The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge (133 page)

“That sounds like one determined woman.”

“I’ll say. That was all she ever wanted, and she made it happen. I admire her for that.”

“How’s her story so different from yours?”

“What do you mean?” Brooke was grateful they were nearing the top of the path. She was getting out
of breath and starting to sweat in the strong October sun.

“Steffie had a vision for owning her own business. So do you. I see you both working for what you want.”

“I haven’t succeeded yet,” she reminded him.

“I don’t know.” He took her arm at the end of the path as if to help her up the bit of last slope. “I seem to see those cupcakes of yours everywhere I go in St. Dennis. And I have to say that the ones I sampled were pretty darned good.”

“You bought them?”

“Of course I bought them. I had two at Vanessa’s party last week and got hooked on them. I’ve had to add time to my workouts just so that I don’t have to cut back on my consumption of cupcakes.”

Jesse followed Brooke through a parking area behind the stores that faced Charles Street.

“Which reminds me. My grandfather is going to be eighty-five in two weeks, and I’m thinking it might be nice to have a little party for him. I think he’d rather have cupcakes than a cake. Would you be interested in doing the baking?”

“That’s a really nice idea and I’d be happy to take on the job. How many people are you thinking about inviting?”

“Ahhh … I don’t know.”

“So what’s his favorite flavor? Chocolate? Yellow cake? White?”

“Ahhh … I’m not sure.”

“Well, we can always make several kinds. I can e-mail you with a list of the different flavors I make
and you can pick a few you think he might like if you don’t want to ask him outright.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Thanks.”

“But you’ll have to let me know how many people you’ll be serving.” They reached Charles Street and turned to the left where the judging stand and bleachers had been erected on the side of the road. “You do have a guest list, right?”

“Not exactly.” Jesse looked mildly uncomfortable. “I thought I’d ask my uncle Mike for some suggestions, but he’s taken my aunt down to Baltimore for some tests and I didn’t want to bother him.”

“Maybe I can give you a hand with that,” she told him as she took his hand and led him toward the bleachers. “Berry has been a client of your grandfather’s forever and is a contemporary of his, so she might know. And there’s always Violet.”

“You had to bring her up.” Jesse grimaced. “And the day was going so well, too …”

Brooke laughed. “It was just a suggestion. She probably knows better than anyone who your granddad’s friends are.”

“Probably.” He was still grimacing.

“Besides, maybe she’ll be nicer to you if she knows you’re doing something nice for Curtis. They’ve known each other forever, remember. And she was a close friend of your grandmother’s.”

“She did mention that.”

“Did she mention that my grandmother Hallie Simpson was one of her good buddies as well?”

“No, she left out that part.” For a moment Jesse looked as if he wanted to say something else. Brooke waited, but when he didn’t continue, she said, “They
all grew up together and went all through school together. They started at that one-room schoolhouse out on White Oak Road.”

“I didn’t know there was a one-room schoolhouse here.”

Brooke scanned the bleachers, looking for Dallas. Finding her in the crowd, she waved.

“Come up here and join us,” Dallas called to her. “We can make room.”

“Want to?” Brooke asked Jesse.

“Sure.”

She led him up the bleacher seats until they reached Dallas, who was sitting with her great-aunt, Berry Eberle, and Berry’s gentleman friend, Archer Callahan. Brooke and Jesse took the seats next to Archer, a retired judge, who after being introduced to Jesse, noted that Curtis Enright had tried many a case in his courtroom.

“A fine attorney,” Archer said. “As is Mike Enright.” The judge frowned for a moment. “I think there was another boy as well …”

“My father.” Jesse’s back had stiffened slightly at the admission and Brooke thought his jaw set just a little tighter.

“Ah, yes.” Archer nodded as if he had recalled something about Jesse’s father but wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was.

“Oh, here comes the parade.” Brooke elbowed Jesse. “Now the entertainment begins.”

“So what’s the protocol here?” Jesse asked.

“This is where the action is.” Brooke gestured to the opposite side of the road, where spectators had set up folding lawn chairs. “Just about everyone in
town comes to see the costumes. The marchers are lined up according to their age group. When your group is called, everyone gets a chance to pass the judges’ stand, and if there’s some sort of performance that goes along with your costume, that’s when you do it. Like, see, that first group, the little ballerinas?”

