Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

L aura

“Laura!” Mom assaults me as I walk into the town medical clinic, balancing the cake box with one arm as she hugs me from the other side. “You look wonderful, hon.” One of my two moms, Marie Marshall is a cross between battle-ax and angel. Her graying brown curls riot around a face shaped just like Rory’s. Today she’s wearing a long gray open cardigan over her teal-colored scrubs.

“Hi, Mom,” I mumble, my voice muffled in her sweater. I maneuver to keep the box with the kransekake from tipping onto the floor. Score one for me. No cakes on the floor today.

“Sorry, hon.” Mom steps back, giving me space to hold the cake box with two hands again. “I just get so excited when I see you.”

“Hi, Laura.” Dr. Sieber, my mom’s boss and the town’s erstwhile general practitioner, waves to me from behind his walnut desk stacked high with medical journals I’m ninety-seven percent certain he has never read. Not from any lack of interest, but lack of time. When Dr. Sieber isn’t tending to the denizens of St. Olaf and the surrounding area, he’s fishing or biking or learning a new language at the local college. The man hasn’t stopped moving since his wife died. “What have you got there, then?”

“Your favorite.” I set the cake box on the only unadorned area of his desk—clearly my mother’s handiwork—and remove the lid with a flourish. “Ta da!”

Mom, Dr. Sieber, and Jenny Tollerston, the third member of this motley medical crew, applaud wildly. Inwardly—okay, outwardly too—I beam. Having people appreciate my work is never a bad feeling.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Laura.” Dr. Sieber leans in for a paternal pat on my shoulder. His white coat is threadbare at the elbows and shoulders, but still he wears it every day. Over the years, his blond hair has faded to white, and the lines around his eyes and mouth soften his features. He’s Daphne’s dad, but while they look similar–apart from their hair color–their personalities could not be more different. “Smells like home.”

By “home,” he doesn’t mean anywhere in Scandinavia or even across the ocean. Dr. Sieber was born in North Dakota and moved to Wisconsin for medical school. After he met his wife, a woman from Sturgeon Bay, he never left. Not even after she died, leaving him a solo parent.

“Eighteen layers of delicious,” my mother says, taking the cake knife from me.

“One problem, Laura.” Dr. Sieber crosses his arms over his chest. “You forgot the bottle of wine in the middle.”

“Did she now?” my mom replies, a playful smile on her face. She reaches into her bag and withdraws a bottle of fancy sparkling wine, fashioned like a green dress with ripples for the skirt folds.

“Thank you, Marie.” Dr. Sieber chuckles like he was Santa Claus in a past life, then wraps my mom in a hug. “You always surprise me.”

I catch Jenny’s gaze and we both roll our eyes. Every year for the last ten, this exact scene plays in this office. Everyone’s clothing and positions are slightly different, but literally nothing else has changed. It’s like my mom and Dr. Sieber wrote the script one afternoon between patients instead of doing something productive, like napping.

“Get the plates, Laura.” My mom elbows me gently in the side. “Thanks, love.”

Free to giggle now that I escaped the office, I head to the small kitchen attached to the medication room. My brother and sister and I grew up in this office, and in the small rural hospital beside it. Hiding behind Dr. Sieber’s desk with Daphne. Doing our homework after school at the small round kitchen table set with the runner Ma embroidered. Ordering pizza delivery for everyone on late nights when there was an ill patient and no means of transfer yet.

I miss it. All of it, but especially the place that used to deliver pizza. The owners packed up and moved to Arizona when their kids went off to college. I suppose that’s the fate of many small towns. As jobs ebb or opportunities shift or climate change makes the weather intolerable, the population leaves in drips and drabs.

I just never want it to happen to St. Olaf.

“Hey.” Jenny nudges me in the side as I bring down the special china plates from the cupboard above the microwave. “Did you hear there’s a new guy in town? Working at Moe’s.”

Thoughts of Jesse and his devilishly handsome scowl that mirrored the storm cloud in his gray eyes sends curls of fire up my spine. “I know. I saw him today.”

“No you didn’t! Is he as handsome as Opal Larson says? She says he has a whole young George Clooney thing going.” Her blue eyes sparkle, nearly as much as the wedding ring on her finger. Jenny is one of the many who married her high school sweetheart, went to school no more than two hours away, and moved back home to have babies and otherwise rock life.

I tear my gaze from her ring. It’s so pretty, and everything it symbolizes…I feel nauseous and hungover simultaneously, though I haven’t had anything to drink beyond water.

That’s never been my lot, no matter how hard I try. I put myself out there. I date. I do everything I can to make my partner stay. But they never do. Then I hit my mid-thirties in a small town where everyone is either too young, too old, or too alcoholic. It’s fine. I have my bakery and my rescue animals. I don’t need much more.

Though some hot sex once in a blue moon would be nice.

“I don’t know if he’s that handsome.” He is. I’m one thousand percent lying to Jenny and do not care one bit. “He’s not from around here. He’s a bit arrogant.”

“The good ones always are.” Jenny’s eyes glaze over, like she’s fantasizing and not about her husband of ten years. “Don’t get me wrong, Chet is wonderful. He’s so good with the kids. It just gets a bit old sometimes.” She pales, as though she said something amiss. “I’m sorry, Laura. I guess you don’t know.”

“Don’t worry about me.” I stack three forks on top of the plates and head back for the safety of Dr. Sieber’s office. “I’ve got Bella, Jacob, and Edward at home waiting for me.”

Jenny shakes her head. “They’re pigs, Laura.”

I shrug and set the plates beside my mom and Dr. Sieber. “Company is company.”