Part 23 (2/2)

”Have you seen it?” Ed asked.

”Well, no.”

”It's huge,” he said.

Just like the headache she was fighting. ”It'll be okay,” she insisted.

Annemarie shook her head and pointed to the ugly headline in the newspaper. Rockslide Danger on Highway 2: Governor Urges Travelers to Stay Home. The reporter might as well have added Governor Kills Chocolate Festival. ”I've had six cancellations in the past hour,” she said.

”This is it for our festival,” Cecily said, pus.h.i.+ng away her gla.s.s untouched. ”So what's the plan now?” she asked Samantha.

Everyone was looking at her expectantly. ”Okay, here's what we do.” We panic! That was hardly a productive option. ”We keep moving forward,” she said again. ”Cecily, call D.O.T. and see if you can find out when they think this will be cleared. Then we'll take out another ad in the Seattle paper, full page.” She looked apologetically at Ed. ”I'll figure out a way to pay for it, Ed.” Right. How? With chocolate?

”Good idea,” Annemarie approved.

”And, Cecily, try to get hold of the producer for Northwest Now again. We've got a great story angle. Town versus rockslide. Or something like that.”

Cecily nodded, making notes in her tablet.

”Anything else?” Olivia asked. ”Surely there's something else we can do.”

”Yeah,” Samantha said. ”We pray like crazy.

Chapter Eighteen.

When a woman is in trouble, that's when she learns who her true friends are.

-Muriel Sterling, Knowing Who You Are: One Woman's Journey Motherhood was the world's hardest job and being a mother to grown daughters was right up there with trying to turn straw into gold. Now, once again, it would appear that Muriel had made a poor choice.

”Mom, you can't tell people we're in trouble,” Samantha scolded over the phone. ”Perception is everything.”

”I'm sorry,” Muriel said. ”I just thought I could get a few people who might have some money to help us out.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Her first and only call had been to Del and she'd realized almost immediately that it hadn't been a good idea. He'd offered to help her come up with a solution, which seemed encouraging. But then she'd heard his bigmouthed sister talking in the background and knew Darla was over there and decided she'd better pull back from this plan until she'd considered all the possible ramifications. Of course, she'd pulled back too late. She'd known even before she hung up that Del would spill the cocoa beans. Darla knew all her brother's business and, sure enough, now she knew the Sterlings' business and Samantha was not happy.

”Mom, please, don't try to help. I can't afford to have people like Darla coming in and panicking our employees all over again. And we don't need the whole town thinking we're going under when we're trying to boost business.”

”I understand,” Muriel said. She was close to tears and it was hard to keep her voice steady.

Samantha softened her tone. ”Look, I appreciate your efforts, I really do, especially after everything you've been through. But if you can just stick to the creative end of things I'll keep working on the money angle. Okay?”

”Okay,” Muriel said. ”And I'm sorry this created more problems for you, especially with the rockslide to deal with.” She wasn't so ignorant that she didn't understand what this fresh trouble could do to her daughter's festival and, consequently, their business. And here she was, adding to the problem rather than helping. So much for motherly good intentions.

”Don't worry. We'll find a way around it,” Samantha said, and her tone of voice dared fate to go ahead and keep messing with her.

Her eldest was nothing if not efficient, but the deck was certainly stacked against her.

They said their I-love-yous and goodbyes and Muriel sat staring out the living room window at the mountains, hemmed in by gray skies, contemplating the disaster that currently pa.s.sed for her life. Most parents, if they lived long enough, became something of a burden to their children but she was too young to be this big a burden.

So, she asked herself, what are you going to do about it?

She was going to quit being so ignorant. She called Mountain Escape Books.

”Isn't this rockslide business awful?” Pat greeted her. ”It's certainly not helping our festival.”

Or our company, thought Muriel.

”But you probably didn't call to talk about that.”

She certainly hadn't. If she started talking about the rockslide and the festival, that could lead to other topics that were verboten. ”I need a good money book. Or two. Have you got some kind of Money Management for Dummies book I can buy?”

”Personal finance? Or business?”

”Personal.” After her faux pas she'd be lucky if her daughter ever let her cross the threshold of Sweet Dreams.

”I'll see what I can find,” Pat promised. ”Do you want me to bring it to dinner tomorrow?”

”No, I'll come by this afternoon,” Muriel said. The way her life was going she couldn't afford to wait even another day.

Samantha had just finished talking another worried B and B owner down from the ledge when Elena buzzed her on the intercom. ”You've got a visitor-Amber Wilkes.”

Samantha had set aside a box of candy for Amber but hadn't been sure Amber would take her up on her offer, since it meant coming by the shop and possibly having to face her again. Never underestimate the power of chocolate, she thought.

”Send her in.” Hopefully, Amber was just stopping by to thank her and not to draw her into any teenage drama. She already had enough drama in her life.

A moment later the door to her office opened and Amber entered, clutching a box of Sweet Dreams salted caramels to her chest and looking back over her shoulder as if expecting...what? Her mother? The chocolate police coming to see if she'd paid for that candy?

”I, um, wanted to thank you for this,” she said.

That wasn't all she wanted. With her uneasiness and sudden shyness, Amber was the picture of a teenage girl with something sitting uncomfortably on her mind.

But Samantha didn't ask what. Instead, she simply said, ”You're welcome.”

Amber gnawed on her lower lip. Yep, here it came. ”Um, what did you decide about telling my mom? You're not going to, are you?”

Would Ca.s.s thank her for keeping this from her? Probably not. But Samantha couldn't help remembering an incident from her own middle-school years.

Straight arrow that she was, she'd still made one bad slip, given in to peer pressure and snitched a pair of earrings from Gilded Lily's. She'd been a lousy thief and Lily Swan had caught her and called her mother. It had been mortifying enough to be caught by the glamorous former model who had recently moved to town and opened her shop, but then to see the look of disappointment on Mom's face-that had been the worst moment of her young life. Mom had made sure she paid her debt to society, farming her out for a summer of afternoon weeding in Ms. Swan's flower beds. That hadn't been fun, but it had sure beat having to live with the humiliation of Mom telling Dad.

”Please don't tell Dad,” Samantha had begged, horrified at the idea of her adored father, who'd called her Princess, changing her nickname to Sc.u.mbag or Sticky Fingers. The idea of sinking so low in his estimation had been more than she could bear and Mom had sensed it.

”If you're never going to do it again, I won't tell him,” Mom had said.

<script>