The entire crowd ooh’d and aah’d as six little girls in pink tutus danced around in front of the judges.

“That has to rate pretty high on the cuteness scale,” Jesse noted.

“They are adorable,” she agreed.

Next came a threesome of clowns on two-wheelers, the training wheels of which were still attached.

“More cuteness,” she noted.

“So are there winners?” Jesse asked.

Brooke nodded. “Winners, prizes, trophies, pictures in the local paper, and of course, these days, online at St. Dennis’s Web site well.”

“Who are the judges?”

“The mayor, the chief of police, the librarian, and a couple of the shop owners.”

“But don’t they know everyone?”

“They know everyone in the parade and there’s more than one relative of each of them, I’d imagine.”

“How can you be objective if you’re judging your niece or a cousin?” Jesse frowned.

“Who said anything about objectivity?” Brooke shrugged. “But I think they somehow manage to choose the best costumes and the best performances in spite of themselves.”

“So, okay, we have the parade and then they announce the winners. Then what?”

“They don’t announce the winners now. That doesn’t happen until later, at the ball.”

“They have a ball? A Halloween ball? Seriously?”

“Seriously. They’ve been doing it for almost one hundred years.”

“So do you have to be in costume?”

“Only if you think you’re going to win.”

“Anything else I should know?” he asked.

“There’s a queen, and—”

“A queen?” His eyes danced with amusement. “A Halloween queen?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Were you ever the Halloween queen?”

“No.” She shook her head. “That’s one I missed.”

Jesse stared blankly at her.

“When I was younger, I was in a few pageants,” she explained, feeling the embarrassment she always felt when she looked back on the girl she’d once been. “It was all a long time ago.”

Thinking about those days brought up a lot of old feelings that Brooke would just as soon forget. Back then, she hadn’t been the person she was now, but there were a lot of people in St. Dennis with long memories who didn’t know that. She’d been snubbed on more than one occasion since moving back home by women who, back in their younger days, had been the target of the mean girl that Brooke used to be. She could crawl into a hole and just die every time she looked back on her old self.

“So what if they announce who the queen is and she isn’t there?”

“Oh, that’s part of the fun. They send people to get you, to find you in the crowd. The queen doesn’t
know she’s the queen until the committee comes for her, and it’s strictly come-as-you-are. In other words, you don’t get to go home to change. Which is why”—she lowered her voice—“there are so many women dressed just a little too well for a parade. They think this might be their year, so they dress up just enough to look good in the pictures, but not so much that they’d look foolish when the crown is handed to someone else.”

“And if you aren’t in the crowd?”

“They’ll go to your house,” she told him. “We take our traditions very seriously here in St. Dennis.”

“Look.” He gestured to the right. “The boys are starting their duel.”

“How serious they are.” She leaned forward and watched as the two boys parried and thrust their swords as they made their way across the street and past the judges’ stand. Just as they reached the opposite side, they pretended to run each other through, then both dropped dramatically to the ground to resounding applause.

“It would appear that the duel ended in a draw.” Berry beamed and clapped wildly.

“Oh my God.” Brooke laughed. “Did you ever see anything so funny?”

The crowd was on their feet after the two boys stood up and grinned.

“What timing,” Berry said proudly. “What showmanship.”

“You can tell that Cody spent his formative years in Hollywood”—Dallas leaned halfway across Berry to tell Brooke—“but Logan is just a natural.”

“That’s going to be a hard act to follow,” Jesse agreed.

“Here come the jugglers.” Berry pointed to the street below. “I do believe they’re Nita’s grandsons.”

“Nita owns the antique shop across the street from Cuppachino,” Brooke told Jesse.

“Which sort of proves my point about everyone knowing everyone here,” he leaned over to whisper in her ear.

She tilted her head slightly so that his lips were dangerously close to the side of her face. For a moment she met his eyes, and her heart thumped inside her chest.

Stop it
, she commanded herself.
Just … stop it
.

