Read Gluten for Punishment for Free Online Page A

couldn’t claim the bakery was gluten-free
     if I didn’t really mean it.
    By lunchtime, the shop was empty. The doorbells jingled, and I looked up from refilling
     the display case to see Tasha standing there with two bags marked with the G RANDMA’S D INER logo and a sheepish look on her face. The grandma in question was my cousin Lucy,
     who was only two years older than I was. In the family tradition, she had had her
     first babies very young and they had had their babies young, and now my forty-two-year-old
     cousin was a grandma. In between helping plan her children’s weddings and baby showers,
     she’d opened the town’s favorite place to share gossip and French fries.
    “Hey.”
    “Hey,” Tasha said back and looked around at the empty store. “Are you ready for lunch?”
    “Sure. Do you want coffee, juice, or water?” I asked, breaking the slight tension.
    Tasha’s shoulders relaxed and she moved to the last table near the back. “Coffee,
     please. I think the weather is finally changing. It’s like fifty degrees out there.”
     She put the bags on the table and took off her jacket.
    I handed her a mug of her favorite mocha with a dash of soy milk then took the chair
     across from her to keep my eye on the front door. I pulled out a heavy paper cup of
     the best gluten-free chili this side of the Mississippi, along with a spoon and napkin.
     Since celiac disease tends to run in families, Lucy knew enough not to thicken her
     diner chili with flour or use beans canned in sauce.
    “I’m going to dive right in. . . .” Tasha’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyes sparkled.
     “I’ve been dating Craig Kennedy for nearly a month now.”
    I froze partway through taking the recyclable cover off my soup. “You’ve been dating—as
     in seeing a man?”
    “Yes.”
    “For over a month . . .”
    “Yep.” She nodded. Her mouth was in a straight line, but her eyes looked happy.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” I let go of the lid and leaned forward. Tasha might have
     been nine hundred miles away when I lived in Chicago, but we’d talked and texted every
     day. In fact, she had been my sole source of comfort during my divorce. “I mean look
     at you, you look happy. How could I not have noticed?”
    “You were busy with your big opening, and you’re doing all the online order fulfillment
     work. . . .”
    “But we’ve seen each other almost every day.” I cringed at the whine in my voice.
     “How come you didn’t tell me? How could I not have known?”
    Tasha leaned her elbows on the table and played with the noodle soup in front of her.
     Her eyes barely met mine as her bottom lip stuck out. “I didn’t want you to know.”
    Oh, boy. I sat back. My feelings were hurt. Seriously hurt. Best friends shared everything . . .
     especially things like when they were worried or happy . . . or dating someone new.
     At least we had. “Why not?” The words came out in a whisper as I tried hard to keep
     the tears out of my throat.
    “Oh, no, honey.” Tasha reached up and patted my hand. “Not just you, I didn’t want
     anyone to know.”
    I wrinkled my forehead and tilted my head. “Why? Is he an axe murderer? Oh my God”—my
     eyes grew wide—“did you find him in jail?”
    “Oh, oh, no.” Tasha giggled. “I found him at the bank.”
    I shook my head. “So he’s a bank robber?”
    “No silly, he’s an adjunct professor at the college. He was at the bank because he
     works there part-time. It’s Craig Kennedy.”
    Kennedy. Wait. “The younger or older Kennedy boy?” I had vaguely known both Kennedys
     since grade school, but they were both ahead of me and looked like bookends. I knew
     one of the dark, curly-haired guys was Ralph and the other was Craig, but I simply
     had never taken the time to figure out which was which.
    “Craig is younger by a year. He was a couple grades ahead of us. Ralph is the older
     one who owns Walcott’s Drug Emporium.”
    “I don’t