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Chapter One.
The Bennet Family’s Christmas Breakfast.

When I was a teenager, I used to have this recurring nightmare.

In it, I would wake up one morning and find myself transformed from the plain, ordinary girl I was into a beautiful blond princess who bore a striking resemblance to my sister Jayne. Not only was I beautiful, I was also smart like my older sister Eliza, as graceful as my younger sister Cat, and as charming and flirtatious as my youngest sister, Lydia.

But although I was all those things, I wasn’t mean to anyone. I had tons of friends, boys chased after me, teachers praised me to the skies. My parents loved me and secretly considered me their favorite child, although they did their best not to let my sisters know this. I certainly never let on that I knew.

My dream always stayed the same from there. I got dressed and went to school, and as I walked down the halls of Meryton High, people would stop and stare at me. I knew they were whispering, but I also knew they weren’t saying anything bad about me. I reached my locker and got out my books when a shadow fell over me.

“Hey, gorgeous,” a deep male voice said. I looked up to see who it was and found Todd Wexman, the captain of the football team, standing there. I didn’t turn around but rather let him plant a quick kiss on my cheek because this is what we did every morning. I wasn’t the type for hour-long make-out sessions in the school hallway, but a kiss on the cheek was okay and it wouldn’t get us into trouble with the principal, who was always prowling around and handing out detentions for PDAs.

“Hey yourself,” I said.

“You goin’ to Jimmy Lucas’s party Friday?”

I smiled, although since my back was turned to him, he couldn’t see it. “I don’t know,” I said. It was a lie, of course. I had every intention of going to Jimmy Lucas’s party----everyone did. Lucas parties were legendary. The Lucases owned a B&B in town called Lucas Lodge. When they didn’t have guests, they let their kids have parties in their enormous basement. As long as the cops didn’t get called and they didn’t tear up the rest of the house, the Lucases could care less what they did.

Everyone knew the main reason Mr. and Mrs. Lucas let their kids have those parties. They wanted them to be popular, and they succeeded. Despite looks as plain as mine in real life, Jimmy was one of the most popular kids in our class. The same had been true for his older siblings, Charlotte and Seth, and eventually for his younger ones, Mariah and Jason.

“Well, I was just thinking...Jimmy’s got this little private party-in-the-party set up in his sister’s old room. Just him, a few others, me...maybe you.”

It was the true mark of popularity at Meryton High to be invited to hang out with Jimmy’s private party crowd. Even though my dream self should’ve been a regular fixture, since I was Todd’s girlfriend, I always got excited when he asked me to join him.

“I think I could make time to go, then,” I said nonchalantly, channeling the flirtatious spirit my younger sister Lydia already possessed, even at so young an age.

“Great. I’ll see you there,” Todd said. He gave me another quick kiss on the cheek and took off.

The scene suddenly switched from the high school hallway to the party itself. In real life, I had never seen the inside of Charlotte Lucas’s room, but I had a pretty good idea of what it was like from my sisters, who were both good friends of hers.

I was having the time of my life. I was drinking alcohol but I didn’t feel drunk. Todd danced every dance with me, and even though there would be a hundred pairs of jealous eyes looking at us in real life, I didn’t seen anyone doing that tonight.

“Having a good time, Mary?” Todd asked in this low, sexy voice while we were dancing to Bryan Adams’s “Everything I Do, I Do It for You.” I hated the song when conscious, but the dream me seemed to adore it since it was always playing when I got to the party.

“The best,” I said, looking up into his green eyes. I willed him to kiss me. He leaned in, his eyes half-closed, his lips the merest fraction away from mine, and...

...and then I would wake up, usually accompanied by Lydia or Cat’s shout of, “Mom said get up or you’ll be late for school!”

And that’s when it became a nightmare, because when I stumbled to the bathroom to get ready for the day to come, I came face-to-face with the reality that was my life. Instead of long, glossy blonde hair, I had tangled fiery-red curls that were almost impossible to tame. Instead of big blue eyes with perfect vision, I saw my usual muddy green eyes behind thick glasses. Instead of the face of an angel, I had a pale, freckled complexion. And instead of having a body that could make grown men cry, I found my usual stick figure with no curves at all.

My problem wasn’t that I was hideous-looking. People didn’t run down the street screaming in terror at my appearance. I was just...ordinary. And that was the worst thing, the thing that really made such a wonderful dream a nightmare. Instead of being the most popular, noticed girl in school, instead of being the favorite and most-loved child in my family, I was invisible.

My sister Jayne was beautiful and sweet, and smart enough not to be called a “dumb blonde” even if she wasn’t the smartest in the family. Eliza was the wise-cracking brainiac. Cat was the lithe, graceful dancer. And Lydia was vivacious, pretty and accessible, which meant she was a handful. So it was easy for a quiet, eager-to-please child like myself to get overlooked among the rest of them. Because I never caused trouble and I had no discernable talent, I was ignored. Dad favored Jayne and Eliza because he felt they were the only two of his five daughters with any “common sense.” Mom preferred Lydia because she reminded her of herself at that age, and she always bragged about Cat.

I did try to get their attention. I allowed myself to be dragged to all sorts of lessons. I nearly drowned in the swimming pool at seven. When I was ten, I sprained my ankle in ballet class and couldn’t walk on it for three weeks. At twelve, my short stories were dismissed as being dull. Then my piano teacher told me I should give up any hope of being able to play the piano. I went through a religious phase at fourteen where I joined the choir. The same day I joined, I was kicked out because I threw everyone else off-key.

By the time I was fifteen, I’d had enough. I realized that I was just making myself miserable by trying to be something I wasn’t, so I gave up. I accepted the fact that I had no talent and that I was never going to have one. I was surprised by how relieved I was when I gave it all up. And then I was even more surprised when my “attention-grabbing” talent showed up.

I had taken to reading through Grandma Gardiner’s old recipe books, which had been left to my mother in her will. I suspected that this was an after-life jibe at Mom, who couldn’t boil water without starting a fire. Mom had wanted to throw them out, but being something of a sentimental sap, I asked if I could have them. She’d been more than happy to dump them on me.

As I leafed through the books, my mouth watering at the thought of what some of these dishes would taste like, I got the wild idea that maybe I could make something. I remembered how much my dad raved about Grandma’s lasagna, so I bought the ingredients and spent the better part of one afternoon in the kitchen cooking. I worried over every spice, wondering if I was adding too much or perhaps not enough.

At supper that night, I set the lasagna pan in front of my father with trembling fingers. What seemed like an eternity later (but was actually only a few minutes), my family was raving about how great supper was. For once, I was basking in the glow of their attention and it was a wonderful feeling. But there was more to it than that. Once I’d gotten past the fear of that first meal, I never worried that whatever I made would turn out bad. I had free reign in the kitchen and I took full advantage of it, making every recipe in Grandma’s books.

After a while, though, as with anything, my parents and sisters stopped being in awe that someone in the family could actually cook. Cooking was a fairly ordinary talent to have, and there were more interesting things going on in the Bennet family. Attention turned to Jayne and her brilliant marriage to a lawyer, and then Eliza and her ongoing feud with Fitz Darcy, a fellow professor in the English department at Pemberley University. Lydia’s disastrous love life was good for a lot of discussion, along with Cat’s becoming a principal dancer in a prestigious ballet company.

My family just took it for granted that whenever they came home for supper, there would be something delicious waiting for them. When I went to college, I made sure there was enough food in the deep freeze to last them until I came home. When I moved out and started my own business, Mom would stop by and pick up things I made for her to take home to Dad. I didn’t mind most of the time. I was happy to be noticed, even if it was only for a second.

But there were times when I did mind...such as on Christmas mornings.

“This is the last year I agree to do this,” I grumbled to myself as I switched on the overhead light in my parents’ kitchen. “I don’t care how much they beg, plead, whatever. Next year, they can have Eggos and I can get a decent night’s sleep.”

It was just after five on Christmas morning, and I had to do what I’d done every year since I was sixteen----make breakfast for my family. Never mind that I was worn out from spending all day yesterday putting the finishing touches on eight other families’ Christmas dinners. Never mind that once I’d dropped the last of them off, I’d gone to my friend Charlotte’s Christmas party. Never mind that I’d gotten home last night just after two. And definitely never mind that lovely dream I was in the middle of starring Jamie Oliver and myself doing all sorts of interesting things with food. The Bennet family was going to be up in an hour, and they were going to expect light and fluffy waffles waiting for them to eat.

“I don’t even live here anymore.”

I switched on the coffee maker and grabbed the pot to fill it with water. I opened a cabinet next to the stove and pulled out a can of coffee. That was where I found what I’d hidden the day before----a little Ziploc bag of ground Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. I smiled in triumph as I opened the bag and dumped the contents into a filter.

“Didn’t find it this year, did you?” I whispered, looking up at the ceiling. I gave my sleeping mother and younger sisters the finger. Every year, I brought the good stuff over so I could have decent coffee while I cooked their breakfast, and every year, they found it and left me nothing but freeze-dried Folger’s.

So while they were out doing their shopping at the last minute like they always did on Christmas Eve, I took fifteen minutes out of my hectic schedule to run down here and hide my coffee in the last place I figured they’d look. I probably had a couple more years of hiding it there before they caught on.

As the coffee percolated and the scent wafted through the air, I felt a bit more human and decided that breakfast could wait until I’d had at least one cup of coffee. I got out a huge mug that read “Perky morning people should be shot” and poured myself a drink. I hopped up onto the counter and took a sip, enjoying the rich flavor. I was a self-confessed coffee addict, but I only treated myself to something as good as this at Christmas time. The rest of the year, I bought whatever I was in the mood for, as long as it wasn’t too expensive. But at Christmas, I splurged.

The first cup of coffee was gone far too quickly. I got off the counter and poured myself another to drink while I made the waffles. Setting it aside, I opened the refrigerator and reached for the buttermilk and fresh blueberries when someone spoke behind me.

“You’re not Santa Claus.”

