CELEBRATION CAKE
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 sticks pure unsalted butter, melted
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
½ cup bourbon whiskey
¼ cup water
1 (6-ounce) package chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans
Hot Buttered Whiskey Glaze
Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Melt butter and add it to flour, along with brown sugar, eggs, whiskey and water. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and pecans. Bake 50-55 minutes or until center of cake is firm and edges begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool about 15 minutes, then drizzle with glaze.
HOT BUTTERED WHISKEY GLAZE
Melt ¼ cup butter. Whisk in 2 cups confectioner’s sugar, ⅓ cup bourbon whiskey, 1 teaspoon vanilla and blend well.
EPILOGUE
Two years later
“Hold it right there,” Rourke said, tugging Jenny to a halt on the sidewalk. “I just need to look at this for a while.”
Rufus, whom she held on a leash, obediently halted and sat back on his haunches. Jenny turned to check out the display in the window of the Camelot Bookstore. The local shop had devoted an entire window display to her first food memoir and recipe collection, Food for Thought: Kitchen Wisdom from a Family Bakery, by Jenny Majesky McKnight, with photographs by Daisy Bellamy. The beautiful, oversize volume looked as warm and rich as her grandmother’s pies. It had been published a week earlier, and Jenny was floating with happiness.
“It’s a book,” she said, grinning and shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it’s a book.”
The day it was published, there had been a party at the Sky River Bakery. They’d had to have special traffic control because of the crowd. Jenny wasn’t sure if people came for the whiskey cake or for an autographed book, but they came in droves.
“Let’s go in and buy a copy,” said Rourke.
“I have a whole box of them at home.”
“Like that’s going to stop me.” He held the door and they went inside together, bringing the dog along. It was library-quiet in the bookstore, and the clerk behind the counter didn’t recognize Jenny, wrapped up in a wool hat and muffler against the February cold and fat as a kolache with her pregnancy. Rourke paid for the book and grinned at the clerk.
“It’s by my favorite author.”
Jenny practically fled out the door. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.”
The street was deserted; people were staying in out of the cold. He slipped the book from the bag and opened it to the first page. Dedication: In loving memory of my grandparents, Helen and Leopold Majesky. “Somewhere,” he said, “I have a feeling they’re incredibly proud of you right now.”
She nodded, but without warning, tears threatened, perhaps due to pregnancy hormones, but maybe because it was impossible to think of her grandparents without thinking of her mother. There had been an autopsy on Mariska’s remains. Her injuries were consistent with a fall from a great height—from Meerskill Bridge. Alger hadn’t lied about that. She’d fallen, but he was so afraid he’d be accused of killing her that—after realizing she didn’t have the diamonds with her—he’d hidden the body. He was serving time now, and Zach had gone to college. Enough, she thought. Let them rest—Mariska and Joey and her grandparents.
“Hey.” Rourke put the book away and drew her close. “The book is beautiful.” He ran his hand over her rounded belly. “You’re beautiful, and I love you.” He had an uncanny knack for catching her mood. This came as no surprise; he always had.
She caught their reflection in the glass of the shop window, two survivors, soon to be a family, and what she felt, in the middle of winter, was a kind of warmth the cold could never touch.
* * * * *
If you loved The Winter Lodge, keep reading
For a sneak peak of One Charmed Christmas by Sheila Roberts
The perfect holiday read!
“Your kids are twits,” Catherine Pine’s friend Denise informed her. “They shouldn’t be leaving you at Christmas, not after what you’ve been through.”
“It’s been a rough year,” Catherine admitted.
Coping with widowhood and then, right after her sixtieth birthday, getting hit with uterine cancer. Not the best year of Catherine’s life, for sure. And chemo and radiation awaited her in the new year.
“All the more reason they should be with you,” Denise said.
“They have lives of their own,” Catherine said in her chil-dren’s defense.
Denise gave a snort and took a gulp from her latte. “Which they’re happy to make you a part of when it suits them.”
Catherine frowned. Denise was her best friend and best friends were like sisters. Not that Catherine had a sister—only a brother who’d never bothered to marry—but that was what she’d always thought. Still, there were times when best friends and probably even sisters needed to keep their mouths shut.
Morning lattes together at Starbucks and diet accountability didn’t give a woman the right to diss her friend’s children. Even if they were twits sometimes. Denise’s daughter wasn’t so perfect. She’d gone through two husbands in twelve years.
Denise pointed an acrylic nail-tipped finger at Catherine. “They were barely there for you after your surgery.”
“They both had to work.”
This inspired an eye roll. “And now they’re both abandon-ing you at Christmas? They should be buried up to their necks in lumps of coal.”
Catherine had so hoped to have her children with her. “Mom, last year was torture,” her daughter Lila had informed her when Catherine brought up the subject of the family gath¬ering for Christmas. As if Catherine were planning to give them a repeat performance.
No, their celebration the year before hadn’t exactly been a happy
