Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

From the Kitchen of Verbena Fullbright

Now you can't go scooping flour out of the bin with a measuring cup and expect a light and fluffy cake. Flour is best measured by weight, but if you don't have a scale handy, use a spoon to scoop the flour into a measuring cup, then level it off with the spoon's handle. Like flour, I've found that words are best when measured carefully as well.

Addie

Steely gray clouds trimmed in black hung low in the sky as Aunt Bean laid on the horn. "Take a gander at this, girls!"

Uneasy, I shifted on the seat. By seeking a bright side, like how we'd made it here alive despite Bean's wild driving, I attempted, once again, to shake the ominous feeling that had been with me since I'd been summoned back to town. But the dark cloud stubbornly remained. I tried to blame its presence on being back in Starlight, to the fear of revealing Ree's secret, of being near Tessa Jane, to everything going on with Bean, but it felt like there was more to it.

As if all that wasn't enough .

Tessa Jane unclicked her seatbelt and shimmied forward. "What are we gandering exactly?"

Her presence had always been a painful reminder of a heartbreaking time in my life. When she was born, my little world, so familiar and safe, had fallen apart when my mama packed her bags and left town only weeks after Tessa Jane's birth.

Even though I'd only been four years old, nearly five, I still remembered the day Mama drove off, leaving Daddy. Leaving me. And I especially remembered how, before she left, she'd pulled me aside and told me that if I ever wanted her to come back for good, I best not ever make nice with Tessa Jane or any of the Wingroves.

So I'd locked Tessa Jane out, plain and simple, pretending I was an only child.

And I'd been an absolute pill to Henrietta whenever she was around.

Because I'd wanted more than anything for my mama to come home.

I sighed, pushing thoughts of her aside as Bean honked again. Two impatient bleats.

"Land sake's alive," she muttered, shaking her head.

Ty Underwood held up a wait-a-sec finger. Another man, his face hidden by a ball cap as he looked downward, tugged at a length of rope connected to the tarp.

Aunt Bean's exasperated laugh came out in a steamy puff as she cut the engine. "So much for the grand reveal. When I pulled into this here lot, the tarp was supposed to drop, and it was going to be a dazzling moment." She gave us jazz hands, then a wry smile. "But instead of getting a ta-da , we got a wah-wahn, " she said, mimicking a sad trombone.

Tessa Jane still peered upward. "Oh, I don't know, Aunt Bean. The buildup to the reveal is kind of exciting. How long until the reopening?"

She didn't sound all that excited. Exhausted was more like it. Outwardly, Tessa Jane looked perfectly pulled together. Beautiful as always. She favored her mama, with her creamy fair skin, bold blue eyes, and thick blond hair that was always parted on the side with long swooping bangs. Her makeup, down to the pale-rose lipstick she wore, was flawless. Her painted fingernails didn't have a single chip. Her clothes, a pink cashmere sweater, designer jeans, and a belted coat, had been tailored to perfection. Her leather boots didn't have so much as a scuff mark. Yet, something was off with her.

I'd noticed it on Friday, the minute I looked into her eyes. Her inner light, the one that practically made her sparkle—even in photos—had lost its powerful glow. Now it only flickered dully, as if trying to flare but not quite catching.

Seeing her in person had thrown me for a loop. It had been so long. I'd locked away so much. I wasn't at all sure what to say or how to act around her.

I didn't know where to begin .

Aunt Bean fiddled with her watch, rubbing a thumb over its face. "There's a big party planned for Leap Day, and so help me, we'll be celebrating in a construction zone if it's not done by then because the invitations have been printed already with a banner that says we've grown by leaps and bounds!" She laughed at her own cleverness. "I'll hand out hardhats as party favors if need be. Addie, remind me later to add hardhats to the event spreadsheet."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, smiling.

I'd seen the spreadsheet at Christmastime. It was extensive, covering food and beverages, decorations, entertainment, and everything in between. I couldn't say I understood the big fuss. Not about the party and not about the renovation, either.

When Aunt Bean had first mentioned the makeover, I thought she'd meant the storefront would have a little nip and tuck, not a full-blown overhaul. I was shocked when she started talking about raising the roofline, adding a stamped concrete parking lot edged with brick, building a porch with fancy millwork. And that was just the exterior design. The plans to rehab the inside were equally as expansive. Vaulted ceilings. Custom paneling. Top-of-the-line appliances.

"Why?" I'd finally asked her after hearing about exposed wooden beams, fancy light fixtures, and blown-glass decorations. "Why spend a fortune to fix what isn't broken?"

