Maple Sugar Crush Read online

“How many?” he asked.

  “A lot,” I said, looking back down at the troubling statistics. “Too many. I mean, everybody should have somewhere to go, don’t you think?”

  The newspaper had taken a poll, and it broke my heart seeing how many people in our little town had spent Thanksgiving alone last year. Widows and widowers. Families going through divorces. People who simply couldn’t afford to travel. While I’d been on the Cape—arguing with my relatives and fending off the advances of the floppy-haired trio—these people had been all by themselves. To me, being alone seemed like the worst fate in the world. I loved being around people, which made the fact that most of them only wanted to be friends with me because of my money even harder to bear. It made my real friends like Tom, Kit, and Amy all the more special.

  Unfortunately, the newspaper wasn’t offering any suggestions on how to help. They’d just printed a photograph of an old woman sitting alone on a bench, holding a pie in her lap. I squinted as I looked more closely at the photo. The letters H-I-N-G were on the front of the building behind her. Did they take that right outside my store? How had I missed a lonely old lady sitting out there with a pie in her lap? I frowned, absently scratching Pixie on the head; standing on her hind legs, her chin just barely reached my lap.

  I put the newspaper down and walked over to the stack of boxes that had just been delivered, Pixie following me. After Tom sold me Pumpkin Everything earlier this year, I made the decision to start stocking a few Christmas items. Tom assured me that his late wife, Lillian, was rolling over in her grave—she’d named the place Pumpkin Everything for a reason, didn’t I know? —but eventually agreed that maybe it was a good idea. Since I hadn’t lived my entire life in Autumnboro, I didn’t have quite the same obsession with fall that everybody else around here did. I mean, I liked it well enough; I can’t imagine there’s anybody out there who hates fall foliage. Amy did hate the smell of pumpkin spice for a while, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, I just happened to like Christmas a lot, too. Why not branch out?

  “You’ll be going to the Cape for Thanksgiving again, I assume?” asked Tom.

  “Actually, I’m not going this year,” I said, pulling out a reindeer oven mitt and gently nipping him on the shoulder.

  “What do you mean?” asked Tom, batting away the mitt, his puffy white eyebrows furrowed in concern. “How come?”

  “Well, last year was a bit…stressful.” I dug further into the box, uncovering bags of Christmas-flavored coffees with whimsical names. Tom was going to kill me. “I told you about my aunt and uncle, and my cousin, and my mother the matchmaker, right? I just thought I’d take a little break from all the stressful family drama.”

  After last Thanksgiving, I’d caved in and written all of them more checks. Audrey and Randy went straight out and bought an RV, which they’d used to take Uncle Burt and Aunt Carla on a month-long tour of America’s greatest casinos. I don’t need to tell you how that adventure ended. And then, a few weeks ago, I got an email from some distant relative who’d run into my parents at a funeral, finagled an invitation to this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, and had just the most incredible idea for a business if only they had the money to get started. They couldn’t wait to meet me. I just didn’t think I could face it. Never mind my mother, who would have a new lineup of gold-digging bachelors waiting, despite everything I had said. Despite everything that had made me believe dating simply wasn’t in the cards for me.

  “I didn’t realize you weren’t going home,” said Tom, “or I never would have—” He paused when he noticed the bags of coffee. His eyes narrowed. “Jingle Bell Spice? What does that even mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I plucked the bag out of his hands. “You would never have what? What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving? Sharyn’s coming up, right?”

  The idea of staying in Autumnboro and spending Thanksgiving with Tom and his family had definitely crossed my mind. I imagined us testing out the new kitchen at The Autumnboro Inn, and eating a cozy dinner in the dining room by the fireplace. With the inn nearly ready to open, the timing for a test run would be perfect. I may have planned out a menu.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” said Tom, avoiding my eyes. “I was planning to ask you for some time off. It was sort of a last-minute decision, but Amy, Kit, and I, we’re going down to Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks. Maggie’s coming, too. The inn is pretty much finished, and with it opening next month, this is the last chance they’ll have to get away. I hate to leave you in the lurch like this. But like I said, it was a last-minute decision.”

