The Secret, Book & Scone Society Page 2

  After flipping the SHUT sign over to read OPEN, Nora continued walking deeper into the shop. She needed to brew coffee. The trolley would be pulling into the public parking area any moment now.

  Nora entered the small office where train tickets were once sold to Miracle Springs travelers. In order to convert the office into a basic coffee dispensary, Nora had removed the ticket window’s glass divide and hung a chalkboard next to the opening. The chalkboard listed the literary names of the beverages Miracle Books offered:

  The Ernest Hemingway—Dark Roast

  The Louisa May Alcott—Light Roast

  The Dante Alighieri—Decaf

  The Wilkie Collins—Cappuccino

  The Jack London—Latte

  The Agatha ChrisTEA—Earl Grey

  From time to time, customers would suggest a new and complicated espresso recipe along with a suitable author name to match.

  Nora, who’d learned to treat people’s feelings with care since her life had taken such a dramatic turn on a dark highway four years ago, would smile and praise the person for their creativity. She would then confess that her secondhand espresso maker could barely handle steaming milk, but if she ever had the chance to upgrade, she’d keep their drink idea in mind.

  At this point, the enthusiastic customer would glance around the shop and notice, possibly for the first time, the piece of duct tape on the split-chair cushion or that the reading lamp was burning one bulb instead of three. Seeing as they’d come to Miracle Springs in search of healing—from a physical or emotional injury, it wasn’t always easy to tell—Nora’s customers were usually empathetic people. Therefore, they’d drop the subject, order a coffee from the menu, and spend more money than they’d originally planned.

  Nora made the latter especially easy to do by filling the store with impulse buys. Not only did she stock new and gently used books, but also signed books, collectible books, bookmarks, bookplates, and “shelf enhancers” as well.

  Shelf enhancers were what Nora had dubbed the bookends, figurines, framed prints, paperweights, clay pots, birdcages, portrait plates, decoys, folk art, miniature needlework plaques, tea caddies, inkwells, apothecary jars, Depression glass vases, tin signs, stone busts, vintage trophies, brass scales, old game boards, and so on, which she strategically placed on every shelf.

  Nora purchased every item at its rock-bottom price. She hit the yard-sale scene on certain Saturday mornings, and on occasional Sundays she combed the flea markets, examining any item captivating her interest with extreme care. The local vendors had come to respect her discriminating eye and shrewd bartering skills. They also knew that she resold their wares at a profit, but the profit margin was small and they didn’t begrudge her a living.

  “What else is a woman like that going to do?” some of the less charitable sellers would whisper, seeing themselves as magnanimous for giving Nora extra discounts here and there.

  Of course, Nora knew exactly which vendors felt this way and didn’t hesitate to accept said discounts. All she had was Miracle Books, and she’d do anything to keep her store afloat.

  Almost anything, Nora thought, scooping coffee grounds into a paper filter. She hadn’t been very open to suggestions from local readers, most of whom were women looking to start a book club and use Miracle Books as their meeting place. Nora was fine with that aspect, but she’d stoutly declined when asked to serve as the book-club facilitator.

  “I can’t” was all Nora had told Mrs. Cassidy at the time. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the idea of discussing a work of women’s fiction as plates of homemade desserts were passed around, but Nora never put herself in the center of a crowd. She felt truly comfortable only inside the ticket booth, with a thick, wooden counter separating herself from other people. To sit in a circle facing a group of women—no, they would start asking her questions. They’d want to get to know her, and Nora couldn’t allow that to happen.

  She’d come to Miracle Springs to forget.

  The sleigh bells jingled and jangled from the front of the store and Nora glanced at her watch again. It was still too early for the trolley, and there was no chance the man from the bench had made it to the Gingerbread House, had a customized comfort scone prepared and packaged for him, and was now ready for his bibliotherapy session. That meant the newcomer was a customer, and Nora would let him or her wander in peace. She never approached browsers unless they gave off an air of needing help, and Nora had become adept at reading people’s vibes.