She'd taken hold of my hand, held it soothingly, as if knowing I wasn't going to like what she was going to say. "Truth is, punkin, I was thinking of hanging up my whisk for good when I took a walk in the starlight and had a moment of clarity. Where the star leads, I follow. I always have. Always will."

I wished I had the same faith as Aunt Bean when it came to the starlight—believing that there was only goodness and hope to be found in its guidance.

My skepticism came naturally, through my mama. From early on she had warned me against seeking help from the starlight aurora. She told me its clarity wasn't all good. That it could hurt people. People like her.

Because when my daddy sought clarity about their troubled marriage, he'd somehow ended up having a baby with another woman. And though I knew there was more to that story, eventually I'd learned her lesson about the starlight for myself.

Tessa Jane said, "Something's happening."

Bean and I leaned forward. Ty had pulled out a pocketknife and was now sawing through the rope.

"Should they have harnesses on?" I asked. That scaffolding didn't seem the least bit safe.

"I'm sure they know what they're doing," Bean said, but I heard no confidence in her tone.

As I stared at the wall of blue tarp, all I could picture was the old bakery. Sitting like an outcast just outside the charming main business district, the square, squat, flat-roofed, cement-block structure had once been a laundromat.

The year I started high school, Aunt Bean decided to close up the barn kitchen and open an official retail storefront closer to the center of town, wanting the cake shop to be a bigger part of the community. She bought the no-frills building for a steal from Petie Pottinger, Petal's cousin, after Petie decided to relocate her sudsy business to Orange Beach.

Even after Aunt Bean transformed the laundromat into a bakery, it still held on to its utilitarian feel. She'd scoffed at suggestions by town uppity-ups to beautify the shop in order to draw in customers. Because she knew the only thing the business needed be successful was her .

And she'd been right. Once the sign on the metal door had been flipped to OPEN , people—townsfolk and tourists alike—had flocked to the most lackluster of Starlight's shops. The visitors ignored the building's ugly exterior, the deep clay chasms cutting through the gravel parking lot, the rusted window frames, and the missing roof shingles.

All had recognized that there was no need for bells or whistles at the Starling Cake Company. Its magic came from within.

As I waited for the big reveal, from the corner of my eye, I caught a flutter of movement. The stretching of wings. The silvery starlings had gathered in the crape myrtle at the edge of the lot, their feathers appearing almost metallic in the murky, damp morning.

My chest squeezed tight with apprehension. The last time I'd seen them this close was shortly after Winchester Wingrove had inherited his wife's fortune and ramped up his talk about wanting to build a resort alongside the starlight crater. He'd also started playing up his ancestor's diamond tall tale, which had caused curious treasure hunters to sneak onto the land. Fortunately, either the field's caretaker or the starlings always scared the trespassers off before they did any damage to the starlight aurora.

For a brief moment, I allowed myself to think of that caretaker. Sawyer Gray had been eighteen years old when Aunt Bean had offered him the job, which came with a small cabin on the property.

A cabin just big enough for him and his then infant daughter. A child he was raising on his own because sometimes life was nothing but cruel.

I pressed my lips together so tightly they hurt, then glanced again at the starlings, banishing thoughts of Sawyer and old hopes and dreams.

As I watched the birds I wondered if Winchester had something to do with their presence now. Traditionally in our family, the bakery had always been passed along to the oldest woman in the family. And the field and hundreds of acres of surrounding land was given to the oldest male. However, with his death, my daddy had broken the pattern, willing the land to Tessa Jane and me, his only children. It was being held in trust until we both reached the age of twenty-five.

That day would come at the end of February on Tessa Jane's birthday. After which, we had one week to decide if we wanted to accept or decline co-ownership of the land. If we declined, all would be sold, the profit divided between us. It had to be a unanimous decision.

All or nothing.

Without a doubt, if we sold, Winchester would find a way to be the highest bidder. Then his development plans would be quickly set into motion.

But even if Tessa Jane believed her grandfather had good in him, somewhere deep down, couldn't she see that what he had planned would damage the field, the starlight? Would she really let that happen by letting the land go?

The thought hurt. Because while I had my own complicated feelings about the field, I wanted it to protect it. And keep it in the family. The Fullbright family.

As I tried not to worry about what might happen, a shout rang out. All three of us leaned forward as far as we could. In a blink, half of the tarp fell, and I simply couldn't believe my eyes.

The Starling Cake Company had transformed from frumpy to fairy tale.

"Wow," Tessa Jane whispered.

