Page 1 of Deadly Sins: Gluttony
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Gluttony (n.)the act or habit of eating and drinking too much; greedy or excessive consumption
Gideon Belmont waved goodbye to his young female employee and flipped the Sweet Hearth Bakery’s store sign from open to closed, surprised at how many memories the sweet shop stirred up in him even after all these years.
Some good.
Others bad.
He wasn’t happy to be there, in a small shop in an even smaller town, a town he’d spent years trying hard to forget.Being in Hollow Pines had always reminded him of his past and what it was like to grow up poor with little more than two pennies to rub together.
The bakery had been started by his mother, Betty.And though she’d toiled day and night to make it a success, the shop had never turned much of a profit—not enough to make a decent living, anyway.In recent years, Gideon had tried to convince Betty to close the business.He’d even offered to take care of her so she wouldn’t have to work or worry about not having the money to pay the bills.
Betty didn’t entertain the notion.
The bakery was her baby—its customers, her friends—and she had no intention of shutting it down.
Betty managed to keep the bakery’s doors open right up to her dying day a year before.When his mother passed away, Gideon was shocked to learn she’d left the failing business to him.After all, he’d never hidden his painful memories of it.
As he looked around the bakery, his mind was drawn back to his younger years.At times the bakery hadn’t turned enough profit to put the proper food on the table.Betty’s solution to that problem was to take home the shop’s leftovers—donuts, cakes, cookies, pies—all the sugary confections most kids dreamed about.
For Gideon, such dreams became his nightmares.
Prior to his mother owning a bakery, he’d been a tall, slender boy.After, the nightly sugary treats caused him to pack on the pounds.His classmates at school made fun of him, earning him the nickname “Gluttonous Gideon.”
The shame he felt from the constant heckling in his youth had almost convinced Gideon to take his own life, and then a new kid moved in next door.His name was Greg Savage, and he was the fittest, most muscular teenager Gideon had ever seen.The pair became fast friends, and before long, Gideon started spending more time at Greg’s house than he spent at his own, eating healthy, slimming down.In a matter of months, his body went through a drastic transformation, the pounds he shed sculpting his body into one that resembled Greg’s.
Still, the nickname stuck, until the day Greg convinced Gideon it was time for them to do something about it.And they did, standing up to the school bullies and earning themselves a one-week suspension.
Gideon didn’t care.
The day they shut those jerks down was the best day of his life.
Months earlier, when Gideon returned for his mother’s funeral, he decided to close the bakery once and for all—until his sister Camille talked him out of it.Hoping to preserve her mother’s memory, she offered to take over the business, to continue their mother’s legacy.But the bakery had become a money pit—paint stripping off the walls, tables and chairs breaking apart, floor tiles chipping and cracking as they succumbed to the wear and tear of old age.
It was as if the business itself had given up.
If his brother, Martin, hadn’t stepped in, shelling out twenty thousand dollars for Camille to renovate, Gideon would never have agreed to allow the shop to stay open.
The money bought his sister time, but it didn’t change the inevitable.
The tables were new, the paint fresh, and the flooring redone, but not even Betty’s own daughter could replace Betty in the eyes of the town’s residents.And as the months rolled on, and the customers frequented the establishment less and less, Camille found herself in the same situation her mother had been in.
Unable to pay the bills, she’d reached out to the one lifeline she hoped would help her—Gideon.This time, she came to him with a proposal, a plan to expand the bakery into a café with a small bookshop in the back.All she needed was a little more money, and she could save the place.
This time, she was sure of it.
Gideon was not.
And today, he’d done what he should have done in the first place—close a dying business before it circled the drain even more than it already had.It hadn’t been an easy conversation to have with Camille and Martin.Though reluctant, they’d agreed in the end, and the days of Sweet Hearth Bakery were over.
A rustling behind the counter snapped Gideon out of his thoughts.He turned, questioning the sound he’d just heard, a sound like the pages of a book turning in the breeze.He walked toward the counter and peered over the side, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing more.
Strange.
For a moment he stood, listening.
All was quiet.
