“And let me tell you.” She waved her hand. “I’m so happy not to have to hear all that construction noise going on down here anymore. I can’t wait for the smell of ice cream.” She bunched up her shoulders and let her fingers waggle in front of her nose as she gave a sniff.
“I don’t think ice cream has a smell,” Riya said in a low voice, looking at me.
“Well, good morning, Felice,” my mother said, and we all looked toward the back steps from where Rivkah had emerged. And there she was, Rivkah’s cat. She should have been called Your Highness. Her white coat flowed as she pranced down the steps and across the kitchen floor with her short, chubby legs, her plume tail swaying. She disappeared into the front of the store without even throwing a “meow” our way.
“What is she doing?” Riya asked.
“I think she’s going to see how the window seat turned out,” I said.
Riya raised an eyebrow.
“She was here when the interior decorator came with samples for the covering, and she picked out the fabric.”
Riya rolled her eyes at me.
I held up my hands. “What? What can I say? The cat knows what she likes.”
“Well, I’m going, too,” my mother said. “You can take the girls on your prescheduled tour later, if you want. I didn’t see it while it was under construction.” She jerked her head toward the cat. “I’m like Felice, I want to see it when I want to see it. I’ve waited long enough.” She looped her arm around Rivkah’s. “I’ll call your father”—she bowed her head at me—“and let him know about your visitor this morning.” She tugged on Rivkah. “C’mon, let’s see what your cat has contributed to the new store.”
“Mom,” I said, and flapped my arms. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We get distracted and we won’t finish on schedule.”
She paid no attention to me, and sashayed off on her short little cobby legs just as Felice had, dragging Rivkah beside her.
I shook my head and gave Riya a look that asked, “Can you believe this?”
“It’s a good thing you hired help,” Riya said. “This is a lot of work.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, glancing toward the front where my mother had disappeared. “I’ve got Candy Cook and Wilhelmina Stone coming in later today.”
“Wait,” Maisie said, a spark in her eye. “You mean Miss Wilhelmina? The woman who was the greeter at the Mayland Heights Walmart?”
“Yep, that’s her.” I nodded. “She’s working afternoons.”
“Isn’t she like a hundred and five?”
“A hundred and four,” I jokingly corrected, “but she’s got years of customer service experience.”
“I bet,” she said, and we all laughed.
“You know how to pick ’em,” Riya said.
“Candy, my other new staff member, seems real cool. She’s nineteen and says she’s a night owl, so she’ll work until close,” I said.
“How do you know her?” Riya asked.
“I don’t.” I shrugged. “She just came in and applied. She seemed friendly enough. Doesn’t know a thing about making ice cream, though. Actually, neither one of them did.”
“Not a commonly found skill set, huh?” Riya said.
“Go figure!” I said, and chuckled. “So I’m thinking with those two and my family’s help that should cover all the hours and foot traffic.”
“I’ll quit Molta’s,” Maisie volunteered, “and work for you.”
“You’re going to quit your job, Maisie?” Riya said. “Not again!”
“That Ari is a micromanager,” Maisie said in her own defense. “He gives off bad energy. Crashes my mood and sends my always-twenty-percent-tip servicing skills into a nosedive.” She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t like him and I can’t work with that man. Plus, that restaurant is too fancy for our little village.”
Did Maisie think that without her the restaurant would just go away?
“The whole village is going upscale, you know, including this place,” Riya said.
“No, we’re not,” I said, and scrunched up my nose. “We’re just the corner ice cream shop my grandparents started.”
“Corner shops don’t sell ice cream with liqueur in it,” Riya said.
“This place isn’t on a corner.” Maisie said it like it was the first time I was finding that out.
“I mean we’re just like one. And between family and my two new employees, I think we’ll be good, at least until the weather breaks.”
“See! You need me,” Maisie said. “You’re gonna need all the help you can find when all your customers start blowing through.”
I couldn’t help but break out in a big grin. “You think so?” I asked. “They’re going to be blowing through?”
“I know so,” Maisie said, her smile matching mine. “Like a high-speed train. Nothing can stop them.”
But like in most cases, Maisie didn’t have a clue. We blew through the prep, and I knew the day’s ice cream flavors would’ve blown anyone away, if anyone had showed up.
They didn’t.
The only thing that blew up to our door was snow. More than a foot and a half of it. And it stopped anyone from coming through.
chapter
SIX
I sat on the bench in front of the store. Grandma Kay’s bench. I needed to feel her arms around me.
I drew in a breath, then watched it vaporize and swirl around when I blew it back out.
My mother had a habit of sitting in parking lots. Whenever she was feeling low or depressed, if she was out, she’d pull the car over and sit there. She said that sometimes to get clarity you just had to be still.
I didn’t need clarity. I knew exactly what had gone wrong. It was the blizzard that blustered in the day I opened a store that usually served the edible kind—on warm, sunny days . . .
And even though I knew what went wrong, I didn’t want to move. My mind needed to be still and I was pretty sure my body was frozen in place.
It was dark already and it was only a little past six. I had sent my mom and Maisie home way before the scheduled eleven p.m. closing and told my new employees not to come in. There wasn’t any reason to stay.
I had walked there, and even though Maisie offered me a ride home, I didn’t want to take it. I felt like walking, only I didn’t get any farther than that bench.