Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

If she could, Dottie would simply erase the next three days off her calendar.
More than any other holiday, Christmas had the power to rip her asunder. A thousand tiny shards of excruciating memory bombarded her as she ventured through Berman’s Grocery store on the annual requisite journey to pad her pantry for the holiday.
Christmas was for those with something to celebrate, with family, and the hope of a better tomorrow. Even Berman’s Grocery store believed that. As if emboldened by the optimism of the new decade, and casting away the specter of rationing over the past five years, they advertised a holiday special on Rock Cornish game hens at thirty-nine cents a pound.
Dottie Morgan picked up the packaged hen. It fit well into her gloved hand, weighing two pounds, maybe a bit more. In all her forty-four years, she’d never had a Rock Cornish game hen.
Behind her, a mother in the bakery section corralled two giggling schoolchildren. Dottie peeked at them—Minnie Dorr, with her little tykes, Guy and Hazel. She recognized the grade schoolers, dressed in their blue-checkered wool jackets, belts hitched around their bulky waists and sweltering in their knitted caps, from the library’s young readers program. Six-year-old Guy could wheedle right under Dottie’s skin like a burr.
Or, a curl of warmth, if she let him.

Dottie turned away from them, dropping the hen back into the cooler. She didn’t need a cart, but hung her wire basket on her arm, passing by the turkeys. She hadn’t purchased a bird in…well, she knew she shouldn’t have stopped by the store on the way home. Today, the place bustled with women stocking up for the holiday, celebration in the air, and it only stirred up the old aches.

Near the canned cranberry sauce hung an advertisement of a jolly Saint Nicholas slaking his thirst with a Coca-Cola, smiling upon two pajama-clad children surrounded by gifts.

At the end of the bakery section a giant velvet stocking bulged with candy canes, Pfeffernusse cookies, and popcorn balls.

A display of ice-skates and holiday lights reminded patrons to visit Berman’s Hardware, next door.

On the radio, Bing Crosby crooned out “Silent Night.”

Memories simply couldn’t be dodged at Christmastime.

Dottie stilled, her hand on a bag of flour, as she watched widow Cora Sundeen march past, her blond hair pulled back from her pretty face and tucked into a black boiled wool hat. Her son hung onto the hem of her matching coat. His ruddy cheeks and blue eyes could devour Dottie whole.

Cora caught sight of Dottie and slowed, her face betraying a second of hesitation before she produced a smile. “Mrs. Morgan! I was just telling Cliffy how, when I was young, we’d celebrate Christmas Eve at the library, with cookies and a story.”
Dottie calculated when she’d last seen Cora, seated at her knee at the library’s Christmas Eve reading, and put the woman at twenty-seven, or older, which meant little Cliffy must be nearly six. Cora probably had only a handful of memories of her fallen soldier husband.

“Oh, Cora…” Dottie looked away, perspiring under her wool coat, wishing, yes, she’d driven straight home. Who needed Cornish hens and eggnog, and plum pudding and fruitcake? After all, who exactly would Dottie cook for? “You know I haven’t had the Christmas story hour…well, it’s been a few years.”

“I know.” Cora’s voice lowered. “But perhaps it’s time to start the old traditions again.” Her arm curled over the shoulder of her son. “For the next generation.”

Dottie had no next generation, but she refused to show that on her face. “Have a lovely holiday, Cora,” she said. She added a smile to soften her librarian tone and turned away from Cora’s fading smile.

The radio announced, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and Dottie headed for the door.

Tomorrow. She could return tomorrow when the place might be nearly abandoned, every woman in Frost, Minnesota at home preparing for the holiday weekend.

She just about plowed over Lew Parsons ringing the Salvation Army bell just outside the door. His red velvet Santa-arm hung folded and pinned to his shoulder and he greeted her with a smile.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Morgan.” He used his schoolboy tone, despite the fact that he had last year married Henrietta Fitzpatrick and now had a child on the way.

Dottie tacked on the appropriate smile. “And to you, Lew.”

She probably should dig into her handbag and find a dime, but she couldn’t slow. She just might be suffocating, choking on the sweet aroma of too many families who had somehow survived this wretched decade.

As if to add gloom to her mood, the pewter Minnesotan sky had begun to drizzle icy droplets of despair, eating away the meager dusting of snow.

