The Late Bloomers' Club Read online

  Also by Louise Miller

  The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Louise Miller

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking

  ISBN 9781101981238 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781101981252 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my sisters, Brenda and Lisa

  CONTENTS

  Also by Louise Miller

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Burnt Sugar Cake with Maple Icing

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Freckles would have smelled the change in Peggy Johnson before her car slammed into the town’s oldest white oak, but the window on his side had been rolled all the way down and the air out on Pudding Hill Road was thick with the scent of the fresh cow manure the farmer had spread over his kale field just that morning.

  Peggy had woken up before dawn like she did every day. She drank a single cup of black coffee at the kitchen table while she read the paper, then she tied an apron around her waist to protect her housedress from grease stains and got to work mixing the batter for a 1-2-3-4 cake. Once the last traces of flour had disappeared into the thick paste of sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla, Peggy released the beaters from the body of the hand mixer. She held them steady for Freckles.

  “There you go, now,” she said as he licked the beaters clean.

  By the time the cake layers came out of the oven, the sun had burned off the morning fog. Peggy pulled on her hiking boots, their leather cracked and worn, and loaded up the backseat of her car with cakes she had decorated the night before. Four in all, three layers apiece, each frosted with yellow buttercream, pink flowers piped along the edges. Peggy tucked a couple of bunched-up blankets around the boxes to encourage them to stay in place.

  “We’ll drop these off, then stop at the White Market for more sugar,” Peggy said, opening the back door for the dog. “I bet the butcher set aside a few stew bones for you.” She reached down and scratched behind his black, velvety ear, which made his back leg kick. “When we get back, I’ll take you down to the pond to cool off. Feels like it’s going to be a hot one.”

  Freckles settled on the backseat as Peggy rolled the windows down. They drove up Pudding Hill, the dog stretching his neck out as far as he could, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his cold nose, and the rich scent of mown grass. His ears flapped back as the car picked up speed, and his tags tinkled like the mobile made out of mismatched pieces of tarnished silver that Peggy had hung on the eaves of the back porch. Freckles was dreaming of rolling in the manure-caked field when he heard a gasp. He pulled his head back in to find Peggy slumped over her steering wheel as the car picked up speed. Freckles stood, sniffing the air around Peggy. With a crunch, the car struck the wide trunk of the old oak that marked the property line of the farm. Freckles’s thick black body crashed against the back of the driver’s seat, then ricocheted back, slamming against the cake boxes before sliding onto the floor.

  When he came to, the scents of blood and sugar mixed with gas and butter flooded his snout. The chime of the open door echoed across the field, punctuated by the sound of falling chunks of shattered glass. Freckles pulled himself up, placed his two front paws on the leather seat, and sniffed the back of Peggy’s head. She was leaning back, one leg hanging strangely out the open door, her clean dress now covered in bits of soft yellow cake, and her snowy hair streaked with frosting. From across the field the farmer shouted. Freckles climbed over the seat, his body stiff. He leaned over, whining as he licked Peggy’s face. He nudged his head under her hand lying splayed on the seat—a surefire way to get Peggy to pet him no matter how tired or busy she was—but it remained still.

  The howl of a siren rose and fell in the distance. The farmer was approaching, his gait shifting from a walk to a hobbled sprint. Freckles’s hackles stiffened and rose to attention as he pawed at Peggy’s still body, pressing the pads of his feet into the familiar softness of her belly.

  “Mrs. Johnson,” the farmer cried, now a few steps away.

  Freckles slid into the backseat, slipping on a greasy cake box.

  The sirens grew louder. The farmer was at Peggy’s side, frantically shouting her name. An ambulance turned off the state road onto the dirt and stopped abruptly. Two men leapt out, running toward the car.

  Freckles slipped out the open window, keeping his body low. He took one step into the woods that lined the road, then another. Behind him, he heard the rumble of men’s voices, followed by the sound of car tires kicking up rocks.

  Freckles stepped deeper into the woods.

  And then suddenly, he was running.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Some people dream of diner life, others are born into it. It was my dad’s vision to own a little breakfast-and-lunch place. He bought the original Worcester Lunch Car Company diner #723 the year I was born and lovingly restored it to its original glory. Sparkly aqua Formica counters and tables were paired with oxblood Naugahyde stools and benches. Buffalo china cups and plates stamped with the Miss Guthrie logo were special ordered. He polished the hand-stamped chrome backsplash that lined the wall separating the counter from the kitchen until it gleamed. He even managed to find replacement tiles for the black-and-white, basket-weave-patterned floor. It was my mom’s idea to add on the dining room out back, and then to extend our hours to include dinner so we could serve enough customers to actually make a living. Together my parents created a successful business and a place for themselves in the heart of the community of Guthrie, Vermont.

