”
So to my unstoppable cucumbers, and their pickled cousins, I credit the culinary inspiration for this book.
Many thanks to Eileen Dryer for the wound-tampon idea, Deb Dixon for being the wisest, best and most patient editor I’ve ever had, Hank for loving me even when I stagger to bed at four A.M. muttering “Plot point, plot point,” and my entire BBB family for being supportive, not to mention looking the other way when I was sleep-deprived and crabby. And yes, when they read this they will say, “How is that different from usual?”
About Deborah Smith
Deborah Smith is the author of more than thirty-five novels in romance and women’s fiction, including the New York Times bestseller, A Place to Call Home, and the Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Crossroads Café. She is also a founding partner and editorial director of BelleBooks/Bell Bridge Books, a Memphis-based publishing company known for quality fiction and non-fiction by new and established authors. The Pickle Queen is the second of The Crossroads Café Novellas, spin-offs set in the Appalachian world of The Crossroads Café.
Coming soon: Gus and Lucy’s story, The Kitchen Charmer.
Visit Deb at www.deborah-smith.com and www.bellbridgebooks.com. Also on Facebook at Deborah Smith Author.
Deborah Smith, The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella
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