Finding Fate (12 page)

It hurts so much to admit that but it’s true.  I don’t want to see the bakery suffer in the shadow of my grandparents and I don’t want to see my mother suffer anymore.

“You wish your mother were dead?” he asks, sounding offended.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Colt says.  Then he opens the door and stands there.  His right hand is in a fist and he smacks the door.  “Damn you, Bella.  What you do to my heart... my body...”

“Colt...”

“You want your mother dead,” he says as he looks out the door.  “I want mine alive.  She’s being buried today, Bella, that’s why I came to town.”

With that, he closes the door to my apartment and I collapse to the floor.

-Chapter 15-

There’s no point in getting up because Colt is long gone.  The roar of his motorcycle begins and then it’s a heart wrenching sound as it fades away into the distance.

My mind pounds at me with one thought.

Colt’s mom is dead.

She just died.  She was being laid to rest today, right now.  That’s where he had to go.  And he didn’t want to tell me about it.  It makes me want to be angry but how can I?  If that’s his way of coping - sharing time with his family to say goodbye - who am I to step in the way?  I know how I feel about him but that doesn’t mean I’m able to be let in right now, does it?  Of course not.  It’s up to Colt to decide when I’m able to be let inside his heart, his soul, his pain.  Just like myself to him.  It’s not implied anywhere that I had to confess a thing about my mother or the bakery.  And even the stuff I said, did it matter?  Did he hear it?

I pull the sheets tighter together.  They’re wrapped around my fists and rub my cheeks and eyes.  When I pull my hands away, the sheet is soaked. 

I hate crying, seriously.  I really hate it.  It makes me feel weak, used, and I feel below the status of my mother then.  I imagine her trying to console me, help me, but manipulate me.  Again, old memories try to surface, ones that I’m fuzzy about, but ones that shape me into the person I am right now.

I need to pick myself up off the floor and live.  Colt will be back, I have to believe.  When he’s done at his mother’s funeral, he’ll need me.  Won’t he?

Now I’m sitting outside my room and I turn to see my room.  To see the nightstand.  To see the laptop.

Then again, what the hell do I know?

Colt could just leave, right?  He could just ride his bike back home, back to his life, his business, his... whatever. 

I think about the club and shooting.  I didn’t ask.  I didn’t press.  I waited.  Like a fool. 

My body aches for Colt, in so many ways. 

My phone rings and I dive into my room.  I’m so wrapped in my sheet that I start to wrestle with it.  I’m thankful nobody can see me right now as I thrash my arms and legs, desperate to get out of my sheet.  Each time the phone rings, I scream, wanting out.  I finally get out of the sheet and I’m on my knees, reaching for my phone.  I don’t think about being naked but I wish Colt were here to see me in this position.

It’s not Colt calling me.

It’s... the bakery.

The bakery?

The bakery is supposed to be closed.  No, the bakery is closed.  I’m here, in my bedroom, in my apartment. 

So who is in the bakery?

I answer the phone with a shaking voice, like a woman in a ghost movie, knowing someone or something is going to growl or moan on the other end of the line. 

“Isabella... is that you?”

I gasp for a second, hearing shades of Grammie’s voice.  Before my mind can run away with the attempt to believe a paranormal experience is occurring, I hear the murmur of people in the background.

“Answer me!” the voice yells.

And then I realize it’s my mother.

“Mom?  What are you doing?”

“I’m working,” she says, “just like you want me to.”

Her voice isn’t clear.

Oh, no.

She’s drinking and she’s at the bakery.

I’m not sure if she knows the recipes or even remembers how to bake a thing.  Let alone the concept of opening the place and helping customers.

“Mom, you should have called me.”

“No, no.  You need a break, remember?  Is someone in your bed?”

I look to my bed.  The sheets are a mess.  The covers are a mess.  It still has the sexy lingering smell of Colt and I.

“Nobody is in my bed,” I say.  I’m not lying but my cheeks still turn red.  “Are you drunk?”

“Nope,” my mom replies and then scoffs. 

Sure, she’s not drunk... yet.

I have to get to the bakery before all hell breaks loose for real.  Hell is there but it can only get worse and will get worse by the second.

I stand up and look for my clothes.  I can’t wear pajamas to the bakery.  I really need a shower but there’s no time. 

“Mrs. Anderson is here looking for an order,” my mom says.  “I looked and I can’t find a damn thing in this place.  My gosh, Isabella...”

“Her order wasn’t completed yet.  It’s supposed to be...”

Yeah.  It’s supposed to be done today, right now, but it’s not.  Because we closed.  Because I needed a break. 

I’ve let the bakery down.

I’ve let Colt down.

I’ve let myself down.

“Well, good job,” my mother says.  “Now I have to deal with her bitchy attitude.  I went to high school with her.  She was such a...”

And I’ve obviously let my mother down, but I’m pretty sure I let her down a long time ago. 

“You shouldn’t have opened,” I yell into the phone.  “Why did you do this?”

“Because it’s what you wanted,” she yells back.

I hear more voices in the background.  She sounds like she’s standing right there, at the counter.  I visualize it - a line of people waiting, growing impatient.  My mother standing there is a blurred haze, trying to do something.

I need to get there and fast.

“I’m on my way,” I say and hang up the call.

I really don’t have time to think about Colt but my body does in other ways.  I inhale the smell of my apartment.  Outside, I take a deep breath, desperate to find anything that reminds me of Colt.  I start the car and reach for the radio, ready to find some slow sad song to think about Colt. 

I don’t.

I’m in gear, driving.

