Better Than Chocolate (21 page)

But then she got a couple of steps closer and recognized one of
the kids. The girl with the short hair dyed jet-black tipped with red and
wearing jeans and a ratty jacket was Cass’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Amber.
Cass had been worried about her. It looked like Cass had been right to
worry.

Samantha hesitated. What to do? Did she pretend she didn’t see?
Did she say something? Oh, for heaven’s sake, did she even need to ask? She
marched over to where Amber and another girl stood with two pimply faced gangly
boys.

One of the boys had just given Amber a cigarette and she had it
halfway to her mouth when she saw Samantha. Her eyes got saucer-big at the sight
of her mother’s friend and the cigarette instantly went behind her back.

“No point hiding it,” Samantha said. “I saw.”

The taller of the two boys eyed her with hostility. “Who are
you?”

“I’m someone who doesn’t have to be in school,” Samantha said,
whipping her cell phone out of her pocket. “And you have one minute to turn your
tail around and get back there before I call and tell your principal you’re all
cutting class.”

The boy raised his chin. “You don’t know us.”

“Nope, but I know her and I bet it won’t be hard for your
teachers to figure out who’s missing.”

The boy hunched inside his coat and stalked off, flipping the
old one-finger salute at Samantha as he left. She flipped him right back. The
other boy and girl followed, keeping their fingers to themselves, settling
instead for shooting her dirty looks as they went. She almost laughed. Like that
sample of sullenness was supposed to bother her? She was doing battle with a
rockslide and chocolate vultures. A little teenage anger was nothing more than
comic relief.

Amber lingered. “Are you going to tell my mom?” she asked in a
small voice.

“Should I?”

Amber shook her head vigorously, making the little hoops in her
row of earrings rattle.

“You’re smoking.”

“I was just going to try it.”

“And fill your lungs full of tar and nicotine and end up
getting hooked and wrecking your health. And your looks. Amber, have you ever
noticed how many wrinkles women who smoke have? All around their mouths. It’s
really ugly.”

Amber shrugged like she didn’t care.

Samantha tried another approach. “You know how much your mom
loves you? Can you imagine how unhappy you’d make her if you took up a habit
that can wreck your health? And where would you get the money to pay for those
cigarettes? They’re not cheap. Oh, of course,” she said, snapping her fingers.
“Those terrific friends of yours would help you get the money, probably by
shoplifting. It’s hard to shoplift in Icicle Falls, though. Everybody knows
everybody. You’d get caught for sure. They send you to jail for that.”

Amber bit her lip. She looked like she was going to cry.
“Please, Sam, don’t tell Mom.”

Maybe she’d scared the girl enough, at least for now. But for
good measure she decided to add some positive reinforcement. “If you want an
addiction, try chocolate. It won’t make your clothes stink and it’s got
endorphins to help you feel good. Come by the shop after school and I’ll have a
box waiting for you.”

Amber’s face lit up. “Really?”

“Really. And if you bring up your grades by next report card,
I’ll give you a two-pound box.”

Now Amber was practically jumping up and down. “Oh, wow,
thanks. And you won’t tell my mom?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I promise I won’t even touch a cigarette.”

“If you do your mom will find out. She’ll smell it on you.”

“So please don’t tell her,” Amber begged.

“I’ll think about it,” Samantha hedged. “Just like I hope
you’ll think about the kind of people you want to hang out with. You’re old
enough to know the difference between a winner and a loser. Which one do you
want to see when you look in the mirror?”

Amber dropped her gaze and mumbled, “A winner.”

“A lot of us think you’re a pretty cool kid,” Samantha said. “I
hope we’re not wrong.”

Amber nodded. Then, figuring the lecture was over, she turned
and fled toward town and, hopefully, school.

If ever there was a walking ad for birth control, it was a
teenager. Yes, Samantha had a business to save but she’d take that over raising
a teenager any day.

Oh, but she had her mother, which was almost as bad. And
dealing with Mom would have to be the next order of business after she finished
with the festival committee.

She found them huddled around the oak table in the private room
at D’Vine Wines. The cheery Italian mural on the wall behind them, the cheese
and crackers, the open bottle of wine and the glasses—it could have been a party
except for the long faces.

“What are we going to do?” Olivia moaned.

“We’re going to continue with our plans,” Samantha said. “The
Department of Transportation will have that mess cleared away in plenty of time
for the festival.”

“Have you seen it?” Ed asked.

“Well, no.”

“It’s huge,” he said.

