Synopsis | Reviews | Excerpt
A thread of hope is all she needs.
Damaged, confused, alone. Cathy Deen Mitternich recognizes
her old self in the fragile survivor huddled in the sheep barn’s storage room
at Rainbow Goddess Farm. Former art teacher Lucy Parmenter may be beyond even
the tough-love magic of the farm, a live-in counseling center for abused women.
Afraid to set a foot outside, drugged on medication, and filled with despair,
Lucy needs the big biscuit magic of the Crossroad Café’s Delta Whittlespoon.
Together, Cathy and Delta search for a lifeline that represents Lucy’s best
hope of holding on.
Their search ends in Lucy’s new home at the barn. When Lucy
discovers the magic there, neither she nor Cathy will ever be the same.
Deborah Smith is the author of The Crossroads Café, chosen as a Top Five Romance of 2006 by Library Journal, a Number One bestseller
at Kindle, and a bestseller at the Wall
Street Journal. Her bestselling Crossroad
Café Novellas include The Biscuit
Witch and The Pickle Queen. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of A Place To Call Home.
Coming soon!
Banger gets a makeover
Years of killing time on movie sets and between photo
shoots had taught me the fine art of texting dumb jokes to anyone who’d play.
Even now, long past my Hollywood days, I reverted. I missed Tom and our
finally-adopted daughters, Ivy and Cora, who’d stayed over after Thanksgiving
in Chicago with his younger brother John, a financial planner. John was
recovering from bunion surgery. He and Tom were logging some time in front of
football games while Ivy and Cora toured the city with Tom’s wife, Monica, and
their cousins Jeremy, Bryan, and David. Five juvenile Mitternichs ages ten to
sixteen. Thanks to texting, I could pretend Monica had it better than me, and I
could remind my husband that I was in a drafty barn having my picture made with
livestock.
WHAT
DO U CALL AN UNEMPLOYED GOAT?
Tom had heard these jokes a hundred times before. He
dutifully typed back.
BILLY
IDOL. COME ON, CATHY, FIND SOME NEW ONES.
WHY
IS IT HARD TO TALK TO A GOAT?
BECAUSE
HE ALWAYS BUTTS IN. PLEASE. DREAMGIRL, GIMME A CHALLENGE.
WHAT
DO YOU CALL A GOAT STANDING ON A HILL?
A
HILLBILLY. I AM SO BORED. I MISS YOU.
WHAT
DO YOU CALL A GOAT THAT JUST ATE THREE LIPSTICKS AND AN EYELINER BRUSH?
NOW
YOU’VE GOT MY ATTENTION. WOULD THIS BE THE SAME GOAT WHO EATS MY CELL PHONES?
YES.
MUST GO NOW. LV, CATHY.
HIDE
THE PHONE. LV, TOM.
I shoved my cell phone in my satchel and pushed the satchel
against the interior wall of the tall, kiosk-like display built for the
advertising shoot. I was behind the counter with one of the barn’s stall doors
blocking me from behind. My namesake Guernsey milk cow, Cathy, hung her head
out of the stall’s half-door and licked the arm of my lavender mohair sweater.
Her pearl-gray horns had been polished for the photo session, and a small red
Christmas bow had been pinned to the tuft of hair at the apex of her
gold-and-white head.
Everyone
else suddenly noticed that Banger, my and Tom’s large gray billy goat, had
hopped down from his decorative hay bales next to the kiosk and was now raiding
the makeup artist’s enormous, unzippered tote bag.
Shrieks
filled the barn. One of them, mine. "Banger! Get out of that!”
But
the notorious leader of our Wild Woman Ridge herd, now a famous celebrity
spokes-goat for Bah Spa, our line of goat milk soaps and lotions, was head-deep
and on a mission to munch. I could see the top of his muscular gray jaws
working swiftly. His curled horns hooked the air as if he were plowing a field
of Max Factor daisies. Plastic cases snapped. Poofs of foundations and blushes
swirled up. The makeup artist danced around him like an emo scarecrow hit by
lightning, flailing him with a brush, while the photographer and his manly
assistants sounded a retreat and ran with their equipment.
The
art director for Southern Hunting &
Kitchens Magazine, accompanied by Suzanne Alderson, the manager of my Bah
Spa store in Turtleville, stationed themselves in front of the expensively
designed holiday kiosk, guarding me and it.
At
least I hoped they were guarding me
more than the Christmas bunting and flower arrangements. Behind me, Cathy’s
large bovine head dipped lower, her gaze clearly peering at the tantalizing
fresh ivy and red poinsettias winding down the kiosk post nearest her stall
door. Her tongue became a sly pink elephant snout. Whoosh. She ripped two feet
of ivy and fresh flowers off the post and wound them into her mouth like
spaghetti.
I
stepped in front of the naked post to hide the damage. She was my namesake.
There is an implied covenant to protect your namesake, isn’t there? She’d been
a breech-birth. Tom happened to be at the farm that day, so he played midwife
under the guidance of farm owners Alberta and Macy when they needed more
combined upper body strength for the task at hand. Birthing a cow would make
anyone woozy from the sight of the placenta and blood, but those were also the
years when he’d been drinking heavily and struggling with memories of his son’s
terrible death in the Twin Towers. When given the honor of naming the new calf,
he’d answered with the first thought in his head.
