“I’ve hired someone to help out with closing shifts.” Genevieve’s dad lowered his newspaper and peered at her gravely as she walked into the breakfast nook the next morning. His dark expression brooked no argument.
“What?” she cried, dropping her school bag to the floor with a thud. “Why? We don’t need another closer!”
“I’ll decide that, young lady,” he said sternly, and then he snapped the paper up again and disappeared behind it. “He’s a good kid, new to town. Needs a job.”
Genevieve sank into the dining room chair across from him, deflated at the sudden thought of the incomprehensible. “Did I do something wrong?”
She thought she saw his shoulders sag momentarily, but then he slapped the paper down on the table, barked, “Of course not!” and rose to get more coffee. Or so he pretended. Genevieve suspected his walking away was just another way of avoiding her hurt gaze.
They’d agreed that when she turned sixteen she could take over closings, which she now did five days a week, as long as she kept up with her homework and maintained at least a 3.5 grade point average. On her days off, their part-time worker, Chase Dillworth, closed the shop.
Genevieve had thrived on the additional responsibility, especially balancing the cash drawer and taking over inventory. She took pride in the fact that her increased work hours had allowed her dad to focus more on his job with the Pinewood Chamber of Commerce, and she dreaded to think she’d lost his trust somehow. But after quickly skimming her memory for any recent oversights, she was reassured that she’d been doing a perfect job.
Genevieve stood and positioned herself at her father’s chair, where he’d returned with a steaming mug of coffee. “If I haven’t done anything to make you think I can’t handle it, and I haven’t,” she said firmly, “then why are you hiring someone we don’t need and can’t afford?”
Her father’s whiskered cheeks turned red. “Because it’s becoming too dangerous, that’s why!”
“What are you talking about?”
He picked up the newspaper again and shook it in her direction. “Do you even look at the paper? Maybe you should take a page from Brandon’s book and start reading. There have been seven robberies—seven!—over in Mountain Ridge since June. All at little mom-and-pop shops with limited cash in the register; places like antique stores and donut shops. Places not likely to have advanced surveillance monitoring. And the last one? Someone got hurt, Genevieve. Some skinny masked punk broke a cashier’s finger slamming it in the cash drawer. All of this violence practically in our own backyard. You think that can’t happen here?”
Genevieve didn’t know what to say. She was in shock over her father’s horrid suggestion that she start reading like Brandon.
Then the truth hit home, and she felt a gut punch of dismay and, within seconds, a broiling anger. “You’re trying to push me out,” she accused. She gestured to the newspaper. “This is just a lame excuse for making me spend less time at Sweet Dreams because you want me to go away to college. You—you’re trying to replace me.” Her eyes swam with angry tears, blurring the infuriating expression of surprise on her father’s face as she stormed out of the kitchen and fled out the door.
The argument had been brewing all summer long. Genevieve’s father wanted her to apply to every university in the state, and choose at least three more out-of-state, to keep her options open. “You don’t want to stay in this little town scooping ice cream forever,” he’d insisted. “This is your time to explore what’s out there, to meet new people, to figure out what you want.”
But Genevieve knew what she wanted. She always had. Her aspirations hadn’t changed since she was seven years old, swiveling on the bar stools at Sweet Dreams and watching her father and Aunt Mellie whip up sweet confections for the people of her adopted hometown. Genevieve loved Pinewood—the way the snowy peaks greeted her each morning, striking majestically over the horizon, the way the fresh mountain air felt cool in her lungs with every new breath.
She loved Sweet Dreams—its bright candy colors and irresistible smell of waffle cones. She saw her future wrapped up in the ice cream parlour the same way it held tightly onto her childhood. Genevieve had every intention of going to college and earning her business degree, but she was happy commuting two days a week to Mountain Ridge University and taking the rest of her degree in distance courses so she could continue to run the store in the evenings. She would stay here, in Pinewood, where her home was, and take ownership of Sweet Dreams, and maybe even expand to open a second shop in Mountain Ridge.
Why couldn’t her father see that everything she needed, everything she wanted, was right here?
