Fireside by Susan Wiggs (pdf e book reader txt) 📗

laughter and conversation. The place looked wonderful, too, with its checkerboard tile floor and funky, eclectic decor.

Kim perused the gleaming glass cases, abundant with a dizzying array of baked goods—kolaches and butterhorns, croissants stuffed with marzipan, raspberry or chocolate, gorgeous cakes with hand-crafted sugar-dough decorations, rustic loaves of bread. She ordered a cup of tea and an iced maple bar. As long as she was going to go off her diet, she might as well go big, as her mother might phrase it. In her old neighborhood in L.A., consuming a pastry like this would be considered a felony.

She browsed the bakeshop while waiting for a seat to open up. Maybe she was just hyperaware of happy couples, but they seemed to be everywhere—smiling at each other across the café tables, holding hands as they waited in line for their orders, sharing intimate glances. So soon after the demise of her relationship with Lloyd, she should not feel a twinge, but Kim couldn’t help herself. She didn’t like the feeling of being alone in a crowd. Didn’t like the feeling of being alone, period.

Good thing I’ve got a house full of people to keep me company, she reminded herself.

The weekenders and day-trippers from the city looked delighted to be heading to the great outdoors of Catskill Park, a natural preserve designated as “forever wild.” Winter sports abounded in the area, where the pristine snowfall could always be counted on to cover the landscape in a picture-postcard blanket of white. Bundled in their colorful parkas and hats, people talked in animated fashion about the perfect weather—new snow, clear skies. She imagined some were headed to Deep Notch for ice climbing, others to Saddle Mountain for a day of skiing. There was also skating on Willow Lake, snowshoeing or snowmobiling in the backcountry. Everyone seemed excited about spending the day out in the bracing cold, away from cell phones and e-mail, firmly in the raw grip of Mother Nature. They all seemed so…content. It was a feeling that had eluded Kim in every relationship she’d ever had. She’d stopped even believing it was possible.

I used to love the winter, she thought. Perhaps she still did. Lately, she hadn’t paid much attention to her own likes and dislikes.

A seat opened up at the counter, facing out the shop window. She settled down at the window bar with the newspaper, her pastry and mug of tea. The moment she sank her teeth into the soft, rich pastry, she saw stars. It tasted like pure ecstasy. It was all she could do not to moan. In those few moments, she forgot about Lloyd, and her exploding life, her crazy mother and uncertain future. If everyone would start the day with an iced maple bar, she thought, we would have world peace.

She noticed a display of art photographs, beautifully matted and framed, showing off Avalon, Willow Lake and Catskill Park at their best—bathed in golden light, the colors soft and muted, as though painted by a master.

Near the cash register, there was also a stack of books on display marked, “Just published! Signed by the author.” The title of the oversized book was Food for Thought: Kitchen Wisdom from a Family Bakery by Jennifer Majesky McKnight. The book’s cover image depicted an older woman’s flour-dusted hands, working a pale globe of bread dough.

An array of daily papers lay on a side counter. While waiting for her tea to cool, she paged through the Avalon Troubadour. In addition to the bakery book, Jennifer Majesky McKnight had a regular column; today’s topic was a deep meditation on the attributes of black cocoa.

Kim sipped her tea and skimmed the pages, wondering idly at the juxtaposition of births, deaths and marriages, all on the same page. Beginning, middle, end. With a whole lot left out. There was a column headed Milestones—graduations and job promotions. And Engagements, featuring smiling people, supremely confident of their future. Why didn’t people announce breakups? Kim wondered. Surely the end of love was a significant life event. People trumpeted it to the world when they got engaged. Why not when they got dumped? Why was it treated like a secret, or like something shameful? Why not announce it as a major milestone, certainly far more significant than a graduation or a promotion at work. Or a demotion, for that matter. Or getting fired.

Kim was a spin doctor. She’d been in sports PR and media training since graduating from USC, and she was good at it. She couldn’t believe breakups and divorces had not been spun into an industry by greeting card and chocolate companies. She imagined her own announcement for the press. “Kimberly van Dorn proudly announces her breakup with Lloyd Johnson, NBA star and point guard for the L.A. Lakers…”

The “Pride of the Lakers,” as Johnson had been dubbed, was her star client. When he had fired her, loudly and publicly, in a room full of everyone who was anyone, she’d committed the ultimate faux pas of dropping her champagne glass. The tinkling, shattering sound had drawn the attention of everyone in the room. And it wasn’t just the sound of shattering glass. It was the sound of her career imploding. The ensuing scene in the parking lot—well, thank God no one else had witnessed that.

The tea boiled in her stomach, and the smells of the bakery nearly overwhelmed her. How would she ever eat anything again? How would she ever face the world without panic clawing at her throat?

To distract herself, she checked out the funny pages in the local paper, pleased to find her favorite syndicated comic strip. Just Breathe was about a young woman who’d moved in with her mother after her life fell apart. Ouch. This morning, that hit too close to home. Kim doubted she’d ever find any humor in the situation.

Setting the paper aside, she studied the scene outside the window. Back in California, she used to wake up to a landscape misted in smog and filled with the