  Back when she was a librarian, she didn’t pay much attention to vibes. Once, a patron requested a book on color auras. The title was long out-of-print and could only be acquired by interlibrary loan. As Nora was filling out the form, the patron informed her that she had a dark red aura.

  “You’re practical, hardworking, loyal, and honest,” she’d said. “You’re also a survivor. You’ve had, or will have to face, a serious trauma.”

  Nora, who’d foolishly believed herself to be content, dismissed the woman’s reading as the ramblings of a New Age hobbyist.

  The trauma was coming, however. It was rushing toward Nora like a runaway train. And she stood directly in its path—too busy with work and other obligations to realize that she was about to be mowed down.

  Do auras change? Nora wondered, as she pressed the brew button on the coffeemaker. They should. Because people change. For better and for worse.

  In the distance, she heard the whistle of the afternoon train. Nora never tired of its long, heartrending note. What other sound could convey both the romance of returning home and the ache of leave-taking? The next whistle, which would blow in approximately five minutes, meant that the train was just about to enter the narrow, dark tunnel preceding the Miracle Springs station.

  Suddenly, the space where the tip of Nora’s pinkie finger used to be tingled. She stared at her hand, discomfited by the sensation. She’d never experienced the feeling before.

  “Excuse me,” said a soft, female voice, and Nora hid her damaged hand behind her back.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” she asked, averting the burned side of her face.

  Like all strangers, the woman noticed Nora’s scars. However, she only gave them a cursory inspection. “Do you carry cookbooks with scone recipes? I just ate the most amazing scone at the Gingerbread House, but the baker said the recipe couldn’t be duplicated because her scones are based on people’s fondest memories. She told me that she uses a basic recipe and adds certain ingredients after talking to each customer.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard as well,” Nora said. “What did yours taste like?”

  “Oranges and cream.” The woman’s face broke into a broad grin. “The first bite brought me back to my grandmother’s house in Florida. She had orange trees. During my visits, we’d bake the most delicious things. Her kitchen was filled with clutter and sunshine. I loved every minute I spent with her.”

  Nora came out from inside the ticket booth. “I have several cookbooks with scone recipes. The best anyone can do is to create a scone of their own.”

  “I’d settle for that,” the woman said. She was younger than Nora, who was edging toward forty, but had the wise and slightly guarded eyes of someone who’d experienced a decade’s worth of anguish in a very short period of time. “If I could spend a few hours lost in memories of Granny, I would.”

  As Nora led the woman to the cookbook section, two things occurred. First, the space just above her pinkie finger tingled again. Simultaneously, the second train whistle called out the imminent arrival of more people in search of healing.

  The woman, who’d paused to pluck a Vaseline-glass fox from a bookshelf, hadn’t noticed that Nora had stopped walking.

  “Granny had a fox just like this,” the woman said, running her fingers down the fox’s smooth back. “She let me touch all of her things, even when I was very young. My house was a veritable museum. It was more important to impress visitors than to be comfortable.”

  “What’s your line of work?�
�� Nora asked.

  The woman’s mouth drooped. “I’m an accountant. I’m good at it, but I hate it.”

  “Do you still enjoy cooking?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounded unsure. “I might.”

  Nora gestured at a club chair covered in purple velvet. “I’m going to put a stack of books on that cushion. I think you need to read these books. If you read every one, in order, I believe you’ll find an orange-scented, sun-filled kitchen of your own.”

  Twenty minutes later, the woman left with the fox and two shopping bags of books. One bag was weighed down with cookbooks, while the other held Eric Ripert’s 32 Yolks, Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Richard Morais’s The Hundred-Foot Journey, Muriel Barbery’s Gourmet Rhapsody, and Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen.

  Nora watched the woman walk toward the park with a light, eager step and hoped the books would do their job. If they did, the woman would make messes in her kitchen. She would buy knickknacks for her tidy, Spartan apartment. She would let her hair down and take chances. She would find joy.

