A CERTAIN KIND OF STARLIGHT

HEATHER WEBBER is the national bestselling author of more than thirty novels—including Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe, the Lucy Valentine novels, and the Nina Quinn Mysteries—and has been twice nominated for an Agatha Award. She loves to spend time with her family, read, drink too much coffee and tea, birdwatch, crochet, watch cooking competition and home improvement shows, and bake. Heather lives in southwestern Ohio and is hard at work on her next book.

“Lyrical, magical and as sweet and rich as one of Aunt Bean’s cakes, Heather Webber’s latest deserves a place in your home and heart. That glow you feel when you finish? It’s your soul thanking you for reading A Certain Kind of Starlight and for always choosing the light over the dark.” —Viola Shipman, USA Today bestselling author of The Page Turner

“A lyrical and lovely story filled with whimsy, heart, and a delicious sense of place. I devoured this wonderful tale of sisterhood, strong women, and finding one’s place in the world.” —Rachel Linden, author of Recipe for a Charmed Life

CHAPTER ONE

From the Kitchen of Verbena Fullbright

Sweet without salty is like hooting without hollering. They’re best together. Salt brightens flavors and lifts the texture of a cake, helping it stand tall and proud. Doesn’t everyone need a boost up every now and again?

Addie

Rooted deep within a woman’s complex DNA was the right to pick and choose the traditions and societal conventions she followed. This was especially true for matriarchs, the backbones, the older women who had seen it all, heard it all, dealt with it all, and no longer gave a flying fig what others thought. After years of living, of giving, of conforming, she now played by a set of rules carefully crafted from experience.

I personally believed southern women took this notion to a whole other level and kept that in mind as I studied my daddy’s older sister, Verbena Fullbright, fondly known by those closest to her as Bean.

Sitting primly, properly, on a stool pulled up to a stainless steel counter, Aunt Bean had her rounded shoulders drawn back, her head held high. Earlier today she’d been to see her lawyer, old Mr. Stubblefield, so she wore a long-sleeved leopard-print maxi dress and leather slingbacks instead of her usual baking attire. Her hairstyle was a cross between a pixie cut and a pompadour, the color of merlot. Her fingernails were painted black, a polish that would surely raise eyebrows around town if the people here didn’t know her and her funky style so well.

It was clear that even while feeling puny, Aunt Bean had stuck to her own particular notions of what was right and proper. She’d never attend a business meeting without wearing heels, even if her swollen feet had to be wedged into the shoes.

“Lordy mercy, those pearly gates are in for a mighty reckoning when I come calling. The heavens will be shaking,” Bean said theatrically, humor vibrating in her loud voice.

Her spirited statement was punctuated by two quick thumps of her wooden walking stick on the cement floor, the dramatic effect unfortunately mellowed by the stick’s thick rubber tip.

“Quaking, even,” Delilah Nash Peebles said as she removed a cake pan from an oven and slid it onto a multi-level stainless steel cooling rack that was taller than she was. She glanced at me, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkling. “We all know Bean won’t be knocking politely. She’ll thunder on in and try to take over running the place.”

Mid-January sunshine poured in through the glass front door and tall windows of the converted big red barn on Aunt Bean’s vast property. It was the temporary home of the Starling Cake Company while the bakery’s Market Street location underwent a massive renovation.

I’d arrived a half hour ago and had been feeling a sense of déjà vu since—because this space had previously housed the bakery when it had been a home-based business. The air was once again scented with Aunt Bean’s homemade vanilla extract—along with a hint of chocolate and coffee from the mocha cakes currently baking—and everything looked the same as it used to when I was a little and practically glued to her apron strings. Three double ovens on one wall. Two stainless steel workstations. Four stand mixers. The decorating corner. An old range. Two massive refrigerators. A large bakery case.

And just like old times, I fell straight into helping where help was needed. Currently, I was dusting greased cake pans with cocoa powder while trying not to flat-out panic about my aunt’s health issues.

“Plus,” Bean sniffed loudly, indignantly, “I have a few grievances that need airing. Saint Peter’s going to get himself a right earful.”

Delilah added two more pans to the rack. “It’s no secret that you have a knack for speaking your mind. If I had a dollar for every time you’ve fussed about fondant, I’d be a rich woman. Poor Petal was fixin’ to pitch a hissy fit when you told her you wouldn’t use it for her wedding cake.”

“Petal Pottinger?” I asked. “She’s getting married?”

I felt a deep ache, one I had become familiar with since moving away from Starlight, from home, twelve years ago. It came from feeling like I was missing out. Mostly because I was.

“Sure enough. She’s getting hitched to Dare Fife next weekend in the ballroom at the Celestial Hotel,” Delilah said. “I’m convinced he’s the only good apple to fall from his crooked family tree. He’s almost twenty-two and hasn’t been thrown in jail yet, unlike the rest of the men in his family. Has himself a good job, too, at the flour mill.”

Dare Buckley Fife. My stomach rolled with worry for Petal, because around here, the Buckley name was synonymous with danger, with dishonor, with damage.

Bean shifted on the stool. “That Dare’s a good boy, so Petal might be all right at picking men, but God love her, she ain’t got the sense God gave a goose when it comes to cake. I call it fondon’t for a reason. And I’ll keep on saying it until my very last breath.”

“Can we not?” I asked, releasing a pent-up sigh. “We don’t need to be talking like you’re standing on death’s door, Aunt Bean.”

Because she wasn’t. She wasn’t.

“Now, Addie, it’s just talk,” she said. “But you know how I feel about dyin’. I’m not the least bit scared of it, though I hope it’ll hold off a good while. I’ve still got some livin’ to do.”

She might not be scared, but I sure was.

I’d known Bean hadn’t been feeling well for months now. After a bout with the flu last November, she’d started having trouble standing for long periods of time and walking distances without feeling out of breath and woozy—which was why she’d gotten the walking stick. I’d chalked up her slow healing simply to getting older. She was closing in on sixty-four, an age when most would be thinking about retiring. But not Aunt Bean.

Like generations of Fullbright women before her, she’d devoted her life to baking. To sharing with others, through cake, the ability to see the bright side of life and its possibilities.

When people tasted one of her confections, they were flooded with pleasant sparks of warmth and happiness as glimmers of hope and optimism, comfort and contentment filled emotional cracks created by life’s trials and stresses. Her cakes healed the soul and enhanced the inner light that helped guide people through hard times and enabled them to find silver linings in even the toughest situations.

For the bakery’s customers, the effects of the cakes lasted a good long while. Weeks. Sometimes months.

For the women in our family, the ability to see a bright side and all that came with it was a near constant in our lives, first appearing almost two hundred years ago after a star fell from the sky onto family land. Legend was that somehow the fallen star with its special glow had given us the gift, and we felt honor bound to use it to bring light and hope and brightness to others.

But beyond the glimmers, our bright sides also included the ability to see the good in a person, something that was revealed when we looked deeply into someone’s eyes. The glow of an inner light showed us the people who were kind, decent. And warned of those who were not.

Right now, though, as I sat in the barn kitchen, I was struggling to see any kind of light. There was no silver lining to be had.

Copyright © 2024 by Heather Webber