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“Look at you!” Lucille exclaimed as Jill shut the kitchen door.
Jill touched her curls, suddenly regretting her bold decision to do something she’d never done in her entire life—go natural, on purpose.
“I adore it. This style suits you!” Lucille continued, moving in closer, gazing at her hair.
Jill had awakened that morning feeling oddly adventurous. Maybe it was the recent near-death tornado experience, or maybe it was the new bakery venture. Whatever it was, it had her pausing when she picked up her hair straightener as she’d done thousands of times before. During the pause, she’d stared hard at her image in the mirror and imagined her mornings and her life, for once, without the crutch of that tool.
Gathering her courage, she’d switched off the contraption and instead massaged a dime-sized amount of conditioning gel into her hair, coating her curls. Then she’d gently dried them, careful to avoid the dreaded frizz.
Emboldened, she’d flipped her head down, picked at the curls gently, then tossed her head back again and sprayed to set them in place. For a split second, she became her little-girl self and heard all the bullies’ name-calling and jabs in her mind.
Don’t let them win.
Emboldened, she shoved away the jabs—all of them—and marched down her apartment steps to meet Lucille.
“Thanks,” Jill responded, smiling shyly. “It’s an experiment.”
The corgis entered the kitchen and barked wildly at Jill.
“I don’t think they recognize me.”
Lucille chided them gently. “You two are silly. This is your friend. This is Jill!”
The barking halted as the corgis moved closer, with Jill crouching down to offer a delicate hand. The moment they sniffed her, George and Gracie’s hesitation shifted into friendly hand-kisses and wiggle-bottoms.
“Well, that’s more like it,” Lucille told the corgis, then assured Jill, “They’ll get used to the new look. And so will you.”
As Jill stood, Rick entered the kitchen, absorbed in his phone and tapping out a text. When he reached the island, he stopped short, and his eyes rested on Jill. He blinked and said, “Wow.”
“Isn’t it pretty, her new hair?” Lucille prompted.
Rick’s gaze remained steady on Jill as he answered his grandmother. “Beautiful.”
The word hung in the air between them, erasing almost all of Jill’s lingering insecurities. Beautiful. She nearly believed it was true.
“I think she looks exactly like that Julia Roberts person,” Lucille insisted. “In the movie about that prostitute. What’s it called? I can never remember movie titles.”
“Pretty Woman,” Rick and Jill said together, both suppressing snickers.
“That’s the one. Oh!” Lucille gave a sheepish grin. “That sounded awful, didn’t it? The reference to the prostitute. I only meant that the actress’s hair in that movie looked the same as Jill’s.”
“It’s fine,” Jill said. “I knew exactly what you meant. Thank you.”
Flattered by all the compliments but suddenly uncomfortable with being on display, Jill asked Lucille, “Ready for our meeting?”
“Yes. I have coffee and freshly made cinnamon buns at the ready, waiting at the breakfast table! Join us, Rick?”
“I’ve got another call to make. Sorry.” He winced and raised his phone.
“All right. We’ll all get to work, then,” Lucille said as Rick swiveled and left the room.
Jill joined Lucille at the table but paused when she recognized the edge of a paperback tucked behind the table’s centerpiece. Touching the edge, she realized it was her first novel. “I thought you were trying out e-books these days,” Jill said.
“I am.” Lucille took a seat and saw the paperback. “Oh, that’s not mine. Well, it is my copy from my shelf. But I guess Rick must’ve pulled it down. I caught him reading it last night.”
Jill raised an eyebrow. She was more anxious at the thought of Rick reading and liking— or not liking—her novel than she was with any critic reading it. His opinion mattered more.
“I made some notes last night,” Lucille started, flipping through her notepad. And thus began the meeting.
Jill slid the paperback aside and drew her focus back to Lucille. Once the market booth had been secured—Beatrice had phoned Lucille late last night with the good news—Jill had suggested an early-morning planning meeting with Lucille, to help get the ball rolling and to add her marketing skills to the mix. Lucille had already made the first savvy business decision without either Rick or Jill. While on the phone with Beatrice, she had finagled a prime spot for the booth, right outside her future bakery’s site, which would drum up interest and would get people accustomed to buying her cookies in that very spot later on.