"Cathy,”
he’d mumbled. "I name the little heifer Cathy.” He and I hadn’t met in person
yet, though our cross-country correspondence was already intense.
In
a way, Cathy the heifer was my and Tom’s love-calf.
So
now I covered for her crime.
A
stern female voice rang out. "Everyone, stand down! I’ll take care of this
buck-billy goat bastard,” Alberta Spruill-Groover yelled. Ex-marine, nurse,
carpenter, berry farmer, sheep farmer, life partner of the far nicer and
infinitely normal Macy Spruill-Groover, Alberta stomped our way.
She
was the woman whom I’d hired to add a few basic modern upgrades to my
grandmother’s house on Wild Woman Ridge during my earliest months in these
mountains. Now, the tough-love nemesis who’d taunted me for my own good, strode
down the barn hallway in camo and plaid one hand tugging her Cardinals’ hat
tighter on her curls while the other swung a fly swatter. She scowled at me.
Our friendship had taken a long time to develop, and was still more prickly
than pretty. "Dammit, Cathy, you know I hate this freakin’ meat sack with
balls. You couldn’t have done this silly freakin’ photo shoot at your own
barn?”
"I’m
here to advertise not only Bah Spa but also yours and Macy’s cheeses and
jellies, which we’re selling at my and Delta’s store in Turtleville and, coming
soon, in our online store. Need I remind you?”
"Nobody
asked my permission.”
"That’s
because you told Macy to handle marketing. Because Macy is the sane one.”
"Out,
Banger, out! You need to be castrated.” She began whacking the hell out of him.
He grunted and shoved the tote bag toward her, head still inside it. She
flapped him furiously—but backed up.
I
leaned over the kiosk’s counter. "Don’t back up. It only encourages him. And
don’t take out your anti-male agenda on my goat.”
"I’ll
take out my testicle clippers on your goat! Finish up this marketing crap and
get back to business! We’ve got a new...” She halted to look
at the outsiders. Then at me. "Sister. Macy needs your advice on a ‘sister’
situation.”
"Sister”
was code for a new resident in the program Alberta and Macy ran for abused
women. Rainbow Goddess Farm was a working farm, yes, but also a counseling
center fully licensed by the state of North Carolina to treat women who were
recovering from domestic abuse. At any given time there were two-dozen women
living in the big house or cabins, along with their children. Some stayed for
months. I was on the board of directors, along with Delta. Proud to be a
patron.
"He’s
charging!” the makeup artist moaned.
Banger
plowed toward Alberta, the tote bag riding his head. Picture a large modern
barn with open pens for newborn calves and their moms, offset by long rows of
milking stations. A half-dozen women in overalls and heavy coats had been
peacefully herding the placid milk cows into the stations. Alberta ran for a
side door and hit an electric opener. The cold November air gushed in. My long
brunette hair, artfully sprayed and molded over the scarred side of my face,
flew back in dark tangles.
Alberta
went down fighting, with Banger and the makeup bag on top of her. A rainbow
cloud of powders filled the air again.
The
hair stylist, who had climbed halfway up a ladder to the loft, nearly flung
herself to the floor in her hurry to save my ’do. "Hold that curl!”
The
’do we do not talk about. I understand that my burn scars are a distraction. We
don’t want Bah Spa customers staring at them instead of the products. I get
that. It’s not a cop-out to be discreet, but I’m no longer painfully self-aware
of the stares my disfigured face and body receive. I exorcised those demons,
with Tom and cousin Delta’s loving help, years ago.
For
the most part. No one with scars like mine will ever be fully healed. But life
isn’t about being flawless. Scars come with the journey.
So
when the stylist rushed me with a wild look behind her retro-rhinestone
glasses, I took her calmly by the shoulders. "Grab goat first. Hide scars
second. No problem.”
She
sagged. "Ms. Deen, they told me you’re a cool lady. Thanks.”
I
patted her shoulders and stopped myself from correcting the Ms. Deen part. I
was Cathy Mitternich, or Cathy Deen Mitternich as a compromise in the screen
credits when I took occasional acting parts, mostly voice work. My movie star
ego had vaporized when Tom, an architect, showed me how to build a new me. One
that I saw through his eyes. Always beautiful, scars be damned.
Scars.
All of Alberta’s and Macy’s "sisters” had scars, emotional and otherwise. This
remote farm in the Appalachians, more than an hour from Asheville by a winding
two-lane road, was a safe home in the arms of the Ten Sisters Mountains, a
sipping sister to the deep warm tea cup of the Crossroads Cove below, where my
cousin Delta Whittlespoon baked biscuit magic at her famous café. We were all
Sisters of the Scar.
No
matter how damaged this new sister was, we would help her.
I
climbed over the kiosk counter and went to rescue Alberta from Banger, or vice
versa. They were both covered in cosmetics.
I’d
bet it was the most makeup Alberta had ever worn in her life.
I
wasn’t so sure about Banger.
