“Helping people isn’t the same as loving them, Sadie.”
She shook off the memory as she drank the cold dregs of her tea and started making a list of healing herbs. She loved Gigi. And magic would save her. That, as far as she was concerned, was that.
She ran through possibilities. Adder’s tongue and amaranth, of course, not to mention goat’s rue and heliotrope. She would start off with something small. Maybe trying to heal a dead plant. Or if she could find an injured animal in the forest, even better. This would work. It had to.
She snapped her notebook closed, and with determination in every step, prepared for the most important task of her life.
She got to the café far earlier than she needed to gather the rarer herbs she kept in the kitchen. After work she’d round up the other herbs from her garden and prep them for the spell.
She drank in the quiet comfort of her shop. The long front counter, made from reclaimed wood, was spotless. She watered the plants and herbs in their clay pots, where they rested on hand-milled wood shelves. Next to them, old black and white framed photos of Poppy Meadows in the 1940s hung on the wall. All throughout the space, Edison bulbs dripped from the ceiling at different heights. Hand-strung crystals rained down from horizontally suspended manzanita branches, reflecting rainbows of early morning light across all of the surfaces. It smelled like the holidays from the cleaner she made herself. Clove and lemon and citrus, with a hint of eucalyptus. It was like walking into a Christmas morning memory. And it was quiet. The peaceful kind of quiet that was laced with hope and expectation.
The large glass front cases were stocked with the day’s offerings, their handwritten cards placed tidily beside each dish. There were apricot and basil shortbread tarts for protection, and peach thyme crumbles in individual cups, if you weren’t feeling like yourself. There was lemon and lavender pound cake that had been baked in mini Bundt tins, if sleep was eluding you. Sadie served it with decaf Duchess Grey tea with extra milk and a generous dollop of clover honey. Now she sat at the high counter along the far wall, where all the stools were mismatched but perfect neighbors.
She took a deep breath. Everything was ready. Everything felt right.
“Today is going to be a good day,” she said again, speaking into the cheery silence of the shop.
Sadie’s optimism lasted until exactly 10:02 AM.
She’d tried to get Gigi to go home. To relax. Conserve her energy. But her grandmother had laughed outright before making Sadie swear an oath of silence about her cancer. She made her swear on the lemon tree, an oath that couldn’t be broken without severe consequences. Watching her grandmother bustle about the shop, it was hard to believe the news she’d shared last night. And that, somehow, made it easier to believe she could find a cure. To be okay with going about their day as if Sadie’s routine, her heart, her thoughts, weren’t coming apart at the seams.
It was Saturday, their busiest day, and Gail and Gigi were taking care of customers up front while Sadie was cooking up half a dozen chilled lemon cream and lavender pies.
Three were for the store and three to bring to church the next day. She’d stored a bowl of melted butter on the high shelf, so it wouldn’t be knocked over. But as she reached up to grab it, her fingers slipped, and the butter sloshed out.
The slick mess coated the right side of her hair, face, and shoulder like a greasy rain. Her eye was clamped shut to keep the butter out, and she felt blindly around for a dishtowel. Cursing and coming up empty-handed, she banged through the door, to grab some napkins from behind the counter, only to see through her one good eye a group of men coming in.
No, no, no, this was not happening. Three were firemen that Sadie knew. And the fourth …
She couldn’t move. The butter had somehow leaked into her brain and scrambled it.
Her eyes darted back to the kitchen, and when they swiveled forward again, she was staring straight into the startlingly dark eyes of none other than Jake McNealy.
Here she was, squinting like a buttered-up pirate, and there was the bane of her existence, doing everything in his power not to laugh and utterly failing.
Excellent. This was so, so excellent.
“Sadie makes the best desserts in town,” one of the men said, clapping a hand on Jake’s shoulder.
Before yesterday she never in a million years would have imagined him in her store. And seeing him there, a smile taking up half his face—well, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.
Last night she’d thought it would be easy to shove him out of her mind. To forget about him yet again. And now the universe was mocking her, delivering him on a silver platter while she was drowned in butter.