Sisters: All Things Sweet [book three]

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Every window is open in the shop.

Not out of choice, but because the fumes made Michele and I light-headed as soon as we cracked open the paint. We've slowed down the work schedule and we've spent the last couple of days redecorating the shop in the cream that Michele created swatches for on the wall. We thought about repainting the shop in the pale pink that Katherine had originally painted it, until we decided we wanted to mark our own originality. We didn't want to completely erase the legacy that Katherine had created, but we wanted to make it our own.

"My arm is tired," Michele says, sweeping the wall with a roller and using her other hand to wipe her forehead. A smudge of paint blotches the tips of her fingers and she streaks her eyebrows with the cream paint. Michele doesn't notice and I giggle, nearly stepping in the large pot of paint that nestles between Michele and I on the floor.

"What?" Michele says pointedly.

"Your head," I say, and Michele's hand flies to her forehead.

"Is it in my hair?" she demands, and I shake my head between bursts of laughter.

"It looks like you've dyed your eyebrows," I say.

Michele merely humphs and treads across the sheet and towel-laden shop floor to the kitchen. I carry on painting through the faint sounds of Michele pottering in the kitchen. I hum a tune to myself as I stroke the walls with my paintbrush. Streaks of paint smudge my old sneakers and clothes. Perhaps my reaction could be attributed to the fumes, or maybe I finally feel myself again. My muscles have been clenched for weeks. Now, the opening of All Things Sweet early next month doesn't seem so daunting.

"Is it gone?" Michele says, as she re-enters.

"Yep."

A couple try and peer through the tinted windows of the shop, and Michele and I smile because people have been doing it for weeks. We hung posters, marking the date of when the shop re-opens, but everything else has remained hidden. We've removed the original sign and tinted the windows so that everything remains a secret for the big day.

My phone rings. "Hello?" I say.

"Hey, Haley," the voice says, and I recognise it instantly. "It's Katherine. I was wondering how the shop was getting on?"

"It's going really well," I say, as Michele sends me a quizzical glance. "I mean, it's been hard work, but we're getting there. How's everything?" 

"Everyone's fine, thanks," Katherine says. "I've just been getting to grips with my new job down at the insurance company. The work hours are long but the pay is good." Her optimism astounds me. I can relate to her more than ever, now that I have found a passion that would tear me apart if I had to let it go. I think about it for a moment more, at the cost of a couple of seconds of silence over the phone. I know that Katherine loved the cake shop, but maybe she loves her husband and her family more.

"How's Zac?" I manage to say.

"Zac is good," Katherine says. "He's on holiday at the moment with his friends in Florida, but he'll be back Tuesday."

"He's off to college in the fall?" I say.

"Yeah, he's off to NYU," Katherine says, and my heart leaps in my chest.

"New York?" I say.

"He recently visited his cousins in the city and he wanted to up sticks and trade the big city for small-town life, I guess," Katherine says.

"What does he want to study?"

"English and creative writing."

"That sounds great," I say honestly, with only a pang of sadness. It reassured me that Zac was only going to be a couple of hours away in Columbus at Ohio State University. It gave me hope that, maybe, at some point down the line, we would rekindle something.