Sweet Memories Read Free

Jeff Brubaker stood motionless beside the car for a moment, scanning the house in the way of a man seeking reassurance that none of the familiar things had altered. “God, it’s good to be home,” he breathed, sucking in a great gulp of the cold, pure Minnesota air. Then he became suddenly effervescent, almost jogging around to the tailgate of the wagon. “Come on you two, let’s get this junk unloaded.”
    Thinking ahead to the next five minutes, Theresa appropriated a guitar case to carry inside. She didn’t know how she’d manage it, but if worse came to worst, she might be able to hide behind it.
    At the sound of the tailgate slamming, a gangly fourteen-year-old girl came flying out the back door. “Jeffy, you’re home!” Smiling with a flash of tooth braces, Amy Brubaker threw her arms wide with an open gesture Theresa envied. Not a day went by that Theresa didn’t pray her sister be granted the blessing of growing normally.
    “Hey, dumpling, how are ya?”
    “I’m too big for you to call me dumpling anymore.”
    They embraced with sibling exuberance before Jeff plopped a direct kiss on Amy’s mouth.
    “Ouch!” She jerked back and made a face, then bared her teeth for inspection. “Look out when you do that. It hurts!”
    “Oh, I forgot about the new hardware. Let’s see.” He tipped her chin up while she continued curling her lips back as if not in the least daunted by her unattractive braces. Looking on, Theresa wondered how it was her little sister had managed to remain so uninhibited and charmingly self-assured.
    “I tell everybody I got ’em decorated just in time for Christmas,” Amy declared. “After all, they do look a little like tinsel.”
    Jeff leaned back from the waist and laughed, then quirked a smile at his friend. “Brian, it’s time you met the rambunctious part of the Brubaker family. This is Amy. Amy, here he is at last—Brian Scanlon. And as you can see, I’ve talked him into bringing his guitar so we can play a couple hot ones for you and your friends, just as ordered.”
    For the first time, Amy lost her loquaciousness. She jammed her hands as far as they’d go into the tight front pockets of her blue jeans and carefully kept her lips covering the new braces as she smiled and said almost shyly, “Hi.”
    “Hi, Amy. Whaddya say?” He extended his hand and smiled at Amy with as charming a grin as any of the rock stars beaming from the postered walls of her bedroom. Amy glanced at Brian’s hand, made an embarrassed half shrug and finally dragged one hand from the blue denim and let Brian shake it. When he released it, the hand hung in the air between them for a full fifteen seconds while her smile grew and grew, until a reflection flashed from the bars of metal spanning her teeth.
    Watching, Theresa thought,  oh, to be fourteen again, with a shape like Amy’s, and the total lack of guile that allows her to gaze point-blank in unconcealed admiration, just as she’s doing now.
    “Hey, it’s cold out here!” Jeff gave an exaggerated shiver. “Let’s go in and dig into mom’s cake.”
    They carried duffel bags and guitar cases into the cheery front-facing kitchen of the simple house. The room was papered in an orange- and gold-flowered pattern that was repeated in the fabric inserts of the shutters on the windows flanking the eating area, which looked out on the front yard. An ordinary house on a street with others just like it, the Brubaker home had nothing exceptional to set it apart, except a sense of familial love that Brian Scanlon sensed even before the mother and father arrived to complete the circle.
    On the kitchen table was a crocheted doily of white, and in the center sat a pedestal plate bearing a mouth-watering German chocolate cake under a domed lid. When Jeff lifted the lid, the gaping hole came into view. In the hollow wedge was a slip of folded paper. He took it out to reveal a recipe card from which he read aloud: “Jeff, it looked too good for