I smacked my head on the top of the fridge. Stifling a shout of pain, I rubbed my head and turned around. It was Jon Bingley, my four-year-old nephew. He stared at me with serious blue eyes.

“Obviously I’m not Santa,” I said.

“So where is he?”

“Uh...” I had no idea whether or not Jayne and Charles had filled up Jon’s stocking. I guessed they had, but they might’ve planned on waiting until early morning. “He’s gone already.”

“But I didn’t hear him and Mommy let me stay up as late as I wanted to I could see him.”

“You fell asleep.”

“No I didn’t.”

I was quickly running out of patience. I wasn’t good with kids under the best of circumstances----defined as “when their parents were around.”

“You didn’t hear me come in last night, did you?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s because you’d fallen asleep. And that’s when Santa showed up. If you hadn’t fallen asleep, he might not have come.”

“Oh.” Jon scratched his head in much the same way his father did when he was thinking about something. “So where is he now?”

Jayne! Charles! Where the hell are you? “Uh...he’s in Alaska.”

“Why is he in Alaska?”

“Because that’s where...where he stops to eat before he goes back to the North Pole!” I said triumphantly.

Jon’s lower lip started quivering. “But I left him milk and cookies. Why does he have to eat in Alaska?”

I got out the rest of the ingredients for my waffles as I thought of an appropriate answer. “Because Santa’s a really big guy and he needs to keep fueled up. If he didn’t eat every couple of hours, he’d get skinny. So see, he ate your milk and cookies, but now that his work’s done, he’s going to stop and have a big breakfast. Just like you.”

“Oh. What’s he having for breakfast? Can I have what he’s having for breakfast?”

“I don’t know what he’s having for breakfast. I’m here and he’s in Alaska. Why don’t you go into the living room and check out all the cool stuff he brought you?” If Jayne and Charles hadn’t filled up his stocking, they could explain the truth about Santa Claus to their son because I wasn’t going to come up with any more excuses.

Jon ran out of the kitchen and headed for the living room, leaving me behind. I breathed a sigh of relief as I got out the mixing bowls and measuring cups. The waffle iron was buried behind various pots and pans that looked like they hadn’t been used in months. With only herself and Dad to feed, Mom rarely cooked anymore, not that she’d done much cooking when there’d been seven at home. I managed to get the iron out without making much noise. Bad enough that Jon was awake without having the rest of the house behind him.

“Hey Aunt Mary, take a look at what Santa got me!” Jon yelled as he ran back into the kitchen.

So much for keeping quiet. I groaned. “Jon, honey, I have to have breakfast for fourteen people ready in forty-five minutes. Can it wait until I’m done?”

Jon’s lip quivered again, and I knew I was sunk. No escape. I put the perishable items back into the fridge and took a seat on the kitchen floor beside Jon. “Okay, what did Santa bring you?”

Jon had to show me each and every toy in his stocking, asking me to try out a couple of toy cars he’d been given and offering me one of his candy canes. When he was finished, he smiled and said, “I’m hungry. What are we eating?”

Thank God! I got up from the floor, ignoring the needs of pain darting through my legs where they’d fallen asleep. “We’re having waffles this morning,” I said. “With blueberries if you like them.”

Jon frowned as he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Don’t like them.”

I opened the refrigerator again to get out my ingredients. “Then I won’t put any blueberries in your waffles.”

“Don’t like waffles.”

I set the eggs and buttermilk on the counter a little harder than I’d intended. “What do you mean? You ate waffles last year and loved them. You would’ve had three but your mother didn’t want you getting sick.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did,” I said, raising my voice as though I could make him see reason with loudness.

“Nuh-uh. I don’t like waffles.”

“Since when?” I snapped before giving up. There was no point in continuing the conversation----arguing with a four-year-old was pointless. I didn’t have the time to bother with him, anyway. “Fine. You don’t like waffles. So what do you want for breakfast?”

“I like cereal.”

I opened up the cereal cabinet and found a box of Special K and a box of Cheerios. I turned and held them up for Jon. “This is all we have, kiddo. Which one do you want?”

Jon made a face and crossed his arms over his skinny chest. “Want Cap’n Crunch.”

I put the boxes back. “Then you’re out of luck, because Grandma and Grandpa Bennet only have these kinds.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re old people, and this is the kind of cereal old people eat.” I prayed my mother was still asleep, because she’d have killed me where I stood for calling her old. She hated being reminded of her age. “When they were younger, they ate stuff like Cap’n Crunch, if it was around then. But when you get old, you’re not allowed to eat the good stuff anymore and then you have to eat boring stuff like Cheerios.”

Jon laughed. “You’re funny!”

“Yeah, I’m a laugh a minute. That’s me. So how about something else if you don’t want waffles? You like eggs and toast, don’t you?”

Jon nodded eagerly. “Can you make them like Mommy makes them?”

I turned away before Jon could see my face. Jayne cooked? Since when? Jayne’s idea of cooking was to stick a frozen pizza in the oven, and even then there was a fifty-fifty chance that it would get burnt to a crisp. “I can make them better than Mommy.”

“Nobody cooks better than Mommy.”

Wanna bet? I glanced up at the clock and grimaced. “Do you want eggs now or do you want to wait until your mother wakes up and can cook them for you?”

“I’m hungry now.”

“Okay, then. You’ll just have to settle for Aunt Mary’s inferior eggs.” I got out a pan and sprayed it with Pam before setting it on the stove. I let the pan heat while I mixed two eggs with regular milk in a small bowl.

I had blessed silence...for about a minute.

“Aunt Mary?”

“What?” I snapped as I poured eggs into the pan. I got out bread and stuck two slices in the toaster.

“What’s a ‘boyfriend?’” Jon asked.

I stirred the eggs, willing them to finish faster than I knew they would. I prayed he would be quiet if he was eating. “A boyfriend is a boy who a girl really likes, who really likes her back. Do you want jelly on your toast?”

“What kind is it?”

I set the spatula down and looked in the fridge. I took out a container of half-empty container of my father’s favorite, homemade strawberry jam. “Strawberry?”

Jon looked at the bottle and made a face. “That’s not jelly.”

“You’re right. It’s jam, but it’s just as good as jelly. In fact, it’s better because it’s homemade and sugar-free.”

“Jelly comes in bottles that Mommy can squeeze. And it doesn’t have yucky floaty stuff in it.”

“This is better for you than that stuff.” I set the bottle on the counter. “Trust me, you’ll like it, okay? Please?”

Jon nodded reluctantly. “Is Daddy Mommy’s boyfriend?”

I smiled and got back to the eggs. “He used to be her boyfriend. See, when a boy and a girl love each other enough that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, they get married. Then the ‘boyfriend’ becomes a husband. That’s what your daddy is now.”

“Oh.” There was a short pause. “So Uncle Fitz’s a husband too?”

“Yes, because he’s married to Aunt Eliza. But those guys with your Aunt Cat and Aunt Lydia...those are just boyfriends.” And not prime examples of them, either.

The eggs were almost finished. I got out a plate and a small cup. I poured milk into the cup and tipped the eggs onto the plate. I quickly smeared jam on the toast and set breakfast in front of Jon.

“There you go. Now eat up and let me get breakfast ready for everyone else, okay?” I didn’t bother waiting for an answer. I opened the bag of flour and measured out what I needed. I dumped it into a large bowl and set it aside for the time being.

“Aunt Mary, where’s your boyfriend?”

I knew that one was coming. “Did Grandma put you up to asking me that?”

“No. Mommy and Daddy were talking the other day and Mommy said it was ashamed that you didn’t have one. She says you’re really nice and you can cook and that you can be pretty if you make a...a fort. What’s a fort?”

I gripped the counter. “Your mother said ‘effort,’ Jon. She thinks I could be pretty if I bothered to try. How are your eggs?”

“Good.”

“Good.” I plugged in the waffle iron and continued working.

I tried not to let the fact that Jayne and Charles were discussing my love life bother me, but it did, of course. I wasn’t hypersensitive about the issue, but I got tired of what I had to deal with on occasions such as this. The fun would begin over Christmas lunch with my mother drinking a little too much wine and complimenting my older sisters on their married states. She’d then move on to lamenting that Cat showed no signs of getting married. Then she’d give a brief mention of the fact that Lydia’s been divorced twice. By the time the presents were opened, she would be on to her finale...her unmarried middle child.

Jayne and Charles would be helping Jon with whatever loud and annoying toy they’d bought him. Fitz would no doubt be pampering Eliza, who was expecting their first child in May. Cat and her boyfriend, her current dancing partner, would no doubt be debating the merits of this ballet over that one. And Lydia would be making out with her boyfriend in some corner of the room, unless they were fighting at the time.

That’s when it would start. “Mary, you could be such a nice-looking girl if you’d only work at it a little. Just because you’re not as pretty as Jayne or even Eliza doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be pretty with some makeup and the right hairstyle.”

No, I wouldn’t. There were many things I was. I was reasonably intelligent. I’d developed a good sense of humor out of necessity. Without one, I would’ve killed my family years ago. I was an excellent cook. But I’d tried the “right haircut and cosmetics” route, and all I’d looked like was plain Mary Bennet with makeup and a new hairstyle that I abandoned a week later in favor of my usual ponytail. With Cat and Lydia snickering in the background, I would tell my mother this.

Then Lydia would say, “If you ever want a makeover, Mary, all you have to do is come by the salon. I’ve been dying to get a chance to work on you.”

Words to send a chill down anyone’s spine. I knew if she ever got her hands on me, she’d make me look ten times worse than I already did.

“Leave the girl alone. If she’s happy with her life the way it is, don’t upset her,” Dad would say. “Not everyone is cut out for the typical ‘husband-two-kids-and-a-picket-fence’ life. Mary’s no doubt one of those people. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting a life like that. Lord knows, it hasn’t done some of the people in this room much good.” This would be accompanied by a pointed look at my mother. It would go over her head, as most of Dad’s comments did.

And anyway, it wouldn’t deter my mother----in fact, quite the opposite, because she would misunderstand his meaning. “What do you mean, Mary doesn’t want a life like that? Of course she wants to get married and have a family. She’s my daughter, isn’t she? She’s a woman, isn’t she?”

