The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella by Deborah Smith

Author:Deborah Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks
Published: 2013-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Sneak Peak:

The Kitchen Charmer

Lucy

Lucy and Gus—the Valentine’s Day Turning Point

Tal and Gabby had adventures; they found true love, they fought for what’s right, they won wonderful men who adored them; they stood tall.

Me? I stood small.

But I was trying to get bigger.

Today, however, was not that day.

February fourteenth, Valentine’s Day. Gabby’s fiancé, Jay, was in the Cove conferring with Doug Firth, Tal, Gabby, and Tom Mitternich, the famous architect, on the future of the odd old buildings that made up Free Wheeler, the forgotten bicycle community.

In other news, rumor had it that some kind of controversy was about to bring Delta Whittlespoon home from her competition on the Skillet Stars show. No one at either the café or the berry farm was even whispering about it.

I have my psychic talents; not like Gabby and Tal’s, which are food oriented, but in a wooly, artsy way. I see colors around people; I seem to know the textures, the type of fiber that defines them.

Whenever Delta’s name was mentioned lately, I picked up two things: fire-red trouble, and scratchy steel wool. Oh, boy.

But back to the current problem. They had convinced me I could go shopping. In Asheville. A ninety minute (each way) road trip from the Cove.

I hadn’t been shopping in three years, since before the rape. The clinical term for my condition was agoraphobic. Afraid to leave home. Terrified of any situation that wasn’t confined to a narrow range of extremely familiar, highly controlled (by me) circumstances. I preferred to call it “sensible.”

But now I was trapped in the produce section of Mother Nature’s Super Soul Foods, Asheville’s biggest organic grocery store. I kept one hand in my knitted tote bag, clutching the wooden spindle Gus MacBride had sent me from Afghanistan, for Christmas. His sister hadn’t told him about my horrible history, so he thought I was normal. I liked it that way. We were pen pals. He was strong, brave, an army captain, a knitter and a cook, and very gallant. I loved the pictures he texted of him cooking over campfires while local children and burqa-clad women watched him eagerly, as fascinated by him as I was.

Okay, I loved him. From a distance. The best way. He would never come home to visit—he did not want anything to do with his memories of growing up in North Carolina, said Tal and Gabby. We’d never meet in person; I’d never disappoint him by not being sexy, confident, comfortable and again, normal.“You okay? Lucy?” Gabby asked. She patted my shoulder with a strong, freckled hand. I felt Tal watching me. I smiled.

“Fine.”

People aren’t supposed to suffer panic attacks in Asheville. It’s the South’s equivalent of your laidback hippy aunt, the one with the vague herbal smell and the subscription to Mother Jones magazine. In Asheville, people get in touch with their inner mountain spirits. They meditate. They chant. They wear crystals. They find themselves.

Not me. I’d lost myself when two men at my apartment complex robbed, beat and raped me.

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