Peppermint Wind - ProloguePeppermint Wind: Prologue He'd been waffling about tonight. He laid awake in bed, gazing into the five illusionary blades of the three-bladed ceiling fan, playing ping-pong with his brain, until Rosie decided for him. The infant's burbling cry rattled the apartment's aging yellow walls. He snapped up at the waist, palms suddenly flat against the mattress. His eyes whipped to Bridgette, coiled up fetally beneath the lumpy contours of the blanket. The moon and streetlights from the window illuminated the moppy spread of her curls across the pillow, her face cut off at the nose by her coverings. Her dreams kept her to themselves. Very well,
NNWM: Peppermint Wind, Ch. 1Chapter 1 Appropriately, the harsh cluster of lights was like a drill, boring into the depths of his mind. Kane blinked into the halogen glare. "Now—now hold on jus' a second, Doc," he said. The doctor dutifully held, with a tiny, terrifyingly sharp instrument dangling beneath his latex fingers. "How many cavities did y'say again? Maybe I misheard you…" "Thirteen. That doesn't really sound too much like any other number, does it?" "Thirteen? Doc, you gotta be kiddin' me! Thirteen!—Wait, you—you're countin' the ones left over from when I was a kid, right? The ones with fillin's already in and such?" "Thirteen new
NaNo: Peppermint Wind: Ch. 2Chapter 2 Their section of town was born of hardy men who ate bricks and sweated concrete. The houses had seen bulldozers and earth-movers passing by on the street in front of them, but none of them had ever stopped in to say hello. A few pavers had dropped by to give them parking lots, but they had not dawdled. The pillars holding up their porches were haphazard with good old-fashioned human error, and the wooden doors were worn shiny with time. The asphalt in front was busy with wheels, but the buildings behind nostalgically longed for the days when a horse was as common as a Ford. Law firms and insurance companies had snatched up the h
NaNo: Peppermint Wind: Ch. 3Chapter 3 Was the silence inside a result of the door, or had everyone in the other room gone quiet with confusion? Kane gave an eye-flick to Pansy, straight-backed in front of her computer. She gave him a return eye-flick of encouragement. The velvety red curtains were drawn tight over the window; Pansy's tan features glowed with a blue halo. She typed with home-row efficiency, tapping her calculator and raptly filling out spreadsheets. Kane's volume trickled to a hush. "Sorry about all the kerfuffle, Zeb. What were you saying?" "My kids. You remember The Deal, do you not, couz?" Kane teased the ridges in his forehead. "Ah… remi
Peppermint Wind Ch. 4Chapter 4 Kane lurched down the dim hallway. His tongue lolled, fat and dry, against his sticky teeth. It kept dipping its way into the cotton balls lodged in his cheeks. "And remember!" Larry called after him. "Lots of liquids, try not to do anything strenuous in the next couple of hours, and I'll see you back here in two weeks!" He tapped his entirely empty wrist. "Feel better soon! Just think—only eleven more to go now!" "And two root canals," Kane garbled over the cotton balls. The receptionist waved Kane off with the same sort of smile as the office's toothy mascot. Was it the anesthesia thinking? Up until now, he had never
Peppermint Wind Ch. 5Chapter 5The front of the shop was wide, but quiet. Two single people milled around the wrappers; college students with morning classes who sought to satisfy their sweet tooth. They tottered in front of a wall stocked high with tipped, hexagonal jars, each one overflowing with jewels awaiting an appraiser's tongue. There were bags and scoops, and a new sign informing customers to please use the pink bags only for the candies marked at sale. The male of the pair broke off for a different wall, this one stocking chocolates and bonbons in various colorful boxes. The large cooling unit with the transparent door tempted him with fudge. "Busy d
Peppermint Wind Ch. 6Chapter 6 "Wow." Dexter shoveled another handful of the amber-colored cereal into his mouth. "This stuff is good. What is it, anyway?" Bergamot scratched his head. "It's… well, it's what it is, really. Cinnamon apple-flavored puffed rice. I guess you'd say it's a combination between Fruity Pebbles and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I think. I've only ever had those at friend's houses; sorry if I'm not on the up-and-up." Dexter gobbled up the last of the cereal flakes, and crammed a large box of milk into a not-so-free spot in the fridge. "Better than that," Dexter said. "You know? I think Dad should make apple pie-flavored candy. I bet it'
Peppermint Wind Ch. 7Chapter 7 Saturday did not drag its feet. A spring breeze sweet as any treat herded customers into the shop. The store front hummed with people, taking their time among the sweets. Some of them had broken off from the nearby mall, wondering what other purchases they could add to their daily tab. Others seemed simply to have a weekend sweet tooth to satisfy. Kane edged his way to the cold case, hands gloved and waxed paper in hand. His and his customer's gazes both locked in on a thick slab of peanut butter fudge. The customer's eyes salivated as Kane unlocked the case and withdrew the fudge. He slipped the cold square in a paper bag, and
