Better Than Chocolate Part 26

Chapter Nineteen.

Every successful person encounters roadblocks, but when your family is with you, you can always find an alternate road to success.

-Muriel Sterling, When Family Matters The Department of Transportation had the rockslide cleaned up by Thursday but the damage had been done. Most of the people who had booked rooms at the town's B and Bs had canceled, and no one was calling in with fresh reservations.

"Our poor town," Olivia lamented to Blake when she came in to draw money out of her savings. "First no snowpack and now this. You know, I was booked solid until this happened. Now I'm down to one couple. And Annemarie is in the same boat. So are Gerhardt and Ingrid over at Gerhardt's Gasthaus. Samantha is trying to let people know we're still having the festival, and her sister made I don't know how many calls to newspapers and even that Northwest TV show, but she hasn't had any success. And at this late date who will come?"

With the festival less than two weeks away, it didn't look promising for the Sterlings or the town. Restaurants, B and Bs, stores-everyone was paying the price for this travel scare. But the ones Blake was most concerned about were the Sterlings. One Sterling in particular.

Samantha Sterling couldn't seem to catch a break.

Could he catch one for her? He didn't know if he could succeed where she and her sister had failed but he was willing to try. Heck, he owed it to them and his other bank customers to enter the publicity fray.

The next morning he was up and out the door by 4:00 a.m., headed for Seattle. Sometimes phone calls weren't enough. Sometimes it took a little face time to make things happen.

"Have you seen the Seattle paper, chica?" Elena greeted Samantha when she came to the office on Friday.

Samantha didn't care if she ever saw another newspaper again. But Elena was smiling, so it couldn't be bad news.

"Look," she said, holding it out. "It's on page two but that's okay."

Samantha took the paper. The words in big print above the article made her eyes pop. D.O.T. Clears Up Pa.s.s in Time for Town's Festival. "Oh, my gosh," she gasped. Free publicity-it was a miracle!

It appears chocolate-lovers will be able to get over the pa.s.s to enjoy the chocolate festival scheduled to take place in Icicle Falls the weekend before Valentine's Day, after all, thanks to the Department of Transportation crews working overtime. A major rockslide recently made it a challenge for travelers going over the pa.s.s via Highway 2, but D.O.T officials say the pa.s.s is once more clear for travel. "We're open for business," says Ed York, Icicle Falls resident and owner of D'Vine Wines. Ed's business is one of many partic.i.p.ating in the upcoming festival.

"Not bad, eh?" Elena said again.

Ed must have contacted the paper. Go, Ed!

Samantha's lips tugged upward. What was that unusual movement? Oh, yes, a smile, the first one she'd managed in days, and it felt fabulous.

She went into her office and started emailing. The clock was ticking and she had a festival to promote. Thank G.o.d.

She was in the middle of putting a tweet on Twitter when Elena buzzed her. "The producer of Northwest Now is on line two and wants to know if you'll do an interview about the company and how you got the idea for the festival."

Would she!

On Monday it was lights, camera, action as the film crew from Northwest Now hit town. Samantha had asked Mom and Cecily to join her, partly for family solidarity, partly as an olive branch to Mom. She'd been pretty hard on her mother the past month, and considering how sweet Mom had been it grated on her conscience. This seemed like one way Samantha could make that up to her.

So now here they sat in the gift shop on soda fountain chairs borrowed from Ca.s.s's bakery with piles of chocolate boxes for a backdrop, lights and cables everywhere, about to talk to Kiki Long, host of Northwest Now. Kiki looked impressive in her red suit but she couldn't hold a candle to Cecily, who was pretty in a pink cashmere sweater and dress jeans, or Mom, who was wearing a pencil skirt and cream-colored silk blouse accented with gold jewelry. Samantha had opted for her favorite embroidered green jacket over a white blouse and jeans-Icicle Falls business casual. She still could hardly believe that their luck had turned and this was happening.

Now, if she just didn't blow the interview. She'd never been on TV and her deodorant was working overtime.

"Don't look at the camera," Janice, the producer, instructed them. "Just make eye contact with Kiki."

Samantha nodded and swallowed in an effort to hydrate her dry throat.

"And smile," Janice added, giving her arm a pat. "This is supposed to be fun."

Yes, fun. Relax. She glanced over at her mother. Mom was as serene as the Mona Lisa. Of course, she'd done this sort of thing before. She'd had a radio interview with a Seattle station when her last book came out.

She smiled encouragingly at Samantha and Cecily and said, "Think how proud your Great-grandma Rose would have been."

