The Chesapeake Diaries Series (132 page)

She checked her watch and noted that it was almost time for the school bus and Logan’s birthday party down at Scoop, so she took a shortcut around the side of the farmhouse and walked down the lane. Logan could still take the same bus to and from school and she’d still walk down to meet him at the same place. There’d be no real disruption to their schedule. The only real difference would be that they’d be in their own house again, just the two of them, like they were when Eric was overseas.

In retrospect, she knew that she’d been stronger, back then, than she was now. But Eric had still been alive, and the path before her had seemed so clear and sure, there’d been no reason for weakness, no cause
for doubt. Now her steps were more tentative because she no longer knew where they were leading, and her dreams were as muddled and confused as her future. And somewhere deep inside she knew that the longer she put off taking those first steps to put her life back together—however small those steps might be—the more likely it was that she’d still be here, living under her brother’s roof, in the house she grew up in, until she passed from this life into the next.

Watching her mother take those first steps had made Brooke think about things she really hadn’t wanted to face. Moving away from her comfort zone, even if that move only took her from the farmhouse as far as the orchard, was still a move in the right direction. The tenant house was close enough that Logan could still see Clay every day, but separate enough to give Clay his privacy. It seemed like the right solution at the right time.

Now she just had to figure out what it would take to make the old neglected house livable once again … and sell the idea to Clay.

Chapter 8

“You know, I’d thought about asking if you wanted me to fix up the tenant house for you, but I didn’t want you to think I was trying to get rid of you.” Clay leaned against the kitchen doorjamb.

“Was this before or after Mom told you she was moving?” Brooke emptied the dishwasher of the implements she needed for frosting and decorating her cupcakes for the following day. Logan’s birthday party had been a big success—as any child’s party at Scoop was sure to be—but she’d lost several hours of work time that now had to be made up. Not that she minded. Besides making her son happy, the few hours off had given Brooke a few hours of socializing with the mothers of Logan’s friends.

“Before. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of months. I thought maybe it was hard for you, living with Mom and me again after having been on your own and having your own place for so long. But I didn’t know how to bring it up without making you feel like I was kicking you out. You know I like having you around, but I gotta be truthful, Brooke. I
really love having the kid here.” He grinned. “Logan gives me an excuse to be a kid again.”

“When did you stop being a kid?” their mother asked as she came into the kitchen.

“I keep the kid in me around for Logan. He needs a playmate,” Clay replied.

“A shoddy excuse, that.” Hannah tapped Clay on the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper as she passed on her way to the paper recycling bin.

“Brooke’s thinking she might want to spruce up the tenant house and move down there,” Clay told her.

“Oh?” Hannah dropped the paper into the bin, then came back to the table where her son sat watching her daughter frost cupcakes. “Are they all going to be for sale?”

Brooke nodded. “Everyone wants three times as many because of the Halloween Parade tomorrow. At this rate I’m going to be baking until dawn.”

“So is that supposed to be a spiderweb?” Clay pointed to the thin black lines crisscrossing the top of one cupcake.

Brooke nodded. “That’s the prototype.” She picked up a cutting board and a package of black licorice. “Here. Make yourself useful. Cut the licorice as thinly as humanly possible.”

“Where’s the spider?” Hannah asked.

“I’m still working on that,” Brooke admitted. She looked toward the ceiling at the sound of running feet. Logan and his friend Cody were on the move. “That’s right, boys, run off all that sugar,” she muttered.

“While you’re working you can tell me about moving
into the tenant house.” Hannah pulled out a chair and sat.

“It just occurred to me that now would be a good time to start to move on.” Brooke looked up at her mother. “You know, like you’re doing.”

“Honey, I’m going because I have to,” Hannah said softly. “You don’t have to.”

“No, but I want to.” Brooke turned her back and began to measure the ingredients for another batch of frosting.

“Well, that place is going to need a considerable amount of work,” Hannah said.

“Besides painting inside and out, it looks like it needs everything: a kitchen and bath update and new wiring and plumbing.”

“The electric and plumbing were updated about ten years ago when I was living there,” Clay told her. “I got tired of blowing fuses every time I turned on the TV and the coffeepot at the same time.”

