The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

Genres: Family Life; Holiday books; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The national bestselling author of The Sister Season shares a new novel about a woman who discovers the spirit of the season is truly in the giving....

With the holidays around the corner, empty-nester Bren Epperson realizes that for the first time in decades, she has no large family to cook for, no celebration to create.  So she starts teaching a holiday cooking class, and it’s a hit—until Virginia Mash, the old lady upstairs, bursts in complaining.  Rather than retaliate, Bren suggests that the class shower Virginia with kindness—and give her one hundred gifts.  So they embark on the plan to lift a heart.  Along the way, amidst the knitting and the making and the baking, they’ll  discover the best gifts can’t be bought and family celebrations can be reborn.

CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED

Release date: October 27, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 368

Sample

Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

Visit us online at penguin.com.

CHAPTER ONE

It was the fifth day of November, and Christmas commercials had been in full swing for weeks—sweatered, singing suburbanites holding power drills and cans of soda and Big Macs and mops as microphones and dance partners. All the stores had their decorations up, and the bell ringers were out in force, their cheerful Good mornings and You have a nice day, nows making Bren Epperson duck with guilt. Who carried cash anymore? She could hardly drop her debit card into the little red bucket.

Ordinarily, by the fifth day of November, Bren would be rushing from store to store, clutching a list of errands so long it could garland her tree. But this year, for the first time ever, she didn’t know where she should go. Planning for the holidays was always such a pain, but not actually having holidays to plan for was maybe the loneliest prospect in the world.

She drove around, an open box of peanut butter cookies sitting in the passenger seat next to her, the radio set to a talk station, not that Bren was actually listening to it—back-and-forthing between two local hosts, one Democrat, one Republican, tedious and typical. She could have scripted their arguments for them. But the conversation in the background gave the illusion that she was not alone in the car. They were like friends, the kind who will let a third wheel tag along, but not really ever acknowledge her. At each stoplight, she tipped up a latte that was more flavored syrup than actual coffee. So sweet it made her jaw ache.

Stopped at a traffic light, she glanced to her left. A frazzled-looking mother and daughter sat in a minivan, the mom’s hands clutched tightly around the wheel, her eyes fixed on the red light. Her mouth was moving, her head bobbing in such a way as to suggest an argument. Every so often, the daughter, in the passenger seat, would roll her eyes, say something, gesture wildly.

“Oh. Don’t do that,” Bren said softly, her breath fogging the driver’s-side window. “Don’t waste your time on that.” How many nights had she wished she could take back arguments she’d had with Kelsey? How many regrets did she have, even if they did get along incredibly well compared to many of Kelsey’s friends and their mothers? “Talk about good things instead. Cookies and coffee.” She held up her cup, accidentally getting the attention of the mother, who glanced across at her. Bren smiled and waved, feeling embarrassed, but also kind of good that she’d interrupted their disagreement.

The woman gave a curious, halfhearted wave, and, to Bren’s surprise, rolled down her window.

Bren pushed the button to lower hers, a bluster of cool air pushing right in on her.

“Do you need something?” the woman asked.

“Eight thousand,” Bren shouted over the noise of the traffic, the first thing to come to her mind.

The woman’s confused look deepened. “Excuse me?”

“Well, eight thousand six hundred and twenty, to be exact.” Bren sipped her coffee. “From Missouri to Thailand. It’s eight thousand six hundred and twenty miles.”

“Okay?” the woman said. A car behind them honked, and both Bren and the woman checked the rearview mirrors, startled.

“That’s where my daughter lives,” Bren said. “In Thailand. Eight thousand six hundred and twenty miles. Not door-to-door, of course. That would be even farther.”

The woman pointed through the windshield. “The light is green,” she said.

“Oh!” Bren sipped her coffee again as the guy behind her held down his horn. “Sure thing. You have a great day! These, by the way”—she held up her cup—“are fantastic!”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, as if she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be feeling or how she was supposed to react. Finally, on the third honk, she roared away, her window shooting up to close out Bren.