That’s when her lament over the state of my love life would really take off, and the subject of Thomas Palmer would come up. He was my last serious boyfriend, one that I’d thought I was on the verge of being getting engaged to. Turned out that the diamond ring I found charged to his credit card wasn’t for me. It was for a twenty-year-old college student he barely knew named Carly. They were married three months later and I was stuck looking like a fool. Honestly, I was more upset about looking foolish than I was about being dumped.

I don’t know that I was ever really in love with Thomas, although I convinced myself otherwise. There wasn’t a lot of excitement in our relationship. Not that I expected twenty-four-hours-a-day passion or anything. I knew I wasn’t the sort of woman who would inspire such feelings in anyone. But things were so...so vanilla and bland with Thomas that once the sting of being dumped was gone, I found that I didn’t miss him at all. I was happy for him and Carly. Better her than me.

I sighed as I ladled batter into the waffle iron. I didn’t know where my mother got the idea that I wanted a family of my own. I’d never said I wanted anything of the sort. Husband, sure. I was just like most other unmarried women and wanted to get married someday. But children? I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t do well around kids that weren’t mine. I didn’t want to think of how badly I could screw up my own kids. That was not something I would tell my mother, though.

The first waffle had just finished cooking when I heard someone tromping down the stairs, which sent me into full panic mode. Jon set his fork down with a clatter on the plate and ran to see who it was as I reached for plates, silverware, and then remembered that I hadn’t made juice yet. And I knew my mother----she wouldn’t be happy with anything but freshly-squeezed OJ without pulp. It was too much to hope that Jayne or Eliza was the one coming down the stairs.

“Good morning, Aunt Liddy!” Jon shouted.

I groaned. Yeah, too much to hope for. I was surprised that Lydia was awake so early. She rarely appeared before noon. It was more likely that she’d been up all night with her boyfriend.

“Not so loud, Jonathan,” Lydia grumbled. “It’s too early to be so loud.”

“But it’s Christmas!”

“I know that.”

“Wanna see what Santa brought me? I got a lot of stuff.”

“Maybe later. Is your Aunt Mary up yet?” Lydia’s voice was getting closer to the kitchen.

“Yeah. She made me eggs that are as good as Mommy’s, but don’t tell Mommy I said so. And toast with funny jelly that didn’t taste as good as the stuff we have at home. Want some eggs and toast? She’ll make you some.”

The kitchen door flew open and in stomped Lydia. Putting her hands on her hips, she said, “Eggs? But we always have waffles for Christmas breakfast. Why are we having eggs this year? And if that’s all we’re having, why isn’t breakfast ready?”

“Because...because...” Because I don’t have a magic wand to wave around and conjure up dishes with a simple spell, I wanted to say. Because I’m not in the mood to make waffles for once in my life... “We’re having waffles,” I finally said.

“But you always have breakfast ready before anyone gets up.”

I pointed to the waffle on the counter. “Start with that. There’s more coming.” And if the next words out of your mouth are about juice, I’m going back to bed.

Apparently, Lydia guessed that I was more than slightly annoyed, because she took the waffle, poured herself some milk, and went into the main dining room. Jon followed her, babbling on about his toys and what surprises might still await him underneath the tree. And I was, at last, alone to work on breakfast.

Three minutes later, Charles stumbled down the stairs, walked right into the kitchen, and asked, “How long until breakfast?”

Oh yeah. They were definitely getting Eggos next year.

Chapter Two.
Caroline Bingley Hamilton Lucas Elliot Woodhouse’s
Annual New Year’s Eve Party

I once dreamed of having my own restaurant. With that goal in mind, I worked in one of the more popular restaurants in Meryton after graduating from college and learned a great deal before deciding that it wasn’t for me. I liked to go at my own pace whenever possible, and having to churn out meals fast enough to suit customers who weren’t used to waiting in this day and age didn’t suit my style. Not only that, but to cook the same things night after night! It was unbearable. Trouble was, once I’d decided I didn’t want to go that route, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

It was Charles who had gotten me into catering four years ago. His sister Caroline was dissatisfied with her old caterers and was looking for someone new. Actually, she’d become dissatisfied with four different caterers and was looking for someone who could meet her exacting standards. With only two days left before her New Year’s Eve party, Charles suggested that Caroline ask me to help her out.

No doubt amused by the idea of having her brother’s sister-in-law working for her, Caroline gave me a call. I had serious reservations about taking the job. I’d known Caroline since we’d gone to high school together. Caroline graduated with Eliza, two years ahead of me, but the misery she caused had lasted long after she was gone.

In one of what I considered God’s little pranks, Caroline Bingley had been one of the most popular girls at Meryton High. She’d been reasonably pretty and her parents had had a bit of money. The fact that she was a conniving witch mattered little----in fact, I always suspected that only made her more popular.

Without beauty, brains, or talent, my life at Meryton High was much like life with my family----I was overlooked. The one thing I did have going for me was that I was a Bennet. High school guys either remembered my older sisters or discovered my younger sisters. Since none of them wanted to wreck their chances with one of the pretty Bennet girls, I didn’t take as much abuse as I might’ve otherwise. The jocks occasionally razzed me about my lack of a figure, but I just razzed them back about their lack of brains. I liked to think we had a bit of a friendly rapport.

As for Caroline and her crew, they left me well alone after the one and only prank they pulled on me. On my first day of high school, I got lost and was running late to homeroom. Caroline offered to show me “where I needed to go.” What she did was lock me in the janitor’s supply closet in the basement. I screamed and pounded on the door for two hours before someone heard me.

I hadn’t intended for anyone to find out, but naturally Caroline told everyone about the “dumb little freshman” she’d made a fool of. When Eliza and Jane got into an argument at the supper table that night over whether or not Caroline was telling the truth, I won the debate for Eliza.

I never knew what Eliza did or said to Caroline. All I knew was that Caroline never mentioned the incident or bothered me directly again. My best friend Melanie King was another story. In high school, Melanie was shy and withdrawn, not to mention fifty pounds overweight. That alone would’ve been enough for Melanie to come under fire from Caroline. The fact that Melanie was my best friend only added to Caroline’s glee at finding a suitable target for her slings and arrows.

I tried to shield Melanie from it as best I could. Knowing that Caroline had a healthy fear of Eliza, I stuck to Melanie’s side whenever I could. The two of us always got a ride home with Eliza or walked home together. We avoided most school-sponsored outings like the plague, not that either of us wanted to go in the first place. And if we needed any reminders of how bad these things could be, we only needed to think about the time Melanie got talked into going to one. She never told me what happened, but it was bad enough that she didn’t come to school for a week.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t be around Melanie all the time. Our class schedules had been similar freshman year, but then Melanie was put in all the accelerated classes and I was with the average students. And just because Caroline was afraid to say something to us didn’t mean her friends were. When we walked home, her friends would drive by, slow down, and shout insults at us. The crumpled look on Melanie’s face broke my heart every time I saw it, but I didn’t know what more I could do for her.

Needless to say, my history with Caroline was enough to give me pause about working for her. In the end, however, the thought of my upcoming Christmas bills was enough to prod me into action. I whipped up enough food to feed a small country. Even though Caroline later claimed that many of the guests had complained about the lack of fat-free alternatives, I knew I’d been a success. I’d received a number of compliments and two catering job offers to prove her wrong.

When I woke up the next morning, I thought about those offers. And the more I thought about them, the more excited I became. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Was it something super-important to mankind? No. Was I ever going to achieve fame and fortune? Not likely. But even though I’d been working for Caroline, I’d enjoyed myself. People had loved my cooking. It was something I could make money at without feeling as though I were just one part in an assembly line. I accepted the offers as soon as I could and so began my catering career.

I’d had many requests from people wanting me to cater their New Year’s parties, but I always kept the night available for Caroline. Despite our differences, despite the fact that I didn’t like her, she’d given me my start. A number of her friends have used my services since, thanks to her. For that alone, I felt she deserved my loyalty when it came to New Year’s Eve. Besides, she threw the biggest parties and she paid the best. I’d have been stupid to give that up.

The first year I worked for Caroline, I made the mistake of asking my sister Lydia to help. Lydia wound up getting drunk and hitting on one of the guests, something I barely managed to keep Caroline from finding out. Since then I’d had to beg, plead, and this year bribe Melanie and her boyfriend Patrick to help me out.

It was late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, and we were at Caroline’s, preparing the food for the party. Caroline always insisted that I do all the cooking at her house, claiming that she needed to keep a close eye on me to make sure that I didn’t do something wrong. Just what she thought I would do, I didn’t know. And it wasn’t as though she was keeping an eagle eye on what we were doing. All she’d done was to come into the kitchen, inspect the food, and walk out a few moments later on her way to be made up for the party. For all she knew, Melanie and I were dosing her specially-made low-carb chocolate truffles with Ex-Lax. Actually, she didn’t know that I’d already made them----they had to be refrigerated overnight and there was no way I was spending the night at her house.

I might’ve objected to this unfounded suspicion, but the truth of the matter was that when the opportunity to cook in kitchen like Caroline’s came along, I couldn’t resist. She had one of those huge kitchens you see in design magazines that you just know no one really uses. I knew this one was rarely used, since when I opened the refrigerator to put things inside of it, there was nothing there but a pint of skim milk, half a dozen containers of yogurt and leftover oatmeal.

“You’re not gonna make your family eat Eggos,” Melanie told me when she heard the Christmas story. She’d been out of town visiting relatives since Frances’s party and hadn’t heard the horror that was my Christmas morning. “You’d rather die than serve them something that comes frozen in a box. It goes against everything you do.”

“I have no intention of serving them anything. I’m going to sleep in and they’re going to wake up and fix their own breakfast. That’s my Christmas wish----for my family to quit assuming that I’m going to cook them breakfast every year.”

“Then tell them that. Be assertive and say, ‘Mom, Dad, annoying sisters, annoying sisters’ significant others, next year you’re on your own. I’m going to sleep until ten and woe to the one who wakes me up demanding to know where their breakfast is.’”

