“Nah?” Bobby’s voice cracked.
“You! Get out!” She took off after him, and I’d never seen Bobby Peters move so fast, not even when he was in his prime on the football field.
Chapter 6
Iris had baked six pies, two three-layer cakes, four dozen cookies, and a batch of biscuits before I’d gotten her calmed down and was able to leave her alone. She assured me she would be fine, and she did leave a message with Tim Crouse, the local lawyer, about what, if anything, she could do about this book. She called it plagiarism of her life.
“She is beside herself, and I don’t blame her.” I stood at the kitchen table and cut into a piece of the transparent pie she’d sent home with me. “Mac, it was awful.”
“I can’t even believe it. Julia had run over and gotten a copy when she went to lunch, and we sat there for the rest of the afternoon reading it.” Mac shook his head. He looked so cute in his loose long-sleeved polo shirt, khaki pants, and tennis shoes. But it was his deep-brown eyes that drew me in. “But we did get this amazing fall pie a little early.”
Transparent pie was a fall treat in Kentucky, not that it couldn’t be made any other time of the year. It was just popular in the fall.
Every time my mom made it, she’d tell me how it was a pie from long ago back when Sugar Creek Gap was first a mill town and supplies were low. One of the frontier women had come up with the recipe by using what they had on hand.
I could still smell the old farmhouse when Mom would make all those Transparent pies and put them in the pie safe, which was really a little cupboard where she’d store them and take them to the Wallflower Diner to sell the next day. Since the pies didn’t need to be refrigerated, the pie safe was constantly full.
Though I’d had my mom’s many times, Iris’s transparent pie was one of the best I’d ever eaten. It was probably because my mom used a premade pie shell compared to Iris’s homemade shell.
“This is so good. Angry makes great baking for Iris.” Mac made a joke, but I didn’t laugh. “Oh, Bernie, honey. It’s all going to blow over.”
He reached across the table, around Rowena, and put one hand on top of mine but didn’t really take notice I was glaring at him because he used the other hand to fork what was left of the pie. Rowena watched every bite he put in his mouth, giving him slow blinks and acting flirty so he’d give her a little taste. “Fat chance, girl,” he told her.
“Honestly, Mac.” I dragged my hand out from under his. “You aren’t really listening. This is serious. Everything hinges on this one thing in her life. Look at her business. What if people decide not to buy from the bakery? What if she loses. . .” The thought of it made my heart ache.
“More importantly, isn’t Stella Jane like twenty-something?” His question got my attention. “How on earth did she even know about this? It happened so long ago.”
“I never thought about that.” I shifted right to left as I tried to put my brain to work, but I was so mentally fatigued that I couldn’t even think straight.
Buster ran to the front door and barked his head off when there was a knock.
I looked up at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall.
“Knitting.” I sighed. “I totally forgot about class.”
The Front Porch Ladies always walked down to my house to get me so we could walk across the bridge down by me, cut across the veterinarian parking lot to Main Street, and then go up to Social Knitwork.
“You go, and I’ll clean up. I’ll even take Buster for a walk.” Mac stood up and put his hands on my arms, looking down at me with his deep-brown eyes. “I love you. Everything is going to be fine.”
I curled up on my toes, met his lips in a nice goodbye kiss, and headed to the door, where I grabbed my knitting bag.
“What on earth took you so long?” Harriette Pearl stood outside of the door while the other ladies were waiting outside my gate. Her gray brows lowered.
“Mac is here.” It was all I had to say to make all of them swoon with happiness for me.
Mac and I would’ve probably kept it on the down low a little longer when we first had decided to make a go of it, but with Harriette Pearl being his neighbor, it was hard to keep anything from her prying eyes and ears.
“Did you bring your book?” Ruby asked.
“We all did.” Gertrude patted her knitting bag.
“I didn’t. I thought we were going to knitting class.” So I was curious as to their thoughts about the whole book and knew we’d be talking about it, but they didn’t need to know that.
“We can gossip and knit.” Millie moved past me and over the bridge to lead the way.
“It’s not gossip. We are doing book discussion.” Harriette Pearl always tried to make things sound so much better in a bless-your-heart way.
“I can’t say too much. Iris is my best friend, and I honestly can’t believe Stella Jane put it in a book.” I still had a hard time wrapping my head around what had been written.
“I blame Elsbeth Clark for this behavior.” Ruby held the door of Social Knitwork, and we all followed in and through the shop to the crafting room, where Leotta Goldey was sitting in a folding chair with her legs propped up on the table and a copy of Beyond Boundaries in her hands.
She didn’t bother looking up. She had no idea we were even there.
“Leotta.” I tapped her on her shoulder.
“Oh!” she screamed and nearly fell right out of that chair. “You scared me.”
“What page?” Gertrude hurried and put her things down on the table. “If you didn’t hear us coming through the door, you must be at a really good part.”
“I just can’t help but think this book is a mash-up of some swept-under-the-rug secrets around here, if you know what I mean.” She dragged her hand up to her chest and lightly gasped. “Especially the part about the radio DJ who had broken up the relationship between a widow and her deceased husband’s best friend.”
“What?” I inhaled a sharp breath. My lips set in a grim line once I really knew the widow was me. And the DJ was Lucy, plus the other person was Mac.
“It seems that you didn’t get left out by the hand of Stella Jane Clark.” Harriette shrugged. “I bet you wish you’d brought your copy now.”
“It even insinuates the widow had feelings for the best friend long before the husband died.” Leotta looked down at the book. “Page one hundred and twenty-two.”
All four of the Front Porch Ladies flipped their books to the page and let out little gasps as they read down the page.
“I don’t even want to know.” I waved each one off as they looked at me with horror on their faces.
“What if little, sweet, innocent Clara reads this one day?” Millie asked a question I didn’t even think to consider.
“If it’s any consolation, I had no feelings for any other man than Richard Butler, even with all his indiscretions, until years after he was dead.”
That was the truth. I had no idea what Richard had done until Tasha, the other woman, had showed up years later, as in ten years later. That’s when I started to let my heart open up.