Bren laughed aloud, wishing she were feeling mirth rather than . . . whatever this was that she was actually feeling, and set her cup in its holder. She pulled forward just as the light turned yellow, leaving the window open so she could shout, “Merry Christmas,” to everyone she passed, just because.

The cookies were gone, and she was still hungry. Hungrier, maybe, now that she’d pointed out three times—loudly—how very far away Kelsey was. She headed for the square.

Vargo Square was a place that for decades had been desperately trying to be relevant in a world of strip malls and big-box stores. As county seat of Vargo County, the square was dominated not only by a massive centrally positioned courthouse, but also by the county jail, the juvenile detention center, and the sheriff’s office, and every time someone important went to trial, also by a parking lot full of news vans. Yet at the same time, the square tried fiercely to appeal to small-town sensibilities, trotting out a rolling troop of kitschy shops, breakfast joints, antiquarians, booksellers, clothiers, and shoe repairers, all of which sprouted and failed at alarming rates around the sturdy and permanent Vargo County Historical Museum, inside of which Bren had never set foot, nor had she ever known of anyone who had.

The Hole Shebang, on the north side of the square, had been a favorite of Bren’s since the day it opened. Not just donuts—although just donuts would have been enough, because weren’t donuts always enough?—but the kind of donuts you put an “ough” into. Doughnuts. Food of the gods—that was what they were. The Hole Shebang’s specialty seemed to be putting the most absurd things in and onto their doughnuts and somehow making them sound delicious—crispy bacon brittle doughnut, buttered cracker crunch doughnut holes, candied anchovy Bismarck, long john with creamy black truffle icing. Froofy food was what Gary called it, but Bren couldn’t help feeling just a little bit worldly while noshing on a sprout fritter.

The bell tinkled as she walked through the door, and even though she’d downed the last of her coffee before getting out of the car, and her body was positively sloshing with insulin, she couldn’t help but feel a twist of hunger at the scent of sugar in the air. It was intoxicating, and in a way overpowering. But who minded being slapped upside the head with a cloud of sweetness?

“Good morning, Brenda,” the young man behind the counter said when she walked in. She was torn between feeling thrilled at the familiarity of being a regular—made her feel like a townie, like someone who belonged—and ashamed that she’d frequented the Hole Shebang often enough for the staff to know her by name.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will eat right, she told herself. No, today. I will eat salads for the rest of the day. Or fast. Yes, fasting is a great idea.

“Merry Christmas, Tod,” Bren said cheerfully, wondering if she was feeling mirth yet.

He laughed, pushing his adorable baker’s cap back on his head. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”

“Never too early to get into the Christmas spirit,” she said.

“Well, I suppose you have a valid point there. What sounds good today?”

Bren tapped her bottom lip with her forefinger, contemplating what was left in the case. Not much, actually. She was a little later than usual, and the morning rush must have been heavy. “Any recommendations?”

He leaned over the counter, peering inside, as if he alone hadn’t made all of the doughnuts and had no idea what was in there. “I’ve been playing around with a sage, potato, and pumpkin cream cheese filling.” He stubbed a finger straight down. “If you’re in the holiday spirit, it’s supposed to evoke memories of Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Like the Gobstopper in Willy Wonka,” Bren said.

“Huh?” He was young. Far too young to appreciate a good Gene Wilder movie reference.

“Never mind. I’ll take one.”

Tod pulled the doughnut out of the case and handed it to her, wrapped in a sheet of wax paper. It was still warm—their signature, and her favorite thing about the Hole Shebang doughnuts. “Enjoy!”

She wasn’t actually sure that she would. She was not the biggest fan of sage, and for all of her bluster about Merry Christmas and Never too soon to get into the holiday spirit and so forth, she was not fooling herself. The number 8,620 flashed in her mind over and over again as she paid for the doughnut, a numerical reminder of how far away her perhaps closest child would be on Thanksgiving Day. Did she really want to evoke that image with this doughnut?

