Close to You

of
marketing.”
    “ I just opened my shop,
Dad. You didn’t raise me to quit.”
    He huffed. “I didn’t raise
you to be crazy, and this is crazy, Evangeline. A donut shop?”
    She gritted her teeth. “It’s a café,
with pastries, not donuts.”
    “ Then what are the books
about? It makes no sense.”
    “ It makes perfect sense.”
She only stocked a dozen or so titles, but she switched them every
week, sometimes based on a theme. People loved recommendations.
“I’m catering to my clientele.”
    “ You could have picked a
less expensive neighborhood to open this place.”
    “ I live here, Dad.” Right
in the building above Grounds for Thought, actually. She’d coveted
that storefront ever since she bought her condo. When it became
free, it was like a sign.
    And Laurel Heights was the perfect
neighborhood for her type of shop. A little ritzy, with lots of
well-to-do retirees and women who hung out during the day while
their kids were at school. She’d made the perfect cozy place for
them to hang out. Just like she’d always dreamed.
    Now her dream owned her .
    “ Have you talked to
Claire?” her father asked out of the blue.
    Eve stiffened. Here it
was—the part where he compared her to her perfect older sister. The
sister who’d gone to Stanford, graduated summa cum laude , married the greatest
guy, had the most adorable little girl, and managed a foundation
for children in Africa infected with HIV.
    Mother Teresa had nothing on
Claire.
    It would’ve all been easier
to take if Claire weren’t so damn nice . Claire never lorded her
superiority over her. In fact, if Eve needed anything, she knew she
could go to her sister.
    Which made her all that much more
determined to prove she could make this work on her own. “No, I
haven’t spoken to Claire in a couple weeks. Aren’t they in
Rwanda?”
    “ Tunisia.” There was some
rustling, and then he cursed. “Damn it, I need to go interview this
person.”
    “ Another marketing
director?”
    “ Yes,” he
grumbled.
    “ The new one you hired
quit? Does that make three?”
    “ If you came back, I
wouldn’t have this problem.”
    It’d probably help if he stopped
yelling at them too. “I’ll talk to you later, Dad. I love
you.”
    He mumbled an
incoherent yeah, you too and hung up.
    She slipped the phone into
her apron and checked on her chocolate croissants. Taking them out
of the oven, she automatically put in a a tray of almond croissants. Then she
dropped her head into her hands and took a deep breath.
    She was trying not to give in to
negativity, but things were bad. Really bad. In thirty days she’d
have no money left, and her credit was already on its way to being
maxed out.
    She was on the verge of
losing everything: her business and her condo.
    Worst case, she knew her parents would
take her in, but she’d rather stab a knife in her heart than crawl
home defeated. She could already hear her dad telling her over and
over again how lacking she was compared to her older
sister.
    She needed another six months of cash.
In six months, she’d be in the black. But banks were tight with
their money, especially when it came to lending to a broke
baker.
    She needed a miracle.
    Shake it
off . Picking up the tray of croissants, she
pasted a smile on her face and went out front. When she saw Freya
standing at the counter bouncing the small pink bundle strapped in
front of her, Eve’s fake smile morphed into a genuine one. “Hey,
you’re up early.”
    “ The kid wouldn’t sleep.”
She looked down at her baby girl and cooed. “Yes, Mae, I love you
so much, even when you wake me up pre-dawn.”
    “ My younger son only slept
six hours a day.” Allison laughed. “But it gets better.”
    “ When?” Freya asked
disbelievingly.
    “ When they go off to
college.”
    “ I can make it better now,”
Eve said. “Go sit and I’ll bring you a cappuccino.”
    “ Hurry, because I’ll fall
asleep if I get too comfortable.” Soothing Mae, she went to sit in
one of the cushy chairs in the window.
    Plating a scone to go with the
cappuccino, Eve asked Allison to hold the fort and joined
Freya.
    “ A scone,” her best friend
said reverently, immediately popping a piece in her mouth. “I knew
there was a reason I went to so much trouble for you.”
    “ Trouble?”
    Freya reached into a pocket and held
out a folded scrap of paper.
    “ What’s this?” Eve opened
and read it. There was a woman’s name and number written in Freya’s
crisp