Dottie wrenched open the rusty door to her father’s faded yellow International Harvester truck and climbed onto the bouncy bench seat, the springs whining with the December cold. She’d long ago thrown a blanket over the seat, opting to cover the worn holes rather than replace the car. She wrestled the gearshift into place and eased the truck out of the dirt lot. The rain pinged on the windshield like bullets, as if it had already begun to turn to sleet. She turned on the wiper blades, but they cleaned only a pitiful swath in the middle. She leaned over the wheel to navigate as she turned onto St. Olaf Avenue and headed out of town.

Frost never suffered for holiday decorations. The entire town turned out in early November to embellish the lamps along the road with white pine boughs, hang lights from Miller’s Café and Soda Fountain, and add sparkling lights to Benson’s Creamery and the gilded window of the Frost Weekly News and the First Bank. The Snowflake Theater listed tomorrow night’s opening of Holiday Affair, featuring Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum. Across the street, J.C. Penny’s boasted a window-sized red-berried wreath over their second-floor window, and at the end of the street, in the circular garden in front of the Frost Community Center—formerly the Germanic Center—the towering blue spruce glowed with twinkly lights against the rain.

Only the star remained absent from the top of the tree. Perhaps it’s time to find the old traditions again…

No. Not yet.

She watched Father O’Donnell throwing plastic over the wooden crèche in front of St Peter’s Catholic Church, then turned left onto Third Street, driving past the community center. Movement inside suggested the local women’s auxiliary bedecking it for tonight’s dance.

The whistle at the mill echoed over the soggy town.

The rain had begun to turn to ice, crystallizing on the windshield. The wiper blades bumped over the glass as they sloughed off the moisture. She passed Central Park, the cottonwoods and oaks shiny with an icy glaze, then crossed the creek at North Street. The river flowed, angry with icy chunks, its spittle grimy below the bridge.

When her father—land owner, banker, mayor of Frost—built their turreted Victorian on the outskirts of town, he’d expected the town to grow and overtake his vast acreage and add to the family coffers.

Unfortunately, the town had grown toward the flour mill side of town and toward the train depot and beyond, so that the ornate, green Victorian with the gingerbread trim and two balconies sat lonely under the knotted embrace of a grove of ancient cottonwoods, resembling something out of a Grimm storybook.

The house overlooked Silver Lake on the south side—more a slough now than a respectable lake. In November, wild turkeys and pheasants took refuge between the stiff cattails and dry milkweeds dissecting the parchment ice. How many times had she wakened to old Barnabus’s wild spaniel barking, or the bone-jarring crack of Gordy’s 16-guage shotgun shattering the pre-dawn air?

Worse, of course, was when she bolted from the bed, her face to the icy window, as if she might catch her son, Nelson’s form out there beside Gordy in the misty dawn, wearing his grandfather’s rabbit shopka, dressed in his brown canvass coveralls, leaning into Gordy’s every word.

Dottie fully blamed the loneliness of this holiday on Gordon Lindholm.

She made out the white pine in her front yard, blowing in the onslaught of the storm. Twenty-plus years it had centered the yard, protected the house from vagabonds who might like a peek into her front windows. Too many branches had turned rusty over the past few years—she would need to prune it to keep it alive.

Hard head stone from the hillside and fields made up a wall that partitioned the main driveway from the Third Street extension. She eased the old International up the hill toward the barn, which served more as a garage for her father’s eccentric collection of cars and electronics. Like the 1929 Roadster. Her father had also owned a Packard Clipper, a sedan he’d purchased right before his death. Dottie had shipped it right back to Minneapolis when it arrived, months later.

Her father always did live too extravagantly. Too many big dreams.

She’d inherited that bit from him, she supposed. But she couldn’t blame her father’s peculiarities for the tragedy of her brief marriage.

No, the state of her life, the lonely creak of the barren house, could only be attributed to her own desperate mistakes.

Dottie slid out of the truck, the rain soaking through her wool coat, the mud slopping over her black dress boots as she tramped to the door of the barn and opened it. She drove the truck inside and parked. In the breathy expanse of the barn, the rain stirred the musty smell of forgotten hay, the remnant odors of the horses that once dwelled within, only bony Ollie left to lounge in the corner stall. Her grandfather’s winter carriage sat dusty and abandoned in another stall, age rusting its steel runners, cracking the two leather bench seats.

