Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes Read Online Free Page B

actually have a few more things I need fixed, I just never personally knew someone who could do the work.”
    He shrugs. “What kind of work are we talking about?”
    “Come on,” she says, turning back and walking through the doublewide doorway into the dining room and then through to the living room. A striped sofa sits beneath two paned windows on the side wall, facing a large brick fireplace. “They’re little things, really. But a lot of little things. Like this.” She stops at the bottom of the staircase and shakes the large acorn finial on the bannister leading upstairs along a soft cream wall.
    “That’s it?”
    “To begin with. I have a list. Bad windows that stick. A warped door that closes only sometimes. The bannister.” She nods at the acorn. “Loose floorboards. A widow’s walk that needs painting.”
    “Well I can do the work, if you don’t mind sporadic. We’re getting busy at the store with winter and the holidays coming up.”
    She follows him back into the kitchen and sits at the round table, shifting over a bag she’d carried in. “This is good actually. I’m kind of low on funds at the moment, so a little at a time works.”
    He picks up his toolbox and turns back to look at her for a second.
    “What?” she asks, smiling a little uncomfortably.
    “Home cooked dinners work for payment, too.”
    “Ha.” She stands quickly, scraping her chair as she does, then reaches for a glass in the cupboard and pours herself a drink of water. “You might not say that if you tasted my cooking.” She tucks her long layered hair behind an ear, looks around and rushes for the bag on the kitchen table. “And anyway, my sister’s the chef, not me. Here. Why don’t you take these?”
    He reaches for the bag she holds out.
    “They’re coffee cakes. A ton of them. She just gave them to me at that scarecrow thing going on, and I’ll never eat them all. Really. You have them. Those should hold you over until your next repair job.”
    “Your sister.” He sets the bag inside his toolbox. “That’d be Brooke?”
    She nods. “You know her?”
    “Her husband does our books at the store. I was at the wedding.”
    “Wait.”
    And she does it again, squints those pretty hazel eyes at him when his cell phone rings. He glances at it, then up at her. “I can’t miss this call,” he says, picking up the toolbox and coffee cake bag. “I’ll see you around, Vera,” he calls over his shoulder while walking out the side door.
    *  *  *
    Never bury the lead . The tenets of Journalism 101 always seem the most important, even after all this time. Vera sits in the downstairs office she set up, a brass lamp casting a yellow glow on papers scattered around her computer, her feet tucked into fuzzy snowflake slippers beneath the desk. Okay, so she didn’t really have an assignment from the Addison Weekly . But maybe if she writes a snappy piece on the scarecrows, they’ll use it. And pay her. So she’s kind of making her own assignment. Sometimes you have to take the initiative.
    With fingers hovering over the keyboard, she considers the lead she can’t bury and finds herself instead typing ones that could happen if things don’t change soon, ones she can’t get out of her head: Local Resident Loses Life Savings to Fixer-Upper. Or Addison Native Penniless, Homeless and Jobless.
    “No way. I can’t go there. Not yet,” she says as she opens a new document, sits up straighter and considers her real lead for the intensely competitive tradition pitting business against business, neighbor against neighbor in a friendly contest for the town scarecrow trophy. The winner gets to display the gold trophy prominently, and with bragging rights, until the following autumn when it’s passed along to the next scarecrow-of-the-year.
    “Focus,” she whispers, opening her eyes wide and looking at the blank screen. She thinks long about the title, takes a quick breath and types as if her life depends on it. Which, she