Before us stood a charming cottage straight out of a children's storybook that had three gables, a stone and stucco exterior, and a wide front porch with dark rustic beams full of knots and enchantment. Warm light glowed in the windows, inviting and welcoming.

It was almost as if you could feel the magic housed within long before ever stepping through the door. Long before biting into one of Aunt Bean's extraordinary cakes.

"Come, come, girls. Let's take a closer look, shall we?" Bean rooted around inside her pocketbook and came out with a plastic rain bonnet that she placed gently over her sky-high pompadour.

Once we'd all climbed out, the sound of hammering from the crew inside came from deep within the building. Wonder lifted Tessa Jane's voice as she said to Aunt Bean, "Tell me you're going to be planting trees. Lots of trees. This place needs a forest. There needs to be moss and boulders and toadstools and gnomes."

Bean laughed. "There will be trees, yes, but sadly not a whole forest. I'll show you the landscape design when we get back to the house. Addie, remind me to add gnomes to my bakery renovation spreadsheet."

Drizzle pooled in droplets on my coat as I smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

The scaffolding groaned as Ty Underwood descended, leaping the last three feet to the ground in a move that made my knees ache in sympathy. The other man had crossed the platform and was sawing through another length of rope in order to release the rest of the tarp.

Ty cleared a path to the entrance, then wiped his hands on his jeans and strode toward us, his steps long and sure. "Sorry about the snafu, Miss Verbena. Those knots weren't coming loose no matter what."

"All's well that ends well," Aunt Bean said lightly.

Ty tucked his hands into the pockets of a black fleece jacket. "Good to see you, Addie." Then his gaze flicked toward Tessa Jane. His jaw tightened. "And you, Grasshopper."

"Morning, Stinkbug," she said oh-so-sweetly, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

The sugariness in her voice was unmistakably fake, like Splenda in sweet tea.

I smiled despite myself, never having heard Tessa Jane be anything other than kindness and light. It was refreshing—and surprising—to hear her sassy undertone. And I was oddly proud of her for returning Ty's volley instead of simply accepting it. After all, it wasn't her fault Ty's father had ended up in prison. That dishonor belonged to Winchester. It turned out he wasn't so different from all the other Wingrove men in his family. He was a swindler at heart. He'd just been better at hiding it, especially once he married Constance Jane.

I could practically hear Ty's teeth grinding as he turned his full attention to Aunt Bean. "Scaffolding is set to come down this afternoon, ma'am. Any word on the sign yet?"

Aunt Bean used both hands to lean on her walking stick. "It's still on back order."

"Might be time to pick another option," he said.

She smiled. "Let's give it a while longer."

A passing truck gave a friendly honk as it drove by, and Ty and Aunt Bean automatically lifted their hands to wave before picking up their conversation about the bakery's sign right where they'd left it.

"You say that as though you haven't already been waiting three months." Ty's heavy work boots crunched against the gravel as he shifted on his feet.

"Hush now. We'll put up a temporary sign if we have to. How's your mama doing this morning?"

He accepted that she was done talking about the sign and said, "Well enough to boss me around. Called me up at dawn to go looking for Hambone. He dug out under the fence. Again."

"Did you find him?" Tessa Jane took the tiniest step forward as concern laced her tone. She looked and sounded as though she was ready to launch a search party right that minute if need be.

As she spoke, Ty's chin jutted. He took a step backward, away from her.

Aunt Bean's keen gaze flickered with irritation as it darted between them. No doubt she knew full well why Ty was acting the way he was, and the look in her eyes told me he was treading on thin ice.

"Surely, he wasn't heading for the barn kitchen that early, was he?" Bean asked, trying to defuse the situation. Then she added for my and Tessa Jane's benefit, "Hambone drops by time to time to say hello."

Ty said, "He stops by for cake scraps, which the Sugarbirds are more than happy to feed him. He's developed quite the sweet tooth."

Aunt Bean shrugged. "Who can blame him?"

Tessa Jane's face was tight with worry. Her neck was flushed and splotchy above the collar of her sweater. "But you found him? This morning?"

Ty looked everywhere but at Tessa Jane when he said, "He was over at the Fife place. He's got himself a crush on Dare's dog, Pepper."

At the mention of Dare, I realized I was clenching my fists. My nails dug into my palms.

By his early teens, through a series of tragedies, Dare had found himself orphaned. A local pastor and his wife had taken him in, giving him a home, and eventually adopted him, even though they'd been well into their eighties at the time. Dare might've gotten a new name, but there was no changing the fact that he was still a Buckley. And Buckleys were trouble.

