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

present”—he checked his rearview and both side mirrors, though his truck was the only vehicle on the road—“we should be okay. If not, I can have Tennessee put someone else on the job.”
    “And then you’ll leave?”
    He shrugged his answer. He’d already told her he was thinking about hitting the road, but the idea of his going even sooner because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut . . . He was here. She was here. She had to be satisfied with that. She had to stop looking for answers to questions put to bed long ago.
    What good would it do now to find them? she mused, staring out the window as they passed the insurance office and the art house theater. “I heard the theater was going to be renovated.”
    “Yeah. Tennessee got the job.”
    “That’s great. Wow. You’ve got to be excited.”
    “He’s excited. I won’t be here.”
    “You’re going to leave before it’s done?” she asked and glanced over, watching his pulse tic in the vein at his temple.
    “I’m just the hired help, remember?” he finally said in response.
    And as stupid as it was, she pushed. “Is that all you want to be?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I remember high school. You and Tennessee talking about doing construction together.”
    “We were kids.”
    “So were we,” she said, not sure if she was reminding him or herself of how young they’d been when they’d shared their bodies as well as pieces of their souls.
    He pulled into an angled parking spot in front of Kern’s Hardware, then shut off the truck, but made no move to get out. Instead, he stared at the steering wheel, twisting his hands around it. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You just can’t let it go. You have to keep bringing it up. You have to keep digging. What is wrong with you, Clark?”
    She stared at her hands where she’d wound her fingers together in her lap, her vision blurry, though she refused to cry. He was right about it all, but she still couldn’t answer his question. All she could do was push out of the truck and head for String Theory, hoping she hadn’t just screwed up the single best friendship she’d ever known.

    Becca spent the rest of the day in the kitchen organizing the supply shelves. Ellie was a genius when it came to baking bread but a complete disaster grouping and classifying her flours and herbs and spices. Who put cinnamon next to sage? That didn’t even make sense. Essential savory herbs were not shelved next to spices. Especially when the cinnamon alone required an entire rack. There was Chinese, Vietnamese, Ceylon, and Indonesian. There were powders and oils and sticks and bark.
    But every time Becca walked into the kitchen to help Ellie wash the mixing bowls and baking pans, or to mop the floor free of spilled flour—which she did, like, five times a day—she found the spelt flour next to the turbinado sugar and that next to the coconut oil. Honestly. The mess of bottles and bags and jars and cans and tubes and droppers had her wanting to pull out her hair. And Ellie’s hair. Which would take forever.
    Then again, Ellie didn’t think of the supplies as simply as Becca did. She was into the medicinal properties of everything as well as the culinary. Sage for respiratory health. Cinnamon for digestive upset. Becca didn’t know how the other woman knew the things she did, or why she came across as such an airhead when she was degreed and anything but. Becca wanted to punch people who made fun of her. Ellie just laughed it off.
    Becca wished she had more of Ellie’s Zen, she mused, alphabetizing the red peppercorns and the black peppercorns and the white and the green and the pink. And more of Ellie’s smarts. Ellie and Thea both were so much better about thinking first. Becca just barged in and reacted. If Thea hadn’t been there to stop her when she’d slammed her arm into Dakota Keller’s throat . . .
    She didn’t want to think about it. She couldn’t think about it. She had to