“Oh, you.” Jean gave him a little swat. “Anyway, our son asked if he could do a photo spread for his magazine,Lake Panache. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Robin had heard of it. She saw it on the newsstand at the grocery store. An aspirational monthly with beautiful spreads of people living their best lake life. It was widely circulated in the United States, as it featured lake communities from almost every state.
Jean now had both hands clasped together in front of her. “He wants us to have a small gathering of friends at our cabin to celebrate our anniversary, and he will photograph the party.”
“What an honor.” Now Robin had no idea where this conversation was going.
“Jean,” her husband said. “You still haven’t told her anything. Give Robin here a chance to say yes or no.”
“I’m getting to that. Well, if we’re going to have a party, we really ought to have a cake. And if we’re featuring the town of Deep Haven, it ought to be a Deep Haven cake.”
Robin caught her breath. Did she mean— “And?”
“And we want you to bake it,” Jean finished with a lilt, clapping her hands together.
“You want me to bake a cake that will be featured inLake Panache?” Could a part of her dreams really be coming true? Ha! A print magazine. A photo spread inLake Panachewould also give her the exposure she needed. Maybe someone would even nominate her for theLa Patisseriecontest. This could be the biggest thing to happen to her.
Take that, Victor!
“Now, we can’t promise anything about being featured.” Palmer’s quiet voice did little to squelch the squealing she was doing internally. “But we do want you to bake a cake, and we do have our son coming to take photographs and do interviews.”
Apparently her mouth understood before her brain did, because Robin heard herself saying, “I’ll do it.”
“I’m so glad,” Jean said. “The party will be on February twelfth. Now, we’ll get the details together later, but Palmer and I never had a proper wedding.” Jean looped her arm through Palmer’s and looked at him with enough heat that Robin almost blushed. Jean looked back at Robin and smiled. “In the sixties it was all free love and getting married by the JP. I’d love to have a beautiful wedding-style cake for our anniversary party.”
Um. Oh no. Was Robin dreaming or did she just commit to making a second wedding cake? Jacob and Emily’s on February 14 and now the Adamses’ only two days earlier. The bakery wasn’t equipped for something like that. They’d barely put cakes on the menu at all. Her heart sped up, and she felt beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck.
No. She would not panic.
She would make this work.
She’d give Wendy and Bella more hours. She herself would map out a plan for baking and frosting the cakes that would fit the schedule. It would all work out.
It had to.
After making plans to meet the Adamses to work out the details, she looked around for Sammy. He would love to hear about this. But it seemed he and his mom had already left, as she didn’t see his broad shoulders anywhere.
She ignored the shot of loss that pinged through her.
Just as well. She was supposed to be forgetting about him. She needed to treat him as a casual friend, not as a partner.
Even if it meant not having someone to share her joy.
* * *
A bitof the lyrics from one of this morning’s hymns rolled through Sammy’s mind. “O the deep, deep love of Jesus! Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free…” Sammy appreciated the reminder from Pastor Dan’s sermon that the love of Jesus would never fail. Even if he wasn’t sure of his own path forward, that truth was something he could hold on to.
After grabbing a quick lunch with his mom at home, it was time to bite the bullet and follow through on his late-night decision. He went to the garage and turned on the small space heater he used while woodworking. A faint aroma of burning dust filled the garage, layering over the pine and lacquer usually present.
Sammy dug out the scrap of paper with Tucker Newman’s phone number on it and dialed.
A man’s voice answered. “Tucker here.”
“Hello, Tucker, this is Sammy Johnson.”
“Sammy! Seth mentioned you might be calling. Good to hear from you. It’s been ages. What, like ten years since high school?”
“Yeah. Something like that.” Sammy scooted onto a stool he parked next to his workbench. Pictures of him in uniform—first football, then Army—lined the back of the bench. A small clock made from the end cut of a log rested nearby. “Seth said you might be looking for a few more crew members.”