Just like the headache she was fighting. “It’ll be okay,” she
insisted.

Annemarie shook her head and pointed to the ugly headline in
the newspaper. Rockslide Danger on Highway 2: Governor Urges Travelers to Stay
Home. The reporter might as well have added Governor Kills Chocolate Festival.
“I’ve had six cancellations in the past hour,” she said.

“This is it for our festival,” Cecily said, pushing away her
glass untouched. “So what’s the plan now?” she asked Samantha.

Everyone was looking at her expectantly. “Okay, here’s what we
do.”
We panic!
That was hardly a productive option.
“We keep moving forward,” she said again. “Cecily, call D.O.T. and see if you
can find out when they think this will be cleared. Then we’ll take out another
ad in the Seattle paper, full page.” She looked apologetically at Ed. “I’ll
figure out a way to pay for it, Ed.”
Right. How? With
chocolate?

“Good idea,” Annemarie approved.

“And, Cecily, try to get hold of the producer for
Northwest Now
again. We’ve got a great story angle.
Town versus rockslide. Or something like that.”

Cecily nodded, making notes in her tablet.

“Anything else?” Olivia asked. “Surely there’s something else
we can do.”

“Yeah,” Samantha said. “We pray like crazy.

Chapter Eighteen

When a woman is in trouble, that’s when she learns who her true
friends are.

—Muriel Sterling,
Knowing Who You Are:
One Woman’s Journey

M
otherhood was the world’s hardest job and
being a mother to grown daughters was right up there with trying to turn straw
into gold. Now, once again, it would appear that Muriel had made a poor
choice.

“Mom, you can’t tell people we’re in trouble,” Samantha scolded
over the phone. “Perception is everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Muriel said. “I just thought I could get a few
people who might have some money to help us out.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Her first and only
call had been to Del and she’d realized almost immediately that it hadn’t been a
good idea. He’d offered to help her come up with a solution, which seemed
encouraging. But then she’d heard his bigmouthed sister talking in the
background and knew Darla was over there and decided she’d better pull back from
this plan until she’d considered all the possible ramifications. Of course,
she’d pulled back too late. She’d known even before she hung up that Del would
spill the cocoa beans. Darla knew all her brother’s business and, sure enough,
now she knew the Sterlings’ business and Samantha was not happy.

“Mom, please, don’t try to help. I can’t afford to have people
like Darla coming in and panicking our employees all over again. And we don’t
need the whole town thinking we’re going under when we’re trying to boost
business.”

“I understand,” Muriel said. She was close to tears and it was
hard to keep her voice steady.

Samantha softened her tone. “Look, I appreciate your efforts, I
really do, especially after everything you’ve been through. But if you can just
stick to the creative end of things I’ll keep working on the money angle.
Okay?”

“Okay,” Muriel said. “And I’m sorry this created more problems
for you, especially with the rockslide to deal with.” She wasn’t so ignorant
that she didn’t understand what this fresh trouble could do to her daughter’s
festival and, consequently, their business. And here she was, adding to the
problem rather than helping. So much for motherly good intentions.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find a way around it,” Samantha said, and
her tone of voice dared fate to go ahead and keep messing with her.

Her eldest was nothing if not efficient, but the deck was
certainly stacked against her.

They said their I-love-yous and goodbyes and Muriel sat staring
out the living room window at the mountains, hemmed in by gray skies,
contemplating the disaster that currently passed for her life. Most parents, if
they lived long enough, became something of a burden to their children but she
was too young to be this big a burden.

So,
she asked herself,
what are you going to do about it?

She was going to quit being so ignorant. She called Mountain
Escape Books.

“Isn’t this rockslide business awful?” Pat greeted her. “It’s
certainly not helping our festival.”

Or our company,
thought Muriel.

“But you probably didn’t call to talk about that.”

She certainly hadn’t. If she started talking about the
rockslide and the festival, that could lead to other topics that were verboten.
“I need a good money book. Or two. Have you got some kind of
Money Management for Dummies
book I can buy?”

“Personal finance? Or business?”

“Personal.” After her faux pas she’d be lucky if her daughter
ever let her cross the threshold of Sweet Dreams.

“I’ll see what I can find,” Pat promised. “Do you want me to
bring it to dinner tomorrow?”

“No, I’ll come by this afternoon,” Muriel said. The way her
life was going she couldn’t afford to wait even another day.

* * *

Samantha had just finished talking another worried B and
B owner down from the ledge when Elena buzzed her on the intercom. “You’ve got a
visitor—Amber Wilkes.”