That made Samantha smile. Yes, Great-grandma, we're still hanging in there fighting.

The camera started rolling and Kiki kicked off the interview by sampling a lemon-white-chocolate truffle. Her reaction was worth a fortune in advertising dollars. Her eyes widened and she actually groaned. "Oh, my G.o.d, this is amazing," she said, fanning herself in typical dramatic Kiki fas.h.i.+on.

"That's actually my mother's recipe," Samantha said. Before she channeled her creativity into writing, Mom had contributed a recipe or two. Unlike her eldest daughter, who was obviously recipe-challenged.

"So tell me about your company," Kiki began. "Is it true that your great-grandmother, who started it, literally dreamed your first recipes?"

And with that they were off. Mom was charming, Cecily was beautiful and Samantha couldn't stop smiling. What woman, seeing their cute pink boxes and bonbons wrapped in gold foil and secured to little satin pillows with magenta bows, wouldn't want to visit the gift shop or go online and order Sweet Dreams Chocolates? They talked about the company, about Icicle Falls and, of course, the festival.

"What made you decide to host a chocolate festival?" Kiki asked.

Desperation. "Well, who doesn't like chocolate?" Samantha quipped.

"Not only do we make the world's best chocolate here in Icicle Falls, but we also have beautiful scenery, great shops and restaurants, and wonderful people," Cecily added.

There was the perfect sound bite, thought Samantha. Why hadn't she come up with that? Her sister had a real gift for marketing.

"I agree with you," Kiki said. "And your candy is incredible. So, Samantha, you're the head of the company, right?"

"Yes, she is," Mom said.

Deep inside Samantha, something tight and hard that she'd been carrying around for a long time broke and shattered.

"Have you dreamed up any new recipes for Sweet Dreams?" Kiki asked Samantha.

What? Of all the questions in all the world, the woman had to go and ask that one? Panic seized Samantha by the vocal chords and she sat frozen in her seat.

Mom stepped in. "Every company needs both dreamers and doers. Samantha is a doer. Thanks to her, our company is going to be around for many years."

Samantha couldn't have been more overwhelmed if the president of the United States had pinned a medal on her. Tears sprang to her eyes and she found herself squeezing her mother's hand.

"Let's hope so," Kiki said. "And all you chocolate-lovers and sweethearts looking for a great getaway this weekend before Valentine's Day, Icicle Falls is the place to be."

And that was it, the end of the segment.

"Perfect," Janice said.

It was time to shake hands, thank everyone and make sure they got complimentary chocolate. The crew packed up their gear and Cecily escorted Kiki and Janice over to Schw.a.n.gau for lunch, which would be on Sweet Dreams, of course.

Samantha caught her mother's arm. "Mom, thanks. For what you said."

"Oh, sweetie," her mother said, "I should be thanking you."

"For what? Being so angry?"

Mom sighed. "Sweetheart, I don't blame you. I know I mishandled things with Waldo." She hesitated and bit her lip.

"Mom, what is it?" Samantha pressed, now anxious to fully clear the air between them.

Her mother sighed. "About Waldo."

Samantha could feel herself stiffen, bracing for a lecture. You should have been nicer to him. He loved you.

Go ahead and say it, she thought. I deserve it.

"He wasn't well."

Of course he wasn't well. He died. "What does that mean exactly?"

"He had something called Lewy body disease."

Ice-cold shock smacked Samantha in the face. "Lewy... What is that?"

"It's a brain deterioration similar to Alzheimer's," Mom said wearily.

"So some of the strange things he was doing..." Of course, that explained why his decisions went from incompetent to disastrous. "How long?" How long had they known? Samantha felt sick.

Her mother shrugged. "Several months at least. It started with what we thought was restless legs. He was having trouble sleeping. I got him vitamins. They didn't help. Then he fell on the deck. But it was slippery that day, so we didn't think anything of it."

Samantha remembered that fall. She also remembered hoping it would keep him out of the office and her hair for a few days. Rotten daughter of the year.

"He started forgetting things-"

Like the quarterly taxes.

"-and getting confused. But other times he was fine. We kidded ourselves, saying he was having senior moments, but by October I knew we were dealing with something more. We didn't get the final diagnosis until December. The doctor had ordered a brain scan." Mom stopped, pressing her lips together while she got control of her emotions and then continued, "The only way to be completely positive it was Lewy body would've been with an autopsy but I couldn't do that to him. Anyway, the brain scan told us enough."

