215 Main Street * Mossy Creek, Georgia

From the Desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager

Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope

The Cliffs, Seaward Road

St. Ives, Cornwall TR37PJ

United Kingdom

Dear Vick:

the winter here in Mossy Creek! And we're plumb glad to see it come. The buttercups have already come and gone, the azaleas are in their prime and the dogwoods and rhododendrons are just around the corner.

You know, one thing I've never asked you about is pets. Do you have a dog or cat or anything furry and warm to cuddle up to on cold winter nights?

Creekites have all kinds of critters in our barnyards ... and our backyards, too! Mostly the winter here in Mossy Creek! And we're plumb glad to see it come. The buttercups have already come and gone, the azaleas are in their prime and the dogwoods and rhododendrons are just around the corner.

You know, one thing I've never asked you about is pets. Do you have a dog or cat or anything furry and warm to cuddle up to on cold winter nights?

Creekites have all kinds of critters in our barnyards ... and our backyards, too! Mostly

The Mice that Roared: Part One

Jayne Reynolds

"Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole."

--Roger Caras

Odd, isn't it, how things and animals and people come into your life.

While it's happening, it seems rather random.

You make love to your perfectly healthy husband and a month later, he dies of an aggressive cancer. Yet somehow you wind up pregnant. You feed a poor, pitiful cat that shows up at your door. You unwittingly start a feud with the owner of the bakery next door to your new coffee house the first day you open.

The next thing you know, you have a pet for the next twenty years, you have your husband's son, and you wind up buying the bakery and hiring the owner who has become a dear friend.

It seems to me that when you look back over the years, you can see how all the pieces of your life's puzzle fit together and you get the distinct feeling that each event was meant to be.

Looking forward, life may be a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump's mother purported. But when you look back, you realize life is a mosaic. Though you think you're making random choices with each piece you place in your life's work of art, in the end you have a complete picture, and you understand that each one of those pieces was destined to be in just that spot.

Take my moving to Mossy Creek a few years ago, for instance. At the time, I was operating in a fog of grief over my husband's death, and I didn't much care where I was. I just couldn't stay in the place where he and I had spent so many happy years. Yet, what I thought had been a knee-jerk reaction turned out to be one of the main themes in my life's mosaic.

I've found a true home in Mossy Creek. I've been accepted for who I am. Am loved for who I am. And while I still miss Matthew, it's almost as if I'd been living another life back then.

Now I feel as if I'm adding jewels to my mosaic, not just dull-colored pieces of tile.

Oh gracious. Listen to me, waxing all rhapsodic. I guess I just have mosaics on the brain.

Tiles, anyway.

Which one? Which one?

I picked up my top three choices and took them over to the fading spring light of my shop's window to see if that would help me make up my mind.

The Naked Bean's front door opened. "Jayne?"

I glanced over see Ingrid Beechum holding the door open with her back as she wiped her hands on a dish towel. Her dog, Bob, stood patiently at her feet, looking up at me because that's what his beloved mistress was doing. The Chihuahua's sight had gotten so bad, I doubted he could actually see me. The white apron Ingrid always wore was missing, so I knew it was time to close up shop.

"That time already?" I asked.

"Hmmm," she said. "Since you're the boss now, I thought I'd check in before I locked the door ... for the last time."

We grinned at each other. We'd begun our relationship as mortal enemies, but were now partners ... of a sort.

Several months ago, Ingrid had a health scare about the big "C. Turned out everything was fine, but it put the fear of God in her, and the upshot of that was, she decided to sell Beechum's Bakery to me.

It made good business sense for me, because what complimented gourmet coffee more than bakery goods? And since the bakery shared a wall with The Naked Bean, it wasn't going to take much to make the two shops into one. Or so Dan McNeil, our town handyman, promised me.

From our truculent beginning, Ingrid and I'd had a tacit agreement that I wouldn't sell baked goods, and she wouldn't sell coffee. That meant, of course, that customers had to go from one shop to the other to get both, and many of them did. When the portal was finished, however--hopefully before the weekend was over--they'd no longer have to go outside.

Ingrid and I weren't technically partners, of course, since I owned both places, but I wanted to think of it that way, and I wanted her to think of it that way.

Ingrid still worked at the bakery, but now she had a tidy little nest egg in case something really did happen, and she didn't have to worry about the managerial aspects of running a business, which she never liked anyway, and I loved. Now all she had to do was create her wonderful pies and cookies and cakes.

