She smiled slowly. “I see. Hang tight. Let me get you some stuff. Abby, cover the front for a minute for me, will you?”
I moved away from the register toward the bakery displaycase, but there was no line behind me. It was slow at the moment, but I knew that wouldn’t last.
A few minutes later, Gracie returned with a brown Sweet Teeth bakery bag and handed it to me. I peered inside. Ingredients, plus a baking loaf pan.
“I’ve given you everything you need except for my recipe,” she said. “That’s a bakery secret.”
I laughed and hugged her. “No worries. I’ll pick Muddy’s brain.”
“If I remember correctly, Brooks doesn’t eat sweets,” she said.
“I’m trying something.” With a wave, I took my stash and left.
I sat on one of the sidewalk benches and ate my croissant. The chocolatey drink was delicious, and the sugar gave me a little jolt. I was about to get up and head back to the apartment when Lucy stepped out of General Merc and pointed at me.
“You,” she said.
“Me what?”
“Come in here. I want to talk to you.”
I rose from the bench, and she held the door as I sidled past her with both hands full. She closed the door behind us and flipped the lock.
The phone rang.
With a sigh, she said, “I’ll be just a minute.”
“Take your time,” I said as she went to answer the phone in the back room.
I wandered around the store that sold everything from socks to camping gear and even raw milk. Stopping at the far wall, I studied a series of black and white photos.
Lucy’s conversation was brief, and I heard her steps as she came to stand next to me.
“In the 1800s, Huckleberry Hill formed during the silverrush here in North Idaho. This building used to be the trading post.”
Silver Street had once been a dirt road. The brick and wooden structures were newly erected and freshly painted. As I moved through the photos, I watched the street evolve from dirt to brick to asphalt, the buildings slowly modernizing and the signs changing. The passage of time was stamped on each picture.
“Cool, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.
“Very cool,” I agreed. “How did you become the owner of General Merc?”
“Family business,” she said with a smile. “As most things are in this town. This store belonged to my grandparents, then my parents, then me and my husband. Edwin was Eloise and Edna’s older brother.”
“Oh.” I smiled softly. “They’re your sisters-in-law. That makes so much more sense now.”
“What does?”
“You and Eloise and your closeness.”
“Eloise and I were in the same grade. Edna was a few years above us, and then Edwin a few years above her,” Lucy explained.
She waved me toward another frame and picked it up off the wall and held it out to me. “These were my grandparents. Can you believe it? They were in their thirties in this photo.”
I looked at their faces in the sepia-toned photograph. Their skin wrinkled and lined from the hardships of the time.
“Stoic,” she went on. “So stoic. My dad was like that too. Mom made it her mission to make him laugh.”
Lucy put the photo back on the wall and then took the one next to it off the hook and showed me. “See? Dad not smiling, Mom grinning like a fool.”
