Page 4 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
All right, Zach, of all people, knew she had something of a temper; he’d been living with her for pretty much his whole life. But they hadn’t seen and heard just how obnoxious Jack Wexler had been. She also hadn’t told them about the one-star review online, because she’d been too annoyed—as well as embarrassed. Miller’s Mercantile had few enough online reviews as it was, so Jack Wexler’s one-star had seriously lowered her overall rating. Considering she was trying—albeit not as hard as she could or even should be—to attract new business, this development was fairly worrying, and yet she knew there was nothing she could do about it.
Let it go, Jenna told herself for the umpteenth time, but the problem was, that review was still up there, and as long as it was, she knew she would feel furious—along with stupidly hurt, which made her feel even more furious. Why should a man she barely knew have that kind of power over her? She’d worked long and hard to make surenoman had that over her ever again, and it was incredibly aggravating that a stupid stranger did.
There was no winning, she reflected gloomily. She just hoped Jack Wexler steered clear of her, because she was certainly going to steer clear of him.
Her friend Annie Lyman was already seated in a deep vinyl booth in Starr’s Fall’s only diner when Jenna arrived. Rhonda, the owner, pouring coffee from behind the counter, gave Jenna a wink and a wave as she came in.
“The usual for you girls?” she called, and Jenna smiled a little tiredly.
Her usual was a gin and tonic and she felt she was going to need it. “Thanks, Rhonda,” she called back, and slid in the booth opposite Annie, who was perusing the menu avidly, even though Jenna was pretty sure she also ordered the same thing every time—a double bacon cheeseburger with extra fries.
“Hey,” she said gently. “How are you?” Annie’s mom Barb had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s just over a year ago, and she’d been steadily declining ever since. It was heartbreaking to watch her friend’s mother slowly but surely lose her abilities—fine motor skills had gone first, then speech, and then walking. She’d moved into hospice care just a few weeks back, a pale shadow of herself, although amazingly still in good spirits. The last time Jenna had visited her, Barb hadn’t been able to speak or even lift her head from the pillow, but she’d smiled, and that beatific curving of her lips had just about broken Jenna’s heart. The palliative nurses thought it was likely to be no more than a matter of months.
Jenna knew Annie was finding it incredibly tough. She and Barb had run Lyman Orchards together for the last ten years, ever since her dad had died. They were best friends as much as they were mother and daughter; Annie had always been fiercely protective of Barb, and watching her suffer without being able to do anything about it had to be tearing her apart.
“Well, you know.” Annie answered Jenna’s gentle question as she pursed her lips, her gaze fixed on the menu. “Could be better, could be worse, I guess.” Her lips trembled for a second until she pressed them together. “It is what it is.”
Grief, Jenna thought, had to be hard no matter what form it came in, or how much time you had to prepare yourself for it. Not that she’d experienced this particular kind of grief; her own parents were fit and well, living in Florida, having retired from running Miller’s Mercantile four years ago. And not that she’d grieve them all that terribly if they were gone, which was a horrible way to think, but there it was.
They’d been emotionally absent from her life for a long time now. There had been no big drama or hostility, just what had felt like a lukewarm love on their part, that had drifted into a vague indifference on both sides as she’d grown older. Her parents had had far more interest in each other and their business than the two children they’d raised; at least it had always felt that way to Jenna, and never more so than when she’d limped back from New York, a shadow of herself, and her parents hadn’t even noticed how much she’d been hurting.
She grieved the relationship she’d never had with them, she supposed, but that was a different kind of pain, more like a scar than a wound, and one she was well used to.
“Tell me something funny that happened to you today,” Annie commanded abruptly. When she looked up from the menu, her eyes gleamed with unshed tears and Jenna’s heart ached for her. She’d been friends with Annie since she’d been tiny; although Annie was a few years older than her, they’d always got along, and when they’d both settled in Starr’s Fall, two decidedly single women in their thirties, they’d developed an even stronger bond. Although Annie wasn’t single anymore, Jenna reminded herself a little morosely. She’d starting dating Mike the Mechanic back in April; you could spot them a mile away, as Mike was six four and Annie nearing six feet, both with full heads of wild gray hair. They were simultaneously the most improbable and perfect couple ever.
“Something funny…?” she repeated musingly. The only thing Jenna could think about that happened today was her unfortunate encounter with Jack Wexler, and that definitelyhadn’tbeen funny. But maybe she could make it funny, for her friend’s sake. “Well,” she began, propping her elbows on the scarred table, “I met the biggest jackass in all of northwestern Connecticut today. Does that count as funny?”
“Only if he did something stupid rather than annoying,” Annie quipped with a wobbly smile. “Did he?”
“If you count asking for smoked salmon in Miller’s Mercantile as stupid, then yes. He wanted it for his toasted sourdough, would you believe?”
Annie let out a gurgle of laughter. “Toasted sourdough! Did he seriously say that?”
Jenna nodded, heartened by Annie’s incredulity. “Yup.”
“That’s both stupidandannoying,” Annie decided. “Was he rude about it?”
“Sorude,” Jenna replied decisively. She found she was enjoying this retelling of the whole Jack Wexler episode—instead of coming across furious and, well,shrewish, she re-imagined herself having risen above it… for Annie’s sake. “This guy practically has privilege tattooed on his forehead,” she continued, settling into her story. “You should have seen the clothes he was wearing—boat shoes, the popped collar, the Rolex, the sweater thrown over his shoulders.Andhe drives a Porsche. Like, try not to be so basic, dude. Wegetyou’re rich. You don’t need to scream it.”
“Good grief.” Annie shook her head, her eyes glinting with amusement, which made Jenna feel a whole lot better. She would gladly throw Jack Wexler to the wolves for her friend’s sake, and after all, hadn’t he done the same thing to her, by writing that horrible review? The memory of it still made her burn, even as she was trying to make light of the whole thing for Annie.
“So did he just storm out of the store or what?” Annie asked.
“He bought some cornflakes because he said he couldn’t be bothered to go all the way to Litchfield. But he kept calling the store ‘this place’ like it was some dirt-floored hovel, and he told me he’d never come back. He also called me ashrew, before he slammed the door on the way out and roared off in his Porsche.”
She didn’t actually know if he’d roared off or not, but it sounded about right.
Annie shook her head, marveling at Jack Wexler’s sheer nerve. “A shrew? Seriously? What a jerk.”
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Jenna continued, leaning forward. The wound was still raw, but she needed to tell someone, and Annie was her best friend. “He wrote a one-star review on Google, absolutely trashing the place. Andhehad been the rude one.”
Annie’s eyes widened. “Okay, now he sounds like a total ass,” she stated definitively. “Nothing funny about that. Is he here on vacation?”
For a second Jenna hesitated, as she recalled, slightly uncomfortably, that Jack Wexlerlivedin Starr’s Fall now. He was, more or less, her neighbor, and she wasn’t one to create bad blood.
But he’d started it, and he’d written that review… even if she’d been a little rude in return.
“He just moved here,” she admitted. “Unfortunately.”
