The Sweet Life (Cape Cod Creamery Book #1)

Suzanne Woods Fisher

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493436286
• Print ISBN:
  9780800739478

Welcome to summer on Cape Cod--a place where the sweet life just might be possible

Dawn Dixon can't believe she's on a groomless honeymoon on beautiful Cape Cod . . . with her mother. She was supposed to be here with Kevin, the man she loves. Still, Mom was the right choice. Dawn's heart may have been broken, but Marnie Dixon is in need of mending as well.

But Mom--being Mom--creates a mess when, on a whim, she buys a run-down ice cream shop in the town's tightly regulated historic district with big plans to fix it up. She's never remodeled anything. And she's never even made ice cream!

Dawn knows she has to stay and fix this fiasco. But her mother's money pit ice cream shop may have created a chance for a happy ending . . . one Dawn could never have expected.

"This deliciously concocted novel is a charming start to a sure to satisfy series."--Booklist

Chapter
One

Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream straight from the carton how she’s doing.

—Anonymous

Needham, Massachusetts
Thursday, February 6

Dawn parked in front of her childhood home in Needham but couldn’t make herself get out of the car. For this brief moment, the terrible news belonged only to her. As soon as she told someone, especially her mom, it would make it somehow more real. More true.

Maybe it wasn’t real. She reviewed the conversation she’d had with Kevin last night. Was it possible that he’d suffered from premarital jitters? Just a case of cold feet. Cold, cold feet.

Tears flooded Dawn’s eyes again. It wasn’t just cold feet. Kevin said he wasn’t sure he was in love with Dawn, not the way he thought he should be. Or the way he used to be. She looked around the car for a clean tissue, but all she could find were scrunched-up soggy ones. How in the world did she end up in a mess like this? Dawn Dixon was known as a levelheaded, objective, logical woman. Her nickname was Teflon Dawn. She could handle anything. Prepared for any crisis. Yet she’d missed Kevin’s growing vacillation about getting married.

The front door opened and Mom stood at the threshold, the obvious question on her face. Why had Dawn come home, to Needham, on a weekday when she should’ve been at work in Boston? Dawn dreaded this conversation. Calling off the wedding, after all her mom had done to make it unique and one-of-a-kind, would devastate her too. Dawn thought of the hours her mother had spent making origami doves that would hang from the enormous and expensive rented tent.

Another image of Kevin popped into her head—one from just a few weeks ago. They were at the wedding venue to finalize some details. Dawn and her mom were talking to the wedding event planner. Like always, her mom had some new ideas, and the wedding event planner was listening with rapt, wide-eyed interest—Marnie Dixon had that effect on creative types. It was like opening a shaken can of soda pop and the fizz spilled everywhere. Dawn turned to ask Kevin a question, but he had slipped away. She found him close to the bay, facing the water. As she approached, he turned to her, his sunglasses hiding his eyes.

Something was off, she thought. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine. Just thinking about things.”

Things. Like canceling their wedding. Their marriage. Their happily ever after. Those kinds of things.

Gag. Dawn felt queasy, thinking of what a cliché she’d become. Jilted. Just two months before the wedding. Maybe not left at the altar, but pretty darn close.

Mom stood on the threshold, arms folded against her chest. Dawn slowly got out of the car and closed the door. Steeling herself, she walked up the brick-lined path. “Mom,” she said, her voice breaking. “There’s something we have to talk about.”

“She told you, didn’t she?”

Dawn jerked her head up.

“I told her not to tell anyone. Blabbermouth. That’s what she is. That’s what I’m going to call her from now on. Maeve the Blabbermouth.”

“Aunt Maeve?” Dawn scrunched up her face. “Maeve told me—”

“I didn’t want anyone to know. At least not until after the wedding. I just wanted to get this surgery taken care of. I don’t want you to worry, honey. It was caught early. I promise. That’s the thing about breast cancer. Catch it quick and take care of it. So I did. And I have plenty of time before the wedding for treatment. The doctor promised. Come April twelfth, I’ll be just fine. I hope Maeve didn’t get it wrong and make it sound like something worse than it was. I’m sure she meant well, but she’s in big trouble.”

“You have . . . breast cancer?” Dawn’s voice shook and broke and then stopped.

“Had. It’s gone. I’m fine, honey. I promise.”

For one dreadful, disorienting second, Dawn’s mind emptied, stilled. Then denial roared in—loud and large. No! No way. Not my mom.