Even though she knew Tod was watching, waiting for her to take a bite and give him feedback on his new creation, she suddenly just couldn’t do it. The caffeine and sugar had all rushed to her brain, made her nervous and forlorn. She smiled—a shaky smile that felt as though it couldn’t hold up her cheeks for longer than a few seconds—and backed through the door, thinking she would take a walk and discreetly dump the doughnut in the trash barrel in front of the vintage jewelry store around the corner. Do the right dietary thing.

But she was only a few feet away from the Hole Shebang when she noticed a piece of paper taped to the inside of the vacant shop’s window next door. It caught her eye immediately.

LOVE THE HOLIDAYS? LOVE TO COOK? LOVE SHARING YOUR RECIPES WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY? THE KITCHEN CLASSROOM NEEDS A TEACHER FOR A HOLIDAY COOKING SERIES. EXPERIENCE HELPFUL BUT NOT REQUIRED. CALL PAULA 555-1454 ASAP.

Bren read and reread the paper, her lips moving over the words. She did love all of those things. In fact, that had been her problem of late, right? It was almost too perfect that she should run across this paper on this day at this moment. She cupped her free hand and placed it against the glass, peering through the window. The shop was no longer vacant. A round, red-haired woman bustled about inside, a hammer in one hand, some nails pressed tightly between her lips.

There were several island counters, each with a small sink and work area on top, an oven beneath. One of the islands was elevated and facing the rest of the room. Behind it was a wall of wire shelves, empty baskets and bottles lining some of them, an accumulation of jarred spices at attention on one end. Bren’s heart raced at the very sight of them.

The Kitchen Classroom. Cooking and teaching. Sharing recipes.

Maybe this was providence. A sign. Maybe this was exactly what she needed right now. Maybe she’d been led to the Hole Shebang and this awful doughnut—the smell of which was starting to turn her stomach a little now—so that she would discover what she was supposed to do with herself this holiday season.

Her hand plunged into her purse, searching out a pen. Without thinking, she stuffed the wretched doughnut into her mouth to hold it while she smoothed out the wax paper and wrote the phone number on it. She would give the job some thought. Sleep on it. Talk to Gary about it and give this Paula person a call in the mo—

“Hello?”

Bren blinked, looked up. The redhead was leaning out the door, the hammer dangling at her side, the nails between two fingers now.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

Bren shook her head, forgetting that the doughnut was in her mouth until it cracked, split, and broke, landing with an orange potatoey-cream-cheesy splat on her foot, a ragged chunk still clenched between her teeth. She had no choice but to chew and swallow, glad for her strong stomach. It definitely tasted like Thanksgiving. But not in a good way. More like if you’d perhaps licked the dirty dinner plates clean instead of putting them in the dishwasher.

The redhead ventured out onto the sidewalk, pretending as if she hadn’t seen the doughnut fall. “I’m Paula. Are you interested in the position?”

Bren swallowed. “Yes. Well, maybe,” she said, swallowing again. “I was writing down the number. I’m Brenda, by the way. Bren.” She held out her hand and the redhead took it.

“You’re hired,” Paula said quickly. She laughed, self-conscious, breathless. “I’m sorry, but I’m desperate. I’m new here and I want to get up and running and I had a teacher all lined up for this class, but now she’s going to Buffalo for Christmas and . . .” She shook her head. “Buffalo. Can you believe it? Anyway, the class was supposed to start this week.”

“But I haven’t filled out an application,” Bren said.

Paula waved her off. “It doesn’t matter. Can you cook?”

“Yes, I think so,” Bren said. Nobody had ever told her she was the best cook in the world, but then again, nobody had ever complained, either. Not really, other than the one time she got experimental with the quinoa. In any case, nobody ever died from eating her food.

“Then you’re hired,” Paula said.

“I haven’t talked to my husband. . . .”

“He can have the leftovers.”

“I was going to sleep on it, and . . .”

“I’ll pay you double what I was going to pay the other lady.”

“I haven’t really had any sort of job in over twenty years,” Bren said uneasily, and it was this, she realized, that frightened her the most.

“This isn’t a job. It’s a friendship. I promise. You will love it. Please?”

