Page 22 of Below the Far Horizon
Trevor grinned. “If we’re having that, we probably ought to get started. It cooks in the crockpot. And I don’t have any, so I will need to make a trip to town.”
“Someone should really start a grocery store here.”
“I hardly think they’d make enough money to make it worthwhile. The days of a mom-and-pop grocery store being able to support a family are long gone, if they ever existed at all.”
“I think they did. Used to be that people went to town once a month and then got whatever they couldn’t get at the little store in their hometown. Now, it’s nothing to jump in the car and drive to the big box store every day, or every other day, definitely once a week.”
Trevor nodded. He knew that to be true. People didn’t frequent the mom-and-pop stores like they did the bigger grocery stores. There wasn’t as much variety, for one, and the prices were higher for another, and it was cheaper to drive to town to get cheaper groceries than it was to walk to the store and pay twice as much.
They talked a bit about what they could make, and then Don said that he probably ought to call and see if it suited the ladies to have them bring a meal anyway. After all, there was no point in going through the work if they had other plans for dinner.
While he did that, Trevor cleaned up his workspace, using a brush to brush off the sawdust into a container and setting the birdhouse on the work shelf, admiring it a little.
He loved putting it together, but there was something about looking at something that he had made and admiring it that made his heart happy.
Whatever it was with his dad and Mrs. Honea would work itself out. Maybe he was just imagining things. But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Grace. Maybe they could get some time alone this evening, if they ended up having dinner together.
Eleven
“This is absolutely adorable,” Grace said as she held up the little craft item she had made from an idea she got on social media. She added a few of her own touches, and it had turned out better than she had anticipated.
“I can’t believe how creative you are. I am really good at making something from a pattern, but you’re really good at seeing the pattern and then creating something different and unique, and, I might add, better.”
“You’re my mom, so your opinion might be a little bit biased,” Grace said as she smiled lovingly at her mother.
They hadn’t talked any more about her mother’s new boyfriend or why it had been such a shock to find out about it. How long had her mom been thinking about this? And not telling anyone?
She had sent a quick text to both of her sisters asking if her mom seemed to have any romantic interest, and they both texted back in the negative. Of course, both of them wondered why, and Grace had been hard-pressed to come up with a legit and truthful answer, one that did not incite any more questions.
“Who could I give this to?” she asked, to herself really, but her mom heard and answered right away.
“Mrs. Donegan’s birthday is tomorrow. I think we all know that because her husband died on her birthday five years ago. The whole town went out of their way the next year on the one-year anniversary of his death to try to make it a special day for her. Every year since, I’ve just remembered. I’m sure a lot of other people do too, because I think it’s a hard day.”
“That would be a really hard birthday for the rest of your life. To have someone you love die on it.” She couldn’t even imagine. And Mrs. Donegan had gone through some difficult things. Not the least had been what had happened with Claire and everyone.
She didn’t want to think about those kinds of sad things today though, so she pushed it aside.
“Do you think she would like this?” she asked, twisting it around and wondering what someone who wasn’t related to her would think.
“I think just the idea that you thought of her and took her something would make her feel good. It’s too bad that Lauren’s mom has been having health problems and has closed the bakery. I know that Mrs. Donegan always had a soft spot for her warm cheese bread.”
“I can’t imagine anyone not having a soft spot for her warm cheese bread.” Grace could feel herself longing for that relic of her past. She could practically smell it now. “Lauren used to talk about taking over someday.”
“I remember you guys sitting out on our front porch, talking about how she was going to make bread and other bakery goods, and you were going to make crafts, and you guys were going to stay here and be happy by the lake forever.”
“Those were girlhood dreams. Then we grew up and realized that they weren’t going to pay any bills. No one’s going to get rich operating a bakery in a dinky little town like this, and crafts are not exactly something that are super popular anymore. People want things that are a little bit more sophisticated, and the stuff that I make isn’t like that at all.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. Your stuff looks just as good as anything you could buy in the store. And craft stores are very popular.”
Grace didn’t argue with her mother. She knew that as much as she loved what she was doing now, there was no way she was going to makeenough to support herself. She did hope she could make a living at it at least long enough to be with her mom and take care of her. But she supposed that she probably ought to be looking for an actual job.
“You know, if we had the tourist traffic that some of the towns south of us have, you wouldn’t have a problem selling crafts, and Lauren wouldn’t have a problem coming back home and taking over her family bakery.”
“I haven’t talked to Lauren in years. I have no idea if she’d still even want to do that.” It was true, she hadn’t talked to Lauren for a really long time. Maybe that was the way it always went where people graduated and went to college and barely saw each other anymore. Or maybe it was because of the tragedy that they all went through. It seemed to bind them closer before it blew them all apart.
They didn’t say anything else before Gita’s phone rang, and she picked it up from where it sat beside her recliner. Grace, who normally worked in the craft room upstairs when she used to help her mom, had brought things to the table so she could sit in the same room as her mom, and her mom didn’t have to climb the stairs. They were working on stairs in physical therapy, and her mom was progressing rapidly. She wasn’t quite where she was before her surgery, but she was probably at seventy-five percent, at least by the physical therapist’s estimation.
“Hello?”