Peppermint Wind, Ch. 8Chapter 8 Closing time came briskly. Louie's extra peanut butter fudge came and vanished, and the chocolate chili bars mustered a half-strong force in their display box. Danica turned a bar over in her hands, admiring the print of her handiwork. With a furtive glance, she snuck the bar towards Louie. "I saw that," Kane said. "But go ahead. For a brand-new product, didn't do too bad for itself. Gotta lot of good comments on it. A lot of people tried it right here in the shop, and they were generally surprised. They said they didn't know what it'd taste like, but all of the doubters except one said it was better than they expected." Wit
Peppermint Wind Ch. 9Chapter 9 Dexter had never looked so somber about a win before. It was no narrow victory, either—some fine moves by Dexter, and the forwards, had helped secure a 5-2 advantage in the game's last quarter. During the obligatory high-five session at the end of the match, the opposing forward had clasped Dexter's palm sharply, and gave him a shoulder-rattling handshake. Kane was close enough, hovering protectively over his boy, to pick up the words hissing over the edges of his mouth: "You're crazy. And awesome. Good game." The line moved on, and Kane scratched his head. Dexter was sandwiched between his sister and Ercole in the back of
Peppermint Wind Ch. 10Chapter 10 Dexter would not come out for dinner. Ginger brought him his plate of grilled chicken and scalloped potatoes in his bedroom. Kane overheard some talk between them—Dexter was crafting longer sentences, at least. However, Ginger came out clicking her tongue. Chaz and Peaches looked a little shocked when she barged in on them in the middle of a conversation, but, after hastily swallowing some words (which seemed to involve a girl from their school), they came and sat at the table without protest. They scuttled back to their room and returned to deep discussion. Under Ercole's efficient eye, Kane and Rosie pulled several of th
Peppermint Wind Ch. 11Chapter 11 Was the girl's face familiar? Not as far as Kane could tell. But she knew his shop—it was noon, and an outpouring of students from the college rushed down to sweeten up their lunches. Ginger teamed up with Jade to man the registers, and Kane went with Hal to the back parking lot, to help unload a delivery truck stacked with sugar. A heavy sack straddled Hal's arms. Kane pushed a bag into the low center of his favorite cart. With obliging eyes, the delivery man heaped a second onto the trolley. Hal considered the top sack for a moment. His weighted shoulders failed to shrug, but his eyes ran off nonchalantly. He dumped his
Peppermint Wind Ch. 12Chapter 12 Every person currently present inside Candy by Kane sat in a circle in the fore of the shop. Ginger, with her entire face slumping toward her chin, sat close to Kane. Jade and Aisling huddled with uneasy stances near by, while Hal leaned his back against the counter. Rosie kept her distance from her father, but her hands were also covered in the grime from inside one of the machines. Pansy sat next to the cousins—Ercole much like the others, Bergamot poker-faced, and Chaz bitter. "Are you gonna explain what's goin' on now?" Ginger shushed. Kane cleared his throat one more time. He stood up, and pressed his hand against t
Peppermint Wind Ch. 13Chapter 13 Kane flipped over on his other side. The lights in his bedroom were out. His imagination filled in the spaces in the gaps left by the light. Hal… why would Hal do that to me? He works here. If the shop fails, he fails too. He's got to support himself and Danica. He'd never do that to me. …Or would he? Maybe… maybe it's different. Maybe he wants me to fall. Then he'd take over the shop for himself; he'd get all the money—he and Dani would be a lot better off. He thumped his pillow. Oh, come on, Kane, that's stupid! He's your friend, not a Scooby-Doo villain! How would he even do that? Rosie was there; she'd n
Peppermint Wind Ch. 14Chapter 14 Kane threw on one of his older flannel shirts and stumbled downstairs. The extra hours of sleep clung to his eyelids, giving them artificial gravity and plenty of sticky, clinging grains. He rubbed the crumbs of slumber out of his face and went to the big sink to wash his hands. Rosie, her fingernails already full of gunk, joined him at the faucet. "G'morning, Daddy. Did your nap make you feel better?" Kane sighed. "I appreciate the thought, but I think I'm too much of a mornin' person to get the most out of sleepin' in." Rosie smiled at him indulgently nonetheless. You are one of the only people who had access to the conta
Peppermint Wind Ch. 15Chapter 15 There was a knock on the back door, rattling the knob. Gloomy-faced, Kane gave a final stir to the thick marshmallow cream and pulled it off the stove. He dashed to the back, and tugged the handle open. With a backpack slung over her back and a gleam in her eye, Danica stood on the threshold. "Afternoon, Uncle Kane. Mind if I come in?" Kane ushered her in with diverse mumblings, all of them unintelligible. She thumped her feet over the doorway, and blew her one large bang out of her eyes. When she scanned his face, she put on a frown to match his. "Geez. Don't tell me something else here got fubar." "If I knew what 'fubar'
