The Summer Girlfriend (Heart Beach, #1)(2)
The corners of Minnie’s mouth lifted in a smile as she walked toward the window with Celeste right on her heels. Jeremiah followed and watched as his wife and daughter peered out the window onto the street. He tried to picture their lives here during summers for years to come. A feeling of warmth and rightness nestled in his chest.
Minnie looked over at him and let out a small laugh. “I can’t believe Mama’s recipes got us all the way here.”
Jeremiah grinned. After college, Minnie had worked as a teacher, and Jeremiah had continued his custodian work while taking night classes. They got by, but they lived paycheck to paycheck in a one-bedroom apartment. Neither he nor Minnie came from money, so they didn’t have a nest egg gifted to them by their parents. Minnie was the second oldest of nine children and had grown up in poverty, and Jeremiah was the only son of a widowed mother who’d worked multiple jobs to keep a roof over their heads. Jeremiah and Minnie knew how it felt to go to bed hungry, or to go without in general. He was determined to figure out a way to spare them from struggle.
His answer arrived when Minnie became pregnant with Celeste. In the evenings, like clockwork, Minnie craved something sweet. But not just anything sweet. She craved one of her mother’s desserts that she used to bake whenever they had extra money. Too tired and uncomfortable to stand and make the sweets herself, Minnie dictated the recipes to Jeremiah, who was all too willing to please her. The first dessert that he baked for Minnie was a pound cake. He made some instinctual alterations to the recipe, like adding an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract, adding one less teaspoon of lemon flavoring, and sprinkling in a bit of brown sugar. He sent up a prayer that the cake would taste good. An hour later when he pulled it out of the oven and Minnie took her first bite, she moaned, and her eyes rolled to the back of her head in bliss.
“Jeremiah, baby,” she said, mouth full. “Mama would probably slap me silly if she heard me say this, but this is the best pound cake I’ve ever tasted.”
“Really?” In disbelief, Jeremiah took a bite of the slice that Minnie held out to him. The fluffy, sugary texture touched his tongue, and as he chewed, he fully understood why Minnie’s immediate reaction was to moan. “Lord, this is good.”
Delighted, Minnie laughed and hurried to cut them each another slice.
Jeremiah baked whatever she wanted. Not just pound cakes, but 7 Up cake, pecan pie, and cinnamon apple pie. Carrot cake, drop sugar cookies, classic chocolate chip. It became a source of joy for Jeremiah, baking whatever his wife desired as their baby grew in her womb. Minnie brought some of his desserts to work to share with her coworkers and students, and soon word got around town about Jeremiah’s baking. Requests started pouring in. People wanted him to bake cakes and pies for their birthday parties and holiday gatherings.
Jeremiah quickly realized the business potential that they had on their hands. Most evenings after work, he baked late into the night. And after Celeste was born, Jeremiah kept her swaddled to his chest, whipping batter as Minnie bustled around the kitchen, helping to package his increasing orders. They saved as much as they could, and within a couple years, they had enough money put aside to quit their jobs and rent a storefront and open their own bakery. They coined it Smith’s Sweets. A year after that, they bought their very first home.
Now, a few years later, the Smiths had a place of their own to vacation in the summers. They’d come such a long way.
“Can we go see the beach, Daddy?” Celeste asked, tugging on Jeremiah’s coat sleeve.
He smiled down at his daughter. “Of course, sweetheart.”
The family of three huddled together against the wind as they walked the few short blocks toward the beach. Because it wasn’t tourist season yet, the beach was mostly empty, save for the seagulls looking for food. In a couple of months, almost every inch of sand would be overtaken with beach towels and umbrellas, and a tramcar would announce its coming and going as it navigated up and down the boardwalk. But today, it was just the three Smiths walking across the beach, their eyes on the ocean in the distance.
They stopped walking before they reached the wet sand. Jeremiah lifted Celeste to sit on his shoulders, and Minnie leaned her head against his arm.
“It’s too cold to swim now, right, Daddy?” Celeste said.
“Yes, too cold today, sweetheart,” he answered. “But we’ll be back soon when it’s warm. And when we’re here, you can come to the beach every day if you want.”
“Every day?”
Jeremiah angled his head and glanced up, seeing the wonder in his daughter’s eyes. This was what it was all for. All their sacrifice and late nights. To see that awestruck expression on his daughter’s face as she looked at the ocean. To witness his wife’s smile and hear her contented sigh. To know that Celeste would never have to want for anything in life, that she wouldn’t know struggle the way that he and Minnie had.
“Yes, sweetheart,” Jeremiah said. “Every day.”
Jeremiah thought of Dr. Thomas’s wish to keep their new Heart Beach home in their family for generations to come. In that moment, he had no way of knowing that years later, Celeste would give birth to three children, including a son whom she’d name after her father.
As Jeremiah Smith I stood with his wife and daughter, feet from the ocean in Heart Beach on that cold March day, he felt completely warm inside.
This was only the beginning.