A friendship. Bren liked that. Bren needed that.

And, without thinking about it, without really pondering what this would mean for her holidays, without even considering whether she could actually come up with a single recipe worth sharing, Bren found her shaky hand extending toward Paula’s chapped one.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

CHAPTER TWO

Virginia Mash hated her apartment. It was small and dark, always dark, and the windows were painted shut, thanks to her incompetent boob of a landlord. Plus, it was smack-dab in the middle of the square, perched atop a doughnut shop like a dusty old hat.

Square shopping had become trendy over the past couple of years or so, she had noticed. Virginia Mash hated trendy. And she hated square shopping. All those stores, thinking they were so original with their sheep’s-milk soaps and their antique chests and their hand-sewn children’s clothes and their crêpes. What on earth, Virginia thought, made a crêpe trendy? Hadn’t they been around for centuries? It would be like calling gladiator sandals trendy, which, she supposed, some of the girls were doing these days, too. Trendy seemed to be defined as I have it and you don’t.

And because the square had been revamped, the old, sleepy shops replaced by these new, trendy stores, that meant the square, and the space around her apartment, was always filled with noise and cars and exhaust and slamming doors and children throwing loud fits, and all the things that Virginia Mash hated most in this world.

It had been especially bad for the past year or so, once the doughnut shop had moved in directly below her apartment. The Hole Shebang, they called it. Virginia could not believe such a ridiculous name. Whatever happened to family names on businesses? Proud, anchored names with history. Ferguson’s Rugs or Elliott’s Pharmacy or Samuel’s Furniture. Well, that one—Samuel—was so anchored it was downright biblical, wasn’t it? Unlike the Hole Shebang. Virginia knew where she would like to punch a hole. And it wasn’t in someone’s shebang, that was for sure. Depending, of course, on what a shebang was, and where on a body it might be located.

Her apartment now smelled like sugar. And not in the good kind of way, either. Not outdoor festival sugar. Not Christmas cookie sugar. Cloying. Sickening. Overpowering, overbearing, overdone. Good Lord, did the irresponsible people of the Hole Shebang think nothing of their arteries? Probably diabetic, every last one of them, or heading there. Dead before they were fifty, and when the medical examiner cut open their lardy fannies, what would she find? Doughnuts. The Hole Shebang doughnuts. Of that, Virginia Mash was certain.

But to make things worse, when she took her fourteen-year-old dachshund, Chuy, out for his walk today, there was a truck out front. A moving truck, parked right in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Hole Shebang, making it darn near impossible for Chuy to do his business at all. Did these insensitive people think dachshunds could just hop up and down curbs all willy-nilly to avoid ill-placed ramps and boxes and dollies? Did they not realize that those short, stubby legs tired easily? Did they not notice that Chuy himself was nearly an octogenarian, half blind, arthritic? You would think these trendy people would have more respect for their elders, even the furry kind. Especially the furry kind. Animal rights were also trendy these days, after all.

The front door of the previously vacant storefront next door to the Hole Shebang was propped open wide, a flurry of movement going on inside, with several men lifting, grunting, sweating, sliding enormous boxes, and a red-haired woman, who looked to be in her mid-forties, wearing flannel and denim and boots directing them while simultaneously rooting through boxes and pulling quilts off countertops and . . . were those ovens? All of them? And with even more of them inside the truck?

“No,” Virginia said aloud, hoisting herself up a few steps of the ramp that lolled out of the back of the truck like a tongue. As if the very truck were mocking her. She peered inside. Everything was covered, boxed, wrapped in cellophane. But, yes, she definitely saw at least one oven in there. “Cripes. Just what we need, Chuy. Another damn smelly restaurant at our feet. Don’t people ever eat at home anymore? Why can’t a good old PB&J be trendy?”

Chuy peered up at her through bleary old dog eyes that seemed to say, Frankly, Virginia, I just don’t give a shit. Virginia harrumphed at him.

