The Cafe of Hopes and Dreams: The Dream Factory, #2

By Linda Mercury and Shéa MacLeod

Katrina Kennedy McPherson used to have dreams. Her ambition was to become an attorney and prosecute deadbeat dads. But Life had other plans for her; like a withdrawn husband and a less-than-exciting accounting career.

 

Always practical, Katrina never questioned how her life turned out. That is, until the night she arrived in the small town of Gold Coast, Illinois, to drag her sister Alice back home.

 

Confronted by her own unhappiness, Katrina chooses to search for her joy instead. Problem is, her old life will come calling, determined to drag her back under, just as she tried to drag away her sister. Fortunately, she's got her sister, a ghost, a town full of quirky characters, and an obsession with cake to help her untangle her true calling.

 

Escape into the magic of The Café of Hopes and Dreams in this heart-warming, feel-good story of a woman meant to change not just her life, but the lives of everyone around her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Mercury
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393252863

Linda Mercury

Linda Mercury ia a writer and creator of really unusual fictional worlds. More than anything, she cares about compassion, connection, and intimacy. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and has a redwood tree in her backyard.

Book preview

Happiness, [my mother] would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move, to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time, feel loved for doing so. Part of happiness was to be loved by a man who enjoyed your strength and was proud of your talents. Happiness was also about the right to privacy, the right to retreat from the company of others and plunge into contemplative solitude. Or to set by yourself doing nothing for a whole day, and not give excuses or feel guilty about it either. Happiness was to be with loved ones, and yet feel that you existed as separate being, that you were not there just to make them happy. Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took.

Fatima Mernissi

Dreams of Trespass

Perseus Books Group, 1994

Copyright ©2021 by Linda Mercury and Shéa MacLeod

Cover Design:

Tugboat Design LLC

www.tugboatdesign.net

All rights are reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute or transmit in any form or by any means without written permission, except in the cases of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictionally and are not construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to Michael Ewan, Michael Poisson, and Robert Nesius for the help with the barber’s shave. Double thank you to RJ Johnson for the stinging jalapeño and that an apology is a down payment on making things right.

Thank you to Jessa Slade of Red Circle Ink for the best editing in the business.

Dedications:

To everyone who needs to find her path.

May you rest, play, and create.

Soundtrack:

I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash

Daisies by Katie Perry

Chapter One

Delight is the medicine to overcome mediocrity.

Start Your Life Now! Affirmations for Women

The ghost of Betsy Whitaker, costumer extraordinaire, frowned. Who were these people who dared to come to The Thing with no costumes? They were ruining her girl Alice’s triumph. She crossed her arms in disgust. Their voices carried all the way to the apartment above The Dream Factory.

You will come with us at once, young lady, the older woman said in a tone that brooked no argument. Her aura was a swirling black vortex that sucked life and color from everything around her. Just like the frumpy outfit she wore: tan slacks that were a decade out of style and a boring beige top that needed a good ironing. That must be Alice’s mother. It was the same tone that would have no doubt had Alice wilting a few months ago, but she was not the same person who’d left home.

No. Alice’s voice was firm.

Three sets of mouths flapped open. Three pairs of eyes widened.

What did you say? Mama’s voice held a dangerous edge.

Betsy bit her lip. She’s got no sway over you, Alice. None. Only what you give her.

Apparently, Alice agreed. Her voice was stronger this time. No.

What do you mean, no? The younger woman’s voice wavered. She had the look of someone whose world was about to crash down around her. Her chest heaved as if she couldn’t catch her breath and her neat white shirt was buttoned up so high it was a wonder she didn’t choke to death. That must be Katrina, Alice’s older sister. Poor thing looked like she might keel over any minute.

I’m not coming with you, Alice said firmly. This is my home.

The man gaped at Alice. The brother-in-law. His aura matched Mama’s, devoid of light and color, like his boring, ordinary suit. He didn’t look any more pleased at Alice’s stand than her mother and sister did.

A third woman exited the car and gave Alice a kind glance. She wore a purple, flowing dress and her aura was bright and warm. Hmm. Must be that nurse they had hired for Alice’s mother. Obviously, a good sort. She moseyed over to Merv and began talking.

Betsy had arranged Alice’s takeover of The Dream Factory, once her studio away from Hollywood, and she had no intention of allowing these people to rip Alice away from Gold Coast. She paced her old apartment, this time in anger. How dare those idiots drain away the delight Alice had worked so hard to achieve?

Betsy’s gaze turned to the woman standing behind the other two. Surprisingly, Katrina’s aura wasn’t sucking away at Alice. The longer the sister stayed in the town, the more her energy sparked and lit. By the time Alice’s family stomped back to the car, Katrina had a full, colorful, spinning glow around her. She might be buttoned to the gills, but something was stirring.

That one had been influenced by the joy throughout the party. And where there was joy, there was hope. Yes, indeed, plenty of hope.

Betsy narrowed her eyes at the sleek Lexus as it left town In the back seat, the younger woman’s energy glowed. The further they sped away from Gold Coast, the more her light dimmed, sucked away by the man and woman in the front seat. Betsy tapped her fingers against the window glass. This would never do.

That woman needed to get her pizzazz back.

