Sweet Gone South by Alicia Hunter Pace Read Free Book Online Page A

finish her degree.
    She took a job at a folk art gallery to pay for her failed attempt at glass blowing.
    Then her grandfather died and she’d driven to Alabama for the funeral.
    “Come back to Virginia with us,” her mother had said. “We’ll figure something out.”
    “Come home,” her daddy had said. “You can go to work for me until we figure something out.” (
Figure something out
translated to
Until we can talk you into going back to school.)
    “Stay here with me,” her grandmother had said. “You don’t have to do anything.”
    So she stayed in Merritt and, for a month, helped her grandmother grieve and make fudge, chocolate stars, and toffee. It had been bliss. If you followed the directions and cooked the syrup to the right temperature, candy happened. It was a sure thing.
    Late one night over a bottle of wine and platter of cheese and fruit, her grandmother had said, “Do you want to learn to make candy?”
    “I’ve been making candy,” Lanie said.
    “You’ve been making the same homey, old-fashioned candy I make. But do you want to be a real confectioner?” Clarice Heaven asked. “A master chocolatier?”
    “I want to stay here with you and make fudge,” Lanie said.
    “You mean hide.” Clarice poured them both another glass of wine.
    “Hiding is a fine thing, if you ask me.”
    “I didn’t,” Clarice pointed out. “I asked you if you wanted to be a master chocolatier.”
    Lanie’s grandfather had been raised in the business but had no passion for it. Oddly, his young wife had, and worked alongside her mother-in-law, first in the older woman’s house, and later in the shop they opened together. History had repeated itself. Lanie’s father had no interest in the candy shop, but became an accountant instead.
    “When your great-grandmother died, she left Heavenly Confections solely to me. She made me promise to pass it on to someone who cared or close it down.” Clarice might as well have said,
And it can be yours, if you will only take an interest.
    “Yes,” Lanie said. “I want to be a real confectioner.” Because, after all, why not?
    Clarice got her an apprenticeship with a master chocolatier in his Jackson, Mississippi shop and sent her to professional culinary classes. It was hard work, but Lanie found it soothing. There was comfort to be found in a job where the mistakes could be eaten or melted away.
    Though she was good at it, Lanie wondered every day if she would quit, like she had everything else.
    Then, thirteen months later, Lanie’s grandmother sent for her. Clarice had been diagnosed with leukemia and six weeks later, the shop was Lanie’s.
    In her last days, Clarice had advised Lanie to make the shop her own, to put her personal mark on it. Lanie had set about doing just that and, to her surprise, began to feel like a success.
    She finished the renovations her grandmother had barely started, redecorated the shop, and started the online business. She’d done well, but that didn’t fill her empty arms. And, if she was going to be completely honest, a child wasn’t the only thing she longed for. If only there was someone to hold and kiss her sometimes. But that couldn’t happen because it didn’t end with holding and kissing and she couldn’t bear what would follow. She had failed at so many things and now that she had found the one thing she was good at, she tried not to think about what she couldn’t do, what she couldn’t have.
    But she had good friends who loved her and would continue to love her even if they learned of her shameful secret. And now she had Luke Avery across the hall and Emma Avery to make her smile. It wouldn’t last, but what did?
    • • •
    “What a morning!” Lanie high-fived her newest employee. She couldn’t quite believe her luck at hiring Phillip Pearce. He’d just finished his MBA and wanted to work at a small successful business to gain experience. Not only was he cheerful and high energy, he’d worked in a Starbuck’s