Mariah Stewart - Coming Home

“Thank you, Miss Grace. I appreciate that.”

“Will we see you for morning coffee tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. And thank you again for the ride.” Grace slammed the car door and walked to the Inn’s front doors.

Vanessa drove slowly down the long lane between the Inn and the main road that led back into town. It was all she could do not to shout “woo-hoo!” as she peeled out of the drive, still smiling with pleasure at Grace Sinclair’s compliment.

It hadn’t taken Vanessa very long to figure out that there were two St. Dennises. There was the St. Dennis of the tourists and the summer people, and there was old St. Dennis. Miss Grace was about as old St. Dennis as it was possible to be. Not just her family, the Abernathys, but the family she married into, the Sinclairs, were land-grant families, here since the earliest days. Of course, Hal’s family was, too, and Vanessa was certain that this fact had guaranteed that most people in town would be polite to her, if not accepting, since Hal had claimed her as one of his. But Miss Grace had always been just a little more warm, a little more kind, than most of the others had, at the beginning, anyway. These days, things were fine for Vanessa, better than fine, actually, with just about everyone in town. But Miss Grace still somehow managed to go above the level of ordinary kindness, to make Vanessa feel as if she really did belong there.

On the drive home, she repeated the compliments.

… what a terrific addition Bling is… brought in some lovely things… windows always such a pleasure… hoping you’re planning on staying for a good long time.

Thank you, Miss Grace. Yes, I’m planning on staying. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

This is my home now, she thought as she parked in her driveway. Everyone and everything that matters to me… Hal, Beck, Mia, Steffie, my shop-my beautiful little shop-my wonderful little house… everything I love is here in St. Dennis.

Oh, yes, Miss Grace, I’m not going anywhere.

Diary-

Attended a lovely party on Sunday afternoon for our own Chief Beck and his beautiful bride-to-be, hosted by the father of the groom, my dear friend Hal. Nice to have met so many of the bride’s relatives, all in from out of town (and all booked at the Inn for the entire week-Daniel couldn’t be more pleased that Beck recommended us). Mia’s people are all in the FBI, except for one brother who lives in Montana and, if talk is to be believed, is a bit of a tragic figure. The story is that he’s mourning the death of his wife at the hands of his very own brother! Tragic indeed! That is, of course, if it’s true… Small-town talk being such as it is, well, who knows what the whole story-the real story-might be?

But I must say, for one who is supposedly grieving, he certainly seemed to be smitten with a certain young lady at the party. Not that anyone would blame him if he couldn’t take his eyes off her-the young lady in question is a beauty, and a personal favorite of mine, and one who has had more than her own share of heartbreak, so they say. Nothing would please me more than to see her meet a nice young man.

So-we shall see what we shall see!

– Grace

VANESSA was leaning on the counter next to her cash register, writing her shopping list for Thurs day’s bake-a-thon, when it occurred to her that 252 guests times four cookies each equaled one hell of a lot of baking between now and Saturday. She picked up the phone and dialed Mia’s cell.

“I think we should start baking before Thursday,” she said when Mia picked up.

“Who is this and how did you get my number?” Mia asked calmly.

“I’m the person who’s trying to figure out how much lemon glaze we’re going to have to make to glaze all these damned cookies. And have you figured out how many cookies we’re talking about here?”

Before Mia had a chance to respond, Vanessa told her.

“One thousand and eight, that’s how many.”

“Divided by twelve equals… eighty-four dozen,” Mia told her. “So we take the recipe, which makes… let’s see, I think it was-”

“Five dozen. I have the recipe right in front of me.” Vanessa bit her bottom lip. “I don’t trust that to be right, though. It’s only five dozen if you make them exactly the same size as the person who wrote the recipe, and that never seems to work for me.”

“Want to make ninety dozen, just in case?”

There was a long silence, after which both women began to laugh.

“Sure. Ninety dozen! What the hell!” Vanessa tried to make light of the task. “What’s a few dozen more?”

“It won’t take any time at all with both of us baking.”

“Seriously, I think you’re grossly underestimating the amount of time we’re going to need. Today is Tuesday. I’m thinking maybe we start tomorrow and plan to keep on baking right up to the rehearsal dinner, after which we return to our respective kitchens.”

“Maybe we need to do this in teams,” Mia suggested.

“That might work if we could recruit a few more bakers. Can you think of anyone else who could be talked into pitching in?”

“I can probably get Dorsey to make some,” Mia thought aloud. “And my cousin Aidan’s wife, Mara. She loves to bake.”

“What about your friend Annie? Isn’t the matron of honor supposed to help the bride out with all the last-minute details?”

“Yeah, but she’s in New Mexico on a case. We’re holding our breath that she gets back in time to make it to the wedding. Otherwise, you’ll be bumped from bridesmaid to maid of honor.”

“We’ll worry about that on Saturday. Today you need to find out if Annie has a kitchenette in her hotel room. We need all the help we can get.”

“We’ll be okay. I’ll just ask Dorsey and Mara. Between the four of us, we should be fine.”

“Maybe. That breaks it down to”-she tried to mentally compute-“roughly twenty-two dozen cookies each, give or take a dozen or so. And this is going to take a lot of flour, sugar, and butter. I think I’ll call over to the Market Basket while I’m thinking of it to see if I need to make a special order. I doubt they have this much butter on hand.”

“Right about now is when you get to say, ‘You should have gone with the truffles.’ “Mia sighed. “I guess this wasn’t such a great idea.”

“Of course it’s a great idea. You wanted to honor your mother’s memory and we’re going to do exactly that. I just thought I should point out that we should not wait until Thursday to start, and that we were severely understaffed.”

“If we start baking on Wednesday, they’ll be stale by Saturday.”

“No, they won’t. We’ll freeze them and put the glaze on them all on Friday. They’ll be fine.”

“According to the schedule you made up, on Friday we’re supposed to put them in boxes and tie on those pretty ribbons.”

“So we nudge the schedule a little,” Vanessa said to assure herself as much as she assured Mia. “We’ll get them into their little boxes and we’ll get the ribbons tied on and everything will be fine.”

The bell over Bling’s door rang and Vanessa looked up as a woman closed the door behind her.

“I’ll check with Ken at the market and get back to you if there’s a problem. Meantime, think about maybe three cookies per guest. That would eliminate about twenty dozen cookies if my seat-of-the-pants math is right. Gotta run…”

She hung up the phone and replaced the receiver, then moved the phone to one side of the cash register. She smiled at the potential customer.

“Welcome to Bling. May I help you find something, or are you just poking?”

“Just poking,” the woman replied.