  Still scanning the park square, Nora wondered where the trolley passengers had gone. The lodge’s green trolley was parked in its usual place, but no lodge guests strolled the sidewalks or meandered from the row of quaint shops on Bath Street to the Pink Lady Grill or the Gingerbread House.

  Just then, a flash of red caught Nora’s eye and she groaned inwardly as a tall, shapely woman passed in front of the bookshop window. The woman yanked the door open, ignoring the riotous clanging of the sleigh bells, and settled into the closest chair like a queen awaiting the adulation of her subjects. Her pouty lips curved into a cat-with-the-cream grin. “Consider your next bibliotherapy session canceled.”

  “Hello to you too, Estella.” Nora picked up the stray paperbacks a customer had left on the table next to Estella’s chair. “I assume you’re referring to the man I met on the park bench. Why isn’t he coming? Did you scare him off?”

  “Me?” Estella pretended to be affronted, but Nora wasn’t falling for the act. “I didn’t even get a chance to meet him. I was up at the lodge wasting my time on a man I thought had some potential, but he’s already making payments to an ex-wife and needs to send three kids to college. There’d be nothing left for me.” She waved a manicured hand in dismissal.

  Nora was itching to reshelve the books and check on the coffee. Though she didn’t dislike Estella, she was rarely at ease in her company.

  Recalling the strange sensation she’d experienced as the second train whistle blew, Nora felt an inexplicable prickle of dread. She jerked a thumb toward the window. “Where is everyone?”

  Estella’s grin returned. “At the train station. They’ve been drawn there like flies to sugar. The sheriff rolled in a few seconds ago, and since he and I have never gotten along, I made myself scarce.”

  Nora, who made it a point not to look people directly in the eye, forgot her rule and gave Estella an impatient stare. “What happened? Just spit it out.”

  Crossing her arms in disappointment, Estella murmured something about no one being any fun, but eventually complied with Nora’s request. “When your man on the bench placed an order for one of Hester’s comfort scones, he asked her to box it because he was heading over here to see you. He left the bakery, box in hand, but he never made it to Miracle Books.” Estella leaned back in the chair and smoothed the skirt of her white sundress. “I’m sure he’d rather be sitting in this comfy chair than where he is now.”

  Nora knew she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question, but it had to be asked. “Which is?”

  “On the tracks,” Estella declared breathlessly. “Someone pushed him in front of the three o’clock train.”

  Chapter 2

  The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamour, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track.

  —F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Estella Sadler had a flair for the dramatic. She behaved as if everyone watched her whenever she entered or exited a room. She wore clingy dresses, pencil skirts, and tight blouses—every item of clothing was meant to draw attention to her provocative curves—and she never appeared in public without perfume, makeup, and carefully coiffed hair. Estella invested a great deal of time, effort, and expense honing her image. She aspired to be viewed as the most desirable single woman in Miracle Springs. As far as Nora knew, Estella had successfully held this title for more than a decade. Nora also knew that plenty of local women directed their venom at Estella. They called her nasty names behind her back, fearing that she had designs on their husbands.

  These fears were inane. The last thing Estella sought was an entanglement with a man sharing her ZIP code. She yearned to be whisked away by a wealthy stranger to somewhere far from Miracle Springs—the town where she was born and raised. Once, when she’d been trimming Nora’s long, thick locks of nut-brown hair, Estella had gestured around Magnolia Salon and Spa, and said, “Some women would kill to have their own business. I rent chair space to two other stylists and have part-time help in the spa too. I can take time off whenever I want, I have a cute little house, nice clothes, and enough money in the bank to pay the bills every month, but I want so much more.”

  Nora, who was accustomed to people sharing their hopes and desires with her, possibly because she was quiet, sat in silence as Estelle listed all the exotic places she wanted to visit.

