Jade’s heart hammered against her ribs. It was over. Cecily had presented a case built of cold, hard, irrefutable logic. How could she possibly fight that with a story about fruitcake? The old panic, the familiar flight instinct, seized her. Run. Sell the building. Pack your bags. Prove them all right.
Then she felt it again. The steady pressure of Leo’s shoulder against hers. His thumb brushing her hand. We face it together.
She took a deep, shaky breath. She was not the girl who ran. Not anymore.
“Thank you, Cecily,” Mayor Whitcomb said weakly. “Now… Ms. Jade Bennett, would you care to respond?”
This was it.
Leo squeezed her hand once, a quick, firm pressure. You’ve got this.
Jade stood, her legs feeling like over-whipped meringue. She walked to the podium, placing the bakery box gently on its surface. Behind her, she heard Leo stand and move toward the side wall. She didn’t look at her notes. She didn’t even look at Cecily. She looked out at the faces in the crowd—at Mabel’s unwavering belief, at Felicity’s terrified encouragement, at the genuine, worried curiosity of her neighbors.
“Ms. Glick is right,” Jade began, her voice surprisingly clear. A confused murmur rippled through the room. “She’s right about the codes. She knows it will cost tens of thousands that we don’t have. She knows that if we close the bakery now, we will never be able to make that money. She’s right that on paper this looks impossible. The law isn’t sentimental. But Frost Pine Ridge is.”
She paused, letting her own words hang in the air. “I’m not here to argue about wiring or ventilation. I’m here to talk about history. Our history.”
She lifted the lid off the box. A warm, spicy scent—of candied ginger, rum-soaked cherries, cinnamon, and a hundred years of stubborn pride—wafted into the room. She lifted the fruitcake out and set it on the podium. It was a beautiful, burnished loaf, studded with jewel-toned fruits and glazed to a perfect shine.
“This is a fruitcake,” she said simply. “But it’s also a story. In 1928, two of the finest bakers this town has ever known entered the annual Frost Pine Ridge Holiday Bake-Off. One was my great-grandmother, Eleanor Bennett. The other was a woman named Constance Glick.”
She saw a flicker of something in Cecily’s eyes. A crack in the perfect icy facade.
“They were both brilliant,” Jade continued, her voice gaining strength. “Eleanor was an innovator. She made a ten-fruit holiday fruitcake that was a work of art. Constance was a purist. Her spiced apple loaf was, by all accounts, a masterclass in elegant simplicity. They were rivals, yes. But they were rivals because they were equals. They pushed each other to be better. They made this town’s baking culture what it is today.”
She let her gaze drift from face to face in the crowd. “The judges gave the blue ribbon to Eleanor. And Constance… Constance felt robbed. Humiliated. So she walked away. A rivalry that had made them both stronger ended with one of them leaving. And a story that should have been about two brilliant women became a story about a winner and a loser. A story about a feud.”
She looked directly at Cecily now, her voice softening. “A story that has been passed down for nearly a hundred years. A story that I think has cost this town enough.”
Cecily sat rigid in her chair, her face a pale, unreadable mask.
“Ms. Glick is right,” Jade said again. “The law doesn’t have room for sentiment. But a community does. A community has room for new stories. So here’s mine.”
She gestured to the loaf on the podium. "Last night, I recreated both recipes from the original contest. Eleanor's ten-fruit masterpiece and Constance's spiced apple loaf. And then I combined them."
She paused, thinking of that smudged ingredient she and Mabel had puzzled over in the late-night kitchen. Whatever that missing tenth ingredient had been, it must have been what made Eleanor's original truly extraordinary—the thing Mabel could never replicate. But combining Constance's elegant spice blend and gentler technique with Eleanor's innovation had created something even better. Something neither woman could have achieved alone.
"This fruitcake honors both women," she continued. "Eleanor's innovation and Constance's elegant restraint. The best of both legacies."
From the side of the room, Leo stepped forward, and Jade’s breath caught. He was carrying something wrapped in cloth—something she recognized immediately.
The plaque.
Her great-grandmother’s prize from that first contest, the one that had hung behind the bakery counter for nearly a century. Leo unwrapped it carefully and held it up for the room to see.
But it was different now.
The original engraving was still there: Eleanor Bennett - First Prize, Holiday Bake-Off, 1928. But below it, in fresh golden letters that gleamed under the fluorescent lights, new words had been added: In Honor of Constance Glick - Whose Artistry Made Excellence Possible.
A collective gasp went through the room. Jade saw Cecily’s hand fly to her mouth, her eyes suddenly bright with unshed tears.
“From this day forward,” Jade announced, her voice ringing with clarity, “if you’ll allow it, Sugar Pine Sweets will be selling a new holiday specialty. It will be called the Bennett-Glick Legacy Fruitcake. A cake that chooses partnership over rivalry. A cake that honors both women who made this town’s baking tradition what it is.”
She took a breath, steeling herself for the final move.
“And one hundred percent of the profits from the sale of this cake will be donated to fund a new wing for the Frost Pine Ridge Historical Society. A wing dedicated to preserving the stories of the women who built this community.”
The silence that followed was thick with shock. Jade had weaponized Cecily’s own passion—her obsession with the Historical Society, her pride in her family legacy.