The morning’s agenda was rather hefty with budgets, lists of supplies and ingredients, and ideas for advertising, including ordering posters and business cards in time for the market opening. Surprisingly, Lucille seemed energized by the process rather than overwhelmed. Rick’s instincts about buying the bakery had been spot on.
It only took them ninety minutes to make it through the entire agenda. As Lucille checked her list again, George came to sit at Jill’s feet and pawed at her leg.
“Hey, little man.” She leaned down to grasp his stubby paw in a shake. Gracie saw the exchange and waddled over to vie for some attention too. Jill rubbed their ears with both hands, trying to give them equal consideration. They closed their eyes in corgi bliss.
“How do you get any work done with these two around?” Jill asked.
“It’s not easy,” Lucille admitted, finishing her second cup of coffee.
George gave a pitiful whine, and finally, Jill understood. “I think they need to go O-U-T.”
“You’ve figured out the corgi code.”
Jill rose from her seat and opened the back door for both dogs, who rushed happily through.
As she closed the door, Jill noticed that a photo had fallen off Lucille’s memory wall. She leaned over to retrieve the faded image of a young woman squinting in the sunlight with a lanky young man at her side. They weren’t touching or holding hands, just standing awkwardly, side by side. “Is this you? And Frank?” Jill carried the photo over to Lucille.
Lucille grasped it then smiled. “Oh, yes. That was taken on the day we first met. Over fifty years ago.”
“Fifty years?” Jill sank into her chair, ready to hear more.
Lucille paused to recount the story. “I was eighteen, a ticket-taker at the movie theater in Austin, and Frank and his friend were going to see some awful horror picture. After he bought his ticket, Frank lingered to talk to me and ended up missing the movie altogether! Imagine that. He offered to buy me a coffee at the diner next door, and something told me to say yes, even though he was a complete stranger. Anyway, his friend was a photography major at UT—he always carried that bulky camera around with him—and he snapped this photo right after I stepped out of the booth to join Frank.” She stroked the photo with her fingertip.
“I always love hearing stories about how people first met. Yours sounds like a scene right out of a movie.”
Lucille chuckled. “Well, I’m not sure it was all that exciting, but I have often wondered—what if I hadn’t been on my shift that day? Or what if Frank had bought his ticket at the other window, where Shirley Banks was working? Life is funny that way.”
“When did you know that Frank was it for you? That he was the one you wanted to be with the rest of your life?”
“That’s a heavy question with an easy answer.” Lucille set down the photo and searched the air with her gaze, remembering back. “We were at a party together and had only been dating a few weeks. A friend of his told some dumb joke to a group of us, and Frank suddenly exploded with this deep, unexpected belly laugh. It was funnier than the joke! Absolutely infectious. And standing there, drink in hand, watching him try to catch his breath and giggling along with him, I thought to myself, ‘I could hear that laugh for the rest of my life.’”
“That’s adorable.”
“And as the weeks progressed, I got to see his kindness, his loyalty, his integrity. They only strengthened my feelings. Frank had connected with some part of me, way deep down, like nobody else ever had.” She shrugged. “That’s the best way I can explain it.”
“So how do you stretch those feelings out to last half a century? What was your secret?”
“Well, most people think love is roses and candlelight, but it’s hard work. It’s learning to compromise and live with each other’s flaws and staying firm during the hard times, the ebbs and flows of a marriage. You choose to stay. That’s how a marriage really lasts. You both make the choice, every single day, to stick it out.” Lucille paused and stared down at the photo again.
Before Lucille had a chance to get emotional, Rick blustered into the room. “Gran, I’ve been on the phone with Hank...” His deep voice startled both Lucille and Jill, who turned in his direction. “He wants to set up a time to walk through the bakery site with you.” Rick paused, looking from Lucille to Jill then back again. “I’ve walked in on something. What’s wrong?”
“Not a thing.” Lucille held up the photo between them. “Jill was asking about this. I told her how Frank and I met, and so we walked down memory lane a bit.”
