Kate tried to push past the ache and think. The grand reopening was tomorrow. Should they still do it? And with the owner of the Cookie House charged in two murders, would anyone show up even if they did?
She felt one thing in her bones: If they didn’t open tomorrow as scheduled, the Cookie House would never open again.
If she was going down, she was going down swinging.
“Maxi, I think we need to put the word out. That we’re opening tomorrow on schedule. Can you call the Coral Cay Irregulars?”
Maxi looked up blankly, blotting her face.
“If there was ever a time we needed our friends around us—and around Sam—it’s now,” Kate explained. “You know how to reach them?”
Maxi nodded. “I have everyone’s phone numbers.”
“Call them. I’m going back to the shop. I’m going to be baking nonstop most of the night just to get ready for tomorrow morning.”
“After I close tonight, I’ll come over and help. But do you think we should still open? With all this?”
“We have to. Especially with all of this. Face it, if the shop doesn’t open tomorrow morning as planned, people will start avoiding it. And that gets easier with every passing day. We have to open like nothing ever happened. Because this second set of charges is just as ridiculous as the first. And we have to broadcast that loud and clear.”
“What if no one comes?” Maxi asked.
“They might not,” Kate said, shaking her head. “We might have to donate every single cookie and roll and bread loaf to a soup kitchen and close up for good. But right now, in this moment, we still have a shot. For Sam, and for Cookie, and for us, I say we take it.”
Maxi took a couple of deep breaths and dried her face with tissues. “I have the phone numbers in my address book. I’ll start calling people now.”
Kate had another idea. But she didn’t want to raise Maxi’s hopes.
“I’m heading back over to the bakery. I just put in a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And I promised the crew some ginger snaps.”
When she walked through the door, the first thing Kate reached for wasn’t the oven. It was the phone.
One call later, she crossed her fingers. With any luck, maybe they could at least help Peter in his efforts to keep Sam in Coral Cay.
Ginger snaps or no, Oliver had stayed behind at the flower shop. With Maxi. Kate sensed that somehow the puppy understood. He knew Maxi needed him.
Kate quickly set the oven and restarted the cookies, hoping that the interruption hadn’t caused any damage. She’d never halted a batch mid-bake.
She grabbed a white china platter from the cupboard. With a spatula, she gently loosened the ginger snaps from one of the trays. She lifted the cookies carefully onto the platter. Instinctively, she plucked one from the top and tasted it.
Sweet with that spicy ginger bite. And the texture was crispy and perfect. And it was a lot easier here than in Maxi’s home oven.
She tackled a few more trays, until she had a respectable pile of cookies. Then she carried it out to the painting crew. But not before pasting a smile on her face.
I’m running a bakery, everything is normal, and I don’t have a care in the world, she reminded herself.
But at the same time, Kate wondered: Just how many customers would they have tomorrow? Or was she running the only bakery in the world that couldn’t attract customers even if they gave away cookies for free?