  I was born into it.

  As a baby, I was placed in a high chair next to the stack of Styrofoam take-out containers so my mom could work the hostess stand. When I was steady enough to sit on a stool, I spent my days at the counter drawing pictures with crayons on the back of paper place mats. During my middle-school years I ate cereal in a little two-seater booth in the back, cramming for math tests and finishing assigned reading before the regional bus honked its horn outside. When I turned twelve, my dad finally relented and allowed me to work the cash register on weekends and school vacations. I took over my mom’s hostess shift when I was thirteen, the year she started treatment for breast cancer, and have been behind the coun
ter ever since.

  Every day at the diner was pretty much the same, until Peggy the cake lady died.

  It was the first week of August, the Wednesday after the Coventry County Fair. July had been a brutal month of sticky heat that had the folks of Guthrie escaping to the glacial waters of Lake Willoughby every chance they could get. But when August arrived it brought with it the kind of dry, sunny days and crisp nights that made everyone’s heart ache with the desire to stop time. The corn was tall and heavy. Glossy red and purple heirloom tomatoes were piled high on the farmer’s market tables. The late summer days were the ones we all lived for, the reason we endured the long, snowy winters and the damp, muddy springs.

  I arrived early that morning as I always do, before the bread man delivered his plastic pallets of English muffins and loaves of sliced sandwich bread. I got there even before Charlie, the breakfast cook, who sleepily pushed through the back door and into the kitchen to heat up the griddle and crack the first flats of eggs. I propped the door open behind me so the fresh air could chase away the lingering scent of last night’s dinner special. That hour before anything begins is my favorite time of day in the Miss Guthrie Diner. Don’t get me wrong—I love the hustle of a busy breakfast shift when every Naugahyde stool is filled and the line for one of the booths stretches out the door. But there is a magic to that hour when it’s just me, wiping down the counter, placing napkin-wrapped cutlery and paper place mats at every seat. There’s a stillness that reminds me of being in the woods, where everything feels right in the world.

  The quiet lasts only an hour, of course, usually less. On that day it had taken just five minutes from the moment I had switched on the dining room lights and turned the window sign to OPEN for the counter to fill with regulars. Some came in pairs—mostly guys who drove to work together. But the majority of regulars arrived alone, reading the Coventry County Record while eating their French toast, knowing if they wanted company they could find it. Mom always said it was our job to take care of the morning people of Guthrie, and to make sure the people who served the town—the school bus driver and the folks who plowed the roads—had a good start to their day. She saw the diner as a kind of utility, as necessary as the dump and the post office, and I liked carrying on my mom’s spirit of community service and passing it on to the regulars. I kept the coffee fresh, handed out free blueberry muffins, and smiled graciously at the old men who considered a crisp dollar bill a generous tip.

  “In the window,” Charlie called from the kitchen behind me, his voice rough.

  I took a look at him. “Late night?” His beard was more scraggly than usual, his hair was a wiry mess, and the skin under his eyes was puffed like dumplings.

  “Filled in at the Bear Cub.”

  The Bear Cub, in neighboring Shelby, is the closest thing we have to a gay bar in the Northeast Kingdom. It’s the sister bar to the Black Bear Tavern here in town. I think when my dad hired Charlie, he had a daydream that Charlie and I might hit it off someday, get married, take over the family business. Dad was never crazy about Sean, my first boyfriend, who eventually became my husband, but he loved Charlie like a long-lost son.

  “Meet anyone new?”

  Charlie gave me a look that said Have I ever met anyone new at the Bear Cub? and nudged the platters of food in the window toward me. I grabbed the two plates—one Hungry Man’s Breakfast and one egg-white omelet—and carried them to the end of the counter.

  “Here you go, gentlemen,” I said, placing the plates down in front of the two customers.

  “You know what those places can do to a town, Chris,” Burt Grant was saying. He was the owner of the Guthrie Hammer and Nail, the town’s only hardware store. “Think about what a place like that could do to my business. To all of the businesses—not just mine.”

  I reached under the counter for the bottle of ketchup I knew Burt would ask for. I tried my best not to eavesdrop on conversations at the diner, but inevitably I would hear a sentence or two. I figured people wouldn’t talk about something out in public if it were truly private, although you’d be surprised. I know more than I thought I ever would about skin tags after one of the regulars had to have hers surgically removed.

  “Anything else I can get you?” I asked.

  “That’s the town bylaw, Grant. My hands are tied,” said Chris Franklin, one of the town selectmen. He smiled up at me. “That will do, sweetheart.”

