Better Than Chocolate Part 24

Now she said the same thing to Amber. The girl was already on her mother's doo-doo list. Did Samantha need to give Ca.s.s another reason to be unhappy with the kid?

Relief flooded Amber's face, was.h.i.+ng the worry lines from her brow. "Thank you," she breathed.

"But you'd better keep your end of the bargain," Samantha said sternly, "or I'll rat you out in a heartbeat."

"Don't worry, I will. You rock," she gushed, then turned and practically danced out of the office.

Rock...rockslide. Ugh. Samantha decided it was time to go home and have a pity party.

Her condo was a nice place for a party, with walls painted a warm brown, photographs of lupines and lady's slippers Samantha had taken on her mountain hikes, framed and hung over the electric fireplace.

And the welcome committee was ready and waiting. Nibs was always glad to see someone who could master the mysteries of the cat-food can.

"You're lucky," she told him as she scooped food into his bowl. "You have someone to take care of you. No worries, no stress." What would that be like?

If she gave up the fight, she'd have no worries and no stress, either.

Except her mother would end up a bag lady and she'd go down in the family history books as the one who lost the company-generations of work and enthusiasm and creativity gone. Poof.

"How could this happen to a nice girl like me?"

Nibs didn't answer. He was too busy eating.

She turned off her cell phone and threw it in her junk drawer. Then she went to bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. Bad idea. Her mind was whirling so fast she nearly gave herself bed spin. She got up and left the bedroom.

What to do, what to do? She paced the condo but no answer came.

She finally grabbed the chocolate seconds she'd brought home and parked on the living room couch in front of the TV and turned on the news like a good little m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t.

"A hard blow for the town of Icicle Falls this week," Erin Knowle, newscast chick, was saying. "With a rockslide across Highway 2 and the governor warning people to avoid the pa.s.s, their chocolate festival is in danger of being canceled. This, coming on top of the weather, is a double blow for the small town that caters to winter sports enthusiasts. Highway 2 is currently closed, so if you need to go over the pa.s.s, use an alternate route."

"Oh, by all means," Samantha shouted at the woman, throwing a chocolate at the TV.

Erin's partner in misery put in his two bits. "We've had unusually warm weather and light rainfall here in the Pacific Northwest this year, haven't we, Erin?"

"Yes," said Erin, all prim and perfect in her power suit and her perfect world where bad news only happened to other people, "and that's translated into very little snow in the mountains. And now these unusually warm temperatures have spelled disaster for ski areas like Snoqualmie Falls and Crystal Mountain and, of course, Icicle Falls, whose economy depends on good winter weather."

Samantha hurled another chunk of chocolate at the TV.

You're being childish, she told herself. And wasting chocolate. She walked over to where the candies had landed, picked them up and put both pieces in her mouth. Then, mature adult that she was, she sat on the floor and wailed.

She was just hitting her stride when someone knocked on her door. Oh, no. Who had heard her? She choked back a sob and sat perfectly still, hoping whoever it was would go away.

A m.u.f.fled voice called, "Are you okay in there?"

Lila Ward. She was coming to pour salt on the wound. The drapes were closed but Samantha felt foolish and pathetic for having been caught sitting here on her living room floor crying. She held her breath and willed the woman to give up and go away.

But, like Samantha's problems, Lila stuck around. Another knock. "Samantha?"

"s.h.i.+t," Samantha muttered. She took a swipe at her cheeks and went to answer the door.

She opened it to find Lila standing there holding a box of tissue. "I heard you and thought you could use this."

The unexpected kindness started the tears rising to flood level again and Samantha's throat constricted. All she could do was take the box and nod.

Lila cleared her throat. "Well, I'll be going. If you need anything I'm downstairs."

She needed the pa.s.s cleared. She needed the governor to shut up. She needed a ton of free publicity. And she needed people to come to the festival and spend a fortune. But she hugged that box of tissues as if it were a gift from heaven.

She managed to choke out a thank-you. Then after Lila left she shut her door, returned to the couch and made use of the tissues.

By the time Cecily knocked on her door, she had a mountain of used tissues on the coffee table and a headache. But she was dry-eyed and resigned to her fate. Was this how people felt just before they drowned? Did some voice inside them whisper, Give up and die?

"Are you all right?" Cecily asked, taking in the mess on the coffee table.

Samantha heaved a sigh. "I will be." At some point in her life, maybe ten years from now. Or twenty.

She went back to the couch. Her sister followed her and snagged a chocolate. "I'm sorry you had to get hit with all this."

That made two of them. If she'd just had a little more time, if she could've made a go of the festival. If, if, if. "I give up." I'm sorry, Great-grandma. I really am.

"Don't give up, Sam." Cecily held a piece of chocolate to Samantha's mouth. "Open."

Samantha obliged and her sister popped the candy in. It soured in her mouth and she spat it into a tissue. She couldn't eat this stuff anymore. "It's not just us. The whole town was counting on this. The B and Bs have lost bookings right and left."

"I'm sure they'll be able to hang on till summer when the hikers and river rafters come," Cecily said.

"That's longer than we can hang on." Suddenly drowning in a vat of chocolate looked pretty darned good. Samantha fell back against the couch cus.h.i.+ons. "What's going to happen to Mom?"

"She'll be fine. She just got a royalty check."

Mom wasn't exactly a household name. It couldn't have been for much. "How much?" Samantha asked.

Cecily shrugged. "I didn't see it, but she says it should tide her over for a month."

Samantha shook her head. "How would she even know? She has no idea what's going on with her finances." She never had. Their mother's brain was not wired for math.

"Yeah," Cecily agreed. "But she should be able to figure out how to make a house payment and pay the power bill."

