Goddess of Spring (39 page)

“Come on,” she said. Rushing out from behind the counter she grabbed his arm and led him to the door. As she stepped out of the bakery, she could hear Anton sighing mournfully and saying, “What a waste . . .”

The evening was chilly, and Lina should have already put up the little café tables and chairs that sat on the sidewalk outside the bakery, but as she struggled to find some barrier she could erect between them, she was glad she hadn't. She sat down at one table, and Scott took the chair across from her. Before she could say anything, he slid it around so that they were sitting close together. Seeing her shiver, he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was warm, and it smelled faintly like expensive aftershave and virile young man. He would have taken her hand, but she kept it out of reach in her lap.

“Scott,” she began, honestly wishing that the sexy way his muscular chest looked in his dress shirt could make her feel more than an aesthetic appreciation for his well-toned physique. “I told you before. It's over between us. I wish you would respect that and just let it alone.”

Scott shook his head. “I can't. There's no reason for it. Just two weeks ago everything was fine. Everything was better than fine. And then one day I wake up and,
wham!
It's all over. No explanation. After almost six months, you dump me and you won't even tell me how I screwed up.”

“That's because
you
didn't screw up.
Merda!
I told you before—it's me, not you.” He's perfect, Lina added silently. Young and handsome and successful and attentive. He needed to go find a nice young woman and settle down in the suburbs with a big mortgage, 2.5 kids and a dog.

“Tell me again. I don't understand how you can suddenly be so different. What is it?”

“You're too young for me, Scott,” Lina said earnestly.

“Would you please stop it with that crap! I'm twenty-five, not fifteen. I'm not too young.”

“So let's say it's not that you're too young. Let's say the problem is that I'm too old.”

“You are not,” he leaned forward and pulled her hand from her lap, holding it in both of his. “I don't care that you're forty-three. You're beautiful and sexy, but it's more than that. Your heart is young. You sparkle, Lina. When we were together, you made me feel like I was a god.”

Lina smiled sadly. “Not anymore. I'm not like that inside anymore.” She stood up and pulled her hand from his. Then she slipped his jacket from her shoulders and gave it back to him. “I can't give you what you need. I don't have it inside of me anymore. Please, just leave me alone.”

He shook his head. “I can't. I'm in love with you.”

“Okay, here's the truth, Scott. I'm in love with someone else.”

Scott straightened in his chair and the skin on his face tightened. “Someone else?”

“Yes. I didn't mean for it to happen, but it did. I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you.”

His handsome young face flushed and Lina watched as he erected a barrier of pride between them. Scott stood up. His jaw was set, but his eyes were sad.

“I hadn't realized there was someone else, but I guess I should have known. You're too amazing to be alone. I apologize for bothering you. Good-bye, Lina.”

“Good-bye, Scott,” she said to his retreating figure as he walked away from the bakery.

Feeling seventy-three instead of forty-three, Lina slowly reentered the bakery.

Anton, Dolores, and just about every other face in the store looked up at her expectantly, but when they saw that she was alone, they looked quickly away.

“I think I'll call it quits early today,” Lina said.

“Oh, no problem, boss lady.” Anton smiled at her and gave her arm a motherly pat.

“Yeah, we can take care of locking up,” Dolores said. “You need some time off. You've been working really hard.”

Anton nodded. “Why don't you sleep in tomorrow, and then go for a nice massage and a facial. You know, from that place you found a few months ago. Remember, you said that they knew how to treat you like a goddess.”

“Want me to call and set up an appointment for you?” Dolores asked.

“No, I'll be fine,” Lina said, grabbing her purse and her jacket. “But you're right. I think I need to sleep in tomorrow.” She tried to smile at them, but her lips didn't form much more than a grimace.

“Oh, by the way, we're almost out of the ambrosia cream cheese. You better make some more soon. Or . . . you could let us in on your secret recipe,” Dolores said, waggling her eyebrows at her boss.

“Yeah, we've already promised not to sell it to terrorists, or to Hostess, even though it would breathe new life into their dreadful Twinkies.” Anton shuddered dramatically.

Lina rallied her sense of humor. “A girl has to have some secrets of her own.” She winked at Anton and slung her purse over her shoulder. “I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, and I'll have a new tub of ambrosia cream cheese with me.” She tried to swing jauntily through the door.

Her employees watched her go. As soon as she was out of sight, they met behind the counter and put their heads together.

“Something's wrong with her,” Dolores said.

“Well, of course there is, she broke up with that young stud,” Anton said.

“It's more than that.” Dolores sighed. “She liked Scott, but I never got the feeling that he meant more to her than a good time. Breaking up with him shouldn't make her this sad.”

Anton thought about it and nodded. “You're right. It is something else. She's not herself—again. Remember how weird she acted last spring?”

“Of course I remember, but she was worried about losing the bakery.”

“Well, she saved Pani Del Goddess, and it did her good. She changed her whole image. She bought different clothes, started roller skating along the river. I swear she lost ten pounds.”

Dolores nodded. “She even changed her hair.”

“
And
she started dating young men. Adorable young men,” Anton said.

“So, what's the point? That's all old news. What does that have to do with what's going on with her now?” Dolores asked.

