My radio alarm clock had popped on at five and was issuing a weather alert when I got back to my room. Cold. Wet. Dreary.
Pulling back the sheer curtains at the window, I took a peek outside. I couldn’t read the still-dark sky, and the dry ground illuminated by the yellow glow of the streetlight didn’t give a hint of what the forecaster warned.
I pulled out a sweater as the old radiator clanked and hissed, held it up and thought better of it.
“Cold weather may be blowing in,” I said, folding the sweater up, “but churning ice cream and waiting on customers is gonna make me work up a sweat.” I smiled. “Yeah, lots of customers. Lots of sweat.”
I stuffed the sweater back into the drawer and, opening another one, pulled out one of the shop’s custom T-shirts. I layered it with a button-down flannel shirt—always best to be prepared—and snaked my way into a pair of jeans. On my knees, I rustled through the floor of my closet. I pushed work shoes down into my knapsack and dug my UGG boots out of the back.
I was ready to start my day—the day—the first day of our family’s new and improved ice cream shop.
First stop, though, my parents’ house.
I grabbed my puffy coat and a hat from the coat rack, picked up last year’s Christmas gift from PopPop and stuffed it in my jeans pocket and plodded across the old wooden floor and down the back stairs that led out from my second-story apartment.
The sky spit down droplets of rain on me as I walked outside. Right now it was hit or miss, but something was brewing, I could tell. The wind let out a low howl, blew the autumn leaves across my path and gave me a shiver up my spine. I pulled the hood up on my coat, shoved my hands into my pockets looking for gloves. Nothing. I balled my fists up and tried to keep my fingertips from freezing. The weather forecast was rarely right, at least for Cleveland and its surrounding areas, and—fingers crossed—I hoped the wintery forecast for the day would be a miss.
Around my hometown, snowfall could come with the daffodils in April and not so much for sleigh rides and decorated trees in December. It wasn’t odd anymore for Christmas to arrive with sixty-five-degree weather, which was what I was wishing for today.
chapter
TWO
Hey!” I called out. “Mom! Dad!” I walked through my parents’ front door, which was always unlocked. “Where are you guys?” I knew no one was asleep in this house.
My parents still lived in the big colonial home where my grandparents had raised my dad, my uncle Denny and aunt Jack, and where they had raised my three brothers and me. They were pretty much empty nesters now, but family was always going in and out. We were a close-knit bunch, and my large family made up the majority of the 0.4 percent African American population of Chagrin Falls listed on Wikipedia.
“We’re back here, Win,” I heard my mother call out.
I tugged out of my coat, draped it over the newel post at the foot of the stairs, adjusted my knapsack across my shoulder and walked down the center hallway back to the kitchen. Much more updated than the Victorian I lived in. Since the kids moved out, my parents had renovated just about every room in the house.
My mother, sitting at the island, reached out for me as I emerged through the kitchen entryway. “Happy Opening Day!” She took my hands and, pulling me over to her, planted a kiss. “Oh!” she said. “Your hands are freezing. Where are your gloves?”
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said. “It’s a short walk down to the shop. I’ll be fine until I get there.”
“You’re not okay. And it’s not fine. You’re cold.” She snapped her fingers, a thought seemingly sparking in her head, and hopped off the stool. “I’ve got a pair for you right here in your old cubby in the mudroom.”
“Hi, Daddy,” I said, knowing there was no use arguing with my mother. Plus, she was right, my hands were cold. “What are you two up to?”
“Daddy’s making me breakfast,” my mother said, bubbly and smiling as usual as she came back from the mudroom shaking a pair of red knitted gloves at me. “We’re having a Riya omelet.” She placed the gloves into my hands.
I raised an eyebrow. “As in my Riya?” I pushed the gloves down into my knapsack.
“Yep,” my dad said, and gave a firm nod. He stood at the stove, bent over close, intense, working on the contents of his small skillet like he was performing surgery. He was the best cook out of our clan. Nobody missed dinner on Family Chef Night when it was his turn. He had on brown dress pants, ready for work, the sleeves of his light blue dress shirt rolled up, his collar button undone. His tie and suit jacket were carefully placed over the back of a chair. “It has a little turmeric, a little garam masala, basil, sweet Italian sausage and—”
“Some red chili pepper!” said my mother, finishing his sentence.
I laughed. “That would be Riya,” I said.
One of my two best friends, Riya Amacarelli was half Sicilian, half Indian and fully American. She had always been a firecracker, hot-tempered and determined. She’d followed in the footsteps of more than half my family and gone into the medical field. Something I’d never considered. I peeked over into my dad’s sauté pan—somehow he’d captured Riya in an egg dish.
“You want me to make you one, Pumpkin?” my dad asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It just seems wrong eating a dish named after someone I know.”
“Suit yourself. You’ll miss a treat.” He flipped over the omelet. “I’m making one for your Grumpy Pa, though,” my father said. “You’ll drop it off to him before you head down the hill?”
“Sure,” I said.
My grandfather lived in the same house, but he had his own suite where he’d drawn a line—no entering without an invitation—except for me. I was his girl.
“Graham, don’t call your father that,” my mother said, creases forming on her brow. “He might be in a good mood this morning.” My mother, the perpetual optimist. “He wanted Win to take over the store and run it, and today’s the day. That has to have him in a good mood.”
“Grumpiness is built into his DNA,” my dad said. “I’ve been scouring medical journals ever since my residency days to see if a grumpy gene has been identified. Soon as they find one, I’m extracting it out of him.”
My mother giggled. She thought all of my father’s dry jokes were funny. The gleam in her eye and her constant smile when they were together would make anybody think that they were newlyweds instead of having been married for thirty-six years.
Other than both being patient and inherently kind, they were complete opposites. My mother, Ailbhe, always joining a Zumba group, a yoga class or a jitterbug dance team, was chubby. Short, with a head of dyed-over gray hair, she was full of energy, joy and laughter. She raised us kids, supported us in our dreams and had helped her in-laws at the ice cream shop from the time she started dating my father.