"I hope so." Samantha rubbed her aching head. Mom was going down the financial tubes. And without Sweet Dreams, so were all their employees. "If I lose the company-"

"You'll go on to start another," Cecily said. "That's what successful people do. They encounter a roadblock and they find another route. But let's not worry about that yet. I came to tell you some great news. D.O.T. should have the road open by Thursday." Her cell phone rang. "Bailey," she announced before answering. Then, "Yes, we're here. Yes, she's fine. Well, sort of." A moment later Cecily held out the phone to Samantha. "She wants to talk to you."

How many family members does it take to pull a girl back from the brink of despair? Samantha took the phone.

"I've been so worried about you," Bailey said. "You weren't answering your cell."

"I turned it off." The last thing she'd wanted was to talk to anyone in her time of misery. Or so she'd thought. But having her sisters here was like wrapping herself in a down comforter on a cold evening. It didn't make the night any less cold but you felt warmer.

"I heard about the slide and I figured you might be upset," Bailey said.

Now there was an understatement.

"Don't worry, Sammy. Everything will work out. D.O.T. will get it cleaned up."

Samantha sighed. "Thanks to the governor and the media, people will be too scared to drive the pa.s.s."

"Not if they hear that everything's been cleaned up. We just have to get the word out," Bailey said as if that was the simplest thing in the world.

"Bailey," Samantha began.

"I know you can fix this."

"I'm not G.o.d," Samantha said irritably.

"You sure acted like it when we were growing up," Bailey retorted. "Remember how we got lost in the woods that time we went camping with Daddy and Grandpa? You found the way back."

"We weren't that far from camp."

"We aren't that far now," Bailey said.

If only she was right...

When Cecily left, Samantha still had no solution to her problems and no guarantee that things were going to turn out well, but she'd recovered her fighting spirit. She got on her computer and began to spread the news via Facebook and Twitter. "Highway 2 rockslide will be cleaned up." There had to be something to this power of positive thinking stuff. "The Icicle Falls chocolate festival is still a go. The rocks won't get you but the chocolate will. Come eat chocolate and go to heaven."

Okay. There. She didn't know if she'd accomplished much with that flurry of activity but she sure felt better.

"I think it's going to take a while to master everything in that book you chose for me," Muriel confessed to Pat as the LAMs gathered for dinner at Zelda's. "I'm afraid managing money is all a terrifying mystery to me." She almost added, I wish Waldo was still alive. But Waldo hadn't been much smarter about money than she was.

"You'll get the hang of it," Olivia a.s.sured her. "Oh, look, they've added huckleberry cheesecake to the dessert menu."

"You told me you were dieting," Dot said.

"I am. I'm cutting back," Olivia said. "But not on our dinner nights. It's my one night out."

Dot shook her head. "Pathetic."

"Well, at least I don't smoke," Olivia shot back.

"Okay, okay. Point taken," Dot conceded.

"Anyway, I need cheesecake for comfort," Olivia said. "I had two more cancellations today, even though I told them the highway would be clear by next week."

"People are spooked. The media did a pretty good job of scaring them," Dot said in disgust.

Her daughter was right, Muriel thought miserably. Perception was everything.

"We can't control the media or the mountain," Pat told them. "All we can do now is hope. So let's talk about some things we can control." She turned to Muriel. "Besides being financially challenged, how are you doing?"

Her daughter was ready to throw her off a mountaintop, she still cried herself to sleep at night and she was probably going to lose her house. "I've been better," she confessed.

"You'll come around," Pat said.

"Don't worry. We'll get you through," added Dot.

She sincerely hoped so, because she wasn't doing such a good job of getting herself through.

The following night Del stopped by, offering to take her to dinner and help her find a solution to her financial problems.

"Thank you, Del, but I think I'm going to just try and deal with this on my own," she told him. That way there'd be no chance of betraying business secrets.

"Nonsense," he said heartily. "Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on once in a while. I've got a nice quiet corner table reserved over at Schw.a.n.gau."

"Well..." She hesitated.

"Come on," he urged. "You've got to eat, right?"

Yes, but not with Del. Between making pa.s.ses at her and leaking information to his sister he'd hardly proved himself trustworthy.

"I think the two of us can get your finances all sorted out," he said.

Getting anything sorted out would be a blessing, and it was only dinner. She'd make sure they didn't talk about the business, but maybe he could advise her on what to do with the house. "All right," she decided. This time she'd sit across from him. That should keep her legs out of range.

They'd barely placed their orders before she knew she'd made a mistake. Over his martini Del proceeded to pump her about the business and predict that the chocolate festival would be a flop. "Not enough time. Very poor planning. And now, with the rockslide..."

"The Department of Transportation will have that cleaned up before the week is over," she protested.

"Too late. The damage is done. People won't come. But even if they did, it wouldn't be enough to save your company. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you that, Muriel, but it's true."

"My daughter is saving the company," she said huffily. Too bad she hadn't told herself that before starting her desperate phone campaign.

"And that's why you called me asking for a loan?" he scoffed.

"I called asking for a loan because I need to make my house payments." That wasn't a lie, not really. She'd be okay this month, thanks to the small check she'd received, but after that she was in big trouble.

Now he looked shocked. "Waldo had life insurance, didn't he?"

The horror of her situation brought tears to her eyes. She bit her lip.

"Oh, no. Well, he had investments, right?"

Once upon a time. He'd also had some sort of pension, but she'd discovered that the pension stopped when Waldo's heart did. She shook her head.

"Muriel, this is terrible." Del reached across the table and took her hand. "But don't worry, we'll figure something out."

"I just need to get over this rough patch," she said, extricating it. If he could lend her a couple thousand she'd be fine. She could give most of it to Samantha.