Their so-called getaway to Seattle right after Thanksgiving hadn't been a getaway at all. They'd been off seeing doctors, enduring a battery of tests, all alone with no emotional support.

Samantha was going to throw up. Or cry. Or both. "Why didn't you tell us?" she croaked.

"We didn't want to spoil everyone's Christmas. And you had your hands full at work with holiday orders."

And fighting with Waldo. Fuming over the penalty Uncle Sam had slapped on them because they'd been late with their quarterly taxes. Creating a scene in his office when she learned he hadn't been able to make the payment on their loan in December. Tattling to Mom.

"Mom, I..." Her throat closed up and she just stood there in the middle of the shop like a big, dumb boulder. All those bizarre purchases he'd made, the paranoia, the increasingly inept decision-making, the financial tangle. Why hadn't she figured out that Waldo's problem was medical?

Because she'd been too busy with the business and with being angry. Now Waldo was up with the angels, practicing his golf putt. When it was her time they'd probably lock the pearly gates and tell her to go look for a hotter climate farther south. Heck, they wouldn't have to tell her. She'd go voluntarily. Why didn't life have a rewind b.u.t.ton?

Now she saw something new in her mother's expression that made her feel even worse. Regret. "I should have told you as soon as I suspected," she said to Samantha. "Obviously it was affecting his ability to run the company."

Obviously. Samantha should have felt exonerated to hear her mother say this-she'd known all along he wasn't fit to run the company-but all she felt was sad. Here her mother and stepfather had been grappling with life-and-death issues and she'd been having hissy fits because he bought cases of bottled water. "Mom, I'm so sorry. I wish I'd known."

"And I wish I'd encouraged Waldo to do something else."

That made two of them. Poor Waldo had fancied himself a savvy businessman but he'd been out of his depth from the beginning. Still, she could have worked with him, helped him more. If she'd tried harder could she have averted disaster? She'd never know.

"I want you to know that after we found out what was wrong, he was going to step aside," Mom said. "We talked about it right before he died. You should have been in charge of the company all along. It was your heritage."

There it was, out in the open at last, the source of Samantha's anger. Waldo, who'd been the perfect happy ending for her mother, the perfect stepdad, had slipped in and stolen her birthright and Mom had gone along with it. Samantha had been saddled with anger over that ever since, and no matter how she'd tried to hide it or ignore it, the nasty emotion had ridden her hard. But it was time to buck off the saddle. This was baggage she didn't need to carry anymore.

"Can you forgive me for my poor choices?" Mom asked, tears in her eyes.

So many emotions crowded Samantha's throat, all she could manage was, "Oh, Mom." And as they hugged she could feel the anger sliding off her.

"I'll make it up to you," Mom whispered.

"Mom, there's nothing to make up." Not now. She was the one who had the making up to do, for her bad att.i.tude, her lack of understanding, her resentment of a man she had genuinely cared for once.

Her mother gave her a watery smile and anch.o.r.ed a lock of stray hair behind Samantha's ear. "If anyone can pull us out of this, you can. Remember your favorite story when you were little?"

"The Little Engine That Could." Mom still had the book tucked away somewhere, saving it for future grandchildren.

"You've always had such confidence," Mom said, "and I'm confident it will stand us in good stead now. We have sweet things to deliver and you're the engine that will take us where we need to go. You have the drive and determination to do it."

Samantha hoped so. With the highway open again and all the great free publicity maybe, just maybe, she had a chance.

Chapter Twenty.

You can, indeed, mix love and business, and wind up with something wonderful.

-Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love "Pat, I can't thank you enough for helping me," Muriel said as they worked their way through the piles of paperwork, bills and bank statements on Waldo's desk.

It had all felt so overwhelming, like the money book she'd gotten from Pat. Tax deductions, refinancing, mortgage rates, compound interest (she was supposed to understand that chart? Really?)-it made her eyes glaze over. She didn't speak this language. This was...math! The book had served a purpose, though. Only a couple of pages of reading was all it took to put her to sleep at night. Better than a sleeping pill.

But that wasn't exactly helping get her financial house in order. An SOS call had brought Pat over, armed with her calculator, and now the two women were about to do battle with the bills.

"I have no idea how I'm going to make what I have stretch," Muriel confessed. "All these bills." She shook her head. "This is humiliating. I'm an idiot savant. The only thing I can do is write."

Why, oh, why hadn't she persisted in taking a more active role in the money-managing process when Stephen was alive? Or even Waldo. After Stephen's death she should have dug in and handled everything.