Julia's Chocolates. Cathy Lamb

stood up, my knees still a bit weak from the attack of the Dread Disease.

      “And, by the way, after breakfast, can you help me paint the back shed green?”

      “Sure, Aunt Lydia.” I’d work all day if I could. Nothing like work to take your mind off the fact that you’re going to be hunted down by your ex-fiancé at the same time you’re fighting off a Dread Disease and Paul Bunyan and his great big steel…thingies, who is down in the kitchen.

      I shivered again. I wouldn’t go there. Wouldn’t think about steel balls. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to eat the sausages.

      “So you don’t like sausages?” Paul Bunyan asked me from across the table.

      Stash had, indeed, prepared Oregon’s best omelets. Avocado. Shrimp. Sour cream. Some type of sauce. Tomatoes. Spices. Delicious. Or at least it would have been had I been able to eat much.

      Stash was on my left, Lydia on my right. Stash had also brought over blueberry muffins. “I cooked them for you, sweetie,” he told me, giving me a hug before settling me at my seat. “You’re my sweet blueberry girl. Always have been, always will be.” Then he told Paul Bunyan about how I ate so many blueberries one night that they had to drive me to the hospital at two in the morning because my stomach hurt so bad that the doctors thought I needed an appendectomy.

      I looked up into those blue eyes again. Cool. Smooth. Yet friendly.

      I caught myself. Breathe, Julia.

      “The sausages?” Dean asked again, smiling at me across the table.

      I jumped. I had stared at him, not answering.

      “No. Yes.” I shook my head. I wondered if there was a Mrs. Paul Bunyan? Was she as big as him? “I do like big sausages.”

      Oh, deliver me, Lord. Had I said I like big sausages?

      I heard Stash’s fork drop to his plate with a clatter. There was a dead silence around the table. Then Lydia snorted.

      I heard Stash trying to control his laughter. He sounded like a hyena who was being muffled with a pillow. I felt the blood rush to my face. Aunt Lydia had found a sudden interest in her napkin. It covered her whole face. Her shoulders shook. She made odd meowing sounds.

      “Well, what I meant…” I protested. I looked into Paul Bunyan’s eyes. They were laughing, but his mouth was very still. “I meant that I do like sausages, any sausage.”

      Aunt Lydia snorted.

      “You know, there are different types of sausages….” I sputtered, still trying to save myself. “Bavarian sausages, German sausages, French sausages, California sausages. I didn’t really mean big…really didn’t mean…”

      Stash made a sound like a donkey braying. Lydia answered with her own high-pitched choking sound.

      “But I don’t like spicy sausages….”

      Please, I told my mouth, oh please, stop.

      “Nothing spicy,” Paul Bunyan said, those lips moving over his words like hot syrup.

      “Right.” We needed to get away from this conversation.

      “So,” Stash said, tears floating in his eyes. “That’s a good thing for you to remember, my boy, Dean. She likes sausages of any kind.”

      Aunt Lydia didn’t even try to pretend anymore, her laughter filling the room like sweet flowers on a cold winter day.

      “But nothing spicy.”

      “Never,” said Stash, laughter spilling from his mouth like caramel corn from a paper bag. “Women are picky about these things. Some women like one type of sausage, some another. Spicy sausages. Big ones, small ones, sausages from different countries. There’s just no pleasin’ these gals sometimes, Dean, no pleasin’ them at all.”

      “Well, I like your sausage, Stash,” Aunt Lydia said. “I like it right fine. Right fine.”

      I stared, astonished. Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. For all the time that Aunt Lydia was fighting with Stash, this was the first compliment I’d heard her give him in a long time. The tension rolled right out of my body with that laugh. I looked at Paul Bunyan, who did not seem the least bit embarrassed about my sausage comment. His eyes were still on me, but now they had a look in them, a considering look, a curious look.

      “But you must remember!” Lydia boomed, holding her fork high in the air.

      “I know, I know, darlin’,” Stash said, still laughing. “Men are pricks!”

      5

      Caroline Harper’s house was a study in surprise. Her home is actually a pole barn, painted brown on the outside. From the front, all you can see is a door and a tiny window. There’s a red and white sign in that tiny window that says GUNS ARE LOADED. Outside another sign says NO TRESPASSING.

      It looks like the kind of place where methamphetamine might be manufactured. At the very least, it looks to be a hideout for wicked criminals. I asked her about the signs later, when we were having tea over a lace-draped table, and she said they added humor to her life. The old man who lived here before her was slightly insane. He had twenty-two cats, was rumored to eat a full garlic clove a day, and made his own whiskey. He lived to be 104. Caroline knew him, liked him, and kept the signs in memory of him.

      At first I was sure I had gotten the wrong directions from Lydia. Surely no one like Caroline Harper lived in such a depressing, dark, scary-looking place. And Aunt Lydia had said she lived in a dollhouse. This wasn’t a dollhouse.

      But Lydia had mentioned the signs, so I slammed the door of the truck closed and proceeded with caution.

      And there’s where the surprises started.

      Caroline opened the door, a smile lighting her gentle features. She wore a red cotton dress that on anyone else probably would have looked frumpy, with its square neckline and flared skirt. I would have looked like a giant blood clot. But on Caroline, it looked stylish and hip and lovely. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her cheekbones gracious curves. Her right eye winked at me, but slowly, gently. She hugged me as I walked in the door. And then I stopped.

      As shocked as I had been at the outside of Caroline’s house, the inside left me gaping. I remembered to shut my mouth after a long minute so I wouldn’t look like an air-starved guppy.

      “It’s beautiful,” I said, awed.

      Though the outside of the house looked like a drug warren, the inside décor was English Country/dollhouse. The furniture was overstuffed and comfy and covered in flowered or striped fabric. It was old, and used, and plush and cheerful.

      Tables held books and candles and lace doilies, and the room was filled with light from floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors everywhere. The walls were painted an eggshell blue, white, or pink.

      It was one huge room, Caroline showed me, with two areas walled off, one for a bedroom and one for Caroline’s “workroom.” The door to the workroom was closed.

      The kitchen was surprisingly modern, and she had painted all of the cabinets pink. It was clear she had been cutting bouquets, as flowers were scattered about the white counters. I looked out her back windows and saw an enormous garden.

      I wanted to stay forever.

      “Would you like to see the garden, too?” Caroline asked, her voice soft and cultured. I again felt like a water buffalo next to this petite woman, and I would have hated her if I could for being perfect, but I couldn’t. She was kind, for sure, but more than that, I related to that twitching eye of hers. Twitch twitch. I was twitching on the inside, Caroline twitched on the outside.

      “Come and see the flower garden first,” she said, leading me to the most gynormous, lovely array of raised flower beds. “It doesn’t look very good right now. Spring is much better.”