“‘Woe?’” I laughed. “Only you could pull that word out of your head. If I used it, my family would think I was joking. And they’d still expect me to cook for them.”

“They wouldn’t expect it if you’d back it up by not cooking anything,” Melanie said. “You know what you should do to make your point clear? Check into a hotel on Christmas Eve and don’t tell them where you’ll be. That’s the only way to be sure they won’t bother you.”

“Then I’ll miss out on Christmas with my family. And before you say anything, I do love my family so skipping Christmas is not an option.”

I was working on the last pan of crab-stuffed mushrooms, just one of the many hors d’oeuvres that would be available to Caroline’s guests. I didn’t cook an actual meal at her parties, but I made enough finger foods to satisfy the strongest appetite. With one hundred and fifty people expected, I’d arrived at Caroline’s at noon to start preparing hors d’oeuvres and expected to be busy well past midnight. I glanced at Melanie, who was toying with the tiny ice cream scoop rather than using it on the cantaloupes I’d given her.

“Hey! Those cantaloupes aren’t going to turn into balls by themselves,” I said.

Melanie looked guilty as she got back to work. “Sorry.”

I finished the crab-stuffed mushrooms and picked up the tray to set it in the refrigerator to await being baked. Just then, someone knocked loudly on the door and I nearly dropped the tray, losing half a dozen mushrooms in the process. “Damn,” I hissed as I set the tray aside and bent down to pick up the fallen food.

I heard Melanie open the door. “Hello, dear,” she said in an exaggerated drawl.

“Hello yourself,” Patrick Hamilton said, followed by the sounds of a brief kiss. “Hi, Mary.”

“Hi.” I stood up and tossed the mushrooms in the garbage. “Patrick, you know I love you and all that, but you’ve got to knock a little quieter.”

“I’ll make that my top priority in the new year. Resolution number one: no scaring Mary.”

I laughed, but then, it was hard not to laugh when Patrick was around. Wit-wise, he was Melanie’s perfect match. Everything else about him would normally have sent Melanie running as far away as she could get from him. Patrick was tall, fairly attractive, and well-built. He’d been a popular athlete in high school, and there was usually some pretty blonde hanging around hoping he’d notice her, or so Melanie said on the rare occasions she got insecure about her relationship. Patrick should’ve triggered all the bad memories Melanie had of her high school years.

And maybe he might’ve, but they’d clicked from the moment they met at a hotel bar seven years ago. It was the night of Caroline’s wedding to Patrick’s older brother Trevor, and Patrick had ducked out as soon as he could. Melanie, Charlotte, and I were celebrating Melanie’s twenty-first birthday. Melanie, courage bolstered by three glasses of champagne and a margarita, told him she thought he was cute. Fortunately for Melanie, he thought the same thing about her. They’d been together ever since. Patrick often said that meeting Melanie the night of the reception was the only good thing that had come from Caroline and Trevor’s marriage.

“So, how was work?” Melanie asked, not that I thought she was ever interested. She knew as much about cars as she knew about quantum physics.

“I saw one of the prettiest mufflers ever today,” he said. “A true work of art.”

Melanie wrinkled her nose. “I never thought of mufflers as pretty, but whatever floats your boat.”

I stuck the tray into the refrigerator and glanced at the island in the middle of the kitchen. Mounds of strawberries sat atop it, waiting for me to slice them up for the numerous fruit trays Caroline required. “What made it so pretty?” I asked.

“The fact that it was so rusted it fell off in my hands.” Patrick smiled.

“He’s such a mercenary,” Melanie said as she cut into another cantaloupe.

“Yes, I am.” Patrick glanced around. “So what is it you need me to do around here?”

I smiled and pointed at the refrigerator. “In there is about a ton and a half of vegetables ready to be arranged on those trays by the sink. Be sure to do it artfully. Remember that to Caroline, the way food looks is almost as important as how it tastes.”

“I have a feeling that your definition of artful and Caroline’s are a bit different,” Patrick mumbled as he opened the fridge.

The three of us worked in companionable silence for twenty minutes. As I finished up the last of the luscious, dark red strawberries, I mumbled, “I don’t know why I take this job every year.”

“Because the pay is good?” Melanie suggested. “Because Caroline’s parties are always good for laughs later? Because you’re insane?”

“I’m going with the last one. Patrick, could you get the big bowl of kiwi out of the fridge for me?” I moved my wrist around to alleviate the cramping I felt after cutting up what seemed like thousands of strawberries. “How are those fruit balls coming?”

“I think I’m done.” Melanie set the scoop down and brought over two large bowls, one filled with honeydew she’d done earlier, the other with cantaloupe. “I hope these are ‘aesthetically pleasing’ to her royal highness.” She took off the food handling gloves and washed her hands in the sink. “The real question is, why do I come with you every year? Caroline Bingley is the last person I’d want to spend my New Year’s Eve with, but this is the third year running you’ve dragged me along to help you out.”

“Because you’re my friends and that means you have to support me in my darkest hour,” I said. “And because I pay you well.”

“This is true.”

“So who is she married to now? I somehow doubt Walter Elliot ever made enough to live in a place like this,” Patrick said. After giving me the kiwi bowl, he returned to the counter where he’d been leaning. Having finished with the vegetable trays, he was staying as far away from Melanie and me as he could get in order to avoid having to do anything else.

I started placing melon balls on the first of the fruit trays, directly across from where the strawberries would be. “You’re falling behind. Walter Elliot was her husband last year. It’s Caroline Woodhouse now.”

“Woodhouse? Isn’t that...?” Patrick asked.

Melanie walked over to Patrick, who put his arms around her. “She married Emma’s father. The man is seventy if he’s a day...”

“Loaded, of course,” I said.

“Of course. Caroline wouldn’t settle for anything less nowadays.” I heard the slightly derisive sneer in his voice. If Patrick lived until the end of time, he would probably always have that tone in his voice when he talked about Caroline and her proclivity for marriage.

It had been bad enough that Caroline had dumped Patrick’s brother abruptly to run off with Jimmy Lucas, but she hadn’t been satisfied with just breaking Trevor’s heart. She’d tried to seduce Patrick. Melanie had two theories on why Caroline had done it, which she’d discussed once and then never mentioned again: one, that Caroline hadn’t been able to stand the fact that someone as attractive as Patrick found Melanie appealing. And two, which I think was more likely to be the case, that Caroline couldn’t stand the fact that Patrick didn’t find her attractive at all.

Whatever the reason, Caroline tried and failed. But the attempt nearly cost Patrick his relationship with Trevor, the business they owned together, and his relationship with Melanie.

Thinking about it made me feel guilty about asking the two of them to help me out. “If you guys want to go...” I started to say.

“Forget about it, kid. Best thing she ever did was leave Trevor.” Patrick winked. “We’re grown ups. We can handle it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Melanie said.

I breathed a small sigh of relief. If they’d taken me up on that offer, I’d have been totally screwed. “Thank you. I know it’s not the best of situations, but...you know how people say you should keep the first dollar you make as a good-luck thing? That’s what this party is to me. That’s why I keep coming back to work for her. I don’t have to like her. I just have to do what she asks.”

“What a depressing thought.” Patrick disentangled himself from Melanie. “Okay, Madame Caterer, what’s next on the menu?”

Caroline had been having these New Year’s Eve parties since her second marriage. At first, she’d held them in order to help Jimmy impress his boss and make connections. The first year I catered for her, in the waning days of their marriage, she met her next husband, Walter Elliot. I caught them kissing in a pantry at midnight. Three months later, Jimmy caught them together in his bed when he came home early from a business trip. The divorce was as acrimonious as one could possibly be in a state of no-fault divorces. As soon as it was final, Caroline married Walter. Jimmy left town to live in Seattle with his brother, where Charlotte said he eventually met someone and married her.

Though the venue of the party had changed in four years, some things remained the same. Caroline came to check on us when we arrived, looked over the unprepared food, then took off to prepare for the party. An hour before the guests were to arrive, she’d come in and give us a couple of insults along with instructions that we largely ignored. Then she’d wander away to flirt with the bartenders who were getting set up.

Melanie and I were getting ready in the bathroom just off the kitchen that was allotted for our use, changing from the clothes we’d been preparing food in because they were “sloppy.” Caroline always insisted we wear something “tasteful and classy but not too flashy” when working her parties. Like I didn’t know how to dress for occasions such as this. Then again, Caroline was the person who had once asked me to dye my hair before working at her last wedding reception because she felt it was “too loud.”

“How much do you want to bet she’s already cheating on poor Larry?” Melanie pondered as I zipped up the back of her black dress.

“I don’t take sucker’s bets.” I checked the mirror to see if my hair was misbehaving in spite of the fifty hairpins and tons of mousse I’d put on it earlier. It was holding up okay. “Although if you want to know the truth, I get the feeling that Caroline’s the type who wants to be lusted after, but only at a distance.” I smoothed down the hem of my dress, which was identical to Melanie’s.

“Yeah, that’s a good way to describe her,” Melanie said as she pulled a dark brown strand of hair from the shoulder of her dress. She turned to me and sucked in her breath. “So, how do I look?”

“Good,” I said. “Me?”

“Your hair’s too loud.”

Melanie giggled as I playfully hit her arm. I was about to open the door when I heard Caroline speak.

“I can’t believe this. Fifteen minutes before the party’s going to start, and my catering staff’s decided to take off! Charles! Stop laughing!”

“You just got done telling me that you’d told them to change because they looked grubby. Now you’re yelling because they’ve gone to do that and they’re not here for you to yell at. Make up your mind.”

While I tried to convince myself that the reason I didn’t open the door was because I wasn’t ready to face Caroline, the truth was that I was curious to see what she’d say when she thought I wasn’t around.

“I don’t know why I bother to pay her for things I could whip up myself,” Caroline grumbled.

“You, in a kitchen?” Charles laughed. “If you ever decide to do your own catering, Caroline, call me. I want to see it.”

