Death by Chocolate

in Georgia. “Well, if you don’t want my
help—”
    “I don’t. I want your love.
For tonight, sitting here on this beautiful beach, I want your company. I want
to just relax here with my sister and eat our dinner, and watch the sun go
down, and I want to talk to you about absolutely anything other than the
past. Please, can we do that?”
    Cordele thought it over. “I
suppose.”
    “Good.” Savannah pointed
across the water. “If you watch, really closely, you can sometimes see the beam
from the lighthouse out there on Santa Lucia Island. Watch. There... did you
see it?”
    “Wow! That’s neat. And the
sailboats are pretty. Is that guy on what they call a waverunner?”
    “That’s right. If you like,
we’ll rent one while you’re here and you can try it out.”
    “Cool.” Her smile faded;
storm clouds gathered on her brow. ‘You know, we were only about a three-,
maybe four-hour drive to the Adantic, but do you think our folks would take us
to the beach even once —once in our entire rotten childhood?”
    “Eah-h-h-h!”
     
    When Savannah woke the next
morning, she wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. In fact, she was too
tired to breathe. She lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling,
wishing she could just mentally whisk herself away to some enchanted island
paradise where there were no murdered TV chefs or disgruntled sisters.
    And her cold was back with
a vengeance. She sat up in bed and held her head in her hands, willing the
throbbing in her sinuses to go away. It didn’t. When she bent over to retrieve
her house slippers from beneath the bed, she nearly blacked out.
    “Oh, joy. Just what I
need,” she mumbled. She wondered if there was any sort of rule against having
whiskey hot toddies for breakfast. She could just imagine the joy Cordele would
have tattling to teetotaling Granny Reid.
    She could hear her now: I
hate to have to tell you this, Gran, but Savannah has developed a substance
addiction. Alcohol, I’m afraid. You know, I recently read an article in Psychology
Digest about the likelihood of the children of alcohol-abusing parents
developing addictions of their own. And since Savannah refuses to deal with her
parental abandonment issues—like I’ve done, by cutting my hair off—it was only
a matter of time till she became a boozer.
    Yes, Savannah could picture
it all.
    So she decided to settle
for coffee.
     
     
    “Leave me alone. I feel
like crap, and I hate the world right now,” Savannah told Tammy when she tried
to show her a website she had found. Savannah shuffled by the desk without even
a glance in her assistant’s direction and made her way to her cushy chair,
coffee [ mug in hand.
    As usual, Tammy’s cheerful
morning mood couldn’t be dampened. It couldn’t be dampened with a fire hose. ;
She smiled brightly and said, “No problem. Sorry your cold came back. Can I get
you something? Goldenseal or ginseng?”
    “Peace and quiet?” she
grumbled, sinking into her chair.
    “You got it.”
    In less than three seconds,
both cats had left their perches on the windowsill and were climbing all over
her, begging to be petted.
    “Get off me, you foul
beasts. Just because Mommy makes a lap doesn’t mean you have to use it. Scram.”
    “Boy,” Tammy muttered, “you
are in a bad mood.”
    “What did you say?”
    “Nothing.” Tammy left her
chair at the desk and clapped her hands together and whistled. “Come here,
Cleo. Atta girl, Di. Aunt Tammy will feed you. Mom’s sick and grumpy this
morning.”
    Savannah said nothing, but
bared her teeth and growled.
    Tammy chuckled as she led
the cats into the kitchen... obviously terrified.
    Savannah closed her eyes and
held the coffee mug under her nose. She breathed deeply and could almost smell
something through her stuffiness. Almost, but not quite. She took a drink and
decided that coffee didn’t taste like much if you couldn’t smell it.
    After enjoying less than two
minutes of quiet, blissful solitude, she found her reverie interrupted when she
heard the back door open and Cordele saying something to Tammy.
    “Lord, help me,” she
whispered. “I’ve only got about one nerve left, and it’s frazzled. If she gets
on it, I might kill her.”
    Cordele came into the
living room, dressed in a black leotard and tights. Savannah was shocked to see
that beneath her usual costume of a baggy white blouse and a saggy dark skirt
Cordele actually had a nice figure.
    “Good morning,” her sister
said