Better Than Chocolate (6 page)

Chapter Five

If you can’t depend on your family in your time of need, who can
you depend on?

—Muriel Sterling,
When Family
Matters

S
amantha sat at her desk, gnawing her
fingernails while staring out the office window at the Wenatchee River. The sun
was out today and the river was a sparkling sapphire-blue, but she could barely
see it. Her view was eclipsed by the vision of the end of life as she knew it.
Sweet Dreams was going to be history. The possibility of using Waldo’s life
insurance money had been her last hope. What was going to happen to her
employees? What was going to happen to Mom without that extra income? How could
she fix this mess?

Maybe another bank would lend her money. Then she could use
that to pay off Cascade Mutual. She made a couple of calls to test the water.
The water was frigid. Another fingernail went bye-bye.

Her cell phone started playing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Bailey.

She forced herself to answer even though she didn’t want to.
She’d already talked to Cecily, who’d at least had the decency to let her be
depressed. Bailey, the family cheerleader, would be calling to pump her up. And
she didn’t want to be pumped up, damn it all, she wanted to be pissed. Pissed,
pissed, pissed!

“I’m here,” she snarled.

“Well, of course. Where else would you be?” Bailey replied
reasonably. “You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t in the office busy saving the
company.”

“I’m not busy saving the company. I’m busy…” What
was
she busy doing? Oh, yeah, feeling sorry for
herself and doing a darned good job of it, too.

“Cecily told me about the bank. Are you okay?”

“No.”

There was silence on the other end and she could just see her
baby sister biting her lip, considering what to say next. “I’m sorry, Sammy,”
she finally said. “I feel like we’re leaving you holding a big, stinky mess up
there.”

Samantha rubbed her aching forehead. “At the rate we’re going I
won’t be holding it much longer.” And then what would she do? Worse, what would
Mom do? She wasn’t exactly making a fortune as a writer. Cecily would have to
find millionaires for both of them.

“But you can’t let Sweet Dreams go out of the family,” Bailey
said. “That would just be wrong, Sammy.”

Sometimes Samantha felt it was wrong that she was the only one
of the sisters who’d stayed in Icicle Falls to keep Willy Wonka Land going. Here
she was, like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Or the Last of the Mohicans.
Or…something.

“Do you have any ideas for how to save the company?”

Offer to sleep with Blake Preston in
exchange for making an exception to bank policy.
Oh, cute. Where had
that come from? No place good. “No,” Samantha said. But there had to be
something they could do. Why couldn’t she think of anything? She’d never lacked
for ideas in the past, so where was all that brilliant inspiration now?
Obviously, her idea factory had been shut down.

“We need a family brainstorming session,” Bailey said
firmly.

If she couldn’t think of anything, what did Bailey suppose the
rest of them were going to come up with? “Listen,” she began.

Bailey cut her off. “I know you think nobody can run the
company like you, but we’re all pretty creative.”

There was no denying that. Samantha looked at the shredded
nails on her left hand and decided manicures were overrated.

“I’m calling Cec,” Bailey said decisively. “I’ll go over to her
place tonight and we’ll Skype you at Mom’s at seven.”

By seven all Samantha wanted was to be in her condo, escaping
into a computer game or a movie on TV with Nibs curled up in her lap. “I don’t
think—” she began.

“Come on now, don’t balk. Let’s at least give it a try.”

Her baby sister would stay on the phone and harass her until
she caved. Might as well cave now and be done with it, she told herself. “All
right. Seven tonight.”

“Good,” Bailey said in a tone of voice that sounded as though
they’d already accomplished something.

* * *

Cecily stared in surprise at the buxom blonde in the
low-cut top and overdone jewelry sitting on the other side of her desk, hardly
able to believe what she was hearing. Liza and Brad should have been a perfect
match. He wanted a woman with boobs the size of life rafts and she wanted a man
with a deep well of money to support her Rodeo Drive spending habit. Brad not
only had money, he was good-looking to boot, another requirement of Liza’s, and
now Liza was saying she didn’t want to see him again? Seriously?

“So you didn’t hit it off?” Cecily asked.

“We should have. He took me to Melisse, and the food was to die
for. We both love great food.”