Samantha had set aside a box of candy for Amber but hadn’t been
sure Amber would take her up on her offer, since it meant coming by the shop and
possibly having to face her again.
Never underestimate the
power of chocolate,
she thought.

“Send her in.” Hopefully, Amber was just stopping by to thank
her and not to draw her into any teenage drama. She already had enough drama in
her life.

A moment later the door to her office opened and Amber entered,
clutching a box of Sweet Dreams salted caramels to her chest and looking back
over her shoulder as if expecting…what? Her mother? The chocolate police coming
to see if she’d paid for that candy?

“I, um, wanted to thank you for this,” she said.

That wasn’t all she wanted. With her uneasiness and sudden
shyness, Amber was the picture of a teenage girl with something sitting
uncomfortably on her mind.

But Samantha didn’t ask what. Instead, she simply said, “You’re
welcome.”

Amber gnawed on her lower lip. Yep, here it came. “Um, what did
you decide about telling my mom? You’re not going to, are you?”

Would Cass thank her for keeping this from her? Probably not.
But Samantha couldn’t help remembering an incident from her own middle-school
years.

Straight arrow that she was, she’d still made one bad slip,
given in to peer pressure and snitched a pair of earrings from Gilded Lily’s.
She’d been a lousy thief and Lily Swan had caught her and called her mother. It
had been mortifying enough to be caught by the glamorous former model who had
recently moved to town and opened her shop, but then to see the look of
disappointment on Mom’s face—that had been the worst moment of her young life.
Mom had made sure she paid her debt to society, farming her out for a summer of
afternoon weeding in Ms. Swan’s flower beds. That hadn’t been fun, but it had
sure beat having to live with the humiliation of Mom telling Dad.

“Please don’t tell Dad,” Samantha had begged, horrified at the
idea of her adored father, who’d called her Princess, changing her nickname to
Scumbag or Sticky Fingers. The idea of sinking so low in his estimation had been
more than she could bear and Mom had sensed it.

“If you’re never going to do it again, I won’t tell him,” Mom
had said.

Now she said the same thing to Amber. The girl was already on
her mother’s doo-doo list. Did Samantha need to give Cass another reason to be
unhappy with the kid?

Relief flooded Amber’s face, washing the worry lines from her
brow. “Thank you,” she breathed.

“But you’d better keep your end of the bargain,” Samantha said
sternly, “or I’ll rat you out in a heartbeat.”

“Don’t worry, I will. You rock,” she gushed, then turned and
practically danced out of the office.

Rock…rockslide. Ugh.
Samantha
decided it was time to go home and have a pity party.

Her condo was a nice place for a party, with walls painted a
warm brown, photographs of lupines and lady’s slippers Samantha had taken on her
mountain hikes, framed and hung over the electric fireplace.

And the welcome committee was ready and waiting. Nibs was
always glad to see someone who could master the mysteries of the cat-food
can.

“You’re lucky,” she told him as she scooped food into his bowl.
“You have someone to take care of you. No worries, no stress.” What would that
be like?

If she gave up the fight, she’d have no worries and no stress,
either.

Except her mother would end up a bag lady and she’d go down in
the family history books as the one who lost the company—generations of work and
enthusiasm and creativity gone.
Poof.

“How could this happen to a nice girl like me?”

Nibs didn’t answer. He was too busy eating.

She turned off her cell phone and threw it in her junk drawer.
Then she went to bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. Bad idea. Her mind
was whirling so fast she nearly gave herself bed spin. She got up and left the
bedroom.

What to do, what to do? She paced the condo but no answer
came.

She finally grabbed the chocolate seconds she’d brought home
and parked on the living room couch in front of the TV and turned on the news
like a good little masochist.

“A hard blow for the town of Icicle Falls this week,” Erin
Knowle, newscast chick, was saying. “With a rockslide across Highway 2 and the
governor warning people to avoid the pass, their chocolate festival is in danger
of being canceled. This, coming on top of the weather, is a double blow for the
small town that caters to winter sports enthusiasts. Highway 2 is currently
closed, so if you need to go over the pass, use an alternate route.”

“Oh, by all means,” Samantha shouted at the woman, throwing a
chocolate at the TV.

Erin’s partner in misery put in his two bits. “We’ve had
unusually warm weather and light rainfall here in the Pacific Northwest this
year, haven’t we, Erin?”