She was happy. I was happy. Our customers were going to be happy. It was a win-win situation all 'round.

Which brought me back to the tile.

Dan McNeil's crew started work tomorrow. Dan said it'd only take a few days to join the two shops, then he'd start work on my apartment upstairs. All of this renovation had been approved by the landlord, Mossy Creek Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker. She and her relatives own major portions of the town but are, thankfully, open to innovation.

With my son Matt approaching three years of age, I needed more room than the tiny, one-bedroom loft over The Naked Bean, in which he and I had been living. Now that I owned the bakery, I was going to expand our living quarters into the bakery's long-unused second floor.

"Come help me decide which of these to use in the master bath," I said to Ingrid.

"Ingie!"

Ingrid bent to catch Matt, who'd launched himself at her from the children's play area in the corner of the shop.

She'd been looking for him, so she caught him deftly.

He laughed and planted a loud kiss on her cheek. He giggled at the noise he'd made and pushed up his goggles from his Bob the Builder Power Tool set. Ingrid had bought the toy for him to encourage his interest in the upcoming construction. Not that she had to. Matt had shown an early interest in building and engineering. Tinker Toys, Legos and old-fashioned Lincoln Logs were his favorite toys. Just like his father.

"You haven't helped Mama pick out her tile?" Ingrid asked Matt as she came up beside me, Bob the Chihuahua at her heels.

"I like the tav'tine," he said with definite decision.

Ingrid looked over the selections I held up and nodded. "I think you're right, Matt. I like that, too."

I'd been surprised that Matt picked the same tile that I was leaning toward. Kids usually went for flash. "So do I. Josie gave me two conservative choices, knowing I'm not too exciting, and one 'decorator' choice. This blue-green glass combination here."

"You're just as exciting as the next person," Ingrid countered, letting Matt down to play with Bob. "The blue tile is too vivid. I think you'd get tired of it pretty quick. But you can live with the travertine for years and years. It's so earthy. Like you."

I held the tile in the weak sunlight. "Yeah. Josie says I have a double dose of earth, since I'm a Capricorn-Ox."

"Humphf." Ingrid made no secret about her skepticism regarding Josie's astrological observations.

"Hey, you're the one who made the 'earthy' comment," I countered, then changed the subject. "Ready for a long weekend off?"

"Weekend off?" Ingrid archly raised her brow. "You mean we're not taking cookies and coffee to the soccer game on Saturday?"

"Yes, of course we are. I meant days off from manning the shops," I said. "Four whole days, and when we come back Monday morning, we'll have an honest-to-goodness full-service coffeehouse." I felt decadent. I hadn't taken more than a day off since I'd opened The Naked Bean, other than the month after Matt was born, and I'd hardly call that a vacation.

"We should've done this two years ago." Ingrid bent to pick up Bob, who'd settled happily in Matt's lap. Matt was gently stroking Bob's head, like Ingrid had taught him.

"We're doing it now, and that's what--" I frowned at my son, who held Bob tight, turning so Ingrid couldn't get him. "Matt, let Ingrid have Bob."

"Bob stay with us tonight."

Thinking of the last time Bob had "slept over" at our house and the puddles I'd had to clean up, I sighed and knelt beside Matt. "Bob is much happier with Ingie." I pried the Chihuahua from Matt's chubby little fingers and handed him to Ingrid.

Matt didn't cry. He rarely cried. But the look he gave me could've melted Colchick Mountain.

I raised my brow at him, and he looked away.

"The boy wants a dog, Jayne," Ingrid said.

I stood, "And I want a million dollars to pay for this renovation."

She stuck her chin in the air. "A boy needs a dog."

"He has a cat."

Ingrid "humpfed" again. "Not the same thing."

"Thank God," I murmured as I locked the door behind her.

The world is roughly divided into two pet camps: cats and dogs. True, a small percentage of the population opts for more exotic pets like snakes or ferrets or parrots, but by and large, it's a race between cats and dogs.

I'd always been firmly in the cat camp. My husband, Matthew, had shown dog tendencies early in our relationship, and little Matt had obviously inherited his father's dog-lovin' genes.

Well, I had set his father straight. I could do the same for my son.

I bent and picked him up. "Come on, little darlin'. Let's go upstairs and fix our supper."