“Common interests are important,” Cecily said. They could have
happily eaten their way through life while Liza ate her way through Brad’s bank
account.

“Then he said he liked my hair.”

“Compliments, that’s good.”

Liza made a face. “Oh, yeah? Not when he says it’s the same
color as his mother’s hair and then he starts talking about
her
.”

“Maybe he thought you’d like his mother?”

“Not by the time he was done. I swear it was like there were
three of us on that date. And she lives with him. He’s forty and he lives with
his mother? Sheesh. I can’t believe you don’t screen your guys better.”

“Well…” Cecily stumbled to a halt. She wasn’t even sure what to
say to that. She didn’t have a place on her forms to check off
mama’s boy
. “I’m sorry, Liza. I thought he’d be
perfect.”

“Well, he wasn’t. You’ve
got
to do
better.”

That might not be so easy, considering the fact that Liza had
tried to sucker the last two guys she’d gone out with into taking her shopping
on the second date. “I’ll try,” Cecily said. “But you have to remember not to
ask these guys to buy clothes for you when you’ve barely started dating them. It
makes them think that’s all you want out of the relationship.”

Liza scowled at her. “Of course that’s not all I want. What do
I look like, a hooker?”

Actually, yes, and not a very high-class one. “No, no,” Cecily
said quickly. “Don’t worry. We’ll find your perfect match.”

“I hope so. I mean, I
could
go to
someone else, you know.”

The Millionaire Matchmaker
on TV?
Cecily smiled the diplomatic smile that had always stood her in good stead. “Of
course, I want you to be happy.” The rest of that sentence should have gone
something like, “And I’m going to do everything in my power to find the perfect
guy for you.” But the rest of the sentence never got out of her mouth. Instead,
she discovered she had an evil twin, and the evil twin said, “So if that’s how
you feel, then you should trot those Jimmy Choos somewhere else and see if they
can find you a man who’s into gold diggers.” Oh, dear God, had she just said
that?

Liza obviously couldn’t believe she had. Her jaw dropped.
“Excuse me?”

Oh, boy.
“I don’t think I can help
you,” Cecily said simply. And then the evil twin added, “And I don’t think I
want to.”

Liza’s eyes flashed. “I want my money back!”

Good luck with that, thought Cecily. That money was long gone,
just like her patience. “You got your money’s worth. I’ve matched you up with
six eligible men. It’s not my fault you blew it.”

Liza glared at her. “Fine. I’m telling all my friends never to
come to you. Ever!” And with that, she grabbed her Kate Spade bag and teetered
out of the office on her three-inch heels.

Cecily ran a hand through her hair. This was abysmal. Not
losing Liza as a client—she’d had a feeling all along that she wouldn’t be able
to help the woman. No, it was the way she’d reacted to Liza’s threat—so tacky,
so unprofessional. What was wrong with her? She was burned out, plain and
simple.

She told Willow, her secretary, to hold her calls and locked
herself in her office with a cup of chamomile tea, but the tea didn’t make her
feel any better. She tossed out the remains and went back to her emails. And
with each new one she opened, she kept asking herself,
What
are you doing here?

Good question.

* * *

Samantha was about to leave the office when her mother
called to ask how she was doing.

“I haven’t slit my wrists yet,” Samantha reassured her.

“Don’t even joke about things like that,” Mom scolded. “I just
talked to Cecily. It sounds like we’re set for a brainstorming session tonight
and I was wondering if I should make dinner.”

While Samantha always preferred other people’s cooking,
especially her mother’s, the idea of sitting across the table from Mom after
everything that had happened, and now this latest development—she couldn’t face
it. “I’ve got a million things to do before we Skype.”
Please don’t ask what.
“Can I take a rain check?”

“Of course,” Mom said. “But let me send some food home with you
after. I’m up to my nose in casseroles.”

Free food. That would work. And stuffing herself with Mrs.
Nilsen’s triple-threat mac and cheese was a step above medicating her pain with
goodies from their gift shop or chewing off what few fingernails she had
left.

She pulled up in the driveway at 6:55, turned off the ignition
and sighed. It was wrong not to want to spend one-on-one time with her mother.
She loved her mother. But right now she felt a big, lumpy wall between them, a
misshapen, awkward pile of resentment, guilt and who knew what else, that she
wasn’t sure how to scale. Mom was trying, though, God bless her. Which, of
course, made Samantha feel all the more guilty.