Peppermint Wind Ch. 16Chapter 16 Thursday hummed along at its own pace. The shop was hollow, but it was not barren. A few brave souls from the college sallied forth to satisfy their sweet teeth. Presumably, those from outside the school were unaffected or hadn't heard—they drifted in at the same rate they always did, buying gifts and indulgences. Friday was busier, but unhurried. Kane took in the silence and used it to think. He thought and wondered until the click of the lock announced the shop closed. The looming spring evening was warm and inviting. Danica graciously helped sweep up. She kept giving Kane little worried sideways glances, and her father
Peppermint Wind Ch. 17Chapter 17 Thuds and rustled roused Kane from the sanctity of his sleep. He blinked his eyes into the dark of his room. What was the time? He looked at his alarm clock. Not yet time for him to be up. He licked at the sleepy taste left inside his mouth. Though it wasn't yet time to get to work in the shop, he couldn't imagine himself going back to bed now. Carefully, so as not to disturb Ginger, he extracted himself from the tangle of sheets he'd woven around himself. He hovered around his clock, ready to stop it when it finally hollered and tried to wake him up. Ginger had no obligation to be up as early as he did, after all. He went in
Peppermint Wind Ch. 18Chapter 18 They dug Bergamot up from beneath the front counter. He cowered, quivering, clad only in a pair of tight-fitting pajama pants, beneath the shadow of the cash register. He had his hands up over his nutmeg-esque hair. "A… are they gone? They're gone, right?" The police caused the real riot. They circled the perimeter of the crowd, penning in what they could. The people huddled, like a mass of trapped penguins, near the center of the group. A few stripped off their masks and quietly handed themselves over. A few loudly explained themselves—it was a protest; it was a prank that had gotten out of hand. When the SWAT team b
Peppermint Wind Ch. 19Chapter 19 "Poor Mr. Peppermint," Jean whimpered. "Ye are certainly havin' a devil of a time this week, ain'tchee?" Kane worked his fingers deep into the knot in his neck. "That I am," he agreed. "If I had time to watch the afternoon news, I would. And I can't watch the evening stuff; we gotta go to Dexter's soccer game. Sweet fancy Moses…" Kane squished out the soft, warm candy into a long stick, and gave the ends a little twist. The candy-stick-to-be bent itself into an attractive spiral, and began to harden there. "Huh." He looked at the twirled ribbon thoughtfully. "I bet if Ercole were down here, I'd know what he'd say. 'Oh! Y
Peppermint Wind Ch. 20Chapter 20 Sunday ticked restlessly. Ercole holed up at the base of Pansy's door, flipping incessantly between old cookbooks and textbooks. Somewhere he'd found an old photo album, and occasionally picked that up to look at the pictures. Kane peeped over his shoulder and saw him run his fingers past the image of a man Kane didn't know, with a penned-in date floating over his head that was well before Ercole could've been born. Chaz put his feet up on the sofa armrests and hid himself in a haze of cartoons and CSI reruns in front of the TV. Bergamot skirted the couch by the widest possible margin. To defuse the house, Dexter put himself on
Peppermint Wind Ch. 21Chapter 21 "Mr. Otis-Peppermint again," the policewoman observed. "We were just here Saturday, weren't we? After that strange protest… -like occurrence." She tipped the brim of her hat. "Not been a good week for you, has it?"` "You don't know the half of it," Kane sighed. Officers bustled through the shop, walling off certain sections and swabbing over others. One of them periodically blurted out observations into his hand-held MP3 recorder. He held his forehead, grunting. "We can't open like this. Even if y'all can skidaddle before it's opening time proper, we'll never have time to prep like we need to before we open. And I don't
Peppermint Wind Ch. 22Chapter 22 Kane melted into the couch, drizzling to a stop beside the awkwardly-positioned Dexter. The boy, however, soon stood, and dawdled off to his room to change into school clothes. Ginger followed him visually. She scooped up another piece of her omelet from her plate. "Would you like me to make you an omelet too, dear?" she asked Kane. Kane shook his head, rolling it back and forth across the aft of the sofa. Ginger might have shrugged. Kane blinked. He felt a dryness in his throat, and a dampness in his eyes. Downstairs, he heard Louie, loud and insistent, trying to bluster his way through the police. Louie was rather late, Kane
Peppermint Wind Ch. 23Chapter 23 People began to pull into the parking lot of the shop, but they didn't come in. They peered in through the windows, pressing their oily fingers to the glass, smearing the tips of their noses across, trying to gauge the shop. Some drove in, stuck their head out the window for a brief scan, and k-turned out. Some held their cell-phones steady, snapping pictures and sending them off in e-mails. Often, those who came on foot would wander into the shop itself. They would finger the wrapped chocolates, examine the boxes, and squint at Jade's bouncing green coiffure or Hal's doorway-scraping buzz cut. The police patrolled the area quiet
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