“Can I help you?” She whipped around and, seeing the flanneled woman coming toward her, Virginia quickly—or as quickly as she could, at her age—scuffled back down the ramp. Startled, the woman held out her hands. “Oh! Careful!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Virginia groused, swatting at the air between herself and the woman’s hands. There were few things she hated more than someone treating her as if she were incapable just because she was old. She’d driven a tow truck in her lifetime, for golly’s sake. She’d fired no fewer than a dozen incompetents. She’d once installed a dishwasher with nothing but grit and determination and a single Phillips head screwdriver. “I can walk down a blasted ramp.”

The woman’s hands dropped to her sides. “Can I help you?” she asked again.

“Haven’t you seen a woman walk her dog before?” Virginia answered, thumping down the ramp with her cane, because for some reason this seemed like an important point to make at that precise moment.

The woman bent down and scratched Chuy on top of his head. He wagged his tail gratefully. Traitor. Turncoat. Attention whore. “He’s adorable. What’s his name?”

“Speaking of, I suppose you’re going to name this place something as stupid as the Hole Shebang,” Virginia said, gesturing at the storefront. “I hope it isn’t sweets.”

The woman looked confused, turning to follow Virginia’s gesture, but then she seemed to get it. “Oh,” she said, her hand flying to her chest. “No. No, actually I’m calling it the Kitchen Classroom, because that’s what it is, a kitchen where people can come to learn how to cook. Pretty straightforward. I suppose I probably should have come up with something more creative, huh?” She’d turned and was studying the doughnut shop. “The Hole Shebang. Cute.” She turned back to Virginia and extended her hand. “I’m Paula, by the way. Owner, manager, and only employee so far. But that will change soon. In fact, I think I may have just hired someone. I hope, anyway.”

Virginia gazed at Paula’s hand with such disgust, Paula retracted it, pinning it up against her stomach with her other hand. “A kitchen classroom? You mean a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing in a kitchen are going to be firing up ovens right below my apartment?”

Again, Paula glanced backward, this time tilting her head up to take in the painted-shut windows above the Hole Shebang. “I’m sure they’ll know how to do that much,” she said, but her voice was soft and uncertain. She turned back to Virginia, but her freckles had been clouded over with a flush. “We’re more of a recipe instruction kind of place.”

Virginia squinted one eye. “People need instruction on how to follow a recipe? I knew how to follow a recipe before I was ten. Can’t they read?”

“We’ll also be renting it out to culinary students and chefs who might want to try out new menu items and so forth.”

“So there will be strangers streaming in and out at all hours of the night,” Virginia said. “And I suppose it would be too much bother to have their backgrounds checked for criminal behavior.”

The flush turned beet-colored. “So, are the—are the doughnuts good?” Paula asked, flicking a finger over her shoulder. “They smell delicious from here.”

Chuy began to tug lightly at his leash, letting out a garbly whine. Virginia had no time for this Paula person and her recipe instruction. Plus, the weather was getting ready to turn. She could feel it in her arthritis. Her knuckles hurt when Chuy’s leash grew taut around them. She glanced up at the sky, which was the flat gray of incoming winter. The tops of trees blew and swished. It wouldn’t be long before a skiff of cold air swooped down onto the square and whipped her hair and clothing like those leaves. Chuy didn’t like the cold. Virginia didn’t like the holidays that the cold heralded in.

“Just make sure you have this sidewalk clear before I get back,” Virginia said, ignoring the doughnut question. Did she honestly look like someone who would eat those nasty lard balls? She gestured toward Chuy with her cane. “My dog can’t do curbs.”

“Okay,” she heard at her back, but she didn’t bother to so much as take another look at redheaded Paula with the flannel and the boots and the ridiculous business idea.

With any luck, the Kitchen Classroom wouldn’t be around for very long anyway.

CHAPTER THREE

It was what should have been dinnertime when the phone rang. Of course, it wasn’t actually dinnertime. Not officially. It hadn’t been officially dinnertime in the Epperson house since Kevin, leaving a trail of balled socks and loose change and mementos of a lost age—football cards stuck upright in the cracks of the baseboards, a Sanibel sand dollar plucked from the ocean an impossible decade ago, figurines from the imaginative days of childhood—had left the house with a passport and only half a harebrained plan. And quite a bit of cannabis, from the smell of him. Oh, he could deny it, but a mother knew when the eyes of her child weren’t right.