Learning that Waldo had no life insurance hadn’t helped. Mom
had felt awful when she called with the bad news and Samantha had felt numb. But
not so numb that she couldn’t exclaim, “How could he have been so irresponsible?
My God! First the business and now this.”

“Let’s not panic,” Mom had advised.

“Mom,” Samantha had said sternly, “we’re in a burning building
and the fire department is on strike. What do you expect me to do?”

“We’ll think of something,” Mom had assured her.

Easy for her mother, the queen of clueless, to say. She knew
nothing about business or finance. “You’re right,” Samantha had lied, trying to
make up for her gaffe. “I’d better go.”
Before I
explode.

After she hung up she’d felt awful. If there was an award for
the most insensitive daughter, she’d win it hands down.

Now she made her way up the walk, slo-o-owly, and then let
herself in, hoping to hear Mom’s voice drifting down from the loft as she talked
to Cecily and Bailey on the computer. Instead, she found her mother rooted in
her favorite yellow leather chair, nursing a cup of chocolate-mint tea. The
aroma drifted across the room to greet her.

“I have a pot of tea on the counter,” Mom said as Samantha bent
to kiss her cheek, “and Pat brought over white-chocolate raspberry brownies.
Vitamin C,” she added, referring to the family joke that chocolate was the
equivalent of vitamins.

At the rate Samantha was going, she’d wind up overdosing on
chocolate. She moved to the counter, poured herself some tea and took a brownie.
Just one. She’d make this the last fattening thing she ate for the rest of her
life. Okay, for the rest of the month. The week. The night, anyway.

“How are you feeling?” Mom asked.

Like French royalty about to face the
guillotine.
Samantha shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

Her mother’s face was a picture of sympathy and regret. “I’m so
sorry, sweetie.”

That made two of them. “Mom, about this morning. I’m sorry I
snapped at you.” Daughters were supposed to be a comfort to their mother. She
was about as comforting as a kick in the shins.

Mom waved away the apology. “Don’t give it another thought. I
know you’re under a lot of stress.”

Stress, the all-American excuse for bad behavior. Could she go
back to the bank and try that one out on Blake Preston?

Mom gave her a motherly pat on the shoulder. “Somehow this will
all work out, sweetie.”

Samantha had to find a way to make that prediction come true.
The weight of responsibility on her shoulders felt like twin elephants. How was
she going to get them out of this mess?
Panic!

No, no. No panicking. Stay calm and
think.

“So they haven’t called yet?” she asked, stating the obvious.
Suddenly she was eager to talk to her sisters. Even though there was nothing
they could do to help, a big dose of moral support would be good.

“Not yet,” Mom said. “I was just about to go up to the loft. We
can start talking to Cecily. You know how to do this Skype thing, right? Waldo
always…” Mom’s sentence trailed off.

Samantha simply nodded and led the way upstairs. At first it
looked like Mom had done some serious cleaning in the office, but on closer
examination Samantha realized her mother had only stacked all of Waldo’s
paperwork in neat piles.

“I’m working through your stepfather’s papers,” Mom said as she
sat down and booted up the computer.

“I can help you with that,” Samantha offered, pulling up a
chair next to her and clicking on the Skype icon.

“It can wait,” Mom said. “You’ve got enough on your plate.”

Not as much as Mom had. Yes, Samantha was feeling responsible
for keeping the company going, but Mom was coping with the loss of a husband and
probably her house, on top of all this trouble with Sweet Dreams. All the
sparkle had drained out of her and she looked like a zombie with her eyes
bloodshot from crying. Samantha, with her ill-considered outbursts, wasn’t
helping.

Their call went through and Cecily appeared on the screen. She
was perched on a brown microfiber love seat in her living room, looking comfy in
sweatpants and an old sweater, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. On the
wall behind her Samantha could see Mom’s 1979 Moskowitz print that Cecily had
taken with her when she’d moved to L.A. It depicted three pastel-colored
ostriches, one with its head in the sand, two staring out at the world with
perplexed expressions. Rather symbolic of most of the women in her family if you
asked Samantha. Not that anyone had.