Dottie checked on the feed for the horse. Someday she should sell the animal. He hadn’t been ridden in years, ornery as an old mule. In fact, only her son had ever been able to cajole the horse into service.
She closed the barn door and hiked up to the house, her stomach already relishing the beef soup she’d left in the ice box.

Tomorrow, perhaps, she’d purchase one of those game hens, stuff it, and roast it for Christmas day.

Maybe even set the grand table in the dining room for one.

For Nelson, she might try to acknowledge the day of God’s grace for the world, even if His grace hadn’t been extended anymore to her.

Or, perhaps, and more likely, she’d stay home, under her mother’s wedding ring quilt and listen to the silences collect her memories.

If she could summon the courage.

The rain turned her skin to ice, dribbling down her back by the time she reached the mudroom door. Stamping her frozen feet on the mat, she hung her coat on the peg, noticed the woodpile needed stocking, then opened the kitchen door and entered the heat of the house.

Or, rather, no heat. An icy breath clasped the grand house with its too many rooms—fifteen in total—in a crisp silence. No clanging of the old coal stoker, no heat blasting from the giant grate heater in the middle of the family room floor. The chilly floorboards protested, however, as she walked across the kitchen, plunking her purse onto the oak table.

She listened to her heartbeat, closed her eyes. If she wanted—she didn’t even have to try hard—she could hear Nelson’s voice, feel his presence entering the kitchen after her. I’ll check on the stoker. The auger might be clogged. I’ll go break it free.
The rain battered the window and she saw Nelson in her memory, his shoulders broad now, hardened by playing football, or chopping wood, or even loading flour at the mill. He grabbed paper and matches to restart the stoker, tugged on her father’s work jacket—now his—tucked on a derby, and headed outside, around the house to the cellar door.
He had a song on his lips, something from Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy.
“Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys, Show them where we stand.
Ever shall our team be champions.
Known throughout the land. Rah, Rah. Boola boola, boola boola,
Boola boola, boola boo…”

She sighed as the song faded into the deathly still of the house. How she longed to hear him breaking apart the coal, the hammering pinging through the catacombs of their house until finally the auger began to turn again. The fire would rest in the coal furnace, heat whisking out of the giant floor grate and into the house.

If she looked up, she might catch him carrying the heavy clinker out to the debris pile behind the barn.
No. See, too easily Nelson crept into her hollow places, entering without permission. She ran the palm of her hand against her wet cheeks then retreated to the back room. Stepping into her father’s high-topped galoshes, she grabbed paper and pulled on the work jacket. Nelson’s scent clung to it, woodchips and teenager sweat, the smell of coal and oil and grease, and way too much charm.

That charm got Nelson out of trouble too many times. Probably what cajoled Dottie into agreeing in that brief, wretched moment, to allow him to march off to war.

She stepped outside into the rain, hunching her shoulders against the pellets of ice now sleeting from the sky as she splashed through the slick yard to the cellar. The hasp lay unlocked, and she wrenched open the door, hesitating before she closed it behind her to keep out the rain. Once, when Nelson was about fourteen, the latch had flipped over, locking him inside for two hours. She’d found him sitting in the cold, pounding on the floorboards, after she returned from work.

Dottie tugged on the overhead electric light and checked the coal stoker. Unlit, indeed.

The coal man had dumped her allotment into the bin in early November. It remained half full of dark chunks, too many of them the size of anvils. Putting on her gloves, she climbed into the bin. Sure enough, a chunk wedged between the auger and the stoker hole. Grabbing the sledgehammer, she picked it up—not without a groan, and dropped it onto the coal. It broke in half. She dropped it again, and the piece tumbled free.

She climbed out of the bin, listening to the wind whine outside. It shook the cellar door.

Taking the paper from her pocket, she shoved it into the middle of the clinker inside the stove, added a piece of coal, and lit it.

The furnace flickered to life, flames gnawing at the paper. The auger began to churn coal into the stoker. Until the house heated, she’d curl up in a quilt and build a fire in the family room.

She removed her gloves, laid them on the steps, and pushed on the cellar door.
It didn’t move.
Again.

She heard the hasp rattle against its mount, but it didn’t give. She closed her eyes. Then, with a cry, she banged her hand against the door, hard, sharp. The action was probably too violent, for pain spiked through her, up her arm, into her shoulder.

The door only shuddered.

She turned on the steps, sat down, and lowered her head to her hands, listening to the memory of Nelson’s song fade into the howling wind.

