Home for the Holidays Read Free Page B

the dramatic nighttime makeup. Today, her hairstyle was more Peter Pan than Halle Berry. Nothing about her outward appearance bore any resemblance to the woman from the night before.
    Locking the door to her apartment, she walked down the staircase, opened the outer door, and stepped out into darkness. Sunrise was still more than an hour away. Streetlights revealed the local chamber of commerce had finished putting up Christmas decorations along Main Street. Meanwhile, merchants had gotten a jump on the holiday season when they decorated their doors and plate glass windows with colorful lights and decorative wreaths a week following Halloween. A few had placed pots of poinsettia on tables and countertops. The residents of the island were also into the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday spirit, with a steady stream of customers coming into and calling the Muffin Corner, placing orders for cakes, pies, and cookies.
    It’d taken a year, but Iris’s lifestyle had become the personification of simplicity since relocating from Baltimore, Maryland, to Cavanaugh Island, South Carolina. Instead of getting into her car and driving ten miles to work, she now walked three blocks from her apartment to the Muffin Corner. Here on the island there were no traffic lights, stop signs, or traffic jams. Her sound sleep wasn’t shattered by honking horns or an emergency vehicle’s wailing sirens. The streets and roads were safe enough to navigate regardless of the hour. After spending her childhood as an Army brat, moving from one base to another, she had finally put down roots in a place to her that actually felt like home.
    Forty-five minutes before she was scheduled to begin working, Iris opened the rear door to the bakeshop tucked into a row of stores off Moss Alley. An early start meant she could finish early and then return home to make her own desserts and prepare side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner. Light from the kitchen illuminated the floor in the storeroom, while cool jazz blared throughout the shop. She knew who’d come in early by the music choice. Mabel Kelly preferred jazz while her husband Lester favored new age.
    She took off her running shoes, pushing her sock-covered feet into a pair of white clogs, and then slipped on a white chef’s jacket with an embroidered muffin over the breast pocket. Covering her hair with a matching cotton cap and with several pairs of latex-free gloves filling the patch pockets of her jacket, Iris entered the industrial stainless steel kitchen.
    A smile parted her lips as she watched Mabel sway to the melodious sound of a soulful sax. Mabel stood barely five foot and claimed a pair of wide hips and slight bowlegs. She flaunted her Gullah roots as a direct descendant of slaves brought to the island to cultivate rice when South Carolina was still a British colony. Mabel’s fifth-generation grandfather had been credited with developing a method for draining swamps and diverting the water to irrigate rice paddies.
    Although Mabel and Lester had been married for nearly twenty years, the couple didn’t have any children. Iris never asked, yet Mabel did feel comfortable to disclose she never wanted children because from the age of fourteen she had to help her father raise six younger siblings after her mother got hooked on drugs. Iris didn’t know if Mabel had opened up to her because she wanted Iris to reveal her own past, but she hadn’t. Once she’d closed the door on her marriage, she vowed never to open it again. Only Tracy knew what she’d gone through after a year of abuse from her ex-husband, and with no help from her mother-in-law, she finally found the strength to start life anew.
    â€œGood morning!” Iris shouted over the music.
    Mabel turned around, flashing a gap-toothed grin. “Mornin’! Let me turn down the radio so we don’t have to shout at each other.” Like Iris, she’d covered her braided hair with a white bouffant cap.