Good thing for her, Betsy was loaded with pizzazz.

Chapter Two

Pleasure is your birthright.

Start Your Life Now! Affirmations for Women

Katrina Kennedy McPherson wanted nothing more than to stay at the Gold Coast Thing. Everything in her yearned to step out and join the fun. Which was...unusual, to say the least.

Small town festivals weren’t her usual haunts—What was her thing anyway? Did she even know anymore? —but her younger sister, Alice, had created a beautiful experience full of music, light, and fabulous costumes. A lion, Louis the XIV, Zorro, Power Girl, a Roman centurion, and Alice herself in a Venetian carnival butterfly costume danced as Katrina’s car disappeared back into the humid Illinois night.

Katrina bit her lips and stared out the back window long after the pretty fairy lights of the party faded. She had arrived in Gold Coast with her husband William and her mama less than an half an hour ago. They had driven to the tiny town near the Kentucky border to force Alice to come back to live with Mama and take care of her like she’d always done. Mama had thrown a tantrum at Alice’s insistence that she be allowed a life, but no amount of budging could move Alice Kennedy.

What had happened to her meek, biddable sister? What magic did Gold Coast hold over her?

The Thing had been joyous. Why hadn’t she known her sister was so talented? Why had she listened to Mama when she had denigrated Alice’s sewing? And why hadn’t Katrina insisted on staying in Gold Coast? Who had she turned into that she was this out of touch?? Katrina had a horrible feeling that Alice saw her as the Wicked Witch of the West or some other soul-sucking fun-eater. Shame, like bile, ate at the back of her throat. She touched the back window of the car, desperate to get back to the party, desperate to apologize for her behavior. A tiny part of her soul knew that she would find the answers to her questions in Gold Coast.

Instead, the four of them—William driving, Mama in the passenger seat, Katrina shoved in the backseat despite her tendency toward motion sickness, and Lacey, also stuck in the backseat—were headed across the widest part of Illinois back to St. Louis. William drove too fast while Mama sat next to him with her arms petulantly crossed over her chest. The tension oozed through the car like a thick cloud of smoke. Katrina leaned over to study her mother’s profile. Believe it or not, her lower lip was sticking out like a pouty child’s.

Lacey patted Katrina’s shoulder. Then, undisturbed by the tension in the car, unlocked her phone and began reading. Katrina envied the woman’s equanimity. How could she remain so calm in the midst of this hostile silence?

Lonely Katrina, wanted, no, needed to run back to the party. Too late to return to The Thing now. There was no way William and Mama would let her turn the car around and get out.

Something tight and hot lodged in Katrina’s chest, expanding like a balloon overfilled with helium. The closer they got to St. Louise, the worse it got. At that moment, the truth hit her like a fat law book to the forehead.

She couldn’t live this way anymore. The few moments she had spent in Gold Coast had made her feel more excited and energetic than she had since before she got married.

She wanted, no, needed to change, from being someone who would drag another adult, let alone her blood relative, from something they loved. She wrapped her arms around herself. The self-hug didn’t soothe or ease the shock of looking at her behavior. With her newly opened awareness, she studied the two in the front seat.

Her husband was no longer her best friend, the happy man who had believed in her. Something about marriage had calcified him into a rigid and brittle man, not the playful and dedicated person he had been.

Her mother was a user. Users sucked people dry until they ran out of the house in the middle of the night to start a new life. Which was what Alice had done.

Katrina wanted a life like the one she had glimpsed at The Thing: color and dancing and fun. Great smelling food. People being nice to each other. All the things that she had left behind at some point.

She set her jaw. Somehow, she was going to find her way back to Gold Coast.

KATRINA SQUINTED AT the clock on the dash of the car. Three a.m. and they’d dropped off Lacey, then Mama. William, who had maintained a sullen silence all the way across the state, finally opened his mouth. Your family, he growled, hands gripping the wheel a little too tight. Why do you always drag me into your drama?

She looked out the window at the lights of St. Louis. What to say to that? That he had offered to drive? That he was more upset at Alice ditching them for a small town in the middle of nowhere than Katrina was herself? That he’d declared he was going to drag his sister-in-law back to St. Louis whether she liked it or not?

Katrina didn’t see much point in that. She wanted a new life.

William pulled into their driveway and waited while the garage door creaked its way up. Then he pulled in and turned off the car. Well?

Time to start now. Rather than rush to apologize and placate, she simply said, It has been a tiring night. Let’s go to bed.

In simmering silence, they exited the garage, crossed their small yard, and entered the back porch. William tromped in behind her and went straight to the cute bar cart Alice had given them for a housewarming present when they first bought their little brick bungalow near the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Still silent, he poured bourbon into a rocks glass, sat on the sofa, and glared at her.

Drinking in the wee hours of the morning? That was a new one for him. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t say anything. He’d only get angrier and she’d wish she had kept her mouth shut. She hated not being able to say anything about how she felt.

Katrina twitched with the urge to beg him out of his temper. Normally she would sit at his knees and listen to his complaints, no matter how tired she was. Instead, she gritted her teeth and went to bed. She could almost feel his petulant anger pulsing at her back.

When she woke up, she would start changing her behavior. She hoped