The Easter decorations are still perky with bunnies grinning, pastel garlands draped just so, and enough chocolate eggs to put the entire town in a delicious sugar coma.
My coconut cupcakes have vanished with happy customers, leaving behind only crumbs and satisfied sighs. The coffee machine hums its steady rhythm while my regulars debate whether having a third cinnamon roll counts as dinner.
This is my favorite kind of afternoon—when the bakery feels less like work and more like hosting a party where everyone pays you for the privilege of eating your feelings in pastry form. The whole place has that warm, buzzing energy that only comes from people deciding that calories don’t count if you eat them this close to a major holiday.
Even the plastic eggs scattered around look cheerful rather than like future victims of tiny toddlers, and for once, nobody’s discovered a dead body in my general vicinity.
Yet.
Or more to the point,Ihaven’tyet.
My mother graciously offered to scoop up all of her grandbabiestoday for what she called a “snuggle fest with Glam Glam”. Yes, all of them, including Lyla Nell and the twins—and I said yes so fast I probably gave myself whiplash. I drove the kids to her B&B before the woman could change her mind, leaving me with the rare luxury of working without simultaneously managing a mobile dairy operation, and preventing a toddler from recruiting supernatural entities for her personal entertainment committee.
Suze, Lily, and Effie are lined up at the counter, staring out at the street with the laser focus of researchers tracking a migrating herd of hotties. And they sort of are.
“Have you noticed how many ridiculously gorgeous people have been wandering through town today?” Suze asks, gesturing toward the window where a woman who looks like she stepped out of a fashion magazine is examining our menu board. “I mean, seriously, where do they all come from?”
Her hair is sleek, her face is magazine-ready, and her clothes look like they’ve met a tailor or two. She’s examining our coconut bunny cupcakes with the kind of focus usually reserved for contracts or crime scenes.
“I hate having so many gorgeous women around Honey Hollow,” Lily announces with the vehemence of someone defending her territory. “I don’t want Alex to feel like he’s suddenly got a brand new set of options parading past our front door every five minutes.”
Alex would be Lily’s main squeeze and Noah’s younger brother. They share a little boy named Levi who’s almost one.
She gestures toward another group of women passing by—all legs, long, shiny hair, and designer everything. “Plus, those kinds of women don’t care if a man is taken. If they want him, they just take, take, take until some poor unsuspecting wife finds herself wondering why her husband suddenly needs to work late every night.”
“And wondering why he’s suddenly interested in wearing cologne to the grocery store,” Effie adds with the kind of baked-in wisdom you only get from working retail long enough to witness three breakups, two reunions, and a marriage proposal before noon.
Carlotta is sitting at the counter, systematically working her waythrough what appears to be her own body weight in coconut cake as if it had an effect on human happiness. Spoiler alert: it does.
Lenny sits beside her, equally absorbed in what I assume is the ghostly equivalent of taste-testing, though I’m not entirely sure how supernatural digestion works.
“These women all look like they’ve been manufactured in the same factory,” I observe, watching another perfectly assembled female specimen glide past our window. “Same hair, same makeup, same I’m-too-beautiful-to-shop-at-places-that-don’t-require-a-membership-fee expression.”
It’s true. They’re so polished and perfect they almost don’t look real, as if someone took the concept of feminine beauty and ran it through a filter until all the interesting imperfections were buffed right out.
“Lottie, you don’t sound too worried,” Lily points out with a frown. “Aren’t you afraid Everett will wake up one day and decide he needs someone who looks like one of those women? Someone who doesn’t have stretch marks and baby weight and the lingering aroma of garlic in her hair?”
“Why would I have garlic in my hair?” I ask. “I’m a baker. Half the time I use vanilla extract as perfume.” It’s true, I’ve been known to dot it behind my ears before heading home. It drives Everett wild. And in truth, it’s cast a mean spell on Noah, too.
“Because you spend half the time across the street at Mangia’s getting a little bite to eat.” She sayslittlein air quotes, but she’s right, so I don’t contest the fact.
I snort into my coffee. “Everett and I are family. We have kids. He’s stuck with me even if I start to look like a turnip with some serious wart issues. These women don’t worry me in the least.”
They all laugh, but Suze shakes her head with the expression of a woman who’s learned hard truths about marriage and male fidelity.
“Even women like me can find themselves on the curb, Lottie,” she says with a bitter edge to her voice.
Women like her?
Effie, Lily, and I exchange a quiet look at the thought.
“My life is basically a cautionary tale,” Suze goes on. “Wiley traded me in for Eliza Baxter and about a dozen harlots in between, too. And I’m a prize—ask anyone.” She gestures to herself with pride. “Former beauty queen, excellent mother, can make a soufflé that would make grown men beg for more. I’m a looker, and I still got dumped for newer models.”
Wow.
I’m still stuck on theI’m a lookerpart. I guess it’s true. The older we get, the more we see our younger selves when we look in the mirror. Heck, I might already be a turnip with wart issues. Poor Everett. There may not be enough vanilla extract in the world to right this wrong.
Carlotta looks up from her coconut cake consumption, pausing to contribute her questionable wisdom, no doubt. “Men are like shopping carts, Suzie Q.” And here we go. “They all seem fine when you first get them, but sooner or later you realize the wheels are crooked and they pull to one side—usually toward younger women in yoga pants.”
