In a matter of two weeks, she learned the number one contributing factor to the “unworkable” part of her marriage to Ken was a pierced and tattooed nineteen-year-old who had flunked out of college in Lubbock and moved home to live with her parents, who happened to be neighbors. That information squelched any notion Sandi might have had that she and Ken could put things back together. It hadn’t done much for her relationship with her neighbors, either.
She had known every nook and cranny of the bank that had employed her, but she’d had no clue what had been going on under her own roof.
Two weeks after that revelation, she found herself not only unemployed, but headed for divorce court for the second time.
She had filed for divorce, instructed her lawyer to clean Kenneth Coffman’s clock and at the same time, petitioned to have her name changed back to her maiden name. She had never liked that stupid name, Coffman.
She was through with men. Period. Exclamation point.
After all of that, all she’d had to do was swallow her pride, get back on her feet, find a job and a new place to live. Meanwhile, for a social life, she had joined Book Wranglers, a local reading club whose members had taken on the lofty goal of reading all one hundred of the books everyone should read in his lifetime. She was now sandwiching War and Peace, Fifty Shades of Grey and the Crossfire Series, which made War and Peace infinitely more entertaining.
She had arranged to meet with the elderly ladies at the Glen Cove Retirement Home for crocheting lessons one night a week and had produced half a dozen intricate tablecloths and an untold number of afghans that nested in a neat stack in a corner of her bedroom. When she needed a gift for someone, she simply plucked something from her stack.
She had bought a gym membership and worked out, took Yoga classes and forced herself to think positive. She was honed into the best physical shape of her entire life. She might be thirty-two, but she had the body of a twenty-year-old.
But the most productive thing she had done back in the dark aftermath of her divorce was enroll in a Wilton course in cake decorating. With her mother working in the Walmart bakery in Big Spring, she had learned a little about cake decorating through osmosis, so she had a penchant for it. Now, daily in LaBarkery, she used what she had learned about cake decorating from Wilton and from her mother.
***
Just then, the front door chimed again and Sandi turned around to see her mother pushing the heavy plate-glass front door open with her butt, struggling with her purse and balancing two Starbucks cups. Sandi strode forward and lifted the two cups from her hands. “Hey, Mom. I wasn’t expecting you.”
Her mother heaved a great breath and waved her hand in front of her face. “Whew. That was a handful.”
Sandi studied the cold cup. Not being a regular consumer of Starbucks drinks, she couldn’t identify its contents. “Whatcha got here?”
“Caramel Frappachino.”
“Yum. Let’s go into the back room.” Sandi led the way back to her tiny kitchen where she concocted and baked the goodies she sold in her shop. Here, she kept a small table and two chairs. “What are you doing in Midland?”
“My hours got cut. I ended up with the day off, so I decided to drive over to see you. I thought you might like a pick-me-upper. Lord, I can’t believe what I had to pay for these two drinks.”
Sandi and her Mom sat down together. “Your shop looks so pretty,” her mother said. “And you’re so busy. I can’t get over how this business has turned into such a success. You’ve been really lucky.”
“I know, right?”
“But luck runs out, you know.”
Sandi did a mental eyeroll. Her mother had barely said hello and she was already criticizing. She always counterbalanced a positive with a negative, thus Sandi herself had grown up with a foot firmly planted in each camp.
LaBarkery was successful. More so than Sandi could have imagined in her wildest dreams, but it wasn’t just a matter of dumb luck. “Mom, I wish you’d stop saying that. I’ve got a college degree in business and marketing, for crying out loud. I worked my ass off to get it.”
Her memory zoomed back to her student days when she had worked at an array of bad minimum-wage jobs. Not intending to let herself get sidetracked, she continued, “I’ve researched. I’ve studied trends. Do you know what I read just this week?”
Her mom’s wide-eyed look came across the rim of her plastic cup. Her head shook.
“This year, the citizens of this country will spend forty billion dollars on their pets. Forty billion. And a piece of that fruit is there for my little business to pluck.”
Her mother set her cup on the table, still shaking her head. “You can’t believe stuff like that, Sandi. People make it up. Forty billion? Why, I don’t even know how to write a number like that.”
Mom had no concept of a billion dollars, Sandi knew. How could she? She hadn’t finished high school, had worked for low wages her entire life, still worked for low wages though she had been employed by Walmart for almost twenty years.
“When you graduated from college, I was so proud of you,” her mother said. “I hoped you’d get a good job and earn a good wage with a big company that would give you benefits. Like I’ve got.”
Sandi stared at her a few beats, considering again the different wavelengths on which she and her mother functioned. Owning her own business would never occur to the woman sitting across the table.
“Benefits.” Sandi said acidly and gave a huff. She had a hard time glossing over the bitterness she felt over her former bank employment and layoff. “Mom, read
