The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) by Alison Kent Page B

when Becca had told her about Peggy’s offer; with no capital of her own, buying the business was out of Becca’s reach. Then had come the defensiveness when Thea had co-opted the idea, turning Becca’s me into her own.
    Becca’s dejection upon learning that Peggy had made the same overture to Lena Mining had broken Thea’s heart. It was like life had chosen Becca to beat up on for some reason, and there was nothing Thea could do to reverse the bad luck that continually blew Becca’s way.
    But the look that had made all the difference was the one of hope when Thea had mentioned bringing the idea of buying the bakery to the table. That was how they did things at the house on Dragon Fire Hill. Anything affecting all of them was fodder for discussion over their evening meal.
    Yes, it was Thea’s money, but unlike the catalyst driving her to open Bread and Bean, this involved more than just Thea’s life or Thea’s man hours or Thea’s recovery from abuse. The bakery would be a group effort from the get-go, meaning an LLC or some such.
    And most of the money for the purchase would be Todd’s, so spending it for the group was sort of karma. She liked the idea of Todd funding the lives of four women who’d been treated abominably. Especially when she was one of them.
    She looked from Becca to Ellie to Frannie Charles to Frannie’s two boys, James and Robert. All five of them, six when she included herself in the count, were sitting in the big country kitchen of her house eating supper. Two of the room’s walls were taken up with white cabinets. The upper ones were glass-fronted and sparkling, except where they were covered with cardboard. Out of the dozen—six on the north wall, six on the east—she counted three intact. One was shattered completely. Several were simply cracked.
    The appliances were serviceable but secondhand, so the stove was an avocado green and the fridge a complementary harvest gold. Very seventies. Save for the one red-brick wall that on its own was quite lovely, but in the retro context was not. Ellie, once an art teacher, had blessed the pairing’s color scheme, happy to have a working kitchen, like a sandbox, to play in.
    The floor was hardwood. Solid. Scarred. In desperate need of refinishing, but Thea loved hearing footsteps falling against it. The Charles boys’ tiny little sneakers slapping. Ellie’s Birkenstocks flapping. Becca’s high-tops squeaking. Her own Keds doing the same. Supper time brought the noises together, a percussive cacophony beneath the clang of pots and pans, the ring of silver on glass.
    Tonight’s meal was boxed mac and cheese, green beans from a can, and fish sticks with both tartar sauce and ketchup. There was milk for the boys, and for everyone else a huge pitcher of sun tea that had steeped on the back porch for hours. Frannie had done the cooking, as much cooking as any of the items required, using foodstuffs she’d bought with her monthly benefits from the state.
    Frannie had set the big circular table—one Thea had found in a flea market and, with Ellie’s help, restored—with her own grandmother’s china and silverware, and linens she’d embroidered herself. They were done in an “Eat Me” and “Drink Me” theme, black thread against coral and turquoise. She sold them through the same network Thea had used to outfit Bread and Bean.
    The dishes and cutlery were among the few family heirlooms Frannie had saved from the house fire that had left her and her sons homeless—the fire her husband had set after his taking pot shots at her with his shotgun hadn’t convinced her to call off the divorce. He was still at large, which was why Frannie, James, and Robert had come to live with Thea.
    And why Frannie still flinched at every unexpected sound.
    The sounds floating through the kitchen now filled Thea with joy, and Frannie, too, judging by her expression. They were gorgeous sounds. Sounds of living. Every day made succinct in universal ways. Women