“If you’d shown up about half an hour ago, you’d have seen me in the kitchen. I always make sure to inspect the food. You never know what garbage people might try to pass of as quality stuff.” When Charles continued to laugh, Caroline got louder. “You think I’m joking, but I’m not. There’s nothing complicated about chopping up a few fruits and vegetables. And I’ll bet you anything that her special Swedish meatballs are fresh from the freezer.”

I felt Melanie clamp a hand on my right shoulder to keep me from charging into the other room and shouting that I made everything I served from scratch. It was a good thing she did, too, because despite the jokes we made about me being insane to do anything for Caroline Bingley (Lucas, Woodhouse, whatever the hell she was calling herself this year), the fact remained that Caroline and her friends made up a good portion of my business. Not only that, but they knew people whose business I wouldn’t mind having. I couldn’t afford to upset the woman, no matter how much I might’ve liked to.

I thought of what I’d said to Patrick and Melanie earlier and found myself agreeing with Patrick about how depressing it was. Ten years out of high school and I’m still kowtowing to her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve seen her in the kitchen. Nothing she makes is from a store-bought container. Besides, it takes you all day to get ready for a party. Do you think you’d have time to look as fabulous as you do if you decided to do all the work yourself?”

I could hear Caroline preening, even if I couldn’t see it.

“You have to say that, Charlie, you’re my brother.”

“But I have a point, don’t I? Admit it. You wouldn’t be caught dead in the kitchen. Think of what would happen if it got back to your friends that you’d had to do everything yourself. They might laugh at you.” There was a brief silence before Charles added, “That alone makes Mary worth every penny you pay her. Not only that, but her food is terrific. Some of the best I’ve ever had.”

“I guess you’re right,” Caroline said with obvious reluctance. “I just wish Larry wasn’t so cheap. Then I could hire a housekeeper and cook and not have to worry about anything myself.”

I brushed Melanie’s hand aside and gave her a small smile. I should’ve known better than to think Caroline would actually do her own catering. And even if she’d tried, I was sure I would’ve gotten the panicked call from her at the last minute, begging for help.

“Sometimes I think that’s why you married her sister,” Caroline said. “You get the opportunity to eat Mary’s cooking whenever you’d like, but you get to go home with Jane when the meal’s over.”

I heard Melanie gasp, and then it was my turn to try and stop her from making a scene. It was a good thing I was standing in front of the door to stop her, because Melanie probably would’ve been out the door and ripped Caroline’s perfectly coiffed hair out by the roots before I could get close.

“I married Jane because I love her,” Charles said angrily. “Mary had nothing to do with it, and you’re insulting both of them when you say that.”

“I’m just saying you have the best of all possible worlds, that’s all.” There was a short pause. “All right, I’m sorry I said it! You don’t have to get so upset.”

“She doesn’t sound sorry,” Melanie said through clenched teeth.

“Do you want to see what I’ve done with the ballroom?” Caroline asked. “You won’t believe how great it looks.”

As a reluctant Charles was dragged away, I slowly opened the bathroom door.

“The nerve of that witch,” Melanie said. “Mary, while you’re promising that this is the last year you make breakfast for your family, can you also promise that this is the last year you work for Caroline?”

“Didn’t we already have this discussion? And where did Patrick go? It shouldn’t have taken him that long to make sure our tables were set up.”

“I guess we did, and I have no idea. If he’s smart, he ran like hell.”

“I guess that makes me a dummy,” Patrick said as he walked back into the kitchen. “You still love me though, right?”

“I guess so.” Melanie grinned.

Before they could get into an extended, diabetic coma-inducing lovefest, I put them both to work.

The party was a rousing success, but then I never expected anything less from Caroline. She was the master of the good party. She hired the best decorators to make the guests feel like they were enjoying a moonlit night beneath the stars, and the effect of the thousands of tiny lights around the room was breathtaking. Despite my grousing about her picky ways, I knew she only wanted the best in food and drink for her guests and I aimed to please.

Once the party started, I never heard a word from Caroline. She kept herself busy talking to her guests, gossiping with her friends, and placating her husband. Larry had a thousand worries from spoiled mayonnaise to people getting drunk from the champagne. Then he worried that the bartenders were watering down the mixed drinks. Caroline assured him time and again that everything was fine. I could tell that the stress was getting to her because she finally brought him around to greet his daughter Isabella. Two minutes later, with father and daughter commiserating on various ailments, Caroline escaped to the sanctuary of her friends.

By the time midnight neared, my feet were killing me. I must’ve made the trip from the kitchen to the ballroom a thousand times, but thankfully, I knew most of the guests were done eating and my job was almost done. I made sure there was plenty of food on the table and allowed myself a quick break in the kitchen.

I found Patrick and Melanie there with a bottle of champagne one of them----probably Patrick----had snagged from the bar earlier. He was working the corkscrew as Melanie set down three champagne glasses.

“Hey, you’re just in time for the big toast,” Melanie said.

With a resounding pop, the cork came off the bottle of champagne. Patrick quickly poured it into the glasses.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said in faint protest. “I don’t think Caroline would appreciate her catering staff getting drunk.”

“She can afford it,” Melanie said as she took one of the glasses. “It’s not like she’s paying for any of it, anyway. That’s what dear old Larry is for.”

“But what if she catches us in here?” I hated to sound like a worrywart, but this was my business Patrick and Melanie were screwing around with.

“Mary! The last place she’s going to be at five minutes to midnight is in her kitchen. You heard her earlier. As long as she can inspect the food to make sure it suits her high standards, she doesn’t care what we’re doing.”

“Think of all the chances you’ve missed to spit in her favorite fruit dip,” Patrick said.

“You’re not funny, and nobody better be at the door listening.” I took the glass Patrick thrust into my hand. “Okay, so we’re having a drink. To what? The new year?”

“To finding the strength to survive another year at the hell that has become my job,” Melanie said. “To finding and strangling my creative muse for abandoning me for the past year and a half.”

“To another year where people buy crappy cars with expensive labels and beg me to fix them now.” Patrick tapped his glass against Melanie’s. “And maybe to a new house.”

Melanie groaned. “Dammit, can we have one night without that coming up? I told you that as soon as I paid off my credit cards and my student loan, I’d start saving money for my half of a down payment.”

“If you’re so determined to do that, how come you kept whipping out the Visa to pay for everyone’s Christmas gifts?”

“Do you think I like living with my parents? I have one room----one room----and in that room I have so much crap that I can barely breathe. Yes, I used the Visa to pay for Christmas, but I swear that I’m going to pay off my bills this year and start saving for the down payment. I made it my number one New Year’s Resolution.”

Patrick looked doubtful. I couldn’t blame him. Paying off her bills had been Melanie’s resolution for the past three years, and nothing had been paid off yet.

“To...to us,” I said, clinking glasses with the two of them. “Because we deserve it. And to the hope that next year will be as good as this one.”

“This year was good? It started and ended with Caroline’s parties. How can that be good?” Melanie asked.

“Shut up and drink your champagne,” Patrick said, taking a gulp of his. “And now, Mary, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go find some corner to make out in while the ball’s dropping. As soon as we’re done, we’ll be back to help you clean up.”

“You can’t...” I started to say, but it was too late. Patrick and a giggling Melanie had disappeared faster than I could point out that we were the hired help, not invited guests. I thought about getting a head start on the cleaning, but the thought of being alone in the kitchen when the clock struck midnight was unappealing. Besides, I had to make sure that Patrick and Melanie were at least going to be discreet about joining the party. The last thing I needed was for them to be caught by Caroline.

I slipped into the bathroom off the kitchen to make sure I didn’t have anything on my dress. I was a little flushed but otherwise looking okay. I tucked a lock of hair that had worked its’ way free of all the pins behind my ear and walked out, heading for the ballroom.

I could barely hear the band for all the noise from the guests as the year wound down to its’ final moments. I looked around at everyone in the room, taking in the occasional familiar face. I’d worked for several of these people. I knew a few more from high school or from church. Near the edge of the crowd I spotted Fitz and Eliza, looking as though they couldn’t wait for the new year to come so they could escape. Jane and Charles were talking with them, although I had no idea how anyone could be heard.
I spotted Caroline standing near the band, her arm linked possessively through her husband’s. She looked absolutely stunning in a gown that was deceptively modest with a high neckline that dipped very low in the back. Caroline’s dramatic coloring was set off to perfection by the deep cranberry color of the gown. Next to her, Larry looked almost colorless in his plain black tux. Then again, given his age, he would’ve looked colorless standing next to anyone. They were talking to Isabella and her husband, John.

As I watched them, Caroline checked her watch, disentangled her arm from Larry’s, and walked onto the stage where the band was belting out a decent version of “Pretty Woman.” As if on cue, the song ended and the lead singer stepped away from the microphone so Caroline could speak.

“Thirty seconds to midnight!” Caroline announced proudly. Someone in the room squealed in anticipation. Caroline stepped off the stage and back to her husband. I edged closer to the food table but didn’t step behind it. I kept looking around to see if I could spot my wayward workers, but there was no sign of them. Then again, I was looking in the corners of the room...

“Ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one! Happy New Year!”

A loud roar erupted all around me as people started celebrating. Balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling as the band struck up “Auld Lang Syne.” People who had someone to kiss did so. Those who didn’t ran around blowing on noisemakers or having another drink. A few people ran around kissing everybody, and I was just able to step aside and avoid being one of their victims.

I glanced over at the center of room and sure enough, there were Patrick and Melanie, standing under one of the strategically-placed lights sharing a kiss that was slightly too passionate for a party they were supposed to be working. I was about to go break them apart when I stopped. There was no reason for me to go over there and spoil their happy moment. As I watched, they stopped kissing but still had their heads close together. Patrick said something that made Melanie giggle. They kissed again. I turned away, embarrassed and feeling like I’d spied on an intimate moment even though they’d been in a public room.