Anton shrugged his shoulders. “Could be some kind of delayed stress reaction. Or maybe a tragic split-personality syndrome that is manifesting in her middle-age.”

Dolores rolled her eyes at him. “You've got to stop watching so much Discovery Health Channel. How about this: it could be that she worked herself too hard and now she needs a vacation.”

“Oh, poo! You always spoil the dramatic effect,” Anton said.

“Let's just agree to keep an eye on her and take as much work off her shoulders as we can. Okay?”

“Okay.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“YES! Yes! Yes! I know—I love you, too.” Lina struggled to get in the door, past her over-enthusiastic, slobbering bulldog. “Edith Anne, will you behave? Let me take off my coat and put down my purse.” The bulldog backed off half a step, still whining and wriggling. Patchy Poo the Pud jumped down from his perch on the chaise and was rubbing himself against her legs, complaining in indignant meows that she wasn't giving him enough attention, either.

“Crazy animals,” she muttered, hanging up her coat. “Okay, come here.” She sat in the middle of the hall and let Edith climb into her lap while she scratched Patch under his chin. The bulldog licked her happily. The cat purred. Lina sighed. “Well, at least the two of you missed the real me.” Her pets looked as well-fed and healthy as they had the night before Demeter had transported her away, but from the moment she'd reappeared in the middle of her living room, the two of them hadn't wanted to let her out of their sight. They followed her from room to room. Patchy Poo the Pud had even gone as far as to sit outside of the bathroom and yowl if she didn't let him in with her. “You two need to relax,” she told the adoring creatures.

But secretly she liked it that they were so pleased that she was back. At least she wasn't a disappointment to them. Everyone else kept looking at her like she'd suddenly grown a third eye. No, that wasn't it. People didn't treat her like she was doing anything weird, they were treating her like she
wasn't
doing something, like they kept expecting more from her.

How had Persephone been more like Lina than Lina was like herself ? She sighed and gently pushed Edith Anne off her lap. Persephone was a goddess. Of course people wanted Lina to be like her. Who wouldn't rather be around a goddess?

Hades . . . Her thoughts whispered his name before she could stop herself. Hades had liked being with her more than he had liked being with any goddess.

She shook her head.

“No,” she reminded herself. “That's not true. He only wanted to be with me as long as he thought I was Persephone.” She remembered the look on his face when he had seen who she really was.

“No!” Lina stopped herself, she wouldn't think about that.

She had to pull herself together. She'd been moping around like a jilted schoolgirl for two weeks. She'd been hurt before, why should this time be any different? It wasn't like she was going through another divorce.

Lina stared, unseeing, down the hall. It wasn't like a divorce. It was worse. Why did she feel like part of her—the best part of her—was missing?

Lina remembered the night she and Hades had watched the soul mates drink from the River Lethe. He had told her that soul mates would always find each other again. But what happened if they were separated by time and worlds? Did their hearts turn into wastelands? Did their capacity for happiness erode until they were just walking shells, going through the motions of daily living but not really feeling alive?

That wasn't what was happening to her. Hades couldn't be her soul mate. He had rejected her. She'd just done something she should have been too old to have allowed herself to do. She'd fallen in love with someone she couldn't ever have. She'd made a mistake. She was simply going to have to get over him and get on with her life.

She'd be all right. She'd make it. Time would help it not to hurt so badly.

Edith Anne whined while Patchy Poo the Pud rubbed a worried circle around her legs.

Lina pushed the sadness away from her heart and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, you two. Let's make some ambrosia cream cheese.”

 

 

IT didn't matter how many times she read it, it still gave her a weird feeling. The paper that the note and the recipe had been written on was from her private stationary that had CFS printed across the top in the Copperplate Gothic Bold she liked so well. The words were written in her favorite blue pen, and the handwriting was identical to her own. But she hadn't written it. She'd found it taped to Edith Anne's dog food bin the day Demeter had brought her back. She'd almost ignored it. After all, it had been in her own handwriting. She'd thought it was just an old note she'd written to herself reminding her to get more dog food, or dog treats, or other items of dog paraphernalia. Then the salutation registered in her mind,
Dear Lina,
and her eyes had moved quickly to the closing,
Here's wishing you joy and magic, Persephone.

Lina had taken the note into the living room and read it. Then, just as she did now, she thought how bizarre it was that she and Persephone's handwriting was identical.

 

The cream cheese recipe was written neatly on the back of the note. Lina studied it one more time. She didn't want to follow it, but Persephone had been right, their customers did love it, and she didn't want to disappoint them either.

She refilled her glass of pinot grigio, leaving the bottle on the counter next to the crock that she'd already filled with softened cream cheese. She didn't need to double check the calendar to see if there was a full moon. All she had to do was to glance out the kitchen window. There was no escaping it. A round white moon was hanging brightly in the clear night sky.

“Just get it over with. It's not like you're a stranger to magic.” She grabbed a measuring cup from the cabinet. “And stop talking to yourself.”

She put the recipe on the counter and began the steps it would take to make ambrosia cream cheese.

Persephone's recipe was wordy. Lina sipped from her glass of wine while she read it.