Her youngest. Her baby. A once-treasured bedroom now home to only forgotten Super Balls and soccer pads and slippers, rock band posters and a rat’s nest of old phone chargers, and the college textbooks he’d foolishly purchased before he’d decided to admit that he wasn’t planning to go, all abandoned.

Kevin had sprung the news on Bren that he’d never actually enrolled in college at a pancake house, of all places.

“Now, Mom,” he’d said, holding his hand out to shush her, not even looking up from his plate of sunny-side-up eggs and congealed bacon grease, so condescending, so combatant, so very Kevin. “I know what you’re going to say.”

And she’d turned her face back down toward her plate, her Belgian waffles, her sausage links, her hash browns, and commenced eating, not even pausing the slightest while he went on about the confines of the American education system and his needs as an inquiring, and still growing, late adolescent mind—no, make that young adult mind—for the freedom to explore.

“If I see a flower that is beautiful, I need to be able to spend a day contemplating the folds of every petal on that flower—don’t you understand?” he’d said, and Bren had nodded, made a muffled affirmative noise, and stuffed another forkful of strawberry topping into her mouth to keep herself from asking him when exactly was the last time he’d even noticed a flower. If, in fact, he could name one single flower in existence.

He’d launched into his plans to travel abroad.

“And I don’t mean just Europe,” he’d said, stretching back, his hands folded behind his head, as if he were the goddamned king of England. “Europe, yes, but it’s so cliché, don’t you think? Finding oneself in Europe? As if we all exist only there. I mean, what if the true me exists in the Himayalas, you know? What if the essence of Kevin is in . . . in Kazakhstan or . . . or Beirut?”

He’d been so good at debate in high school. Well-spoken, extremely intelligent. Bren and Gary had been so proud, so very, very proud of his ability to think for himself, to put his thoughts together and present them convincingly. He could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo, Gary was known to say, a quip that made Bren feel uneasy—was it offensive to Alaskans? She could never quite tell.

Turned out Kevin hadn’t needed to sell anything to anyone but her. By the end of the breakfast, she was so full she felt sick, stuffed to the gills with carbs and fat and sugar, but she was smiling, assuring Kevin that, yes, yes, she would talk to his father about these new plans of his. It sounded like an adventure, she told him between muffled belches. Something she wished she’d done while she was young and had a chance to explore the world.

He’d left with a jacket, a pocketful of snacks, and a sleeping bag harnessed along the underside of a backpack, for Christ’s sake. Isn’t he taking this backpacking-across-the-world business a little far? How can he possibly have packed enough to live off of in that thing? Bren had asked Gary, who’d sat on his parked motorcycle looking one-tenth worried for Kevin and nine-tenths envious out of his gourd. Oh, he’ll be fine, Brenda. Let him explore. This is important. You don’t want him to turn around in thirty years and regret that he never went. Bren had rolled her eyes. Of course Gary would make this about himself. Ever since the man turned the corner into the back side of his forties, he’d managed to make everything about himself. God love the old oafish bastard.

And so Kevin had hugged her and made promises about phone calls and postcards and a future that she knew would never come true and had hopped into his friend Tony’s idling 2000 Toyota, checked his pocket for his passport one last time, and set off for the airport, a flick of his wrist through the passenger window for a wave, Epperson family dinners whisked away on a fog of alternative music and car exhaust.

At last check-in—must have been at least three weeks ago—Kevin was just pulling into Ceský Krumlov, which Bren had made him spell so she could look it up on the Internet later. Somewhere in the Czech Republic, he’d said. He’d dropped his iPod in the Vltava River, but he didn’t care, he’d said. He’d met a girl, he’d said. Her name was Pavlina, and she was an artist—like, a real artist, not one of those weird girls who use