I felt a pang of loneliness as I stood by myself in a room where it seemed that everyone else had somebody. I didn’t feel this way often. I had work to keep me busy, and when I didn’t, I had good friends and good books. But that night, I realized it had been almost six months since my last date and almost two years since the end of my relationship with Thomas Palmer. And before him...

I might’ve continued dwelling on my abysmal love life, but I heard someone say in my ear, “Crazy thing, midnight on New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?”

When I turned to see who had spoken, I found myself looking up----something I didn’t get to do often being five-eight. He was tall, blond, and looked to be in his mid-thirties with blue eyes that were smiling down at me. The dimple in his chin was probably emphasized by the smile on his lips. And as for the rest of him...a lean, muscled frame was shown off to perfection by a tux that looked to have been tailored for him alone. It was no doubt worth more than I’d received for catering tonight’s party.

I realized that the once-over I was giving him was not only too long, it was too personal. I blushed, which only made his smile wider. I thought he was drunk, because why else would he be smiling at me? But I didn’t smell liquor on his breath and he looked completely sober.

“Uh...” It took me a few seconds to remember what he’d asked me. A million and one fun, flirtatious things popped into my head, but not one of them would come out of my mouth. “I guess so.”

“Have you ever stopped to wonder why people make such a big deal out of kissing someone at the stroke of midnight? What makes that kiss different than all the other kisses a couple will share over the course of the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year?”

I was on the verge of saying something nonsensical and asinine when, for the first time in my life, the words I wanted to say were there when I needed them. “I think...it’s nice knowing that you have someone to share the moment with. It’s a new year, a new start, and you’re just so happy that you have to celebrate. Never mind that later, when you wake up, you’re hung over and you remember everything about the other person that drives you crazy. At this moment, you’ve got a clean slate. Anything is possible.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”

He glanced around the ballroom. “And where’s the person you should be sharing this moment with?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t...I’m...”

“You’re alone, too?”

Was it possible for my face to get redder than my hair? “I’m the caterer, actually,” I said, more defensively than I would’ve liked. “Mary Bennet.”

He nodded. “Well, Mary Bennet, I hope you won’t mind if I share this moment with you.” Before I could answer one way or the other, he bent his head down and gave me a quick, soft kiss on the lips that left them tingling. He then disappeared into the revelry of the crowd, leaving me to wonder what the hell had just happened.

He must’ve been drunk after all.

Posted on Sunday, 27 May 2007

Chapter Three
A Night in with Friends

Friendships fascinated me. What made people become friends? What made people stay friends over the years? What lines could be crossed without irreparable damage and what ones could not? Why did some friendships fall apart when everyone was convinced the duo would be best friends forever?

Melanie and I bonded in the seventh grade over a social studies project. Mr. Faulk told the class to pair up, an unusually cruel thing to do when half the class wanted to be pretty little Isabella Thorpe’s partner and the rest wanted straight-A student Henry Tilney. Once those two were chosen, everyone got sorted out according to popularity. Melanie and I were the last two standing, so Mr. Faulk motioned for me to join her.

No one knew much about Melanie King, and most of them didn’t care to know. Her family had moved to my neighborhood over the summer but she never went out. She had no friends and spoke to no one. She was pudgy and frumpy, with lanky dark hair, glasses, and freckles. Everything about her screamed ‘loner.’ When I suggested we meet in the library after school to get started, all she did was nod her head. I spent the rest of the day dreading our meeting, knowing I’d have to do most of the work myself if we were going to get a passing grade.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the library and found Melanie there already. She sat at a table covered with open books, writing furiously in a notebook. She said nothing when I sat across from her and said hello.

“I had no idea the library had this many books on the Mexican War,” I said in an attempt to start conversation. “Trust us to get the boring war. Mr. Faulk hates me.”

Melanie stopped writing and looked at me through chunky glasses that made her brown eyes look owlish. “I would’ve preferred the Civil War myself. My father’s always dragging us off to the battlefields and prison camps. He’s got an entire section of his library devoted to the Civil War. But this one’s interesting, too.” She rattled off several facts that she’d discovered from her reading.

I couldn’t believe Melanie had that many words in her, which was probably why I gave so much attention to the topic. She came alive as she spoke, her face becoming animated and surprisingly pretty. We stayed in the library until it closed at five. When I invited her to my house for supper, she mumbled an excuse and left before I could say anything else. It made me wonder if Melanie had a split personality----what else would explain why she’d talked nonstop for two hours only to retreat into silence at the end? True, all she’d talked about was the assignment, but I was intrigued.

Melanie didn’t trust people easily, but once we’d crossed the line between reluctant project partners to friends, I couldn’t have asked for a better one. If I needed to call someone at three in the morning because my heart had been stomped into pieces, I knew Melanie would be there. And vice versa.

Not that either of us had that particular problem, but still.

My other two closest friends didn’t start out as my friends, but rather as my sisters’ friends. Frances Price was Cat’s...well, “friend” might be misleading. Frances was the best dancer at the Meryton Dance Studio, and Cat knew it. Believing the old cliche that one should keep friends close and enemies closer, Cat proclaimed herself Frances’s best friend. Then Frances was in a car accident that wrecked her right knee and ended her ballet career, and Cat saw no reason to keep hanging out with her.

I was convinced that losing Cat’s friendship on top of her dancing ability would crush Frances, so when she came by I talked to her. We got to know each other and by the time Frances figured out Cat had no interest in her anymore, it didn’t sting as much as it might’ve.

“I don’t think Cat ever liked me,” Frances admitted one day. “And to be honest...I know she’s your sister, Mary, but I didn’t like her, either!”

Our friendship thrived in spite of----or maybe because of----Cat’s displeasure.

Then there was Charlotte Lucas. Her family lived across the street from ours growing up. Charlotte and Eliza were inseparable throughout junior high and high school. They double-dated all the time. They shared a dorm room in college, where Charlotte majored in nursing and Eliza in English. It seemed to me like they had the perfect friendship, and they did.

Until Charlotte met Bud.

Bud Collins was the associate pastor at the Meryton Baptist Church. He wasn’t the smartest man around, although he tried convince people otherwise. He wasn’t handsome, beginning with his combover and ending with his bad fashion sense. His attempts at being nice always came across as self-serving. It was uncomfortable to watch the way he was around Meryton’s head pastor, Carlton de Bourgh----he’d lick the man’s shoes if he thought it would further his career. But when it came to sermons, the man was mesmerizing----he genuinely believed what he preached, which made a nice change from Pastor de Bourgh.

I thought it was a joke when Eliza told the family one Sunday that Charlotte and Bud were a couple. Nobody could figure out what his attraction was for her, and the more Eliza tried, the more frustrated she got with her friend. They had one fight about him. It wasn’t a bitter fight, but it was enough that they’d fought. A line had been crossed that neither could get past. They pretended to themselves that their friendship hadn’t changed. Eliza was a bridesmaid at Charlotte and Bud’s wedding and later asked Charlotte to be in her wedding. But it wasn’t the same, and they both knew it.

Charlotte and I had always been friendly toward each other. She treated me a lot better than many of my sisters’ friends when I was growing up. But we didn’t become close friends until four years ago.

Charlotte hired me to cater a dinner they were having for Pastor de Bourgh and some other high-ranking church members. Bud insisted on Charlotte preparing the meal herself, conveniently forgetting that she couldn’t cook worth a damn. In a panic, Charlotte begged me to help her out. I agreed to cook everything then sneak away before the guests arrived, allowing Charlotte to take credit for the meal. I also agreed to give Charlotte the bill in person rather than risk Bud finding out what she’d done.

A couple weeks later, Bud stopped by to ask me to cater brunch for a Sunday gathering after church services. He specifically asked for “that apple thing” I’d made for their party. Turned out I’d catered a wedding reception for one of the church members, who remembered the Apple Tart Tatin I’d made especially for the groom in lieu of a groom’s cake.

“You’re not mad at us, are you?” I asked. “She wanted to do it herself, but it was too much for her.”

Bud smiled. “Yes, I know. I should’ve asked her to make an easier meal so she could spend more time on the dessert, but I wasn’t thinking. Still, it worked out better than I hoped. Mr. Elton thought we’d brought in the apple...what did you call it? Tartin? Well, he thought we had you make it just for him. He was extremely impressed.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “You want me to cater a brunch, you said?”

From then on, Charlotte hired me to cater any dinners Bud wanted to hold...and I continued to let her take credit for everything but the dessert. While those didn’t exactly do my business any good----how could I call Charlotte Collins a good customer if I wasn’t allowed to tell people I catered her dinners?----Bud helped. He arranged for me to cater Sunday brunches, though at a reduced rate because that’s what the Lord would want me to do. Or so he said, and Pastor de Bourgh backed him up.

Charlotte rolled her eyes the first time he said this, and our friendship was sealed.

January was my enemy. The rush up to the holidays gave way to a dead zone where no one was doing anything. People were spending money in post-Christmas sales or saving up to pay their income taxes. The weather was so dicey that most people opted not to plan parties because there was no guarantee that they would be holding them.

My calendar was nearly bare. My Sundays were taken----I’d been conned yet again into providing brunches for the adult Sunday School classes to help boost attendance, which I’d be doing more or less gratis----but other than a software company’s monthly board meeting, the only jobs I had were for a small dinner party hosted by Emma and George Knightley, Lydia’s birthday party, and a “private, intimate dinner for two” that Frank Churchill was planning so he could propose to his girlfriend.

I secretly enjoyed this stretch of almost-down time. It allowed me to regroup from the frenetic holiday preparations and relax. I took the time to enjoy myself before February, with its’ rush of Valentine’s Day weddings, began. I tinkered with new food ideas, most of which were dreadful. Occasionally I came up with something worthwhile. I caught up on my paperwork, prepared my taxes, watched episodes of CSI that I’d saved on my TiVo for when I had free time to watch them, and spent time with my friends. To that end, I invited all of them to my house one cold, blustery night for dinner.

Melanie needed no invitation, of course----she was over at my house so much I thought about charging her rent. A phone call was all it took to drag Patrick out from under whatever car he was working on. Getting the rest of them to join me was more of a challenge. Charlotte and Bud had to arrange for a babysitter, which wasn’t easy when everyone knew what terrors their three-year-old twin girls were.

