Page 61 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

“Fine. I’ll be there in a few. Whose turn is it tonight, anyhow?”

“I think Posey’s,” she said.

“Oh, goodie.” Posey always picked something chocolatey for our snack. “I’ll see you in a few.”

Libby’s store was only a few steps away from Town Hall. As I made the brief walk, I considered asking the camera crew to come shoot at one of our meetings. After all, if I was going for unique, there wasn’t really much that could match the Libbies. Then again, the group was very rarely sober. Or appropriate enough for prime time television. And it wasn’t exactly easy to explain what we were or how we got our name.

I imagined myself trying to tell the producers about it. “See, we started as a book club. The Lilac Bay Book Broads or the L.B.B.B. And then we decided to try baking at our meetings, because no one really cared about the books—and that was another B. But then we realized we were doing a lot more drinking than talking about books or baking so we added another B for booze and that just seemed out of hand. So we shortened it to the Libbies, since we meet at Libby’s store. What’s so confusing about that?”

No, all in all it was probably better not to show the producers a Libbies meeting. Besides, it was a funny thing about booze and these women. Once they got a few drinks in them, they became downright bawdy. Present company excluded, of course.

Libby’s place was only just starting to fill up when I arrived. I said hello to a few friends—Iris was there already, along with Sherry and Margaret, a friend of Posey’s who worked at the Island School. No sign of Jenny yet, so I grabbed myself a glass of wine from the counter and mingled a bit.

Of course, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was the show. People were still buzzing from seeing themselves on TV. “That horrible ex husband of mine, you know, Barrry,” Denise was saying in a low voice. “Do you know he had the gall to call me after the show aired? He said I looked great, but I know he’s just trying to get close to me because he hopes I’ll invite him up. Such an asshole.” For all she said about her ex being an asshole, she sounded pretty damn pleased with herself.

“I can’t believe they actually chose my interview to show,” Jill was saying, a smug little smile on her face. “I mean, out of everyone on the island, all the people they could have chosen, they picked me! What are the odds?”

“She helped out the odds by undoing the top three buttons of her shirt,” Libby muttered, passing me in the other direction. “Jenny just walked in,” she added, before being swallowed up by the crowd of chit-chatting women.

It was easy enough to find my friend—I was, after all, taller than everyone else in the room. “Jenny,” I called, pushing my way through. “Over here.”

Her face lit up in relief when she saw me, and I felt a pang for her. Would she always be this nervous out in crowds? I hoped not.She just needs more practice,I told myself as I reached her side.

“How are you?”

“Good!” she said brightly, her eyes darting around nervously. “I’m so glad you asked me to come.”

“You might be regretting that by the end of the night,” Iris said, joining us. “I just saw my cousin come in with her supplies. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be one of our more successful attempts.”

“Worse than the time we forgot the cupcakes were in the oven and nearly burned the store down?”

Iris made a face. “I mean, she said something aboutkale.”

A few minutes later we were all seated around tables in the tasting room behind Libby’s store. She hosted wine tasting for some of the biggest wineries down on the Leelanau Peninsula in this room. Which, come to think of it, was a pretty good outing to show the camera crew. Our proximity to some of the best wine in the Midwest was definitely one of the draws of the island.

Unfortunately, we’d be having nothing so appealing as a wine tasting that night. As Posey passed around ingredients, I started to get the feeling that Iris had most definitely been right.

“Excuse me,” Sherry called from a table on the far side of the room. “I thought you said we were making your grandmother’s famous cherry fudge cookies.”

“We’re making a recipeinspiredby her cherry fudge cookies,” Posey corrected in her happy little voice.

“Then what in the hell are these bean sprouts doing on my table?”

“Sherry, those aren’t bean sprouts,” Posey said. “They’re mung beans!”

“Explain yourself,” Cora Hanson said in a dark voice, glaring at something that looked like caviar on her table but I was pretty sure Posey had called chia seeds.

“We’re doing a healthy makeover!” Posey said. “I figured since we’re all going to have a bunch of opportunities to be on TV in the next few weeks, we probably all want to be looking our best. And the best way to do that is get our diets healthy!”

No one in the room spoke. We were all too busy staring at Posey in horror. The thing was, Rose Powell’s cherry fudge cookies were legendary. You didn’t just mess with something like that, television cameras or not.

“I’m going to need some liquor to get me through this,” Sherry sighed. “What did you bring to drink?”

From a bag, Posey pulled out several gallon jugs of a greenish pale liquid. “Green tea!”

“And what did you bring to put in the green tea?” Libby asked.

“I have honey and agave nectar to sweeten it and—”