  My heart sank as my idea of Thanksgiving at the inn went up in smoke. While I loved having Tom around at the store, I certainly wasn’t going to crash and burn without him. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to miss him. I’d miss all of them. A couple of weeks without my friends was a very long time.

  “Don’t be silly!” I said, pasting a bright smile on my face. “Lord knows those two deserve a break, and you deserve to spend some time with your daughter. I’m happy for you!” I turned around and busied myself with pulling bags of coffee out of the box and stacking them into a nearby hutch.

  “We assumed you were going to the Cape, darling,” said Tom softly. “Otherwise, we would have invited you along. You know you’re like family to us. Let me call Amy! Maybe we can still book you on the plane.”

  “Oh, please,” I said, glancing at him over my shoulder. “You know I don’t fly. And if I did, I’d rent a private plane. But I’ll be fine here. Someone has to keep the store open.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Maybe I’ll even open for Black Friday!”

  That did sound sort of exciting. I could do some major markdowns and clear out some of the fall stuff that nobody wanted—Rotten Pumpkin scented candles made a great gag gift, but we’d never sold more than three of those things. Then there was the carton of pumpkin spice-flavored Tums that Tom thought would be a real hit with the senior citizens. It was not.

  I walked back over to the counter and looked again at the newspaper photo of the old lady with the pie. So, what was I going to do for Thanksgiving? I’d been stupidly counting on spending it with Tom and his family. I still didn’t want to face the drama of going to the Cape, but I didn’t want to spend the day alone, either. The thought of that made my stomach sink. I could invite Meg and her family down to my house, but it wasn’t fair to expect them to give up Thanksgiving with the rest of the family. As I looked at the photo, an idea came to me.

  “Hey, Tom?” I said.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “It’s not about goat yoga again, is it?”

  “No, it’s not about goat yoga,” I said, shooting him a look. “It’s about Thanksgiving. What if I host a dinner for all the people who don’t have a place to go?” I turned around and held up the newspaper. Tom came over and took it out of my hand.

  “I think you’re a lovely, generous young lady,” he said. “And if anybody can pull it off, it would be you. But just so you know, that’s Margie Warton in that photo. She has thirteen grandchildren and has been shacking up with Walter Packard for sixteen years. She must’ve been waiting for the senior shuttle to come by when they took that picture. She always brings a pie to our potluck.” He held one hand up to the side of his mouth. “Not homemade.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to look at the photo from a different perspective. “Okay, well, that’s a good thing! I’m glad she’s not lonely. But there are still plenty of people who are, and I could make a real difference. I could put an ad in the newspaper! Then there’s the food. How many turkeys do you think I’d need? Fifteen? Twenty? How does one go about cooking twenty turkeys? I might need to order a few ovens…”

  Tom just shook his head and grabbed his coat. “I’m going across the street for coffee, would you like anything?”

  “Sure,” I said. “One more PSL before they go out of style. Take this.” I pulled a ten
-dollar bill out of my wallet.

  Tom waved it away. “It’s on me today. Let an old man feel useful.”

  “Fine. But I’m buying you an extra pair of socks this Christmas. Cashmere. No, wait! Alpaca!”

  “Lovely.”

  As soon as he left, I opened my laptop and began making a list of ideas. I had visions of a huge hall lit by candles and white fairy lights, with long tables covered in cornucopias and mountains of food. The more I envisioned it, the more it morphed into the Great Hall at Hogwarts, with candles floating above the tables and owls swooping around. It was a shame a place like that didn’t really exist, since I actually had the means to rent it out and fill it with owls. But that was okay. Since I was trying to avoid stress and drama on Thanksgiving, I should probably try to keep this thing relatively small. I’d find a suitable location right here in town. Sourcing everything locally would be another way of giving back to the community.

  Why hadn’t I thought of doing this sort of thing before? I brought free food and coffee to the people who worked around Main Street, I donated to animal shelters and hospitals, I purchased mosquito nets for children in Africa, and I sent two students from Autumnboro High School to college each year on scholarships. But I’d never considered doing something like this, which meant there were countless other things I hadn’t thought of, either. Guilt settled in my stomach, as it always did when I thought about how I wasn’t doing nearly as much as I could. One good deed at a time, I told myself, taking a deep breath. Those were my dad’s words. I did feel bad about not seeing my dad for Thanksgiving this year, but I’d go down for a visit soon after. It would be easier without the extended family around, and Mom would hopefully be too distracted by Christmas shopping and yacht club holiday galas to worry about my love life.