“Caught early. Taken care of. Gone.” She snapped her fingers, like it was no big deal.

But it was a big deal. “When did you find out?”

“A month or so ago, I had a routine mammogram—and you know how much I hate going to doctors—but I went. And they called me back in.” She shrugged. “That happens. I wasn’t concerned. Not until they wanted the ultrasound. Then the biopsy.”

“Biopsy?”

“Yes. On the day you were getting your makeup done for the wedding. You didn’t want me there, remember? You said I would get in the way.”

“I said you would turn me into someone I didn’t recognize.”

“Well, it all worked out, because that was the day of the biopsy. And then things happened fast, honey. Surgeon, oncologist, boom. Surgery. They move fast when they find cancer.”

“When?”

“A week ago.”

“Mom . . .”

“I know, I know. Maybe I should have told you, but I just want this wedding to be perfect. I was going to tell you after you got back from the honeymoon. I promise. I’m not trying to hide anything from you.”

“You had surgery and didn’t tell me?”

“I left a letter for you that Maeve was supposed to give you . . . just in case something went wrong.”

“But . . . how are you feeling?”

“Not bad. A little sore. Like I don’t want anyone to accidentally bump into me kind of sore. But relieved. And grateful. I had good doctors who helped me make decisions.”

“All alone? You didn’t talk to anyone else?”

“I told Maeve about the surgery. And she took me to and from the hospital. She’s brought me food and checked on me. I suppose I will forgive her, eventually. But I really didn’t want you to know about any of this yet. I was so clear with her about that. What is the point of having a best friend if they go behind your back and tell your daughter that kind of news . . . right before her wedding?”

“Mom. Stop talking and listen to me. Kevin doesn’t want to marry me. There isn’t going to be a wedding.”

Mom finally stopped talking.

There wasn’t going to be a wedding. And her mom had cancer. Dawn and her mom stared at each other in a mixture of shock and disbelief.

● ● ●

There wasn’t much in life that could knock Marnie Dixon down, but seeing her daughter sit at the kitchen table, head in hands, weeping, did the job. Her friend Maeve always said that mothers felt whatever pain their child felt, only magnified. Marnie jumped up, got a box of tissues to set on the table between them, and pulled out one for Dawn and another for her.

Dawn rarely cried, even as a little girl. When she was learning to walk, she would fall, pick herself up, and try again. That was Dawn. Philip used to say that their daughter was born accepting the fact that life would require grit and determination.

Dazed, Marnie dabbed her eyes, rose again, and went to get two cups of coffee. She filled them, then remembered they’d run out of coffee creamer. A brilliant idea struck. She opened the freezer and rummaged for a container of vanilla ice cream. She dropped a big spoonful of it into each mug and handed one to Dawn, who peered vaguely at the melting lumps.

“Everything’s better with ice cream,” Marnie said. She slipped into the chair next to her. “Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.” The timer on her phone went off and she jumped up to take her pain pills. Dawn sat at the kitchen table, watching her with worried eyes. “I’m fine, honey. I really am. This is just a little blip on the radar.”

“Mom, please sit down.”

Right. Marnie needed to settle. She sat in the chair opposite Dawn and put both hands around the warm coffee mug. “Let’s talk about your wedding.”

“I keep trying to tell you. There is no wedding.”

“But . . . what are the chances that Kevin just has a bad case of pre-wedding jitters?” Dawn’s eyes filled with tears again. That should have told Marnie, right there, all she needed to know. Those beautiful blue eyes of Dawn’s, they were bottomless pools of sadness.

“Last night, Kevin came over to help me address wedding invitations. I was showing him how to put the stamp on just so.” Dawn took a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a minute.

Marnie sighed. “Gorgeous stamps,” she muttered. She’d designed them herself—two Eastern Bluebirds, building a nest—to complement the avian-themed wedding. Marnie loved birds.

“When I handed him the stamps, he held them in his hand and said he just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just showed him how to do it again. Then he said that he knew how to put a stamp on. What he couldn’t do—” Her voice choked up. She reached for another tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “He said he couldn’t marry me.”

“Why? What reason did he give?”

“He said he didn’t think he loved me. Not the way he thought he should.”

“That’s not possible! Kevin’s loved you since the first time he laid eyes on you.” Could there be another woman? Marnie didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to think it. After all, this was Kevin—nearly a son to her. He even spoke at Philip’s memorial service—he was that much a part of their family tapestry. There was hardly a picture in the family albums that he wasn’t in.

