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  I’d pretty much perfected my system over the last ten years.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been calling and texting all morning. I about left pies in the oven to come find you.” Iris sounded a little more on edge than the typical yearly feeling-bad-for-her-friend call.

  Maybe she was calling about the pumpkin sugar cookies I’d volunteered us to make for the high school boosters.

  “I’m fine. I’ll meet you at my house right after I get finished delivering my route.” I didn’t tell her how I’d already baked several dozen of the pumpkin sugar cookies last night when I couldn’t sleep. “I totally forgot it was the day until Vince Caldwell reminded me. I feel awful. I bet Grady wonders why I haven’t texted him.”

  “Huh?” Iris sounded all sorts of confused on the other end of the line.

  “Richard’s date of death.” Was she pulling my leg? Iris never forgot.

  “Oh my God!” Iris’s voice was so loud it made my brain rattle. “Bernadette, I’m so sorry. How are you? Did you get any sleep? You’re working? Of course you didn’t get any sleep and you just said you were working. I’m a bad friend.”

  “You’re a great friend. I’m fine. I slept,” I lied. “I just told you that I totally forgot.” I stopped shy of Tranquility Wellness to make sure I didn’t disturb any sort of class or clients’ quiet time. Tranquility Wellness was a one-stop Zen shop that did all the things the name would suggest, like spa treatments, yoga classes, meditation classes, nutrition classes, and any sort of spa treatments that I wanted to check out.

  “So if you weren’t calling to check on me so early this morning, then what’s up?” I asked.

  “First off, I think it’s a good sign you forgot. Maybe you can start dating now.”

  Leave it up to Iris to fix me up. She’d been trying to do so for the past nine years, leaving me one year to grieve.

  “Not on your life. The last thing I want is a man to have to cook and clean for.” I looked in the window to see if there was a class before I crept in and laid the mail on the counter. “What’s up?”

  For a brief moment, I stopped and took a deep breath. Even though I knew Peaches Partin, the owner, used a machine to pump a spa smell from a bottle into the vents, it still made me feel good to inhale and exhale the fragrance.

  “I had me a feeling. I know you don’t want to hear about it, but I was wondering if you’ve been by Mac Tabor’s house yet?”

  I’d asked her to stop telling me about her “feelings” after Richard’s death.

  “No. I haven’t gotten that far in my deliveries,” I told her. “I’m about to stop at Pie in the Face. You there?”

  Iris had created her business, Pie in the Face, after she’d caught Bobby Peters cheating on her in their own bed. Not only were he and the girl all snuggled up, they’d been eating Iris’s homemade pie right out of the pie plate.

  Forget he was cheating; Iris never let anyone eat out of the pie plate.

  “You didn’t even cut a piece out of the pie plate?” was what Iris had told me she’d said to the cheating couple when she found them in bed with her pie plate. “You get a pie in the face!” she yelled at them as she picked up the pie and slammed it into his face.

  She had come to our house all torn up, but Richard and I couldn’t stop laughing. Richard had suggested she make her baking side hustle into a real business. That was also when he had jokingly said she should call it Pie in the Face so whenever Bobby had to drive downtown to get to his lumberyard, the name on the bakery would be a constant reminder of his philandering ways.

  She ran with Richard’s idea and had a very successful bakery now.

  I did bake some items for her, and she paid me for them, but most nights, we were still baking in my farm kitchen, keeping each other company. If not for Iris and our friendship or our fun nightly baking sessions at my house, I didn’t know what I’d do with all my free evenings now that Grady was married off.

  That was when being a widow was the hardest. Night.

  “I’m not at the bakery. I had a few deliveries this morning, and now I’m off to the high school to help teach Cake Decorating 101.” Iris was also the baking consultant for the high school’s home economics department.

  “Anyways, when you get to Mac’s house or business, make sure he’s all right. And I have some outgoing mail, so be sure to grab it, because I’m not sure Geraldine even heard me when I left. She was on her phone Instagramming some of the pies.” Geraldine Workman was Iris’s only employee.