I called Frances to invite her, but she informed me that she had plans with her boyfriend. Perhaps it was just as well. Her boyfriend, Henry Crawford, didn’t like us----and the feeling was entirely mutual.

“I’ll bet you anything Henry’s ‘plans’ were nothing more than sitting in front of the TV watching basketball,” Melanie muttered. “And I don’t see why you can’t make apple pie when you know I can’t stand blackberries.”

We were in my kitchen, the reason I bought the one-and-a-half story brick house when I realized I had to get away from my parents. The previous owners had run their bakery out of their home, which meant the kitchen was up to the public health board’s codes. I loved everything about it, from the huge double oven to the flower border along the walls. And the back door leading directly to the car port made loading my van a lot easier than it was at my parents’ house.

Melanie sat at the scarred table I used to roll out dough, cutting up tomatoes for the salad. She was careful not to let her sleeves get near the flour still on the table where I’d been finishing the crust for the blackberry pie. I made four one-inch cuts into the top of the crust for air to escape.

Satisfied that it was ready, I put the pie in the oven and set the timer for forty minutes. “It’s all you guys’ fault. You and Patrick and Charlotte. None of you bother hiding the fact that you don’t like him.”

Melanie stopped chopping for a moment. “We do, too. We haven’t come right out and called him a patronizing jerk to his face, have we? We haven’t even said anything to Frances.”

“She already knows.” I took out my pasta maker and reached for the lump of dough I’d prepared earlier. “Your attitude makes it pretty clear how you feel.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“How many lawyer jokes have you told around him?”

“How many cracks has he made about what I do?” Melanie set the knife down and crossed her arms over her chest. “Or what Patrick does? I can’t stand the way he acts all condescending towards us. Yeah, maybe I did only get a bachelor’s degree, but I graduated cum laude with two majors in four years. And maybe I do work at a dead-end job where I’m underpaid and I get no respect. And maybe I am dating a mechanic, but where does he get off acting like he’s some prince descending from on high?”

I sighed. Melanie’s voice had been rising during the entire speech and I knew I was going to have to calm her down. “Look, don’t go thinking I like him. I don’t. But what we think doesn’t matter. What matters is what Frances thinks, and she...”

I was interrupted by a very soft tap on the back door which I almost didn’t hear. I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and answered the door to find Patrick standing there shivering. He held a bottle of wine in his hands.

“Took you long enough to hear me,” he said. “I’ve been standing there knocking for the past five minutes. I’m not making any New Year’s resolutions next year.”

“Thanks for trying.”

Patrick handed me the bottle of wine and shook snow off of his coat before coming inside to take off his boots. “I’d love winter a lot more if it weren’t so damn cold.”

“I thought winter was your favorite time of year,” I said, shutting the door behind him.

“That’s an ugly rumor and as soon as I find out who’s spreading it, that person will be in a world of hurt.” Patrick kissed Melanie on the cheek and took the seat closest to where she was.

“So you were telling me how it’s our fault that Frances isn’t here tonight,” Melanie said. “Has Frances had an operation which glues her to Henry’s side? Because other than that, I don’t see why she couldn’t have left him at home and come by herself. You can see me without having to invite Patrick any time that you want.”

I tried to lighten the mood. “Really? Great. Beat it, Patrick.” I pointed to the door.

Melanie went back to work on the tomatoes. “Hilarious. But if Frances knows how we feel about Henry, why does she insist on bringing him when we get together? If you guys didn’t like Patrick, I’d keep him as far away from you as possible.”

“I don’t see anyone not liking Patrick,” I said, because it was true. “Frances is convinced that if you guys would take the time to get to know Henry, you’d like him better.”

Patrick snorted. “Not likely. I still don’t see what a sweet person like Frances sees in him.”

Before the discussion could continue, there was a loud knock at the kitchen door. “Come in!” I shouted.

“We’re not late, are we?” Charlotte Collins asked as she walked into the kitchen carrying a bakery box from Krispy Kreme. “Bud was busy visiting one of his ‘beloved flock’ in the hospital until six and the babysitter was late because the roads were so bad. Then Bud insisted we stop and get you something to say thanks for dinner, and this was all I could think of.”

“I would’ve called to cancel if I’d realized how bad it was getting,” I said, taking the box from Charlotte’s hands. I glanced at the logo on the box and smiled. I had a great fondness for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. “On the other hand, if I’d done that, I’d have missed out on these, so it’s just as well that I didn’t.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Charlotte stomped her feet on the large rug in front of the door in an effort to get snow off her boots. When most of it was gone, she leaned against the doorframe and took them off. She stepped aside to let her husband walk in and repeat the process.

“How are the Terrible Twins?” Melanie asked.

“Oh, wonderful. Phoebe learned a new word from Daddy today and decided it was so nice, she had to run around Wal-Mart repeating it.”

“As a man of God, I would never use such language,” Bud said irritably. “No doubt she got it from you.”

“Oh, right, I go around saying...” And they were off, arguing as usual.

Eliza had been confused about why Charlotte married Bud, but I didn’t understand how they’d managed to stay together for five years. The occasional argument I could understand----I’d been in relationships of my own, enough to know that no two people on earth could agree on everything all the time. But Charlotte and Bud were always fighting. Melanie believed they got off on it, but I wasn’t so sure about that. Melanie wasn’t exactly the expert on relationships either, having only had one semi-serious boyfriend before Patrick. Then again, who in this world was an expert? Charlotte and Bud were still together, so maybe she was right.

“Whatever,” Charlotte was saying, sounding as irritated as Bud. “Anyway, I caught Calliope using my lipstick to write on her bedroom walls again.” She flopped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and slumped. “I know I said I wanted a big family, but I meant just one kid at a time.”

“You wouldn’t give either of the twins away,” I said, reaching into a cabinet to get a pot in which to boil the noodles.

Charlotte snorted. “Don’t tempt me. I had half a dozen angry mothers glaring at me when Phoebe starting chanting her new favorite word at the top of her lungs. And who did I have to run into but Augusta Elton.”

“Who’s Augusta Elton?” Patrick asked.

“She’s the music director’s wife,” Bud said with a smile. “A lovely woman.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Yeah, lovely. She got this little condescending smirk on her face and I just know she’s going to go around telling the entire church about our bad-mouthed kids.” She took a seat at the kitchen table next to Patrick. “Is there anything I can do to help, Mary?”

I shook my head. “Melanie’s already got the salad almost done and all I’ve got left to do is make the Alfredo sauce.”

“Where are Frances and His Royal Highness?” Charlotte asked.

“Not coming. Frances said they had plans when I called to invite them.”

“Which according to Mary is all our fault because we’re so obvious about how much we dislike Henry,” Melanie said.

“Do we have to get into a discussion about this every time we get together as a group?” Bud asked, sitting at the end of the table. “Every time, before they show up and after they leave, we talk about nothing but them. It gets tiring. Have none of you ever heard the old phrase...”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, yeah, yeah,” Melanie said. “I have a theory about them.” When the rest of us groaned at hearing the familiar words----Melanie had a theory about everything----she flipped us off, then blushed slightly as she remembered too late who was present. “Sorry, Bud. But my theories are not bad.”

“No, just a little over the top,” Patrick said, causing her to flick a piece of lettuce at him. He kissed the air in her direction. “Love you too, baby.”

“Do you want to hear it or not?”

“Of course we do, “ I said. When Charlotte started laughing silently, I snapped a towel at her.

“Good, because I was going to tell you anyway. You guys know how bad she was when things went south between her and Edmund, right?” Melanie was referring to Edmund Bertram, Frances’s ex-dance partner. We considered him the love of Frances’s life. Unfortunately for Frances, he saw her as nothing more than a friend. He’d married Henry’s sister a year ago.

“If you could say things were ever north between them,” Patrick said.

“Patrick!”

“Come on. How did she ever stand a chance if she didn’t say anything to him? If you hadn’t come up to me at the bar that night, I might not have realized you were interested in me because you didn’t spare me a glance. But then you waltzed up, smiled, and told me I had the cutest butt you’d ever seen. And then I knew.”

Melanie reddened. “I seem to recall that I said you had a nice smile, but thank you, Patrick.”

“No, you definitely told him he had a cute butt,” Charlotte said. “You said, ‘You have a cute butt and the nicest smile I’ve ever seen.’”

Melanie blushed so red it matched my hair. “Yes, thank you, Charlotte. I think the world is well aware that when I’m drunk, I’m more honest with people than I should be. Can I finish making my point here?”

“There was a point?” I asked, dodging as Melanie aimed a lettuce leaf at me. “Cut it out. That’s supposed to be dinner.”

“You deserved it. Yes, there’s a point. She’s dating Henry because he’s safe.” Dead silence met this statement. “She knows he doesn’t love her, and there’s no way in hel----er, heck, that she’s in love with him. Frances is just making sure she doesn’t get hurt again by dating a guy she could care less about. It won’t surprise me if she marries him one of these days and has a baby within nine months of the wedding. At least then she’ll have someone to love who won’t hurt her in return.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bud said. “I was hurting something awful when...Phoebe kicked me the other day.”

“It was Calliope,” Charlotte said absently.

“I’m not talking about physical pain,” Melanie said with thinly-disguised impatience. “I’m talking emotional pain. Henry can’t hurt her the way Edmund did, and she prefers it that way. And Edmund is Henry’s brother-in-law, so if she marries Henry she’ll get to see Edmund from time-to-time.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Charlotte said. “Women don’t date men just because they know they’ll never love them.”

“I don’t know,” Bud mused. “A few years ago, I dated this girl because I knew I wouldn’t fall in love with her. She was fun to be around, but she wasn’t the one.”

“So why were you with her?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you have been actively looking for ‘The One’? Isn’t using someone for a reason like that going against what you preach?”

“Well...” Bud smiled in a way that he probably thought was beguiling. It was faintly nauseating. “I already had her picked out. She just didn’t know I existed. Then she met me and the rest was history.”