They’d probably find her frozen, emaciated body sometime in May.

What to do with Seb?

If a guy knew he would end up back in his hometown, he might never have left. Seb Brewster has finally surrendered to the forces of Deep Haven, returning to the town who loved him, where he had his glory days as the state-champion quarterback of the Deep Haven Huskies. And maybe he can resurrect them, if he can win the job of football coach away from Caleb Knight. But really, what he’d like to do is win back the heart of the girl he never forgot…and the real reason the Seb-a-nator is back in town.

But are the glory days worth resurrecting?  God just might have something better for him if Seb has the courage…

Down…Set….Seb!

Seb Brewster just wanted to sneak back into town before anyone noticed.
He needed time to paste on his game face.

The sun had just begun to peek over the lake, denting the sky with gold as he coaxed his Dodge Neon over the last hill and into the hamlet of Deep Haven. Opening the window, he tapped the brakes, cruised to thirty, and drank in the piney tang of the air after a storm, the sound of gulls crying over lost opportunity.

Cars lined the streets, and as he veered away from the Main Street cutoff, he noted a band shell set up in the harbor park. Today’s lineup was sure to feature JayJ and his band of blues musicians, probably still plunking out the same tunes they had when they’d slapped together sounds in his garage over a decade ago. Seb lasted about two practices at the trap set before football overtook his life.

A few early morning power walkers pushed athletic strollers or followed obedient city dogs on leashes, and a couple of teenagers in shorts and Lake Superior sweatshirts skipped stones into the hungry water. One-two, three, four . . . he’d made it to fifteen once.

Back in his glory days.

The sweet breath of coming home stirred inside him and nearly slid his compact into an empty parking space in front of the Footstep of Heaven bookstore, daring him to dash down the street to World’s Best Donuts, grab a fresh donut.

What if Lucy still worked there?

Maybe she had finally forgiven him.

He sighed and kept going, through the one stoplight, past the grocery store, the auto parts lot—aka, junkyard—the forest service building, and finally, just at the town limits, turned left at Dugan’s Trailer Park.

His buoyant spirit deflated as he passed the rows of trailers lined up like railroad cars. A few displayed the efforts of beautification—a potted clump of geraniums, a bed of nasturtium and day lilies. A free-standing swing and a turtle-shaped sandbox with a collection of Tonka trucks, their yellow tin glinting in the hazy morning sun, suggested small children still lived in the neighborhood.

As he drove farther up the hill, the nostalgia died in the clutter of weeds and a rusty white pine that loomed over a single-wide green trailer with dented screens in the two-by-two windows. A blackened plastic Christmas wreath hung on the door. A sorry reminder of his mother’s last Christmas before she left.

Seb pulled up next to a dented Impala. A splotch of oil blackened the gravel under it, and he had to arc his leg out to avoid stepping into the grease. By the end of the week, he’d probably be lying in the puddle, changing out the oil pan.

The birds chirruped as if remembering him, and the old porch creaked appropriately, but no sounds of life drifted from the trailer’s screened door—no bacon sizzling on the stove, no canned laughter from the television. He peered inside for a moment, gathering his breath against the cigarette odor that would saturate his clothes. Once upon a time, the smell would cause him to fling open the door, search the rooms for his father, home from the road.

Later, the smell told him whether he should stick around or take off for Coach Presley’s place. Seb had awakened most Saturday mornings on the coach’s front room sofa, his stomach aching at the smell of pancakes.

He eased open the door. It caught and he had to wrestle it the rest of the way, as if forcing himself back into his old life.

Perhaps, indeed, that’s exactly what he was doing.

Dishes marinated in the sink, a swarm of flies lifting as if in greeting. Spaghetti hardened in a bowl on the built-in dining nook table. No television at all—maybe it had broken, although he hadn’t seen it on the porch. Instead dust layered the television stand, the deer lamp on the side table. The brown carpet hadn’t been vacuumed this side of the last election.

He eased down the skinny hallway, past the bathroom, then his old bedroom-turned-closet for his father’s hunting equipment. The Marlin 336 lay on the bed—great storage, Dad—and against the wall leaned the Ruger rifle, with what looked like a new scope.

Seb sucked a breath, then pushed open the master bedroom door, half-hoping he wouldn’t find him, a skin-and-bones man, his teeth saggy and yellow, his skin bled of color, his hair long and tangled over his face, life shucked from him one drink at a time.