  Iris and I hung up. I quickly texted Grady.

  I knew Grady would be too busy in his classroom to even read my text, but I still didn’t want the day to go by and Grady think I didn’t remember.

  A group of men was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Wallflower Diner, my mom and dad’s place. One of them was Dennis Kuntz. I walked slower and pretended I was going through the bag to collect the diner’s mail.

  I recognized the other men from the football games. They all liked to hang over the chain-link fence instead of sitting in the stands with their wives.

  “I’m telling you, Mac Tabor threatened me last night when I told him I didn’t agree with Chuck selling his part of our country club to him. He’s not going to get away with it.”

  When anyone mentioned Mac’s name, it got my attention.

  Dennis Kuntz’s big belly hung over his pants, and a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth. His thin brown hair was combed to the side to help try to cover up the baldness, but he didn’t do a good job of it. He had plump cheeks.

  “I heard it,” I heard one of them say, but I didn’t look up to see who it was. “This emergency city council meeting better settle it, because I don’t have time to listen to this crap at tonight’s game. We’ve got to bring home a win.” The man shook his head. “The city council and the commissioners better get on the same page before this little town implodes.”

  As the mother of the coach, it was hard to pinch my lips shut. These men loved to give their two cents on how they’d run the plays that Grady gave the boys on the field. Once, I hadn’t kept my mouth shut, and Grady had been mad at me for a week. He said I should know better and it was part of being a mom of a coach.

  Nonetheless, I was a mom—a Sugar Creek Gap Grizzly mom that was a bear in her own right.

  “Mac Tabor and Chuck Shilling will regret it if they show up this morning.” Dennis Kuntz folded his hands over his big belly.

  If it hadn’t been for them talking about Mac and how Iris was hell-bent on those feelings of hers, I would probably have just walked on by with that night’s game my only care in the world.

  “You only own forty percent of the country from what Chuck Shilling told me last night after football practice it was a done deal.”

  Another one of the men had spoken up, and I recognized the voice as Peter Dade’s. Peter’s son, Samuel, was the star of the high school team. I knew his wife, Eileen, from the boosters.

  “Chuck pretty much said it was a done deal. Said it right there while we were standing on the fifty-yard line.” Another one of the men in the circle had stuffed some money into his wallet and was trying to put it in his back pocket when his elbow hit me. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem.” I stopped, nearly stumbling over my own feet. “I should’ve been watching where I was going instead of sorting the mail.” I sucked in a deep breath and slid my gaze over to Dennis.

  “Ain’t you Richard’s widow?” Dennis asked me with furrowed brows.

  “Yes.” It was a title I hated, but it was what it was.

  “You got a great son. Good football coach. I’m really looking forward to tonight’s big game.” He smacked Peter on the back. They all nodded. Well, not Dennis.

  “Your husband and Mac Tabor were best friends.” Dennis’s chin lifted. He stared down his nose at me.

  “Yes, they were,” I confirmed. My stomach tightened. I could feel the gut punch coming.

  “You tell him that if he thinks he’s goi
ng to get his hands on my country club, he’ll have to go through me to do it,” Dennis said through gritted teeth.

  The other men laughed.

  “I’ll see you gentlemen tonight.” I hurried past them and pushed the diner door open.

  “Go, Grizzlies!” My dad sat at the counter with the other regulars.

  “Go, Grizzlies.” I pumped a fist in the air and weaved in and out among the full tables. “Here’s the mail.” I handed my mom the stack of various food-service bills and magazines she loved to display throughout the diner for those who were eating alone. “What’s the deal with the country club?”

  “Sure enough, there was a line out the door when we got here.” Mama shook her head.

  Her hair was still nice and brown, giving me hope I wouldn’t inherit the gray hair my father had gotten in his fifties. Mama was a little plump around the waist and hips from all those years of good cooking for all the people in Sugar Creek Gap. The years had been kind to her. She had very few wrinkles and wore very little makeup.