“Yes,” said Erin, all prim and perfect in her power suit and
her perfect world where bad news only happened to other people, “and that’s
translated into very little snow in the mountains. And now these unusually warm
temperatures have spelled disaster for ski areas like Snoqualmie Falls and
Crystal Mountain and, of course, Icicle Falls, whose economy depends on good
winter weather.”

Samantha hurled another chunk of chocolate at the TV.

You’re being childish,
she told
herself. And wasting chocolate. She walked over to where the candies had landed,
picked them up and put both pieces in her mouth. Then, mature adult that she
was, she sat on the floor and wailed.

She was just hitting her stride when someone knocked on her
door. Oh, no. Who had heard her? She choked back a sob and sat perfectly still,
hoping whoever it was would go away.

A muffled voice called, “Are you okay in there?”

Lila Ward. She was coming to pour salt on the wound. The drapes
were closed but Samantha felt foolish and pathetic for having been caught
sitting here on her living room floor crying. She held her breath and willed the
woman to give up and go away.

But, like Samantha’s problems, Lila stuck around. Another
knock. “Samantha?”

“Shit,” Samantha muttered. She took a swipe at her cheeks and
went to answer the door.

She opened it to find Lila standing there holding a box of
tissue. “I heard you and thought you could use this.”

The unexpected kindness started the tears rising to flood level
again and Samantha’s throat constricted. All she could do was take the box and
nod.

Lila cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll be going. If you need
anything I’m downstairs.”

She needed the pass cleared. She needed the governor to shut
up. She needed a ton of free publicity. And she needed people to come to the
festival and spend a fortune. But she hugged that box of tissues as if it were a
gift from heaven.

She managed to choke out a thank-you. Then after Lila left she
shut her door, returned to the couch and made use of the tissues.

By the time Cecily knocked on her door, she had a mountain of
used tissues on the coffee table and a headache. But she was dry-eyed and
resigned to her fate. Was this how people felt just before they drowned? Did
some voice inside them whisper,
Give up and die?

“Are you all right?” Cecily asked, taking in the mess on the
coffee table.

Samantha heaved a sigh. “I will be.” At some point in her life,
maybe ten years from now. Or twenty.

She went back to the couch. Her sister followed her and snagged
a chocolate. “I’m sorry you had to get hit with all this.”

That made two of them. If she’d just had a little more time, if
she could’ve made a go of the festival. If, if, if. “I give up.”
I’m sorry, Great-grandma. I really am.

“Don’t give up, Sam.” Cecily held a piece of chocolate to
Samantha’s mouth. “Open.”

Samantha obliged and her sister popped the candy in. It soured
in her mouth and she spat it into a tissue. She couldn’t eat this stuff anymore.
“It’s not just us. The whole town was counting on this. The B and Bs have lost
bookings right and left.”

“I’m sure they’ll be able to hang on till summer when the
hikers and river rafters come,” Cecily said.

“That’s longer than we can hang on.” Suddenly drowning in a vat
of chocolate looked pretty darned good. Samantha fell back against the couch
cushions. “What’s going to happen to Mom?”

“She’ll be fine. She just got a royalty check.”

Mom wasn’t exactly a household name. It couldn’t have been for
much. “How much?” Samantha asked.

Cecily shrugged. “I didn’t see it, but she says it should tide
her over for a month.”

Samantha shook her head. “How would she even know? She has no
idea what’s going on with her finances.” She never had. Their mother’s brain was
not wired for math.

“Yeah,” Cecily agreed. “But she should be able to figure out
how to make a house payment and pay the power bill.”

“I hope so.” Samantha rubbed her aching head. Mom was going
down the financial tubes. And without Sweet Dreams, so were all their employees.
“If I lose the company—”

“You’ll go on to start another,” Cecily said. “That’s what
successful people do. They encounter a roadblock and they find another route.
But let’s not worry about that yet. I came to tell you some great news. D.O.T.
should have the road open by Thursday.” Her cell phone rang. “Bailey,” she
announced before answering. Then, “Yes, we’re here. Yes, she’s fine. Well, sort
of.” A moment later Cecily held out the phone to Samantha. “She wants to talk to
you.”

How many family members does it take to pull a girl back from
the brink of despair? Samantha took the phone.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” Bailey said. “You weren’t
answering your cell.”

“I turned it off.” The last thing she’d wanted was to talk to
anyone in her time of misery. Or so she’d thought. But having her sisters here
was like wrapping herself in a down comforter on a cold evening. It didn’t make
the night any less cold but you
felt
warmer.