CHAPTER TWO
THE SPITEFUL SUBSTITUTE
Minutes later, Genevieve pulled up to the small one-story house on Aspen Lane and felt her icy mood begin to thaw. A towering pine tree leaned comically away from the double-gabled home, which had fern-green siding, white trim, and a wide set of wooden porch steps. She walked the flagstone path up to the steps and opened the door without knocking, as had been her custom since fourth grade when Mrs. Summers officially declared her part of the family.
The smell of pancakes and warm maple syrup greeted her as she entered the foyer.
“Genevieve!” cried Charlotte, Brandon’s tow-headed kid sister. She bolted into the room like a blue streak and crashed into her, flinging thin arms around Genevieve’s waist. Genevieve laughed and hugged the little girl back, then twirled a lock of Charlotte’s long blonde hair. “Ooh, I love your curls,” she cooed appreciatively.
Charlotte looked up at her and beamed. “Brandon did it.”
“Did he?”
“Good morning, sweetie,” Jill Summers said, stepping around the corner from the kitchen and engulfing Genevieve in a warm hug. Like every morning, Mrs. Summers’s makeup was flawless, her short brown hair perfectly pin curled, and she was wearing her retro polka-dot Kiss the Cook apron over a smartly tailored dress suit. With heels. Even in Genevieve’s memories as a small child sleeping over and watching movies, Mrs. Summers always wore heels. One of the many traits that bonded the two of them was their shared appreciation for always looking their best.
“We’re having pancakes,” Charlotte chirped, pulling her by the hand toward the kitchen. Genevieve gladly allowed herself to be led nearer to the delicious and comforting smell of warm maple syrup and cinnamon. She felt the remaining frostiness of her earlier frustration melt away.
“Charlotte, it’s time to get ready for school,” Mrs. Summers said, and Charlotte raced away compliantly. Mrs. Summers began chattering to Genevieve about her latest client, a local author launching a marketing campaign to promote his upcoming book on the history of the Anasazi Indians, a prehistoric tribe from the Four Corners area who vanished in the thirteenth century.
“It’s really quite fascinating,” she said, sliding a stack of steaming pancakes onto a plate and topping them off with a generous dollop of butter. “Did you know that the wood they used to build their ladders was transported from over fifty miles away? Or that we still don’t know why they disappeared?”
Genevieve said she hadn’t known. Another thing she and Brandon’s mom had in common was how much they loved their respective jobs. Mrs. Summers was a natural at public relations, with her energy and enthusiasm and genuine desire to see others succeed. She wanted to help bring attention to amazing books, both by teaming up with authors to create promotion plans and then by showcasing those authors in her bookstore.
“Here you go, sweetie.” Mrs. Summers drizzled thick warm syrup from a beehive-shaped dispenser and handed the plate to Genevieve, whose stomach was beginning to rumble.
“These look amazing, thank you.” She took the plate and turned for the basement landing at the same moment Charlotte came bounding back into the kitchen with her My Little Pony backpack, skidding to a halt at the table. Mrs. Summers chastised her lightly, and with a smile Genevieve headed downstairs.
Brandon Summers was in his usual spot, hunched over a light-up keyboard and squinting at the multi-monitor display of his gaming computer. The basement room was characteristically dim with patchy spots of hot and cold, due to the only heat source being a portable space heater Brandon kept as far away from himself as possible. As Genevieve watched, he pushed his perpetually sliding glasses up on his nose.
Her best friend had stupidly long eyelashes, cherubic cheeks, and was in constant need of a haircut. He did not look up as Genevieve entered the room and flopped onto the shabby brown polyester couch, which was as comfortably drab as everything else in the cave.
“Your mother’s breakfasts are going to make me fat,” Genevieve said through a mouthful of pancakes.
“Right,” Brandon said, still clicking away on his keyboard. “It’s my mother’s pancakes and not your father’s daily hot-fudge-and-butterscotch-layered sundaes to blame for your impending blimpdom.”
“What you don’t know, because it is a strict family secret, is that everything at Sweet Dreams Ice Cream Parlour has been magically manufactured with zero calories.”
Brandon spun lazily in his chair, carefully folded his glasses into his breast pocket, and smiled at her. “In that case, I should be eating there more often.” He patted his generous midsection.
“You could always run with me in the mornings,” Genevieve suggested.
“I’d sooner starve to death, thanks.”