When Tessa Jane didn't seem as fazed as I was by the mention of Dare, I wondered if she didn't know he'd been a Buckley before he became a Fife. It didn't seem likely. Everyone knew.

Just like everyone knew that way back when, Bryce Buckley, Dare's half brother, older by some twenty years, had once poisoned a watering trough on the Wingrove property, killing a pair of Constance Jane's prized horses. It had all been caught on security cameras and Bryce had been arrested, locked up, and years later, had died during a prison fight.

Buckleys were dangerous, plain and simple, which was why I was surprised to hear Bean say with a tone of affection, "Dare's done a real good job raising that sweet girl. I can see why Hambone's smitten."

Was it possible Dare had broken the Buckley cycle? That he was a good guy, as Bean had claimed the other day? It was hard to imagine. Too hard. So I decided the affection she voiced had to have been directed only at Pepper. Aunt Bean loved dogs. All animals, really.

"Unfortunately for Hambone, Pepper wasn't out," Ty added. "Even still, I had to lure him back into the truck with one of the donuts I had with me for Mama. With the chemo, anything sweet is what she tolerates best. Says most everything else tastes like metal. Her doctors aren't real pleased with her diet these days, but I'm happy as long as she's eating something . She's been looking like a string bean."

"If it's sweet she wants, it's sweet she'll get," Bean declared. "I'll put the word out and also whip her up something extra special, too."

I tucked my hands under my arms to warm them, thinking that as far as comparisons went, a string bean was a good choice. They didn't need much to absolutely thrive. Some sun, some water. Mostly what they needed was support, something to hang on to. Or in Ernie's case, a whole community who loved her and would help hold her up until she had the strength to stand on her own once again.

"She'd love that." Ty motioned toward the building with his chin. "Are you ready to head inside? I can't say it's any warmer, but at least it's dry."

"The heat's still out?" Aunt Bean swept an arm toward Tessa Jane and me as though trying to corral us. She used to do the same when we were little, pulling us both to her, anchoring us against her soft curves. It had always made me feel safe. Loved.

I took a few steps forward and Tessa Jane flinched, seeming alarmed by my nearness. At her reaction, I was suddenly flooded with so much shame and regret that it hurt to breathe deeply.

"The issue was traced to the electrical panel," Ty said. "Should be fixed by the end of the day."

"Who's doing the fixin'? Aren't all the Grays up in Mentone?" Aunt Bean asked as we headed for the porch.

The mention of the Gray family made my chest ache even more. My heart pounded. My palms dampened.

What made me think I could do this? Be here? In Starlight? With Tessa Jane? And the Grays? And even Dare Buckley Fife?

Have mercy on my soul .

I wanted to go back to Birmingham. Where life was so much easier. Where I didn't have to deal with all these emotions. All this pain. Out of sight, out of mind.

As anxiety thrummed, I took even breaths, ignoring the heartache, trying my best to pretend it wasn't there. Like always.

I inhaled for five seconds, held the breath for five seconds, then released it for five seconds. Box breathing was a technique my therapist had taught me years ago when my worries felt out of control, and I prayed it worked now, because I felt like I was about to break open.

I tried to assure myself that around Alvin Gray, who owned Starlight Electrical, I'd be able to hide the secret I kept behind small talk. It was his son, Sawyer, I had to worry most about. Honestly, it was nothing short of a miracle that I hadn't had to face him during my brief visits over the years.

Aunt Bean glanced between Tessa Jane and me. "A few days ago, Annabelle's baby decided to come a month early. A little girl. The Grays drove straight up to lend a hand."

The last time I'd seen Sawyer's younger sister, Annabelle, she'd been a sophomore in high school. It was hard to believe she had a family of her own now.

Once again I felt like an outsider. I should've been at her wedding. At her baby shower. I'd been close to the family once.

Because I'd been close to Sawyer.

Memories flooded as I recalled all the time Sawyer and I had spent together way back when. In my mind, it was so easy to see his kind hazel eyes. His shy smile. To feel his strong hands. To smell his piney scent. It was heartbreakingly easy to recall the hopes I'd had.

And how the starlight had ruined everything.

I reached into my coat and pulled out my star pendant. I closed my hand over it in the hope that it would help ground me, comfort me.

Ty glanced upward at the man on the scaffolding. "Sawyer came back early to take care of an emergency call that came in yesterday. He probably would've had the work here done by now, except I wrangled him into helping me with the tarp. He'll be down in a second, once he pries the rest of it free."

There was a stabbing pain in my chest, like my heart was breaking all over again. Shattering. Panic set in, rooting deeply, like it was never planning to let go.

Because Sawyer was here .