Love Finds You in Hershey, Pennsylvania (20 page)

“There,” she pronounced. “I never did like those things.”

Sadie pushed her plate aside.

“Thanks, Aunt Matilda.”

The old woman beamed.

“Is schizophrenia generally a problem in old age?” she asked in a whispered aside to Jasper.

He grinned but didn’t reply as he kindly edged his plate toward Sadie, offering her some of his fries. She smiled gratefully at him and reached for a few.

“Aunt Matilda,” Jasper began in an effort to get things back on track, “have I mentioned that Sadie and I are dating now?”

“What?” Matilda leaned forward. “What was that?”

“We’re
dating
,” Jasper repeated with succinct pronunciation.

“You’re mating!” Matilda leaned back in shock.

Sadie immediately stood to her feet and extended her hand to Kylie. “Come on, baby, time to go to the bathroom.”

Kylie looked up at her in confusion. “But Kylie doesn’t have to go, Mommy—”

“Now, Kylie—
now
.”

With a weary sigh, Kylie crawled under the table and out of the booth, slipping her hand into Sadie’s with a grumble. As Jasper attempted to calm Matilda, they headed off toward the back of the restaurant with Kylie asking in a much-louder voice than necessary, “Mommy, what’s
mating
?”

When it came time to return Matilda to the nursing home, Sadie and Kylie helped the old woman to her room as Jasper lingered at the nurses’ station to speak to someone in charge about Matilda’s denture collection.

While Jasper was occupied, Sadie pulled forth a decorative tin filled with cookies, which she had carried in with her from the car.

“Aunt Matilda, I brought you a little special something.”

Matilda tugged an orange-and-brown afghan around her shriveled thighs and eyed Sadie warily. Clearly, her assessment of Sadie’s character had not been entirely reformed just yet.

“Mommy, Kylie doesn’t think that’s a good idea,” the five-year-old girl piped up, eyeing the tin with a similar expression of wariness.

Sadie glanced at her daughter. “Why not?”

Kylie just sighed in a way that made Sadie narrow her eyes at this seemingly long-suffering forbearance.

Ignoring this reaction, she turned her attention back to Matilda. “I made them myself,” she assured the elderly lady. Removing the tin lid, she waved the container back and forth beneath Matilda’s nose.

“They’re chocolate chip–walnut.”

“Ohhh.” Kylie’s little hands covered her face.

Sadie felt a prick of irritation at that. “Come on. Try one.” This was a new recipe, and Sadie felt absolutely confident that, this time, her dessert-making efforts had been a success.

She’d been practicing.

Removing a walnut-encrusted disk from the tin, she waved it under Matilda’s nose.

Matilda sneezed. “Smells like cat litter,” she declared.

A few stray crumbs floated onto the afghan. Matilda stared at them. “
Looks
like cat litter.”

Kylie giggled, and Sadie threw her a look. The expression on Sadie’s face instantly silenced her.

Sadie’s teeth clenched tighter than a vise, and she forced through them the suggestion, “Why—don’t—you—just—try—one?”

Matilda may have been old. And she may have been senile. But she was certainly not stupid. “Do I look like your guinea pig, young lady?”

Sadie pursed her lips. “Eat it.”

“No.”

“You’ll like it.”

Matilda crossed her arms. “Why don’t
you
eat it?”

Sadie’s hand, hanging in midair, drooped slightly. “You want
me
to eat it?”

Matilda nodded.

Sadie swallowed.

“Well, I—I suppose I could…. ” She lifted the crumbly cookie toward her face.

Kylie’s eyes grew round. Sadie licked her lips, and Matilda’s eyes narrowed to thin slits.

With a little breath, Sadie stuffed a bite of the cookie into her mouth and chewed vigorously.

“Mmmm!
Dell-esh-us!
” she muttered around the dry mounds. Cardboard cutouts tasted more appetizing. But it had to be just her. She could whip up bisques to soufflés, appetizers to entrees…surely her desserts were not so bad.

She grinned confidently and extended the remains of the cookie. Kylie’s eyes darted rapidly back and forth between the two women.

Matilda’s head cocked.

She’s buying it… .

The old woman leaned forward and opened her mouth, the clean line of her dentures standing at arms. Taking no chances, Sadie immediately stuffed the rest of the cookie into Matilda’s mouth and waited breathlessly.

The wrinkled jaws chewed seemingly involuntarily. Chew, chew, chew…a few attempts to swallow…no swallowing…

Matilda opened her mouth and attempted to gasp but managed only a raspy, sucking sound. Her bleached blue eyes widened and filled with liquid, but no sound escaped her lips except that constant rasp.

Sadie grew alarmed as Matilda’s bony fingers reached for her throat. Kylie scurried over.

“Mommy! She’s choking!”

Matilda’s vein-thickened hands clutched at her neck.

“Matilda?”

Only the sucking sound in reply.

“Mommy! She’s
blue
!”

Matilda’s skin
had
taken on a color similar to that of her now-wide eyes. Sadie jumped to her feet and reached for the pitcher of water. She poured it with shaking hands, sloshing liquid over the sides and onto the floor.

Rushing to Matilda’s side, Sadie thrust the straw between her crumb-speckled lips and urged the old lady to drink.

This complicated matters as Matilda attempted to inhale the liquid and only served to pull more crumbs even farther back into her throat. She sputtered like an old engine and grabbed Sadie’s hair, tugging in desperation.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,
ow
!” Sadie cried, as she attempted to pull her head free.