“Really?” Brooke turned around, a smile on her face. “Then it’s just the other things. Mostly the kitchen remodeling and new bath and some cosmetic stuff. I figured I could use some of the money Gramma Madison left me.”

“You still have some of that?” Hannah asked.

“Every last dime.”

“I’ll help you out where I can,” Clay told her.

“You don’t have to,” Brooke said. “Especially since you already took care of two of the biggies in the wiring and the plumbing. We just need to decide on a fair rent.”

“If you’re going to pay to upgrade the house, you shouldn’t pay rent.” Clay swiped a finger into the bowl
of frosting Brooke had left on the table. “Not if you’re spending your money to improve my property.”

“We can work something out.” Brooke turned on the mixer. Whatever Clay said as he left the room was lost, so she turned off the appliance and called to him to repeat what he’d said.

“I said, I’ll call Cameron O’Connor and make an appointment for him to come out and look the place over, give us an estimate for the work. If you’re going to do this, let’s see if we can get it done before the weather turns cold.”

“That would be great, Clay, thanks. I can’t think of any reason to put off the work.” She paused. “How was the heater?”

“The heater worked fine. That was replaced, too,” he told her. “But there’s no air-conditioning.”

“I’ll worry about that next summer.”

“You might want to have Cam look at the duct work. It might be easier to have everything done at the same time. Less disruption.”

“Good point.”

Logan and his friend Cody ran through the kitchen on their way to the backyard. Still wound up from Logan’s birthday party, the two of them were falling all over each other laughing at something only eight-year-old boys could understand. They dashed through the kitchen, then stopped at the back door.

“Mom, did you make our swords for Halloween?” Logan hung on the doorjamb.

“Not yet, sweetie. But I will, as soon as I finish these cupcakes.”

“Hey, I thought I got to make the swords.” Clay
came down the back steps from the second floor. “I make way better swords than your mother does.”

“You think,” Brooke challenged him.

“I know,” he tossed back then turned to the boys. “We’ll let the guys decide. Who would you rather make your swords, me or your mom?”

“You!” both boys cried.

“Sorry, sis.” Clay looked smug as he ushered the boys out the back door.

“I bow before your superior sword-making ability,” Brooke called as the back door slammed behind him. She glanced at the clock then counted the number of cupcakes she’d finished and figured out how many more she had to make. She groaned and promised herself that the new kitchen in the tenant house would have that second oven for sure.

“Isn’t Halloween the coolest holiday
ever
?” Logan slid his eye patch over his head and covered his right eye. He swung his cardboard aluminum-foil-covered sword as he dashed through the kitchen, his free hand curved over his head. “Uncle Clay taught me and Cody how to duel. You do it like this.” He demonstrated his newly learned technique.

“Quite impressive.” Brooke nodded as she stacked the unused pastry boxes and put them into the pantry, remembering the previous weekend’s debacle in front of Vanessa’s house. Thinking about those bouncing boxes of cupcakes made her think of Jesse. Twice this week when she went into Cuppachino in the morning, Grace mentioned that he’d just left.

She wondered if she’d run into him at the parade later this morning. He did say he’d be going.

“We practiced with our swords a lot last night,” Logan was saying. “We showed Cody’s mom when Uncle Clay drove Cody home from my birthday party. Cody’s mom was impressed, too. So was his aunt Berry. She said we looked like real swashbucklers.” He paused. “What’s a swashbuckler?”

“A pirate who knows how to duel really really well,” she told him.

Logan nodded. “That’s us. And she said we looked just like Earl … I don’t know, Earl somebody.”

“Errol Flynn?”

“Maybe.” Logan shrugged. “Can we go now?”

“Yes. Just give me a minute to brush my hair and maybe put a little makeup on.” She pulled the elastic from her ponytail.

“You don’t need makeup, Mom. You’re beautiful just the way you are.”

“Who told you to say that?”

“Uncle Clay.”

