Cedar Creek Seasons (39 page)

Once the town found out about his buche de noel cakes, he’d been busier than Cedarburg’s holiday event calendar. But a tight schedule didn’t keep him from wishing things could be different between them, and wishing he could be honest with her without betraying another confidence.

Why she let him continue to visit Oompa, he couldn’t say. She kept her distance, that’s for sure.

“I tried a new recipe,” he said, plate extended toward her. The Christmas log looked so much like birch bark, he half expected it to crinkle when he cut into it.

“No, thank you. I’m not … hungry.” Beth busied herself arranging moebius scarves on a pegged stand.

Strained, but civil.

“Beth, I think you’ll like it. Try just a bite?”

“I’m sorry. I have a customer.”

He scanned the Yarn Shop. Oompa’s eyes were closed, though his chair rocked as if teased by the gusts of warm air from the temperamental furnace. Shoppers passed on the sidewalk outside the window. Some even stopped to look at Beth’s holiday display of knit ornaments.

No one else occupied the shop. She had a customer?

As if knowing his thoughts, she added, “On the Internet.”

She wasn’t anywhere near her computer. But she also wasn’t a liar. That label belonged to him. Temporarily. It hadn’t seemed so complicated in its origins; benevolent, even. But now the ruse fed the tension both between them and inside him.

Beth, if you only knew …

“I’ll leave you to your work, then.” He set the plate on the cash counter. She opened her mouth as if to object but didn’t.

“Hey!” Oompa hollered from his now stock-still chair. Pointing at the air between the two, he yelled, “Sparks like that could hurt somebody!”

The room fairly crackled with his distress. And it smelled faintly of burnt wiring.

“Get away from there!” Oompa shouted, rising from his chair.

A blue-white spark shot out of the light switch behind the counter, sizzling through the space between Derrick and Beth. They both jumped back. Like frantic synchronized swimmers, they simultaneously pulled out their cell phones, punched a series of three numbers and yelled, “Fire at the Yarn Shop!” as the lights went out.

Oompa adjusted the nosepiece of his oxygen tubing. “You know, Cedarburg’s first firehouse burned to the ground. Ironic, huh?”

Beth gripped the broom handle tighter and resumed sweeping singed plaster from the floor behind the counter. She should have insisted he stay away from the place. But his insister was stronger than hers. Now that danger of sparks and smoke were gone, he insisted on being in the middle of the action.

“This building is still standing, such as it is,” she said, eyeing the thin, smoky shadow that rose a foot and a half above the now defunct light switch. “Once we get the rest of the wiring replaced, we shouldn’t have to worry about that, at least.”

“Did you call the electrician?”

“Oompa! The firemen just left! Give me a minute.”

She dropped the broom and her irritation. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have groused at you. Sometimes I think this building will be the death of me.” She crossed to where Oompa’s rocker sat in its current new location, dislodged from its roots by conscientious firemen searching every inch of the shop and the attached apartment for more signs of electrical shorts.

“Oompa, forgive me.”

He stroked her hair with more gentleness than frailty. “Oh, child. I’m the one who should ask your forgiveness.”

“For what?”

“Saddling you with this building, this shop, with me. That’s no life for a young woman like you.”

The words forming in Beth’s throat got stuck there. She urged them out. “I am so blessed to have had you in my life. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” That began to sound like a eulogy, so she shifted direction. “You’ve loved me through some hard years. You’ve always been there for me.”

He leaned his head back. “Did you just say those things to me or to the good Lord?”

A tear traced a Cedar Creek–crooked path down her cheek. “Both, I guess.”

“That’s my girl. I wish I could have handed you a building that wasn’t so ornery. And a business that stirred your heart.”

She drew back. “It’s an honor to manage the Yarn Shop.”

“But it’s not your heart’s desire, now, is it?” He tucked his chin to his chest. The oxygen tubing buckled like bent wings at the sides of his throat. She reached to make sure the flow wasn’t interrupted.

“Don’t think I don’t know,” he said, “where your heart lies. Just a little while longer, Lord willing, and you’ll have a chance to pursue your own dream.”

The bell above the door jingled. Derrick walked in with what looked like industrial-strength soot cleaner and a giant-sized sponge. Miserable timing.
He is so not what Oompa meant
.

Erik shook the snowflakes off his built-in wooly cap. “It’s snowing.”

Beth ignored him, walked to the wide front windows, and peered out into the deepening night. Was she as enamored as he was with the way each snowflake seemed to light up when it drifted past one of the Christmas lights?

“Is it supposed to accumulate?” she asked.

So much for her appreciation of the artistry of it all. He couldn’t fault her, though. She’d been through a lot. It probably felt like her life was collapsing around her. Busiest season of the year and her shop was a mess. What might have happened to her inventory if the soot and flames had gone farther than that one wall behind the counter? What if smoke had filled the room rather than just smeared a wall? What if the spark had ignited Oompa’s oxygen? What if the short had happened in the middle of the night?