  I looked across the store and noticed that Tom had left his cardigan draped over the back of a chair. Before he returned with our coffee, I walked over and slipped a ten-dollar bill into the pocket.

  Chapter 2

  “It all just looks so beautiful,” I said, my eyes tearing up as I looked around the lobby of The Autumnboro Inn. The old two-family Victorian home that Kit and Amy had grown up in had undergone an incredible transformation over the past year. I was so happy that my money had been able to help make Rebecca Parker’s dream a reality, I got teary-eyed every single time I came by. Not helping my emotional state, were the colored pencil drawings from her journal that Kit had framed and hung in various places around the inn. I walked over to the one by the coat rack, then looked past it into the living room. It was almost a perfect recreation.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, following Amy into the living room. My heart lifted when I saw the Christmas tree standing in the front window, then sank a bit when I realized it had already been decorated with silver and white pumpkin ornaments. A scarecrow was perched on top, where the angel would normally be. With its mid-December grand opening, the inn was an interesting mix of both autumn and Christmas décor.

  When I’d first offered to invest in the inn, I’d had so many grand ideas of how I would be involved in the decorating, the advertising, the day-to-day inner workings. I saw now that I was just a tad bit overexcited, bordering on delusional. I was a silent partner which, according to the internet, means an individual whose partnership is limited to providing capital to the business. Being a silent partner does not include purchasing six Catherine Zeta-Jones Sherpa blankets without the consent of the general partner. Live and learn. Still, it was sort of a bummer.

  “You’re our sole investor, Josie,” said Amy. “Believe me, you’ve already done more than enough.”

  “I know that,” I said, glancing around the rest of the room. There seemed to already be an autumn decoration on every available surface, and a pile of Sherpa blankets in a basket by the couch. Darn it. Even the glass case protecting Tom’s model stagecoach had been outlined in orange and white lights. I stepped over the electrical cord that was running across the room (total trip hazard if you asked me—which they hadn’t), and craned my neck toward the kitchen. “I wasn’t talking about money. I was thinking more along the lines of decorating, or maybe helping to check in guests, or…oh! I could carry their luggage up the stairs! Don’t you think it would be fun to be a bellhop?” I gazed at the main staircase, imagining myself in a cute uniform with a little hat, effortlessly heaving suitcases up the steps.

  “Um, maybe?” said Amy, giving me the same exact look that Tom had when I’d mentioned goat yoga. It was uncanny. “Only, Kit’s planning on doing all the check-ins and helping guests with their luggage. We only have six rooms, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. And we’ve been working our butts off to get all the decorating done in time. I still can’t believe we’re opening in just a few weeks!” She looked at me with a wide-eyed, exaggerated expression of excitement and fear.

  “Oh, you’ll be fine!” I said, pulling her into a hug. “It’s going to be great! I’m so proud of you two.”

  I really was. During the chaos of renovations, Kit and Amy had also managed to squeeze in a wedding and a honeymoon. To be honest, the way those two had reunited after ten years apart, the entire past year seemed like a honeymoon for them. Most of it, at least. There was a brief time—after Amy first found out that Kit wanted to remodel their childhood home into an inn, forcing Tom to move out—when I wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to make things work. But once Tom gave Amy his blessing to let go of the house, everything worked out like a dream.

  Which leads me to another reason I hadn’t been as involved with the inn as I’d hoped. As soon as renovations had gotten underway, I realized that I was nothing but a big, fat third wheel. Between Kit and Amy’s PDAs and the playful butt smacking, it didn’t take me long to vacate the premises.

  “Thanks,” said Amy, hugging me back. “Do you find it at all strange, though, having an autumn-themed inn around Christmastime?” She glanced nervously at the tree.

  “You realize you live in an autumn-themed town year-round, right?” asked Kit, appearing on the stairs in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. When he got to the bottom, he planted a kiss on top of his wife’s head.

