Lassoed by Fortune. Marie Ferrarella

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      Chapter Two

      As was her custom six days a week, Julia came down from the small apartment above the store where she lived at exactly 7:00 a.m. to unlock the front door to the Horseback Hollow Superette, the town’s only grocery store, which had been in her family for several generations. It was also the only grocery store for thirty miles.

      The store served its customers from seven until seven Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, the hours were somewhat shorter. However, since Julia did live just above the grocery store, she could always be reached in case someone had a “food emergency” of some sort—such as relatives showing up for a forgotten dinner just when the cupboard was bare.

      Running the family business had not been what she’d envisioned doing with her life when she had been a senior in high school, but this was—at least for now—the plan that life seemed to have in store for her.

      Twelve years ago she had been all set to go away to an out-of-state college with an eye out to someday perhaps owning her own restaurant. She’d loved to cook ever since she could reach the top of the stove without the benefit of using a stool. She could still remember the very first thing she had prepared for her parents: cinnamon toast. At four she’d been proud enough to burst at what she’d viewed to be a major accomplishment: toast buttered on both sides with a dusting of cinnamon.

      Her parents had been nothing but encouraging and supportive from the start, telling her there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do or become if she set her mind to it.

      And then, just like that, her world had come crashing down all around her.

      Right before she was to leave for her first semester at college, her father had had a heart attack. For a while it was touch and go and the doctors weren’t sure if he would pull through. There was no way she could leave him or her mother at a time like that.

      And even when her father began to come around, she found more than a ton of reasons that kept her right where she was. Between concern over her father’s health and trying to keep up her mother’s morale—not to mention because her parents needed the income to pay for her father’s medical bills—there was no way she could find the time to go away to school. Her family needed her too much and she’d refused to leave them high and dry.

      Though they always had part-time help at the Superette, there was really no one else to keep things going. Math had always been her mother’s undoing.

      So Julia had stayed on, putting her dream on hold—which sounded a good deal better to her than saying that she was giving up her dream—and doing what needed to be done.

      Looking back now, that almost seemed like a lifetime ago to her.

      With time, her father, Jack, had improved somewhat, although he was never again the hale-and-hearty man he’d been before the heart attack. And eventually, she’d seen the color come back into her mother’s face to the point that Annie Tierney no longer looked as if she was auditioning for the part of a ghost.

      As for herself, she’d gone from being a carefree, whimsical young girl to being a practical, pragmatic young woman with the weight of the world occasionally on her shoulders.

      But she managed. She always managed.

      Those years had also seen her married and then divorced, neither of which happened with a great deal of emotion or fanfare. Marrying Neal Baxter, a local boy who had just returned to Horseback Hollow to practice law after getting his degree, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. She and Neal were friends and Julia had honestly believed that having a friend to go through life with was a smart thing to do.

      But a few years into the marriage, a marriage that seemed to be built on little more than mutual respect and a whole lot of boredom, she and Neal came to the conclusion that they really liked one another far too much to be trapped in something that promised no joy to either of them.

      So an uncontested, amicable divorce settlement was quickly and quietly reached. They each came away with whatever they had brought into the marriage.

      It was a case of no harm, no foul, except that Julia had learned that dreaming about things you couldn’t have—such as a passionate marriage—really did hurt.

      After that, the store became her haven, her home base. It was the one thing she could always depend on to be there. After a time her job became so ingrained she went about her day’s work routine practically on autopilot.

      Before unlocking the door, she first prepared the store for customers. Produce was put out and carefully arranged in the appropriate bins. The breads, pastries and especially the doughnuts were baked fresh every morning—she saw to that even though it meant she had to get up extremely early to get the goodies to the store in time to arrange the display. It was her one creative outlet and she looked forward to the scents of sugar and butter in her kitchen each morning.

      Aside from that, there were always a hundred different little details to see to and Julia kept a running checklist in her head at all times, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

      She did all this by herself and even, at times, found the solitude of the store comforting at that hour.

      So when she saw her mother in the store, Julia was more than a little surprised. Her mother was sweeping the aisles, a chore Julia normally took care of just before opening, a full hour before she normally came in. Annie always arrived after having made breakfast for her husband.

      Judging by her presence—not to mention the look on her mother’s face—something was definitely up.

      Julia approached the problem—because there had to be a problem—slowly by asking, “Mom, what are you doing here?”

      Looking far from her normally sunny self, Annie answered, “It’s my store. I work here. Or have you forgotten?”

      “I know you work here, Mom,” Julia said patiently, “but you don’t come in until after eight. Everything okay with Dad?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

      Julia realized that was the only thing that would make her mother break with her regular routine. Her mother was nothing if not a creature of habit. It was Annie who had taught her that a regular routine would give her life structure.

      And she had been right.

      If it hadn’t been for her routine, Julia was certain that the act of setting her goals and dreams aside would have crushed her spirit so badly she wouldn’t have been able to function and come through for her parents the way she had. She had taken everything over, becoming what her mother was quick to point out was not just her right hand, but her left one, as well.

      Julia owed that to a well-instilled sense of structure, not to mention to a very keen sense of family loyalty.

      “Your father,” Annie said, answering her question, “is the same as he was yesterday and, God willing, the same as he will be tomorrow. Well, but not perfect.” She paused to smile at her daughter. “But then, no man is ever perfect.”

      It was a familiar mantra that her mother had uttered more than a handful of times.

      What was different this time was the sadness around the edges of her smile. And the deeper sadness she could see in her mother’s eyes.

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