The Winter Lodge by SUSAN WIGGS

Author:SUSAN WIGGS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2016-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Daisy had been raised to expect much of herself, yet she always fell short and managed to disappoint herself time and time again. So working at the bakery was a surprise. She liked it and was good at it, a new concept for her. This made her realize that maybe the problem wasn’t her. Maybe the problem was buying into other people’s expectations.

“You look happy,” said Zach, who was moving racks out to the loading dock.

“I am,” she said, stepping out into the cold winter day with him. “I mean, it’s totally crazy, but I like everything about working here—the smells, the other employees, the customers. It’s fantastic.”

He grinned at her. “You’re right—crazy.”

“If so, then it’s a good kind of crazy. You know, what’s funny is I’ve had a lot of jobs, and I hated them all. See, at my school in the city, we had to do these rotations to explore different ca-reers. But they were all the ‘right’ kind of careers. Wall Street, PR, law, the legislature. No way would they have sent someone to work in a bakery.”

He drew down the back door of the truck and locked it. They had decided to spend their break taking a walk because Daisy wanted to shoot some pictures. As they started walking, Zach pulled out a cigarette. She plucked it from his hand before he could light it. “Oh, no you don’t,” she warned.

“Great, so you’re some kind of antismoking radical.”

“Ex-smoker,” she admitted.

“You?”

Daisy knew what he was thinking. She looked like the all-American girl, the kind who could do no wrong. That was why she used to get away with so many things.

“So here’s the stupid part,” she said. “Not only did I know smoking would kill me, I knew it would drive my parents nuts.”

“Did it work?” he asked her. “Did you drive them nuts?”

“No,” she said with a bitter laugh. “They drove each other nuts. Me, they just kind of ignored.” Divorce did that to kids, no matter how hard people worked to make it bearable. The truth was, when a married couple was doing all the emotional work of breaking up, the kids got pushed aside.

They stopped in the city park, which was a study in black and white—the wrought-iron fence, benches and tables against the snow. The steel tubes of the swing set. The black granite of the statue of Avalon’s founder. Daisy took out her camera. Zach took back the cigarette and lit it.

She acted unimpressed, although she couldn’t help it—he looked sexy in a kind of bad-boy way. “Lean against that tree,” she said. “I’ll take your picture.”

He shrugged, and then complied. He was getting used to her habit of taking pictures, and by now was relaxed in front of the camera.

She took a few more shots. Zach had an interesting face—bony angles counterbalanced with full lips, and that shock of straight, white-blond hair. Wreathed by a thread of cigarette smoke, he looked intense and for some reason, sad.

“Very Rebel

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