“What was he thinking?” Annajane asked.

“I have no idea,” Mason said with a scowl. “We’re basically only communicating by e-mail these days. But that’s going to change pretty shortly. In fact, a lot of things are fixing to change.”

“You met with Sallie?”

“Yes,” Mason affirmed. “We had a fairly long, frank discussion about a lot of stuff. She’s still not totally convinced the family should keep Quixie, but that’s sort of a moot point at the moment.”

Annajane looked over at the bowl of ice cream she’d just scooped out. “Sounds like this could be a long story. So let me just take this in to Sophie before it melts, and I’ll be right back.”

*   *   *

Annajane came back into the kitchen. “You were saying?”

“My brother and I can’t keep working at cross-purposes,” Mason said. “It’s hurting the company, and it’s hurting the family. We managed to hammer out a short-term agreement this morning.” He took a deep breath and looked directly at Annajane.

“I told Davis we have to find a way to get you not to leave the company.” He clamped his hand over hers. “We need you, Annajane. Need your talent, your energy, your commitment. Davis and I don’t agree on much, but it turns out we do agree about that. What do you say? Will you come back?”

She stared down at their hands and sighed.

“Please?” Mason’s face looked haunted.

Annajane looked away, struggling to find the right answer, for the right reasons.

“I’m all done.” Sophie stood in the kitchen doorway, her tousled blond curls backlit by the sun streaming through the windows. Her pink pocketbook was slung across her chest, bandolier-style. She padded barefoot into the kitchen and carefully placed her bowl on the table where Mason and Annajane were sitting. Without a word, she slid onto Mason’s lap.

“Whatcha doing?” Sophie asked, glancing down at the intertwined hands on the tabletop.

Annajane snatched her hand away from Mason’s, but she could feel herself blushing.

“I’m trying to talk Annajane into changing her mind about moving away,” Mason said.

“Letha says it’s a damned shame Annajane got chased outta town by that lil’ hussy,” Sophie said brightly.

Mason choked. “I’m going to have to have a talk with Letha about little pitchers having big ears.”

Sophie cocked her head and regarded Annajane somberly. “Will you stay, pretty please?”

“I’m not sure,” Annajane said. “I have a lot to think about.”

“Like what?”

“For one thing, I don’t have a job anymore,” Annajane said, keeping her tone light.

“You can have your old job back,” Mason offered.

“Yay!” Sophie clapped her hands in delight.

“Also, I don’t have anyplace to live. My loft is sold, and I have to move out by the day after tomorrow,” Annajane said.

“Since when?” Mason asked.

“My real estate agent called right as I was driving into town,” Annajane said. “The closing had to be moved up to Wednesday, which means I have to be totally moved out of the loft by noon that day.”

“You could come live with us!” Sophie said delightedly. “Right, daddy?”

Mason coughed politely. “I think Annajane probably wants a place of her own, Soph.”

“Letha told Aunt Pokey that Daddy and Celia had a big ole fight, and now Celia is gone for sure, thank you, Sweet Baby Jesus,” Sophie reported, mimicking Letha’s slow southern accent with deadly accuracy. “So now, Annajane could sleep in your room, couldn’t you, Annajane?”

Mason coughed so violently his face turned purple and tears streamed down his face. Annajane couldn’t help herself. Her shoulders heaved with suppressed laughter.

“I am going to have a serious talk with Letha about spreading gossip,” Mason said solemnly. “And for your information, and Aunt Pokey’s and Letha’s, we did not have a big fight. We had an um, discussion. But Celia is not gone.”

“Are you still getting married?” Sophie asked, tilting her head to look at her father.

He looked out the window. “It’s still under discussion,” he said finally. “Anyway, that’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Annajane could stay in my room with me. Right?”

“That’s a very generous invitation, Sophie,” Annajane said, giggling despite herself. “But if I do stay in Passcoe, which I’m not sure I will, I’ll need to find a house of my own.”

“Why?” Sophie looked puzzled. “Don’t you like us?”

“I like you a lot,” Annajane said. “But I’ve lived alone for a long time now. I’m used to my privacy, and doing things my own way. It would be best for everybody if we left it like that.”

Sophie yawned widely and leaned her head back against Mason’s chest.

“Time for you to go take a nap,” he told her, gently sliding her down from his lap.

Sophie threw her arms around Annajane’s neck. “Will you come over and watch Milo and Otis with me tonight?”

“Hmm,” Annajane said. “I wish I could, Soph, but now I’ve got to go home and get my stuff all packed up to put in storage. But I promise, as soon as that’s done, we’ll have movie night again.”

“Okay,” Sophie said, trying to suppress another yawn.

Mason waited until Sophie had gone to find Letha before returning his attention to Annajane.

“Will you at least agree to come back to work at Quixie?” Mason asked. “I’m dead serious, Annajane. I told Davis I want you back on our team. You’d report directly to me. I know it’ll be awkward, but that can’t be helped. Will you do it?”

He gave her that slow, winning smile that had always worked on her in the past.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I really don’t want to get between you and your brother. Or Celia. I’ve complicated things enough already.”

Tell her, damn it. You’re only making things worse by talking her into staying.

“You’re not what’s between us,” Mason said. “Davis and I have been having issues for a long time now. And Mama, she’s got her own agenda. But I do want to talk to you about this new marketing scheme; I don’t like it.”

Annajane bit her lip, hesitant to trash Celia.

“You know,” she said finally. “Yesterday, I was cleaning out my office and taking some old file boxes that had been in there for years and years out to the Dumpster. One of the boxes was so old it fell to pieces as I was unloading it. Inside it I found all the old magazine and newspaper mechanicals and tear sheets for Quixie ads from the ’40s and ’50s. They were so charming, so right, so Quixie, for want of a better phrase. For me, they just really captured the essence of what we’re selling—fun, refreshment, and yeah, the idea of celebrating the moment. I honestly think that’s what we’ve forgotten with all these slick, sophisticated campaigns we’ve bought into in the past few years.”

Mason nodded thoughtfully. “I remember those old ads. There was one, from the sixties, probably, showing teenaged girls in a speedboat…”

“I saw that one,” Annajane said. “It made me want to run out and get a permanent wave and a Jantzen bathing suit, maybe buy a Chris-Craft outboard.”

“Mama and my aunt Lu posed for that ad,” Mason said. “They took the photo that the illustration was based on, out on the lake, back in the day. Dad had it framed and hanging in the basement playroom for years and years, when we were growing up.”

“Those are the ads that everybody remembers,” Annajane said. “Quixie is never going to be Coke. It’s never going to be Pepsi. It shouldn’t even try. The brand is iconic in its own way, and I think that’s what the message needs to return to. Retro is in again, you know.”

“My granddaddy always said he just wanted us to be the best independent regional soft drink company in the business,” Mason said. “He never touched coffee, but he drank a bottle of Quixie from his own special Quixie icebox just about every morning of his life, as soon as his feet touched the bedroom floor. As far as he was concerned, our product was unique, and he really believed every bottle of Quixie that left the plant was the thing that would sell the next one.”