But there he lay, fully clothed in a pair of greasy jeans and a T-shirt, his mouth open as if surprised that he might find himself in his own bed.

Seb walked up to him. Nudged his knee. “Dad. Hey.”

Nothing.

“Dad, c’mon. Wake up.” He shook him again, harder, his heart just a little in his throat.

The man roused. Groaned.

“Dad, it’s me, Seb. I’m home.”

An eye flickered open. Then the other. For a long, suffocating moment, he simply stared at Seb, those green eyes unfocused, or simply climbing out of some place Seb didn’t want to know about. Seb fought the urge to drop and bury his head on his father’s bony knees and weep. It’s me, Dad. Seb. And . . .

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I meant to be more.

But he pushed his hands into his jean pockets, fisted them.

Finally, his father broke through the fog and blinked at Seb. He wiped his mouth, then reached out his hand, gripped Seb’s wrist. “It’s about time you got here, kid.”

About time. Yes, maybe.

“Do you need anything?”

A smirk tweaked his father’s face. He followed it with a harrumph. “How about some breakfast?”

His father’s grip fell away and he rolled back into slumber. At least the old man had made it home. Hopefully without hurting anyone.

Seb nodded, slipping into a rhythm, seventeen again, arriving home from practice to find his father passed out on the sofa, the bathroom floor, the bed. He’d fix himself eggs and watch the NFL channel until midnight, plotting his future. Back then, he’d planned on playing for the University of Minnesota. If he got lucky, if he did well at Combine, he’d get picked up by the Packers or even the Bears. He wanted to stay close, in case his mother came home, in case she saw him in the papers.

Maybe she’d even want season tickets. He’d get her a box seat, of course.

Seb missed that, perhaps, the most—looking up out of a huddle when he was fifteen, already varsity quarterback, and seeing her, bundled for winter in the stands. Sometimes the only one.

But even his touchdowns hadn’t kept her home.

As he reached the door, he heard his father rouse again. Seb stopped, swallowed hard, turned back to face what remained of his family.

“Welcome home, Son.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Dad. I’ll get those eggs for you.”

I Love Lucy, the Donut Girl of Deep Haven. Lucy is more than just the owner of World’s Best Donuts, right? Knowing everyone’s donut order in town isn’t some sort of great talent, or spiritual gift. Isn’t there more for her? Her life is like the donut she peddles…rich on the outside, empty in the middle.

However, perhaps being the Donut Girl means more than she realizes. Perhaps God has a plan to fill that empty place inside…and it starts by bringing back into town the one man who stole her heart.

Fall in love with Lucy….

How Lucy Maguire hated 3 a.m. The world at 3 a.m. bore a hush that could turn her bones brittle. Not with fear, of course—because who could really be afraid in Deep Haven? A hamlet trapped in time, without a Starbucks, without a mall, without even a movie theater. No, the brittle, almost breakable sense came from the loneliness of the hour, the fact that only her voice kept her awake as she kneaded dough, processed it through the donut cutter, plopped it into the hot oil.

Most of all, her solo humming reminded her that upon her size-two shoulders alone hung the confectionary legacy of three generations.
And she was going to let them all down.

Lucy slapped her hand on the alarm and buried her head in her pillow. Even if she tried, after all this time, her body simply refused to sleep past three-fifteen.

It made for a stellar social life.

She rolled over, stared at her ceiling. Pulled out her earplugs and set them on the white wicker nightstand, the one her mother picked up at a garage sale in the cities when Lucy was twelve. In fact, the entire room overdosed on white wicker, all garnished with pink—a pink bedspread, pink carpet, pink plush pillows.

She padded across the hallway into the bathroom, dug her toes into the royal blue bath rug and fished her toothbrush out of the cup. It must have rained in the night because the rug squished between her toes, a victim of her open window. She turned off the water. Sure enough, the random plinks from the poplars looming over the two-story bungalow told her to put on her raingear for her walk to the donut shop.

A gal had to get her exercise somehow. Especially when she hung around donuts all day. The grease embedded her pores and indeed, as she peered into the mirror, she resembled a teenager the week before the prom, little bumps of acne across her forehead, where she wore her baseball cap. Then again, she always looked like a teenager, or worse, a ten-year-old. It simply wasn’t fair that Issy landed all the curves while Lucy could still shop in the juniors’ section at Dillards.