  “But not by myself,” Estella had added. “I want someone to take me and to take care of me wherever we go. Someone who will show me the world, but will treat me like a queen when we’re watching TV at home too.” Estella’s scissors had stopped snipping. “Do you have books to help me get a man like that? A how-to guide on snaring a millionaire with a heart of gold?”

  Though she doubted it would do any good, Nora had found such a guide for Estella. She’d also introduced her to romance authors like Catherine Coulter, Brenda Joyce, Candice Proctor, Bertrice Small, Diana Gabaldon, and Jade Lee. Estella confessed that she’d been a voracious reader as a child, but had become too focused on her ambitions to invest in reading as an adult. But with a little coaxing from Nora, Estella had renewed her love affair with fiction.

  “I’m not making this up,” she said now, leaning forward in her chair to impart the seriousness of her claim. “Even though it sounds like a John Grisham plot. Well, maybe not Grisham. Fill in the blank with the appropriate writer who’d dream up a scene where a clueless tourist is pushed off the ledge above the train tunnel—you know the one, the place the moms tell their kids to stay away from or else.”

  In an attempt to calm her tumultuous thoughts, Nora pictured the spot where the man from the bench must have drawn his last breath. It wasn’t far from Caboose Cottage. Like Nora’s backyard, the land leading down to the tunnel’s mouth was a steep slope and though the town had erected a chain-link fence to prevent trespassers from approaching the area, bored teenagers constantly tampered with the fence. They liked to sit on the narrow swath of concrete overlooking the train tracks, swinging their legs into empty space and shouting obscenities into the black tunnel. They were amused by the echo of their voices and relished the feeling of invincibility, no matter how brief.

  There was also a long-standing Miracle Springs tradition that encouraged lovers to hang a small padlock from the fence and toss its key onto the tracks. If the wheels of a passing train flattened the key, the person who hung the padlock would win the heart of the person they most desired, as long as they remembered to scratch his or her initials into the key.

  “Why would he go down there in the first place?” Nora murmured to herself.

  Clearly disappointed by Nora’s reaction to her announcement, Estella got up from her chair and crossed to the window to see if there were signs of activity outside.

  “Maybe he wasn’t pushed. Maybe he jumped,” Estella said while scanning the park. “Think about it
. No one travels to Miracle Springs because they’re happy.”

  Nora considered this remark. “Not every out-of-towner comes here because they’re unhappy, either. Or sick. Some people like the tranquility. Miracle Springs is an oasis. A respite from a noisy, frantic, demanding life that creates stress and fatigue. Our Wi-Fi is spotty, we don’t have five hundred TV channels, and the pace is slow. People can find rest here. They can be quiet.”

  Estella rolled her eyes. “Quiet. Rest. Ugh! That’s why this town is so awful. I don’t want slow. I want roller-coaster fast! Trendy and fascinating. Risky and scandalous. Nothing in Miracle Springs has changed for fifty years. People flock to this place because they think it’s magical. Whether it’s in the water, the kale smoothies, or the sunrise yoga sessions—they believe in something I don’t. But your man from the park bench? Word has it he tried everything. He meditated, took long hikes, got massages, went to the hot springs and thermal pools several times—”

  “Word has it? He hasn’t been dead an hour yet. Are people lined up at the top of the slope in hopes of catching a glimpse of his corpse?” Nora asked sharply. She couldn’t explain why she felt defensive on the man’s behalf. She didn’t know him from Adam, but he’d been on his way to see her. He’d been coming to her for help. Somehow, she felt responsible for his welfare. Not only that, but she knew what it was like to be stared at, and she didn’t like the idea of a crowd of strangers gathering to gawk at the man’s broken body. The heat of her anger made her burn scars itch.

  “Honey, I own a salon.” Estella sounded pleased to have finally gotten a rise out of Nora. “When my clients see me, they start talking. They’re practically wired to tell me the latest news, and there isn’t much bigger news than an out-of-towner being flattened like a penny by the three o’clock train.”