“Are you talking about that blonde bimbo you were seeing when we met?” Charlotte shook her head. “If you’d told me it wasn’t serious, I’d have introduced myself a lot sooner than I did.”

“If I’d known you were interested in me, I’d have told you.”

“Still, you were with the blonde because you liked her but knew you’d never love her, right?” Melanie was determined to make her theory seem legitimate. “Or were you with her to make Charlotte jealous?”

“I guess so, but I had no intention of marrying her, so it’s a completely different situation than Frances’s.”

“But...”

“Give it up, Melanie. Your theory isn’t holding any weight,” I said, turning back to the stove before I screwed up the sauce.

“It is!”

“Yeah, just give her a little time to refine it and it’ll be perfect,” Patrick said, earning another tossed lettuce leaf in his direction.

I hurried to finish supper before my kitchen floor was covered with lettuce, and the five of us sat down in the dining room to eat.

“This is wonderful, Mary,” Bud said through a mouthful of fettucine. “Have you ever considered writing a cookbook?”

I shook my head vigorously. “Most of my recipes were pilfered from my grandmother’s old cookbooks, and those that I’ve come up with on my own don’t add up to an entire book. Besides, if I gave away all my secrets, no one would use my services.”

“Nonsense,” Melanie said. “It hasn’t hurt all those cooks on the Food Network. Maybe it would land you your own show.”

I took a drink of my wine. “Not in this lifetime. Don’t you remember what happened that time I auditioned for the community center’s production of Murder Most Fouled-Up? I couldn’t get past the first line of the monologue I was supposed to say.”

“Why not?” Patrick asked.

I smiled at the memory, though I’d nearly died of embarrassment at the time. “Let’s put it this way. If I were to have my own Food Network show, they could call it ‘Stuttering in the Kitchen with Mary Bennet.’ Although something good did come from the experience. Mr. Cresswell got so tired of Melanie trying to help me out that he suggested she take over my audition. She did...and got the part.”

“Before you all exclaim over how talented I must’ve been, she was only trying out for the part of a housekeeper,” Melanie said. “Not a big part at all.”

“But a memorable one,” Charlotte said. “I remember Jimmy coming home one night holding his right ear. I asked him what was wrong and he said you’d screamed so loud during a scene that the entire stage crew had gone deaf.”

Melanie blushed again as Patrick burst into laughter, saying, “I can believe it!”

“Why were you screaming?” Bud asked, confused.

“Because that’s what the character was supposed to do. The play was about a family who gathered together at a will reading, expecting to get an inheritance. If I remember right, they had twenty-four hours to find the hidden inheritance or they’d lose it all. The house where it was hidden at was haunted by the ghosts of ancestors past and there were these trap walls that circled around, leading to hidden corridors. At one point in the play, my character----the housekeeper----is tapping on one of them and falls through it. Naturally, she’s scared to death and starts screaming.”

“She was very convincing,” I said. “And very funny. She got the biggest laughs.”

“Probably because I was the only one you could hear the whole time. It was the one and only time my loud voice was an asset rather than an embarrassment.”

“All the same, my disastrous audition convinced me that a life performing in front of people wasn’t for me,” I said. “I’ll stay behind the scenes and let my food do the talking for me.”

“Why on earth did you audition for a play to begin with?” Bud asked. “It doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Either of you.”

I hesitated and looked at Melanie. I’d never told her the real reason, but it seemed like this was as good a time as any. “I did it because I knew Melanie wouldn’t audition on her own.”

Melanie had had a forkful of salad halfway to her lips. She set it down and stared at me. “You screwed up the audition on purpose?”

“No, I really couldn’t get through a line of the monologue. But the reason Mr. Cresswell suggested you take over is because you were the next person on his list. Didn’t you think it funny that he asked you to take over my audition?”

“His exact words were, ‘Miss King, since you seem to know all the lines, perhaps you’d prefer to...take your turn.’” Melanie grinned ruefully.

“Gotcha.” I saluted her with my wine glass and took a drink. She returned the gesture, making sure to keep her raised middle finger hidden from Bud as she did so. Patrick nearly choked on his salad.

Conversation veered off in a different direction and I was serving the pie and doughnuts when Charlotte suddenly exclaimed, “Ooh! I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you guys my big news! That’s kind of unusual for me.”

“You’re having another baby?” Melanie asked.

“Lord, no!” Charlotte looked properly horrified----I would’ve, too, if I’d been the mother of the Terrible Twins. “Nothing like that. Sam’s coming back to town, and from what my mother said, he might be coming back for good.”

A stunned silence fell on the table from those who remembered the oldest of the Lucas children. Samuel Lucas was something of a legend in Meryton. Unlike his brothers and sisters, Sam hadn’t needed his parents’ willingness to have parties for their children in order to achieve popularity. Sam was an athlete----a good one, but not great. He was the guy who came out of nowhere to make the winning basket or to get the game-winning hit. Everyone at Meryton called him “Minute Man,” which was a shortened version what the basketball coach, Mr. Gillis, said after one game, “I should save that young man until the last minute, because that’s when he’s at his best!”

When all that was combined with slightly better-than-average looks, the sweetest smile east of the Mississippi, and a slightly perverse sense of humor, Sam had had his pick among the prettiest girls in school. He’d dated Jayne for a couple of months before moving on to Libby Elliot, which hadn’t broken Jayne’s heart but which did ruin the dreams of Cat and Lydia, both of whom made no secret of how they felt about him. (Not that he would’ve looked at them because they’d been thirteen.)

What had elevated him to legendary status was what happened the night after graduating from high school. Ever since the drunk driving tragedy of 1990 that had killed three graduating seniors out celebrating, Meryton High has held an all-night graduation party with enough food, games, and parties to keep everyone occupied----for the actual night of graduation, anyway. Sam invited everyone out to his place the day after graduation for the real party.

From what I heard later, it was the best Lucas party there had ever been. My sister Jayne, who had been in Sam’s class, compared the party to the movie Can’t Hardly Wait. And right in the middle of it, Sam Lucas skipped town and never looked back, leaving nothing except a note to his parents saying goodbye and promising to call once he’d reached California safely. He’d gotten a scholarship to Stanford and had sped out of Meryton so fast that it was said a radar gun was needed to clock him. No one knew why. Except for major family events, to which he arrived at the last minute and left as soon as he could, Sam hadn’t been seen in Meryton in fourteen years.

The rumors about what Sam was doing were wild and varied from being a male prostitute in West Hollywood to being a mobster in witness protection. They were all ridiculous, and if anyone had really wanted to know what Sam was doing, all they had to do was ask Charlotte. For the record: he was doing something with computer programming in Seattle. Or he had been.

“Who is Sam?” Patrick asked.

“You don’t know Sam?” I asked, surprised. “Surely you met him at some point. He was in town a three years ago when the Lucases got together for the twins’ christening and...” I couldn’t believe I’d made such a boneheaded statement. I mentally smacked myself in the head. “I’m sorry, Patrick. I forgot about Jimmy and...”

To my relief, he waved aside my apology. “Don’t worry about it. So who’s Sam?”

“He’s Charlotte’s older brother,” Melanie said. “I can’t believe it. Sam Lucas, back in Meryton. Didn’t he say something in his salutatorian’s speech about never coming back to this...ah, place ever again?”

“Nice save, Mel,” I said, glancing at Bud. Sam actually said he would never be returning to “this hellhole,” something I’m sure Bud knew already. But Melanie said she felt guilty about swearing in front of him. I understood how she felt. Bud was all right, but there was something sort of sanctimonious about him that always made us edit our words and actions around him, just to be sure that it wasn’t offensive.

“It just goes to prove you should never say never,” Bud said, “because it’s never true.”

“You just said ‘never,’” Patrick told him.

I nearly choked on the bite of pie I’d taken. Bud glared at Patrick, who gave him a smile that somehow managed to combine innocence and mischief at the same time. His smile soon changed to a grimace, which I could only hope meant Melanie had kicked him under the table.

“Why’s he back now, after all this time?” Melanie asked.

“He told Mom and Dad that he’d accepted an offer from a college friend to work for his company.”

“It must’ve been quite an offer to make Sam come back here,” I said, thinking wistfully of what it would be like to get away from Meryton. I’d thought about it for about a minute when I was getting ready to start the business, then chickened out.

“Mom thinks he misses home. He’ll be staying with them until he can find a place of his own.” Charlotte glared at Bud as if to dare him to say something about her mother, which he’d been known to do from time to time.

Not that Bud was wrong when he said a plague of locusts was preferable to a day stuck in the company of Mrs. Lucas. But it wasn’t something he should’ve said within a five-hundred-mile radius of Charlotte.

“Why do you think he’s coming home?” I asked hastily.

Charlotte took a drink of her wine. “Because of Anya, of course.”

“Anya?” Patrick asked.

“Anya Satterling,” Charlotte said without inflection.

“Also known as the inspiration behind The Ball Boys’ first big hit,” Melanie said, referencing one of the myriad of boy bands that managed to survive despite critics worldwide panning their work.

“Also known as Sam’s ex-girlfriend,” I finished. “She dumped him for the lead singer.”

“Poor guy.”

“I’d say this job offer came at just the right time,” Melanie said. “When will he be back?”

Charlotte shrugged. “You know Sam. He could be here tomorrow or three weeks from now.”

“We don’t know Sam,” I said. “He made sure of that when he disappeared after graduation. I hardly even remember what he looks like.”

“Like me, only better looking,” Charlotte said, tossing her dark blonde hair about like she was one of Charlie’s Angels. Everyone laughed as Bud protested his wife’s description of herself as anything less than perfection.

Patrick’s beeper went off just then, reminding everyone how treacherous the roads were. He left to get his tow truck. Bud became concerned about leaving the poor babysitter with the twins, so Charlotte and he left soon after. Melanie stayed long enough to help me clean up the supper mess before getting home.

I watched an episode of CSI and finished off the last of the wine before going to bed. Continue on to Next Section