I make it to the bakery in record time.  I don’t like speeding and don’t condone it, but all I could see were cracks.  Cracks in and out of the bakery.  Each second, each alcohol laced breath from mother, all creating cracks to take the family business down.

As I rush through the back, my mother appears, covered in flour and looking woozy.

“Go get a glass of water,” I say with a growl in my throat.

I hurry out front to find a line of ten people waiting for me.  They’re all regular customers and the only who looks annoyed is Mrs. Anderson.  I’d be annoyed too.  Her order isn’t ready and my mother called her a bitch.  I tend to her first, offering her anything in the glass case for free.  Lucky for me, she accepts and then lectures me that her prayer group isn’t going to be very happy but considering the deplorable circumstances they will eat and spend their meeting praying for my mother.

Good, one less thing off my back I guess.

She’s out the door and I get everyone back in line.

One by one, I calm the place down and tend to the customers.  Orders are placed, orders are picked up.  Orders are paid for.  I don’t need to lie to anyone because they just look at me and seem to understand.  Each sad set of eyes that meets mine makes me think of Grammie and Granpie.  I can imagine them looking down from the heavens, shaking their heads.  Their daughter a mess and their granddaughter rolling between the sheets with a guy like Colt.

When Miss Peters is at the counter, her buffoon hair standing a mile high and her blue eye makeup teetering on the look of a clown, she smiles.  There’s a small smear of red lipstick on her perfectly white front teeth and for some reason it all hits me.  How much I maybe do like the bakery.  The people, the personalities, and the protection it gives me.  It keeps me inside, away from the world.  Away from people like Colt and whatever he was still hiding from me.

She's always been a fan of the bacon bread and I reach for two loaves before she asks for it.  When I put the bread on the counter, she touches my wrists with her hands.  For a second I think she's going to pray for me... yes, it's happened before.

But she doesn't.

"It's so sad," she whispers and nods towards the open archway leading to the back of the bakery.  "She's lonely.  Missing her parents."

And there it is, the justifying.  That's what has happened all my life, people justifying what my mother does instead of telling her to stop it.  Instead of getting her help, the find an excuse and assume the excuse will run its course and cure her.  But there was no excuse for my mother and there was no cure.  The only cure that really exists is already inside us.  We just have to take the time to find it.

"She shouldn't be here," I say, trying not to sound bitter.

"All we can do is love," Miss Peters says.

"Yeah," I say, "love..."

Of course I'm not associating it with my mother.  All I can see is Colt standing at his mother’s grave, mourning her.  It pains me.

Miss Peters pays and I leave the money on the counter for the moment.  As I reach down for a shopping bag I see the label-less bottle just as it falls to the floor.  It hits and shatters, followed by the harsh smell of alcohol.

She's back to whiskey, back to numbing the pain.

I look up at Miss Peters and out her bread in the bag.  She doesn't say a word about the mess I've made and I'm sure she can smell it. 

When she leaves I turn and see my mother standing next the archway, a glass of water in her hand.

"I'm drinking water," she says.

I look down at the chunks of glass on the floor and the puddle of whiskey.

"Good," I say, "clean up your mess."

My mother sips her water with a grin on her face.  A teasing grin, knowing damn well how much this hurts me. 

I look at the neck of the bottle, still intact, and I kick it at her.  It spins and skids along the floor and stops at her feet. 

"I guess this is my fault," she says.

"You show up, open the bakery, and get drunk."

"Not drunk," she corrects.  "People starting coming in right at the opening.  And you say the place is going under."

I don't say a word.  If I start this, it's going to go back and forth and won't end well.  There's a point my mother reaches where she's not so drunk she's falls over but far from sober.  This point is where she's mean, unwilling to try or care, and will take out her life on those around her.

"How's your break?" she asks and takes another drink.

"Just fine," I say as I look around the bakery.  "Do you have another bottle here?"

"Nope.  And in fact, I'm going to close up.  I'd rather be home."

That makes two of us.  Only I'll stay to keep the place functioning.  My mother chugs her water, lets out a long satisfying sound which is nothing but sarcasm, and then leaves.  I watch her get into her car and it scares the hell out of me.  I fear she's going to kill someone if she drives drunk.

The car is gone and I'm back to work.  My mind swirls.  I see the money Miss Peters gave me and I open the register to put it inside.  The drawer dings and flies open, empty.

Empty.

I don't expect anything less from my mother and it starts to paint a picture for me.  She came to the bakery to take the cash out of the drawer and forgot to lock the door.  A customer showed up and she had to work.

I look up from the register and stare across the empty bakery.  The few small empty tables.  Even the street is empty. 

I'm empty too.

I know what's coming from my mother and yet a part of me thinks and wishes she will change.  That she would come to work and actually work.  We can balance the bakery and bring it back to what it once was.  And add everything Colt suggested...

Oh, Colt.

We're so far away but close at heart.

In a sad way we are both mourning the loss of our mothers.  Mine is still breathing, a living death, maybe the worst kind because all I can do is wait for something to happen.  I hate thinking it, I hate saying it, I hate seeing it in my mind, but it’s true.  There can never be a good ending to this. 

I try to get back to normal, even though I’m not really sure what that means anymore.  I gather up the requests for orders and take inventory of what we have and don’t have.  Ordering supplies is becoming harder each day, especially when the register is now magically empty.  I kick myself for not taking the cash out and doing something with it.  I normally do, leaving just a little bit in there so if my mother does steal she thinks she has something.  But my mind has been so focused on Colt and my own life, I’m letting things slip through the cracks.