But at least she could shop at Dillards, at the mall some two hundred miles away. At least she wasn’t trapped in her house. At least Lucy’s mother was alive, albeit on a beach in Florida, having done her tenure at the donut shop.

Issy had good reason for her panic attacks and Lucy, her best friend since first grade, wasn’t judging.

She scrubbed her face, ran her fingers through her pixie cut, grabbed a red baseball cap , didn’t bother with makeup, and returned to her room. She shucked on yesterday’s jeans, found a clean T-shirt, and pulled on a Deep Haven Huskies sweatshirt.

Wait—today was the Fisherman’s Picnic parade. They’d expect her on the class float. Well, she’d just have to come home and change.

Or not. After all, she didn’t have anyone to impress. There wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t know Lucy the donut girl, hadn’t known her since she was three. And wearing pink. Sweet Lucy.

She hadn’t been sweet since . . . No. What was it about the Fisherman’s Picnic that roused all the dark memories?

All her failures.

She grabbed her raincoat and slipped into her rubber boots. Not bothering to lock the back door, she cut through her yard to Issy’s backyard paradise. Oh, to have one ounce of Issy’s talent. Everything she did, she did well, from gardening to her crazy radio show. Trapped in her home, she was still someone. Miss Foolish Heart.

But Lucy, oh yes, she could make donuts.

She closed Issy’s gate and turned onto the flagstone path. Stopped. Glass littered the porch, the light shining upon it, turning it to teardrops.

Someone had broken into Issy’s house.

She ran up the back steps, her Keds crunching on the glass.

“Issy?” She didn’t care if she woke the whole neighborhood. “Issy?” No light in the kitchen, or the front room, or from the upstairs office. But Issy had to be here. What if she was hurt? Her shoes picked up the glass, which sliced into the ridges and crunched as she ran down the hallway. “Issy!”

“Here. I’m here.” The voice emerged small, and even as Lucy searched she couldn’t find her.

“Where are you?”

“By the piano.”

Oh, Issy. Wrapped in her father’s coaching jacket, the one that still smelled of grass stains, Issy had crammed herself between the bookcase and the leg of the baby grand in the front parlor. Bare feet stuck out of her jeans, rolled up at the cuffs.

Lucy flicked on the lamp over the piano. “What happened? Are you okay? Your back door—there’s glass everywhere.” She crouched before Issy. Her long hair hung tangled and crunchy around her face, now puffy as if she’d been crying.

“I think there was an accident.”

“I know, I saw the door. Are you okay?”

“No, I mean . . . you know. At the light.”

“At the . . . there was a car accident?”

“A couple hours ago. You probably had your earplugs in, didn’t you?”

Lucy nodded, but what did that have to do with Issy’s back door being decimated? “I don’t understand.”

“I heard the sirens. And I think there was a fire.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“I don’t know. I just—” She drew in a breath, and Lucy had to give her credit for not burrowing back into her father’s coat.

“Shh. You’re okay. But what about your door?”

“Oh. There was a dog. I think he must have been afraid of the storm. He broke in.”

Lucy took Issy’s hands. They radiated heat, clasped as they’d been inside the arms of the jacket. “Are you hurt?”

Issy swallowed, sadness on her face. “No.”

“Good. You’re okay. See, you’re okay, right?”

Issy nodded. “I’m okay.”

“Where’s the dog?”

Issy looked past her. “I think he’s upstairs.”

“C’mon. We’ll get him.” Lucy held on to Issy’s hand and led the way up the stairs.

Sure enough, the dog had invaded the second floor, helping himself first to the greasy white donut bags, now saliva sloppy and littered across the floor towards—

“Oh no.” Issy pushed open her parents’ bedroom door.

Lucy followed her in. The dog, his feet chunky with globules of earth, his sides slicked with grime, slept in the middle of Issy’s parents’ handmade wedding ring quilt. Mud layered into the creases of the squares. The animal had even settled his head on the matching pillow, dripping saliva into the cotton. The quilt itself was tangled in a circle around him, as if he’d tried to make a nest.

“Wow. That’s . . .”

Issy made a strange sound. A burble at first, then a hiccup of something breaking free.

Lucy turned. Please, don’t let her be unraveling, not again.

Issy put her hands over her mouth, looked at Lucy and laughed.

Out loud. Louder, half crying, half laughing. “I guess he likes me.” Her words emerged on more high-pitched giggling.