  I had grown up in the diner, so I didn’t mind being called “sweetheart” by regulars like Chris who had known me since I was in pigtails—they said it with affection. Most of the folks around my parents’ age saw me as a forty-two-year-old kid. But I wasn’t crazy about being called “sweetie” or “honey” by the guys closer to my age. And by a stranger it was a different matter altogether.

  “Everything going well, Burt?” I asked. Burt was only a little older than me, but the new creases in his forehead made him look more like his dad every day. I considered giving him Chris’s Hungry Man. He looked like he needed the nourishment.

  “Can’t complain,” he said, but he wasn’t convincing.

  “Nora, in the window,” Charlie called.

  The bell on the door tinkled, and Fern, the Miss Guthrie’s most senior waitress and my oldest friend, rushed in the door. “Sorry, sorry,” she called as she pushed her way into the kitchen, trying simultaneously to take off her jacket and pull back her frizzy blond hair into a bun.

  “Just one last refill, Nora, if you don’t mind?” Sheriff Granby asked as I walked by, nudging his ceramic cup toward the edge of the counter. After I served a couple of plates of poached eggs, I returned to the sheriff with a glass pot of coffee.

  “Can I pack you up anything for later?” The sheriff and his wife had just split, and he had been taking most of his morning and evening meals at the diner ever since. I figured no one was making him lunch.

  Granby looked up from the paper. “You’re an angel. Have any of that shepherd’s pie left over from last night?”

  “Let me check.”

  I pushed through the swinging door that separated the counter from the kitchen. Charlie was scrubbing the grill with an iron brush. “Shepherd’s?” I asked. Charlie and I had developed our own language over the years, mastering the art of saying the most with the least amount of words.

  “Fridge, top right.”

  Next to the reach-in refrigerator, the back door was open, the still-cool morning air rushing in and cutting through the heat of the kitchen. I pushed plastic containers of coleslaw and pickles out of the way until I spotted the pie plate and pulled it out. Out of the corner of my eye I caught something moving in the backyard. The morning fog had lingered, softening the shape of the Dumpster, the crab apple tree, and the picnic table that I kept for the staff smoke breaks. I heard a rustle of movement through dried leaves. I squinted and pressed my nose to the screen, touching it with my tongue. Between the table and the trees I caught the flick of a white-tipped tail. A snout emerged from behind the table, and then a torso. It was a large dog, jet black with white feet and a white stripe running down his snout. His head would easily come up to my hip. He looked like a Border collie whose kibble was sprinkled with Miracle-Gro.

  “Hey, Charlie,” I called over my shoulder. “Come here. Doesn’t that look like Peggy Johnson’s dog, Freckles?”

  “Peggy the cake lady?” Charlie wiped his tortoiseshell glasses on his apron and peered out. “Nah. Freckles is brown. And curly. And fat.”

  “That was Freckles number three. I’m talking about Freckles the fourth.”

  Peggy delivered her cakes herself and she was usually accompanied by a dog or two. I had only seen the newest Freckles a couple of times when I walked by her car parked in the White Market parking lot.

  The dog sniffed the ground under the table, looking for scraps. He nosed a green crab apple on the ground and licked it.

  “That dog doesn’t eve
n have freckles,” Charlie said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and pressed the pie plate into his chest. “Pack that up for Granby. No charge.”

  * * *

  Over at the dish station, I grabbed some crumbled scraps of bacon and a soggy slice of toast and stuffed them into my apron. I pushed the screen door slowly, trying not to make a sound. Peggy Johnson’s place was miles from town, over on Hunger Mountain Road. She had been my family’s next-door neighbor for as long as I could remember, until we had to sell the place. If this was Freckles the fourth, he was far from home. Peggy loved her dogs and they were her constant companions—it was unusual to see one not by her side. Maybe he had got caught up chasing a rabbit and lost his way? It had been a banner year for rabbits. The door slipped from my fingers and snapped shut behind me, squeaking and slamming. The dog’s head shot up and he took two steps back.

  “Hey there, sweetie. It’s okay.” I dropped down into a squat and held out the toast in one hand, tossing bits of bacon with the other.

  “Come here, now, Freckles. Are you Freckles? Aren’t you a good boy?” The dog raised his muzzle in the air, sniffing in a circular motion. He took one step toward me, leaned down and inhaled the bacon on the ground, backed up, then quickly slipped behind the picnic table. With two fingers I eased my phone from my apron, careful not to get grease all over the lens, and snapped a few photos before he disappeared into the woods. I had only captured his tail and a bit of curly fringe that trimmed his back legs.

  “Hey, Nora.” Fern popped her head out the screen door. “A bus full of antiquers just pulled in.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I stood, emptying my pockets of bread scraps and bacon and tossing them toward the trees, then wiped my hands on my apron. I glanced one more time into the woods, but Freckles was nowhere to be seen.