Rick came closer and gazed toward the photo. “So she told you the ticket-taker story?” he asked Jill. “Did she also tell you that a year later, she rejected his marriage proposal three times?”
“Seriously?” Jill’s mouth dropped open.
Lucille blushed. “Well... I wanted to be sure he was sure and that he meant it with all his heart.”
“He obviously did,” Jill said.
“You want me to put this back on the wall, Gran?”
“Yes. Thank you, dear.”
Rick pinned it back to its spot with ease.
“What was that about Hank?” Lucille asked.
“Oh, he wants to set up a time to go through the site with you.”
Lucille consulted her list. “I happen to be free right now. Let’s go!”
* * *
LUCILLE SAT ON THE living room floor, her foot propped on a pillow near the crackling fire, the corgis snoring soundly beside her. She had been thumbing through the Morgan Stout biography that Jill had given her to browse.
“I’ve lived in this town for decades and never knew anything about her,” Lucille marveled, pointing to the text. “It says here that Morgan crafted individual baskets of food—into the hundreds—and helped distribute them to struggling war widows in Austin.”
“Wasn’t she amazing? The more I learned, the more honored I felt to be related to her. She’s become the main point of my article, in fact.”
“I can see why.”
Jill joined Lucille on the floor, enjoying the rare silence as Lucille flipped to the next page. After their morning kitchen meeting, Jorge and some other men had arrived with chainsaws to clear Lucille’s beloved tree. The minute the mighty trunk hit the ground, the whole house felt it. Lucille was forced to keep the corgis in the kennel most of the day, and she’d lowered the blinds in the kitchen, not wanting to witness the tree’s demise. Jill had attempted to work on her article in the afternoon, but at one point, the grinding noise became so obtrusive that she packed up her laptop and took it to Christine’s Bistro, where a quiet corner table and a lunch of tomato soup and Caesar salad awaited her.
Lucille continued to skim the biography while Jill focused on the paint samples sprawled out on the table. As she was about to thumb through them, her phone rang inside her pocket. She tilted the screen and saw her mother’s name. Finally!
It would’ve been a struggle for Jill to untangle her legs from beneath the coffee table then push herself off the floor in time to answer the call, so she stayed put and pressed the button to answer. She didn’t mind if Lucille overheard.
“Darling, hello!” Her mother’s voice sounded far away, and the reception was lousy.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on a yacht. South Florida. Some new friends invited me for the Christmas holiday, so I said yes.”
She could picture her mother with her phone in one hand, a glass of white wine in the other, and a younger man at her side.
“Mother, did you get any of my messages about my coming to Texas? And about Dad’s ancestors?”
“Yes! Sorry—I haven’t had good reception until now. You’re in some little town called Marshall’s Grave?”
“Morgan’s Grove.”
“Can you repeat that, honey? You’re fading away again.”
“Morgan’s Grove!” Jill enunciated her syllables and raised her voice, realizing how ridiculous the whole conversation was.
“What’s it like there?”
Before Jill could even form her answer, static invaded the line. Jill thought they’d been disconnected until she heard a faint “... losing you. Happy Holid...!” and the connection went dead.
Jill placed her phone onto the table with a generous sigh.
“Where is she right now? Your mother?” Lucille asked.
“Oh, somewhere in Florida. With ‘new friends.’” She added the air quotes with dripping sarcasm.
“Rather than with you,” Lucille finished, “for Christmas.”
“Yes.” She saw the compassion in Lucille’s eyes, and before it could shift into pity, Jill added, “But it’s fine. That’s just my mother. I’m used to it. We’ll reconnect sometime in the new year, and she’ll tell me all about her holiday adventures and pretend to care about mine.” Jill forced a smile. “But now I’m here in this lovely home, with a new project in front of me.” She turned her attention to the coffee table and sifted through samples. “Have you narrowed these down yet?”
Lucille set the library book aside. “Actually, I’m overwhelmed. There are too many to choose from! One color looks like the next.” She adjusted her glasses then stared again at the hundreds of samples before them. She chose one and held it up. “And look how tiny they are! No bigger than my thumb. How in the world am I expected to imagine an entire room covered in... Evergreen Mist?”