  “You know I can’t make hide nor hair of the truth, but I do know something about Mac Tabor,” she continued. “I was gonna ask Julia about it this morning, but she grabbed a biscuit and coffee before she headed out. Something about a long day.”

  Julia and Grady lived in the one-bedroom apartment above the diner. It was perfect for them because it was fairly close to their jobs. Julia’s office was a few shops down at Tabor Architects, and the high school was just about a mile down the road. Really, I should have been living in the apartment and they should have had the farm. But I couldn’t think about that right now.

  “Uh-oh, you got that look in your eye.” Mama handed me a Styrofoam box filled with some biscuits. “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing.” I shrugged and took the box. “Harriette?” I asked with a nod at the biscuits.

  “Yes. She’s got the ladies coming over this morning for some front-porch gossip.” Mom winked. “I told her I’d send the biscuits with you.” Mom always had me delivering food, as if I was Uber Eats or something. “Gertrude has made some of her blueberry jam and canned a lot for the winter. I think I’ll get some for the diner.”

  Gertrude Stone, hands down, made the best jam in Sugar Creek Gap.

  “You in a hurry?” Mom asked when I put the container in my mailbag and started to wave.

  “Yes. I’m thinking about switching up my route and heading over to the city council meeting to see what’s going on around here.” I sighed. “It appears as if everyone has lost their minds over this.”

  “Rightfully so. When changes happen in a community, every one of us is trying to figure out where we will belong in the new system. I think that’s what’s going on.” Mom swiped the towel across the counter before she tucked it back into her apron. She took a to-go bag from underneath the counter. “For Rowena. Tell her they are from Granny.”

  “Aww.” I took the bag of leftovers my mom liked to give my cat. “She’ll love it.” I stuck it in my bag. “Will I see you tonight?” I asked her.

  “Of course you will,” she said. Mom and Dad never missed anything of Grady’s. Even now in their mid-seventies, they were just as active as the day I’d brought him home from the hospital.

  I gave her a quick hug and my dad a kiss before I headed out the door.

  Quickly I delivered the mail for the other shops between the diner and Tabor Architects.

  “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you,” I greeted Julia, my daughter-in-law, when I walked into the front office.

  “You won’t believe how crazy people have gotten over Dennis Kuntz and his partner, Chuck Shilling, selling the country club.” Then Julia told me some news I’d yet to hear. “And how Mac is buying it.”

  So it was confirmed. This was news that would travel fast in Sugar Creek Gap.

  “He is?” I wondered if Iris had had a feeling because she’d heard about the big news.

  “Yes. Mac has been doing some layouts for the new condos he wants to build. He told them about his plans at the city council meeting last night. Worst mistake ever.” Julia shook her pretty blond hair and put her hand up to her head. “I’ve already got a throbbing headache from people calling and protesting. What am I to do? I don’t make the decisions around here.”

  About that time, the phone rang. Julia raised a finger to signal me to hold on.

  I glanced out the door and noticed a few of the city council members and the mayor walking toward the courthouse with some signs under their arms. I almost got a crick in my neck trying to see what the signs said but couldn’t get past their glares at me through the window. What had I done? I shook my head and turned back to my daughter-in-law.

  “Tabor Architects,” she answered the phone. “I’m sorry. Mr. Tabor isn’t in right now. May I take a…” Julia pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it before replacing it in the cradle. “This town has lost their minds.” The phone rang again. She grabbed it but put her hand over the receiver of the phone and mouthed, “I’ll save you a seat tonight in the stands.”

  TWO

  Sugar Creek Gap wasn’t a tourist town. Our little community had been built on generations of families. We were a small community, but through the years, the owners of big farms had sold off various acres and built several subdivisions.

  Sugar Creek Gap was a tiny community surrounded by mountains.

