The Devine Doughnut Shop(3)

“I told you, Neal and I are having boys,” Macy answered with a smile.

“And if God has a sense of humor and gives you girls?” Sarah asked.

“I’m sending them all to Grace to raise.” Macy’s blue eyes twinkled. “She makes a good drill sergeant.”

Grace wiggled her fingers in front of Macy’s face and raised her voice to a high-pitched, eerie tone. “I hereby bless you with five daughters, and all of them will make Audrey look like she has a halo and wings.”

Macy’s eyes snapped shut, and she covered her face with her hands. “Don’t do that! I hated when you did that when we were kids.”

“Why wouldn’t you want five daughters?” Sarah teased. “I liked growing up in the house with y’all, even if there was only three of us and not five. We had so much fun together.”

“Neal and I are having two sons,” Macy declared. “We have already named them and are planning to have the first one when we’ve been married two years. The second one will be born two years after that, and then we’ll have our family. I’m the one who is going to break the daughters-only streak.” She shot a look across the room at Grace. “Your silly fortune-telling isn’t going to work this time.”

“We’ll see,” Grace said and smiled. There had been a few times when her prophecies fell flat—especially when it came to Justin, Audrey’s father. Grace had insisted to her mother that Justin would always be there for her, but she had been dead wrong.



“That sounded just like Mama.” Sarah giggled.

Grace nodded and did a quick curtsy. “Thank you.”

Sarah picked up a tray of glazed doughnuts and carried them to the front of the store. She placed them in the glass display case and glanced up at the clock. An hour ago, the parking lot had been empty, but now she counted several vehicles out there. They didn’t close until noon, so Macy might be making more doughnuts after all.

Folks depended on the shop being open until noon. She glanced around to be sure that the four tables were cleaned off and all the crumbs had been swept up from the floors. The black-and-white-tiled floor hadn’t changed in more than fifty years, and neither had the four red chrome table-and-chair sets—two on the east end of the long room, two on the other end. The glass doughnut case stretched across the length of the room, with the old cash register sitting at the far end. Pictures of the women who had run the shop in the past hung on the walls, along with old pictures of the town of Devine—from back when the railroad had come through the area and all the way up to the newest sign that had been put up to welcome folks to their small town.

Audrey ignored Sarah but stopped every few minutes to sigh loud enough to raise the dead right up from the Devine Evergreen Cemetery.

“I’m not your boss, as you have told me many times, girl,” Sarah finally said, “but you might take a word of advice here. If you will notice, there are folks coming in, and you’ve already had more than enough time to clean the front of the display case. Get a move on it, and once everyone is inside, work on the door. When they leave, you can clean it again because there will be smudges on it. Your mama wasn’t joking when she said she’d make you snip off that strand of blue hair that is sneaking out from your hairnet right now. You might want to put more muscle into work and less into pouting.”

“I’m not pouting,” Audrey snapped. “And I thought you’d be on my side.”

“Own your mistake and do the time for it. That will teach you to be accountable,” Sarah told her.

Audrey stomped her foot, tucked her hair up under the net, and went back to work. “They weren’t even my cigarettes. I don’t smoke, and I told Mama that.”

“Who did they belong to?” Sarah asked.

“I’m not a rat,” Audrey grumbled.

“Was it your whiskey?” Sarah asked. “And if so, where did you get it?”

Audrey shook her head. “Like I said . . .”

“Well, then, your friends are getting off free and probably having a good time over spring break while you are doing chores and will be getting up every morning before daylight,” Sarah told her.

“But they’re still my friends, and they wouldn’t be if I ratted them out,” Audrey answered as she finished the door.

“And, honey,” Sarah said, lowering her voice, “if they were really your friends, they would take responsibility for their own actions. They’re using you, and true friends don’t do that.”

Audrey shrugged. “It’s my life, and I’ll live it the way I want to.”

“Yep, you can, and you can learn all your lessons the hard way.” Sarah turned and went back to the kitchen.

Audrey had been a pretty baby who’d grown up into a cute teenager. She wouldn’t ever be tall, not with her genetics. Grace was barely over five feet tall, and Audrey’s father, Justin, was only about five feet, six inches—or at least, the sorry sucker had been when he was twenty-one and left Grace to raise his child alone. She’d gotten her long blonde hair from her mother, her brown eyes from Justin, and her smart mouth from her Aunt Sarah.

“I wish I’d given her something other than genes that are constantly getting her into trouble,” Sarah muttered as she picked up two more trays of doughnuts.