  “Of course, I do,” said Amy, slipping her arm around his waist. “I’m just saying that it seems even stranger when you see it all thrown together in one tiny place.”

  “And you’re telling me this now?”

  “I’m sorry! Forget I said anything!”

  “Now it’s all I can see,” said Kit, nervously surveying the room, his eyes landing on the scarecrow atop the Christmas tree. “I know that Josie cries every time she sets foot in here, but I always assumed that was a good thing.”

  “It is!” I said. “The place looks amazing, guys. Don’t change a thing. So, are you all pa—”

  I was about to ask if they were all packed for their trip to Pennsylvania, when Amy smacked Kit on the butt and the two of them took off giggling into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the living room. Right. Maybe I should add invisible to my title. Josie Morgan, Invisible Silent Partner.

  I felt a small pang of jealousy, as I heard more laughter coming from the kitchen. The fact that I could be jealous of anybody was a laugh in itself, but there it was. Sometimes I liked to ponder the idea of “giving it all up” for love. Like, if a big blue genie appeared and made me an offer, would I take it? The fact that I didn’t one hundred percent know my answer always left me feeling ungrateful. There were people who would kill to be in my situation. How dare I have the nerve to go around dreaming about giving it all up for some hot guy?

  Not that he’d need to be hot, per se. Just sweet, and kind, and open to the idea of owning a capuchin monkey (though totally not a deal breaker). The best part is that I wouldn’t have to worry about him using me for my money, because the money would be gone! I’d have given it all up for love, which would either be incredibly stupid or incredibly romantic. Either way, the whole fantasy seemed so anti-girl-power that I didn’t dare mention a word of it to anyone but Pixie. />
  When Kit and Amy still hadn’t returned after several minutes, I decided I should probably get going. I grabbed my purse just as the front door opened, and in walked Kit’s younger brother, Riley. A few butterflies, who clearly didn’t understand anything, stirred in my stomach.

  “Hey, Moneybags,” said Riley, tossing a big, brown jacket onto the reception desk and knocking over a pencil cup. “Kit left this at my apartment yesterday. Is he around?”

  I jerked my head toward the kitchen, where the sound of Amy’s laughter was followed by a disturbing sort of a slurp. I really hoped that was the coffeemaker.

  “Gross,” said Riley.

  “Tell me about it. I thought that sort of thing would have worn off by now. But, what do I know?”

  Riley walked past me into the sitting area and flopped down on the couch. He put his feet up on the coffee table. It was a weekday, so he was dressed in his funeral home work clothes—dark gray suit, white shirt, black tie. He’d been letting his facial hair grow a bit since the summer, and his dark hair looked freshly cut—short on the sides, with the longer top part combed over. No, not like a combover. Like…modern. Cute.

  Last fall, I ended up as part of a group Halloween costume with Riley, Tom, and Maggie. We’d all dressed up as Pokémon characters, and the whole night had been so much fun. It all started with Amy surprising Kit with the deed to her grandfather’s house, followed by handing out candy to trick-or-treaters at Pumpkin Everything, followed by a late-night party back at Kit and Riley’s apartment. I’d known Riley for a while at that point, never thinking of him as anything other than a friend. But after a few pumpkin ales, I’d found myself strangely attracted to the way he popped bite-sized Snickers into his mouth—one after the other—while slumped all casual-like on the couch, staring at his phone. Normally, a grown man in a Pikachu costume would be nothing to get worked up about. But that night…

  Anyway, I’d kept one eye on him over the winter, but it wasn’t until this past summer that I may have gone and developed a teensy little crush. With Kit and Amy all wrapped up in each other and their wedding plans, Riley had seemed a little lonely. I’d felt bad that he’d been forced to move out of the house he’d grown up in and into his own apartment all the way over in Summerboro. I’d been feeling lonely, too, with Amy so preoccupied, and even Tom spending more and more time with Maggie. Pixie and I had started stopping by the funeral home every so often with a frozen Maple Sugar Crush, which I’d found out from the barista at The Shaky Maple was Riley’s favorite drink. I’d slipped her a twenty for her trouble.