Sweet Misfortune: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

economy.
    “Any specific theme today?” asked Evalynn.
    “Nope.” Sophie tapped the pen on her lips while pondering what to write.
    “You aiming for mild disappointment, or full-blown heartache?”
    Sophie glanced up, annoyed. “Sshh. Neither. The goal is reality, nothing more.”
    Evi stifled a laugh. “Your reality or mine?”
    “Stop.”
    “Can I help you write them?”
    “Nope.”
    “Well then, can I at least have a peanut-butter truffle?” she asked hopefully.
    With a hint of a growl, Sophie hissed, “Be quiet! I can’t think. Just turn your mouth off for a few minutes. Please.”
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” whispered Evalynn, as she started for the other room, where a tray of fresh truffles was on display.
    “Fine,” said Sophie, frustrated. “Knock yourself out. But just give me a few minutes’ peace so I can finish.”
    Fifteen minutes later, satisfied that she had enough slips of paper filled out to meet the day’s demand, she gathered them together and joined Evalynn in the front of the store.
    “How’d you make out?” asked Evi.
    Sophie handed her the small stack of tiny slips. “See for yourself. And when you’re done, would you mind sliding them into the fortune cookies? I have a couple more things to clean up in the back before we open.”
    Morning sales can be notoriously slow, even for the best chocolatiers, so it didn’t surprise Sophie that nobody was beating the door down when she turned on the neon Open sign that hung in the window. Chocolat’ de Soph opened promptly at ten, but the first customers didn’t arrive until ten thirty, and they were more interested in free samples than anything else.
    Shortly after eleven o’clock the lunch rush started, and sales began to pick up. As always, the big customer draw was Sophie’s Misfortune Cookies, each of which included one of her unique, handwritten prognostications of gloom, doom, or pending hardships. By design, Misfortune Cookies weren’t the best-tasting treat in the store. After bending and baking the cookies to the traditional fortune cookie shape, they were dipped in a vat of unsweetened chocolate stock imported directly from a cocoa plantation in Brazil. The resulting taste was shock-and-awe on unsuspecting mouths. When she dreamed up the odd cookies eleven months earlier, Sophie figured they’d be a short-term gimmick at best, a novelty that would fizzle. But to her great surprise, the bitter morsels had grown into a high-volume, high-margin staple, gaining enough local infamy to keep them flying off the shelf. She’d even started getting mail orders from other parts of the country.
    Just prior to two o’clock in the afternoon, while Sophie was ringing up a husband and wife who seemed perfectly giddy to find out from their Misfortune Cookies that their car would soon break down and that others talked about them behind their backs, Evi tapped on her watch and mouthed,
It’s almost time!
    Sophie’s brow furrowed tightly as she remembered the arrangements her friend had spoken of earlier. She handed the couple their change and waited for them to exit before turning back to her friend. “Okay, Ev. Spill it. What’s the big surprise?”
    Evalynn glanced again at her watch. “I told you, my lips are sealed.”
    “Is something being delivered to the store?” There was no reply. “Is it a tangible something-or-other?” Still nothing. “Oh c’mon, give me a clue, Evi. You know I hate surprises.”
    “Fine. Yes, something is coming to the store. Something tangible. But that’s all you’re getting out of me.” She zipped her fingers across her lips, then twisted an imaginary key at the edge of her mouth and dropped it down the front of her blouse.
    “When? It better not be until later in the day.”
    Evalynn glanced beyond Sophie’s shoulder toward the door, then back at her watch, and then she began tiptoeing toward the kitchen. “Oh,” she said slowly, drawing out the word while stealing another quick