They’d known Kevin since he was fourteen years old, when his father accepted the call to be the senior pastor at their local church and moved his family to Needham. Kevin and Dawn met in youth group and shared a common circle of church friends. They started to date in their junior year of high school, went to the same college, dating steadily throughout all four years. They were the perfect couple, both immensely sensible and well suited. No drama, not ever. As Dawn and Kevin graduated from college, everyone expected they’d get engaged. Ever reasonable, they decided to wait a few years, to get work experience, live with friends in Boston, and not miss out on any young adult experience. That’s exactly what they did. Two years passed, three, then five. Getting engaged was always the plan . . . someday.

But then Philip died, suddenly and unexpectedly, and everything changed. Everything. Kevin proposed, Dawn accepted, and elaborate wedding plans got underway.

Dawn picked up her mug and crossed the kitchen to the coffee-maker. She refilled her coffee and spooned more ice cream into the mug, then took a spoonful straight from the carton and ate it. Marnie noticed how Dawn’s shoulders slumped in that way they had after Philip died, and her heart ached for her daughter. Dawn brooded, internalized every blessed thing, whereas Marnie shared every thought and feeling. Even now, Marnie had a dozen questions she wanted to ask but prudence kept her quiet. She needed to let Dawn reveal what she wanted to, and when. A lifetime of experience had taught her that if she asked too much, Dawn shut down.

“Looking back, I can see now that there were signs.” Dawn returned to sit at the table, hands gripped tightly around the mug. “He never had any opinions about the wedding. I tried to get him interested, but he just kept deferring. He would say, ‘You and your mom can make that call.’” She took a sip of coffee. “I thought he was just accommodating us, but now I realize he didn’t want to be a part of it.”

“So you think it was the choices of the wedding that caused this?” And if that were true, Marnie felt furious with him. He was a grown man, after all. He could have spoken up at any time.

On the heels of anger came guilt. The wedding, she admitted, was teetering toward over-the-top. Perhaps a tiny bit more than Dawn had asked for, definitely more than Kevin wanted. When they first got engaged, he said he’d always wanted a wedding on the beach with only family attending. Ridiculous! Imagine Dawn’s wedding dress train dragged along the sand. For goodness’ sakes, Dawn was an only child who had recently lost her father. Why shouldn’t she have the wedding of her dreams?

Dawn stared into her mug. “I don’t know. I just know that things haven’t been easy between us, not like they used to be, ever since . . .”

“Since when?”

She sighed and looked up. “That’s what I don’t know.” She covered her face. “It’s so humiliating. We have all the same friends. I will forever be known as the girl who was left at the altar.”

“True friends aren’t like that.”

Dawn ran a hand through her hair. On a typical workday, her long red hair would be tightly pulled back and pinned, out of the way. She tried to look older than her years. Marnie thought that was silly. Dawn oozed such confidence and self-assurance that people had always thought she was a decade older than she was.

Today, though, wasn’t a typical day. Dawn’s thick tangled hair looked like it hadn’t been combed recently. Dark circles rimmed her eyes. “This morning he sent a text asking to talk again tonight.”

“Maybe—”

“No, Mom. No maybes. The wedding is off. That much, I’m sure of. I gave him the ring back.”

Marnie’s eyes slipped to Dawn’s left hand. The ring—one that had belonged to Kevin’s grandmother—was gone.

“We’re only going to talk about how to divide up the cancelations. In his text, he said he would help call vendors. He’d make as many calls as needed.”

Marnie sat back in her chair. “So he’s really serious about this.”

Dawn nodded. Another tear escaped and she wiped it off her cheek. “Dead serious.”

Okay. Okay, then. Marnie jumped up and grabbed the wedding notebook. “I can handle everything, Dawn. You don’t have to do a thing. Maeve can help. We’ll take care of everything, sweetheart.”

Dawn looked a little bewildered. “Hold it. Slow down. I know you can pivot on a dime, but I can’t move quite that fast. Besides, Kevin is the one who is calling this wedding off. He offered to ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Novels by Suzanne Woods Fisher
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Cast of Chacters
• Glossary of Ice Cream Making
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Questions for Discussion
• Author’s Note
• Sneak Peek of Book 2 in the Series
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Back Ads
• Back Cover