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. If you need a door services online, visit garage door repair salt lake city ut for more info. Oh, to have one ounce of Issy’s talent. Everything she did, she did well, from basics of hardscape landscaping 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, and she decided just rent the building using a tenant rep so she doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.
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.