Jesse was so easy to be with, such fun to be with, because all he wanted from her was her friendship. Hadn’t he made that clear? He hadn’t asked her out, hadn’t called the house like some love-struck teenager the way some others had. And she did like him—a lot—but since she wasn’t looking for a relationship, she appreciated the fact that he hadn’t put her in an awkward position by trying to be something more. Which would ruin their friendship, she reasoned, and that would put an end to days like today, when she’d totally forgotten herself and simply enjoyed his company without feeling any pressure to be anything else. Besides, he wasn’t attracted to her in the way other guys were, or he’d have pursued something other than friendship, right? So it was a good thing that they could just be friends, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

An hour later, when the last of the parade participants
had passed the judges’ stand, Brooke stood and stretched.

“So will we see you at the ball tonight, Jesse?” she asked.

“Are you going?”

“Sure.” She pointed to the crowd of costumed children. “There could be a prize in someone’s future. No way I’m going to get out of attending.”

“Where do they hold it?”

“In the old Grange Hall on Harbor Road. It usually starts around eight, it’s over by ten. Not a real ‘ball’ in the traditional sense. Though I suppose it was at one time.” She turned to Berry, who was slow to get up and grumbling about having stayed in one position for too long. “I’ll bet Berry would know.”

“What’s that, dear?” Berry leaned on Archer’s arm.

“Didn’t there used to be a real ball on Halloween night? With fancy costumes and a band and champagne at midnight?”

“Oh, my, yes.” She nodded enthusiastically. “Back before Halloween became such a big holiday for children.”

“Back before members of our generation started dying or moving away,” Archer added.

“True enough, dear. There aren’t quite so many of us former queens left in town.”

“You were a Halloween queen, Berry?” Dallas turned to her great-aunt in surprise. “You never said.”

“You never asked.” Berry sniffed and started down the bleachers to the street below.

“She was magnificent,” Archer told them over his shoulder as he accompanied her.

“Of course I was,” she said grandly.

“The woman never changes.” Dallas shook her head, and followed the elderly couple. “And may she never …”

“She was quite the thing back in the … what, thirties, forties, fifties?” Jesse took Brooke’s arm to steady her as they made their way through the crowd. “She was a real film star, right?”

Brooke nodded. “She was the most famous person ever to come out of St. Dennis. Well, until Dallas, but Dallas wasn’t born here. She and Wade started coming to stay for the summers after their father died. He’d been Berry’s only nephew, and they were very close.”

Jesse appeared to be about to speak, but they were distracted by the small group of three who started to climb the bleachers toward them. Brooke’s first thought was that it was strange that anyone would be coming up the bleachers when everyone else was going down. Until she saw Grace Sinclair’s beaming face—and the sparkling shiny thing Grace held in her hand.

Oh, no, no, no. Please no. Not me. Not me. Anyone but me …

Overhead, gulls were circling and squawking, and a breeze had kicked up off the Bay. Jesse had just taken Brooke’s arm so that she wouldn’t stumble on the somewhat unstable bleachers, and he was thinking that so far today, he must have scored some serious points, when she stiffened and her entire demeanor changed. Her face had lost its color and her eyes had widened as if in terror. And frankly, the grip she had on his arm sure did feel like real fear to him. She’d stood motionless and mute as Grace Sinclair and two people Jesse recognized but didn’t know approached her with a sparkly crown.

“Brooke Madison Bowers, we’re happy to say that you’ve been unanimously selected as queen of this year’s Halloween festivities,” Grace had said. She leaned forward and added softly, “We’re all so proud of you. Your acts of kindness have not gone unnoticed.”

“Congratulations, Brooke,” the two men had said with much enthusiasm.

Brooke had appeared to be in a daze. When she finally
snapped out of it, she’d said something like, “I don’t think … that is, maybe someone else …”

“No, no, dear. We all agreed that you were the perfect choice.” Grace had stepped behind her and placed the crown on her head. “Hold still now. We’re going to have to secure this with some pins.”

Grace had pulled some bobby pins from her pocket and proceeded to affix the crown to the unsmiling Brooke’s head. The look she’d shot Jesse had been sheer misery.