Brooke laughed and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time. She washed her face and ran a brush through her hair, then got out the mascara. No need for eye shadow or blush, just maybe a little color to the lips. She stood in front of the mirror and took a good look. When had she started to look so tired? Where had those circles under her eyes come from? She started to look for concealer, but it had been so long since she’d bothered, she couldn’t remember where she might have put it.

“Mom!” Logan called up the steps. “I think we should go now.”

“I’ll be right down.” Brooke took a second look, decided that it was going to take more than a little
concealer, and said the hell with it. She pulled off the T-shirt she’d been working in all morning and tossed it in the direction of her overflowing hamper. She’d been so busy with her cupcakes all week that she hadn’t gotten to her laundry. She rummaged through the pile for a sweatshirt, found one she’d worn a few days ago, then went into the bathroom and ran cold water, hoping to remove the little bit of chocolate frosting that she’d gotten on one sleeve.

“Brooke, the parade starts at eleven,” Clay called to her as he passed by her room. “We need to leave now if you want to ride up with me.”

“Coming, coming.” She grabbed a ribbon from the top drawer of her dresser and sat on the edge of her bed to put on her walking shoes. On her way down the steps, she tied the ribbon around her ponytail and grabbed a jacket she’d left on the newel post in case it got cooler later in the afternoon.

“Here I am,” she announced as she came into the kitchen.

“Let’s go. Move it.” Clay attempted to hustle her toward the door.

“Wait! I want to get my camera so I can take some pictures of the boys in their costumes,” Brooke called to her brother.

“I have mine.” Hannah came into the kitchen behind her. “Go.”

“All right. Everyone’s in such a damned hurry this morning,” Brooke grumbled.

“Brooke, are you sure you want to wear that sweatshirt?” her mother asked. “Perhaps you should change—”

“We’re only going to a parade.” Brooke frowned.
“Besides, everyone’s been hustling me along for the past ten minutes. We don’t have time for me to change. Anyway, I haven’t done laundry in a week and I don’t think I have anything else to wear.”

“She doesn’t have time to change,” Clay called from the back porch. “She looks fine.”

“You know there’s chocolate on the sleeve …” Hannah held the door and waited till Brooke went past her before closing it.

“What’s the big deal?” Brooke climbed into the backseat of Clay’s SUV and sat next to Logan, who was busy strapping himself in.

“As soon as we get to town, we can line up for the parade, right?” Logan asked. “I’m supposed to meet Cody right by Scoop.”

“How convenient,” Brooke muttered. “No ice cream until after the parade.”

“What if we get boiling hot? What if we get so hot we start to sweat?”

“You can drink some water.” Brooke helped straighten Logan’s eye patch. “Steffie always has cold water.”

“Maybe after the parade we can have ice cream?”

“You betcha,” Brooke told him. “But only after. You would not want to dribble ice cream on that very cool pirate shirt.”

Logan looked down at the bright red shirt. “No, I would not want to do that.”

They had to circumvent the center of town because of the parade route and park on a side street several blocks away.

“Good thing you made your deliveries earlier,” Hannah noted as they walked to Charles Street. “Those
boxes of cupcakes would be getting mighty heavy right about now.”

“It’s almost eleven,” Brooke replied. “I’ll bet half of those cupcakes have been sold by now. Carlo says they never last past noon at Cuppachino.”

“Then maybe you’re not making enough,” Clay told her.

“I think once school is over for me in December, I’ll have more time to bake. And by then I should be able to assess how many I need to make in a week.”
And by then, with luck, I should have that second oven
, she reminded herself.

The streets of St. Dennis were crowded with every manner of ghoul and ghost, vampire and werewolf, witch and warlock. And pirate. Logan was distressed to count seven pirates on their way to registering for the parade.

“I thought me and Cody would be the only pirates,” he grumbled.

“Pirates are very popular this time of year.” Jesse walked up behind Brooke. “It’s been a favorite costume for years.”

“Logan, do you remember Mr. Enright?”

“Uh-huh.” Logan nodded. “Were you ever a pirate?”

“Actually, I was a pirate once. But I didn’t have an eye patch like you have.” Jesse smiled at Brooke. “Nice touch.”

“You and Cody will be the only pirates with perfect swords,” Clay noted.