“Purple!” Kylie cried as Matilda’s color heightened to an entirely new shade.

Sadie pulled at Matilda’s skeletal arm, attempting to free herself, but the woman had a death grip on her hair.

“Kylie! Get Jasper!”

Kylie whirled and pattered out into the hall, looking both directions in an attempt to remember which way they’d come in.

“Kylie!” Sadie called.

The little girl turned.

“That way,” Sadie pointed.

Kylie raced off in the direction her mother indicated, calling Jasper’s name at the top of her lungs.

Matilda continued to struggle futilely, pulling in small tufts of cookie- crumb air into her failing lungs. Sadie still fought for control of her head, praying for a miracle and inwardly listing cookie ingredients.

One cup brown sugar—check.

Two teaspoons vanilla—check.

One-half teaspoon salt—check.

I didn’t forget the eggs, did I? No, I couldn’t have. Two eggs— check.

She had gone through the recipe one whole turn and was starting it a second time when Jasper finally arrived in the doorway with a squadron of nurses on his tail. Kylie worked her way through a forest of legs and pointed out the obvious.

“Aunt Matilda is choking!”

The nurses swarmed the room with SWAT-like efficiency. It took two of them to disengage Matilda’s fingers from Sadie’s hair. The others went to work gently pounding Matilda’s back, rubbing her throat, and finally administering a version of the Heimlich maneuver that made leg-eating cannibals look tame.

A congealed glob of cookie matter, peppered with walnut-and-chocolate-chip remains, flew across the room, hit the wall, and dropped to the floor right beneath Matilda’s framed print of
Whistler’s Mother
.

Oh, the shame.

Sadie dared not look at Jasper, but after a moment, she felt his reassuring hand against the small of her back. She relaxed, though she still didn’t look at him. But a moment later, she stiffened as Matilda drew in a clean lungful of air and screeched in indignation.

“The hussy tried to kill me! Murder! Murder!”

The crew of nurses each turned to stare at her. Sadie felt her eyes fill with tears.

“It was a cookie,” she tried to explain. “I just wanted her to try my cookies!”

With a clicking of tongues, the nurses turned and attempted to comfort Matilda. They fluffed her pillows and rearranged her afghan and crooned and cooed at her until she settled down.

Sadie felt it was all a colossal conspiracy. Honestly. The old woman’s system had probably dried up on its own. Her cookies hadn’t really had anything to do with it…had they?

A dark-haired nurse with full cheeks and sharp eyes stalked over to them. “I believe that’s enough for one visit.”

“Yes, I quite think so,” Jasper agreed. His voice held just the faintest shadow of amusement, although Sadie also thought she detected a note of relief in there too.

For once, Kylie didn’t have to be told to gather her things. She did so quite efficiently all on her own.

Another nurse, smaller in stature and with kind gray eyes, brought over the tin container of cookies. She held them out to Sadie.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she whispered. “I’m not much of a cook myself.”

Sadie took the cookies and left the room without a word.

The ice cream was supposed to make up for the trauma of Sadie’s day, but somehow not even the idea of mocha chocolate chip with hot fudge quite salved the wound to Sadie’s spirit. The quaint little ice cream parlor along 322 on the way back from York was one of their favorite stops. Jasper held her hand as they stood in line, his thumb gently stroking hers while Kylie ran in circles around them and vibrated her lips in imitation of a plane’s buzz.

“They were only cookies,” Sadie repeated for the fourteenth time.

“You can’t win them all, Sadie.”

She sighed. “You don’t understand.”

Jasper raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Oh, really? I understand you can be obsessed—that you’re a bit of a control freak.” He nudged her to ease the sting of this remark but then grew serious. “You can’t always be the best, Sadie. You can be good—really good. Maybe you can win a few…but you can’t win them all. Be content with what you’re good at and let the rest go. It’s only food.”

“It’s not just food! It’s a type of
art
!”

He faced her directly, and Kylie wove her way in between them with a
putt, putt, putt
sound. The plane’s engine was failing.

“Sadie. It’s a cookie.”

“It’s
not
just a cookie.”

“Aha! See! That’s my point. Where it should just be a cookie, you turn it into a competition.”

Sadie rolled her eyes and took a step forward as the line moved. “But I only wanted Matilda to
try
one. I just wanted to prove that… that…” What
was
she trying to prove? She bit her lip. “Who do you think I’m competing with, anyway?”

Jasper draped an arm around her shoulder. “Yourself, sweetheart. Only with yourself. Besides…” He gave her a lecherous grin. “I’ll try your cookies any day.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a ridiculous gesture she couldn’t help but smile at.

Her smile quickly turned to a frown as the customer in front of them ordered.

“Two of the chocolate chip cookie dough, medium size.”

Sadie sighed.

“It’s just that…” She turned then and faced Jasper, her desperate brown eyes staring into his soft blue ones. “I can
do
this. I know I can.”

Jasper brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his touch feather-light and tender. “But what if you can’t?” he asked her.

Sadie’s lips parted with an answer even she was not sure of when a voice came between them.

“Can I take your order?”

Jasper turned his attention to the counter staff, and Sadie distractedly admired the way his jaw flexed strongly as he ordered ice cream for the three of them. Kylie had stopped her airplane imitation and now clung tightly to his legs. He laid a hand atop her soft brown head as he accepted the change from the bill.

It’s so easy for him,
Sadie thought. So simple to just accept who he was—his talents and limitations—without fear of rejection, self-loathing, or ineptitude. Jasper made life seem effortless. She didn’t know how to do that. She had never known how to do that.