They all had a lot to be thankful for.
They?
Bad habit of his—presuming himself into the scene. Why hadn’t he been smart enough to hide the manuscript? So close to the end, so close to success, and he’d ruined what he now knew would have been the greatest reward for his efforts—a chance to win and keep Beth’s trust.

“Is it?”

He should have been grateful she was speaking to him. “Is it what?”

“Supposed to accumulate?”

“I’m not sure. Are you two going to be okay tonight?”

What was that expression on her face? Softness. As if she were at least a little grateful he cared. “We’re fine.”

Oompa half turned in his rocker. “Erik, put that stuff down and come here. It’s time we came clean with Beth. The secret’s about to do us both in.”

Oompa was in on it? That made no sense. Beth itched to step outside and clear her lungs, her head. Mid-December guaranteed stimulating iciness to the air. Beyond that door, she’d find no smell of soot or secrets.

“Beth, child?”

She rubbed her eyes and pressed her index fingers against her tear ducts. “I’m listening.”

As they had so many times in the past months, Beth sat on one side of the rocker and Erik on the other. She rested her hands in her lap and made eye contact with her grandfather. Brief glances at Erik were all she could manage.

Oompa drew a deep, oxygenated breath, smiled, and reached his hand toward Erik. “Beth, meet your new landlord.”

“Mr. Schurmer, are you sure this is the time to—?”

“Young man, look at her face. As much as we wanted to wait until Christmas Eve …”

She waved her hands in the air between the two men. “I’m here. You could talk to
me
about this whatever it is. Landlord?”

“I’ve sold the building to Erik. Well, officially to Nicole. She’s on her way.”

Beth looked from one smiling male to the other, the confusion intensified by their seeming disregard for her distress. “Who’s Nicole?”

“That would be me.”

The voice came from the entrance. A female version of the man she’d known as Derrick filled the doorway. Copper curls tamed by an updo that made her look even taller than her WNBA height matched Erik’s, hair follicle for hair follicle.

Beth sought confirmation from him. “Your sister?”

“
She’s
the one who made the basketball team. Hey, Nicole! Let me get that for you.”

The woman relinquished the microwave-sized box in her arms. “Somehow I knew I’d find you here.” She stripped off her leather gloves, hugged Erik, then rushed to embrace first Beth, then Oompa. “So good to finally meet you two!”

Beth’s mouth had hung open so long her tongue bumps dried out.

The box deposited on the counter near the cash register, Erik returned to the circle-of-life-and-confusion. He nudged Nicole toward the chair he’d occupied and drew another closer. “Oliver and Beth Schurmer, I’d like you to meet my much-loved sister, Nicole.”

The woman mirrored the same warmth and congeniality as her brother.

“Oompa, good to see you in person,” she said, patting his knee. “And Beth.” Without taking her gaze from Beth, she said, “Not that you need my opinion, Derrick, but I highly approve.”

Beth found her voice. “Okay, what’s going on here?”

Butter-smooth hands held hers as if the news about to be broadcast could change her life. “Beth, I make a mean brownie, but my sister and her husband own Life by Chocolate. I’m …”

“A writer. I know.”

“Nicole owns my building, and now this one, too.”

Beth stole a glance at Oompa. Unfazed, he continued grinning as if enjoying a rollicking good movie at the Rivoli.

“Oompa, is that true?” Her substitute career now had more than bad wiring to worry about.

“Hark, the herald angels sing! Glory to the newborn King! Peace on—”

Carolers dressed in heavy coats, some of them sporting Beth’s moebius scarves, stood outside the front window, beaming their joy into the shop through the plate glass. Beth considered flinging a shoe at the window in a “not now” gesture, but resisted. The crisis on hold until the song ended, she and the other three turned their full attention to the song. Beth caught the irony that Christmas and chaos collided in her—in Oompa’s—shop.

When the singers moved up the street, Beth let the truth of the song, the spirit of the season, unclench her nerve endings. “I don’t understand,” she said. If Nicole was anything like her brother, she possessed a caring heart and faith to match. How could any of those people not have her best interests in mind? Benefit of the doubt might be the most significant Christmas gift she gave this year.

Oompa’s face wore an expression of contentment. He leaned forward to say, “Beth, you’ve done a fine job taking over your grandmother’s wool business.”

She looked at the sooted, tangled, plaster-dandruffed shop.
Sure, I have
.

“Any hardships here existed before I made you take over.”

Her heart muscle cramped. “Oompa, you didn’t force me to manage the shop. I was lost and you …” Why couldn’t she pry the next word from the hollow in her neck?

“Loved you.” Oompa closed then opened his eyes, not a blink but a benediction. “I loved you, and I needed your help.”

“Me, too,” Erik added. “I mean, needed you. Not that that I don’t lo—”

Nicole slapped her brother on the knee. “Erik!” She shot a quick glance at Beth.

“It’s okay,” he sighed. “She knows I’m Erik Hoffman.”

“Does she know everything?”

Beth dragged the conversation back to first person. “I know you’re a writer. I know you’ve been listening to Oompa’s stories for a project of yours.”