“Are you okay? Do you need to sit down, maybe put your head between your knees? Is this the beginning of a panic attack? I don’t know what to do.”

Issy pressed her fingers under her eyes. “The poor dog sort of looks like me, crazy with fear, trying to find a safe place. If I were him, I’d have done the same thing—gone for the donuts, then curled up in my parents’ bed.” She sat down, ran her hands over the animal. He opened one eye, but didn’t move.

“Issy?”

Issy’s smile faded. “I’m so tired of this, Lucy. Tired of feeling broken. Tired of letting fear beat me. Tired of hiding in the dark. I just want to be free.”

Lucy sat next to her. “You will be. One day at a time.”

“I hope so. One of my callers tonight asked me to go to her wedding. In Napa.”

“Napa Valley? In California? That’s wonderful.”

Issy gave her a look. “Not so much.”

“You should go.”

“How, exactly, might I do that? I can’t even stir up the courage to cross the highway and attend the celebration in town. Bree’s called me three times to get me to ride on this year’s float. Like that’s happening.”

“You don’t need to ride on the float. I’ll walk down to the corner with you. We can wave together.”

Issy picked up the animal’s floppy ear. Leaned into it. “Whomever you belong to is going to die a slow, painful death.”

The dog yawned, groaned, settled back into sleep.

Issy glanced at Lucy. “It wouldn’t hurt you to ride the float, you know. A little free World’s Greatest Donuts advertising?”

“And it wouldn’t hurt you to go to Napa, a little free advertising for My Foolish Heart.”

“Touché.”

Lucy grinned. “I need to go to work.”

“Go. I’m fine. I think I’ll just join Duncan here.”

“Duncan?”

“Doesn’t he look like a Duncan?”

Lucy kissed her friend’s forehead, let herself out. Sure enough, at the intersection, a couple tow trucks hoisted two dented cars onto their beds. She blinked away the too-raw image captured in the Deep Haven Herald of the fire department pulling the body of Issy’s beautiful mother from the wreckage of their sedan.

As for Issy’s father, well, the town had yet to find a replacement for their most winning football coach, the wound of his injuries still fresh. Thankfully, Coach Presley hadn’t died—although it seemed like it sometimes with him trapped in his bed at the care center. That night had dismantled the football program with one swift, ugly blow. The assistant coach had barely managed to finish out the season and moved out of town. And the volunteers since then hadn’t known the first thing about coaching, let alone how to fill the shoes of a man who’d helped build men of honor.

Or at least tried to.

Lucy detoured the other way, crossing a block down from the wreckage, intending on cutting back across the lakeshore toward the donut shop. After fifty years of renting, her family had finally purchased the tiny building on the edge of Main and First. It needed updating, however, the land beneath it worth more than the building. Unfortunately, she owed too much money to the back to consider updating the property..

She’d sold six hundred fewer donuts yesterday than she had last year at this time. Which meant she’d have trouble making her monthly loan payment yet again. With heating bills and the dip in tourism, clearly her decision to stay open all winter hadn’t been a wise one.

Maybe she wasn’t exactly cut out for business ownership.

What if she just called it quits, closed the shop?

Then what?

She caught her refection in the dark window of the Java Cup. Hood up, she looked like a waif or perhaps a vagabond.

Nearly tripping on something on the ground, she stopped. She’d stepped on a piece of cardboard—no, poster board, probably ripped from the door of the coffee shop by the storm. She read it in the dim light.

Freshly made donuts, sixty cents each. While they last.

Freshly. Made. Donuts. Sixty cents? She’d been charging eighty for the past two years. A person couldn’t make a living for less than eighty cents a donut.

While they last? How many had the coffee shop made? Six hundred, perhaps? Five hundred dollars of her donut revenue?

She picked up the sign, her hands shaking, and debated putting it up against the door, but then, suddenly, couldn’t.

She was the donut girl. She ran World Best Donuts.

Marching over to the Dumpster, she held it up to toss it in, then—yes!—she tore it in half. Again. And again.

She tossed the scraps into the Dumpster. Picked up a rock, threw that inside, too.

Oh, she wanted to scream, to awaken the town, or . . . something.

Issy wasn’t the only one tired of being trapped, of being overwhelmed. Tired of the past haunting her, telling her how to live.

But Lucy was the donut girl. It was all she had. She wasn’t going down without a fight.