  Sugar Creek Gap had been founded as an old mill town since it was nestled in the mountains. The old mill wheel was the first one built, and the preservation committee made sure to keep it running. Though we didn’t have any mill operations today, it was still a neat piece of history and was unique to have it right smack-dab in the middle of downtown.

  On most fall mornings like this one, you’d find residents who had walked downtown to get a nice cup of hot coffee and sit next to the wheel as they enjoyed the scenery and caught up with friends.

  Not this morning. It looked as if everyone had gotten their coffee from the Roasted Bean and headed to the courthouse.

  Our courthouse was located right behind the mill wheel and housed all the officially elected offices, clerks’ offices, PVA and much more. Most of the lawyers in town even rented office space there. The Sheriff department was in the back, and the volunteer fire department was located in the building next to the back parking lot. It was a one-stop legal shop for all of Sugar Creek Gap.

  Even the library’s parking lot, which was right next to the courthouse’s lot, was full.

  I swung my mail carrier bag around me to rest on my back as I tugged open the heavy leaded-glass doors. The hallway was filled with people talking and drinking their coffee. The clerk’s office always had a lot of mail and gossip, so I headed there first.

  “Hey, Bernadette, you’re early.” Trudy Evan looked up from behind her computer and smiled. “I guess you heard about last night. Law had to be called and everything.”

  I laid their rubber-banded mail on the counter and leaned on it.

  “Really?” I’d yet to hear that little bit of juicy gossip. “The sheriff?”

  “Yep. Angela was getting it when she ran into the courtroom after Mac threatened Dennis Kuntz.” Trudy shook her head. “I’m guessing Mac done told you.” She eyeballed me.

  “You know what, Trudy, I’ve not talked to Mac. I had no idea he was even trying to buy the country club until Julia told me a minute ago,” I told her.

  It was unusual for Mac to keep such a big secret from me. Uneasiness pierced my stomach.

  “It’s not a done deal from what I heard. I think Mac’s signing the papers this afternoon.” She dragged the mail off the counter and took the rubber band off. She started to thumb through it, sorting it into different piles as she continued to talk. “The mayor and a few of the council members are really trying to stop it. They don’t want condos going up, but if you ask me,” she looked up and whispered, “the city council members get free membership, and they don’t want to lose that perk.”

  “A
nyways, if you want to get a good seat this morning”—she dragged her eyes to the other side of the room and gave a quick nod—“head through that door. You might have to stand, because the courtroom is already filled up. Judge Mason had to call off court just so they could have this emergency meeting.” She shook her head. “I feel so sorry for Emmalynn Simpson. She and Kenneth have been through the wringer on this one. Someone said Kenneth is the reason the country club is going to have to file for bankruptcy if they don’t sell it.”

  Murmuring and footsteps from outside the door caught her attention.

  “I bet it’s about to start.” Trudy grabbed a tube of lipstick and put some on. “I heard the TV cameras were going to be here.”

  TV? I watched Trudy scurry off to the door she’d told me to go through then followed. There wasn’t a local television station, so I wasn’t sure what she meant, though my curiosity had been piqued.

  “Told ya this was a good spot.” Trudy folded her arms and leaned back against the wall.

  It was standing room only in the courtroom. The judge’s bench and the court reporter’s desk had been replaced by three tables placed in a U-shape. If I counted correctly, there was a seat with a microphone for every city council member, twelve in all plus one for the mayor.

  There was a podium in the middle of the U-shaped tables with a microphone. As the city council members took their seats, I noticed Kenneth and Emmalynn Simpson sitting in the front row of what would be the jurors’ box. Dennis Kuntz was next to them.

  Mayor Leah Burch walked in and took the middle seat. The city council members all filed in and took seats at the other tables. After everyone appeared to be in their places, Leah stood up.

  “As we can all see, the matter of selling the country club has come to everyone’s attention. We all know last night’s meeting got a little carried away and out of control. Today we’ve invited members of the country club and the residents of the area to come and give us some insight on how they feel.” Leah took a deep breath and looked down at the list.