Jill cupped her hand over her mouth to suppress a chuckle.
“Am I amusing you?”
“Yes, actually. Because you’re right. This whole system is impossible.”
Jill’s chuckles caught on, and Lucille let out a hearty laugh. “Oh, look at the two of us. We’re hopeless.”
Without any warning, not even a whimper or anticipatory growl, the corgis suddenly exploded in simultaneous watchdog barks then ran toward the kitchen door to greet Rick.
“How do the dogs always know?” Jill said. “I didn’t even hear Rick pull up.”
“It’s those enormous ears. Frank called it ‘corgi radar.’ It’s extremely reliable.”
Rick stepped inside the living room, brushing the glistening rain beads from his hair.
“Why so late?” Lucille struggled to get up from the floor. “Are there problems with the bakery?”
Jill quietly rose up beside her, offering Lucille a hand to help her stand.
“No, nothing like that,” Rick assured her, moving closer and peeling off his coat. “I was just getting some work done after the guys left. They made a lot of demo progress tonight—they ripped out the pizza oven and dismantled the buffet table. It was quiet after that, so I stuck around to have a conference call—”
“At this hour?” The three of them met together in the middle of the living room.
“Yeah, Aaron is in London. We had the call late—well, early for him.” Rick held an enormous, flat book at his side. “Samples for wooden flooring.” He set it down, balancing it against the sofa.
Jill sensed that Rick was unusually tired from the day, or maybe from the conference call. Or maybe something else.
Lucille must’ve noticed too, because she said, “You need to go sit by the fire. I’ll warm up your meal.”
“Need some help?” Jill offered.
Lucille waved her away. “No, no. It’s good for me to feel independent again. You two go relax by the fire.”
Rick obeyed his grandmother, settling on the floor with his back to the fire while Lucille slowly made her way to the kitchen, still favoring her injured ankle. Jill planted herself on the couch nearest Rick, tucking her feet underneath her.
“Looks like my grandmother’s been busy today,” Rick noted, glancing at the table full of paint samples.
“She’s getting really pumped about the renovations.”
Rick leaned forward to scratch Gracie’s back in slow, long circles.
“Are you okay?” Jill studied his face for the answer, wondering how much he would give. “You don’t seem like yourself tonight.”
Rick settled his gaze on Jill. He told her, in hushed tones, “That phone call I took the other day, at the bakery with you and Gran. Well, there’s a situation at Quantum. I thought it was handled, but it’s this fire I’m having to put out. And the more I try to control it, the more it gets out of control. I’m not sure it can be stopped.”
His grim expression was the same one Jill had seen for weeks, off and on, as he answered calls or talked gruffly with someone on the other end. It isn’t a girlfriend he’s having problems with. It’s his company.
Jill assumed financial woes but didn’t want to pry. He would tell her as much as he wanted to. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” It was a silly question, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Rick stretched his back. “Nope. Nothing anybody can do. I’m supposed to keep the details under wraps, and I don’t want to worry my grandmother with this.”
“I won’t say a word.”
An occasional slam or clanking of flatware could be heard from the kitchen as Lucille put together Rick’s meal.
“I must’ve had it written all over my face when I came in.” Rick’s mouth curved into a half grin.
“Don’t worry. Lucille only thinks you’re wet and hungry. Nothing a hot meal can’t fix.”
“I wish it were that easy. Speaking of food, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Now seems as good a time as any. Would you... I mean, I was wondering if you’d like to go out to eat with me. There’s this Italian place in Austin that’s supposed to be good. I just thought you and I might give it a try sometime before you leave.”
It was the very last thing Jill had expected from Rick.
He rubbed his palms together. “I thought we both deserved a night off, a chance to de-stress. Maybe tomorrow night?”
“Here we are,” Lucille announced in a singsong voice as she came into the room with a tray.
Jill turned confidently back to Rick and whispered, “Yes.”
He shined a smile in her direction before standing to help his grandmother.