From Scratch (5 page)

“How have you been?” Nick asks in a way that sounds sincere, though I imagine he’s only being polite.

“Fine,” I say, biting my lip. “Just . . . tying up some loose ends for my father before I head back.”

“I see.”

“And you? The hospital?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I immediately wish there was a way I could pluck them from the air and put them back inside me.

Nick rakes a hand through his dark brown hair. It’s the longest I’ve ever seen it but still just as untamed. “Things at the hospital are good,” he says. “Everything’s good. My father’s head of cardiology now.”

“That’s . . . great,” I say. “Your mother must be so proud.”

His lips form a thin line, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “Something like that.”

“Oh! Lillie, dear, haven’t you heard?” Sullivan Grace interjects, pressing a delicate hand to her chest. I forgot she was standing beside me, and from the startled look on Nick’s face, I think he did, too. “Everyone’s all aflutter about—”

Nick’s shoulders stiffen. “It’s fine, Ms. Hasell,” he says. “Lillie doesn’t care about any of that.”

He’s right. I
don’t
care. Not about him and Baylor Medical, not about this Upper Whatever my father has volunteered me for, and not about managing Turner’s Greasy Spoons. I left Dallas to get away from all that.

Sullivan Grace blinks, looking momentarily stunned before regaining her composure. “Right, right. Of course,” she says, then changes the subject to the god-awful baking competition again, yammering on about sponsor expectations and donation forms and judging guidelines and
blah blah blah.

“Ms. Hasell,” I cut in. “I’m flattered you want me to do this, but I really must be going. My father’s expecting me at his attorney’s office and—”

“And nothing, dear,” she says with a steel-wool smile, deepening the crow’s feet around her eyes. “You’ll be at Junior League headquarters tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock. This is for charity, after all. Are you really going to deny a desperate child the opportunity to receive a warm meal?”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer.

“Now you’re a bit behind the other contestants with practicing,” she continues, “but I’m sure you’ll catch up in no time. In fact, yesterday I was telling Paulette Bunny . . .”

I tune her out, grateful she’s a talker.

As I tuck a hair that’s escaped from my ponytail behind my ear, I watch as Nick’s eyes lock on my finger. My left ring finger—the one with the sparkling diamond on it. I meant to leave it in my pocket like I did yesterday, only this morning I must have slipped it on out of habit.

Nick furrows his brow and tilts his head, examining the ring as if it’s a Magic 8 Ball giving him a clue he doesn’t understand. A moment passes and then his expression hardens into an unreadable mask.

My heart hammers in my chest and my insides twist like they’re being spun around fork tines. My hand trembles, and the cushion-cut stone dances under the lights, reflecting tiny rainbows onto Nick’s shirt.

Could I be a bigger idiot?
I think as I shove my left hand into my trouser pocket.

My eyes dart to Sullivan Grace, hoping she hasn’t noticed. Thankfully, she seems oblivious. Now she’s in the middle of telling a story about last year’s Upper Crust baking competition. Something about how an apple turnover beat out French silk pie for best in show.

I start to interrupt before Nick ruins everything. The last thing I need is Sullivan Grace gossiping to my father before I have the chance to tell him myself.

But I’m too late. Nick speaks first.

“Congratulations,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he never got down on one knee in our secret spot at Montgomery Park and asked me to marry him. “I’m happy for you.”

My gaze meets his, and it’s as if we’re continents apart. I should feel smug, victorious, showing Nick that I’ve moved on, put our past behind me, but instead I’m overcome with sadness.
It was supposed to be you.
The thought is like a wound that won’t heal.

“Thank you,” I say. “It . . . happened recently.”

Sullivan Grace finally realizes there’s another conversation taking place and turns to me and says, “Recently? What happened recently?”

“Oh, um, my new promotion at work,” I stammer, my eyes pleading with Nick to
please, for the love of cherry streusel
go along with it. “So you can understand, Ms. Hasell, why I’m not in a position to stay and help with your charity event. You’ll need to find someone else, someone
willing
.”

Sullivan Grace’s mouth drops open but quickly snaps shut. In all my years, I’ve never seen her rendered speechless.

Nick stares at me with the focus of a sniper. When he finally speaks, his tone is so sharp it could slice through dry ice. “It’s probably for the best, anyway,” he says to Sullivan Grace, though I know his words are meant for me. “Lillie’s still got all those
loose ends
to tie up before she runs back to wherever the hell she’s been. May as well let her get on with it.” Then he gives me a look, as if
I’m
the bad guy.

A fire ignites in the pit of my stomach. Flames of anger lick through me and burst from my mouth. “You knew where I was.”

“Really?” Nick says with a bitter laugh. “How would I know that? You
left
.”

I feel a shift inside me, transforming my anger into righteous indignation as I recall all the meals I ate alone. All the times I waited for him to return home after his residency shift ended only to be faced with cold indifference when he finally did pass through the front door. All the conversations I had with myself because I couldn’t bear the silence. All the nights I laid curled up in bed longing for a touch that would never come.

He left me first, long before I ever took the final step.

He left me first.

“Go ahead, Nick. Blame me.” I take a challenging step forward. “You’re right. I did leave, and I don’t regret it,” I say, then say it again, louder, firmer, grounding the electrical current pulsing through me. Reminding me that nothing has changed between us. Nothing.

Then with long, purposeful strides, I walk away from him and Sullivan Grace, grabbing my things before stepping out into the warm October afternoon.

And like that day five years ago when I boarded a plane to Chicago, I don’t look back.

FIVE

THE LAW OFFICES
of Stokes and Ingram, LLP are located on the forty-fourth floor of the Trammell Crow Center in the Arts District of downtown Dallas.

Bursting into the reception area, I see a group of men in suits and ties lounging in leather wing chairs immersed in today’s
New York Times
. I walk past them but stop when I notice they’re all stuffing their faces with . . . raspberry oatmeal bars?

Then I hear my father’s booming voice say, “Now if I told you that, it wouldn’t be a secret ingredient anymore.”

I glance at the reception desk, where my father is chatting with a silver-haired woman wearing an afghan for a sweater, her hand deep inside a pastry box. My father is dressed in faded Levi’s and scuffed work boots.
At least he threw on a button-down shirt
.

As I make my way over to him, the receptionist slaps my father playfully on the arm and says, “Jack, don’t tease an old woman. Give me a little hint. What else is in the filling?”

Is she flirting with him? The ladies have always loved my father and his sweet-talking ways, so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked.

“You signed me up for a baking competition?” I say in a firm voice, interrupting their conversation. My father keeps setting these traps, and like an idiot, I fall right into them. I thought once I entered adulthood I’d have learned my lesson.

Peering over her glasses, the receptionist scrutinizes me like a judge at a beauty pageant.

My father winks at me and grins. “Course I did, baby girl,” he says, popping half a raspberry oatmeal bar into his mouth. “I already ironed your mother’s apron. It’s waiting for you in the office.”

“I don’t bake anymore.
Remember?
” I try to sound cordial. I don’t succeed.

“With my bum knee, you can’t expect me to do it.”

“Then find someone else.”

Wiping crumbs off his jeans, he says, “You know I’d never give anyone who knows jack-diddly-squat about the diner a copy of our family’s recipe.”

Frustration sweeps through me, cresting in my chest. “Maybe you should have thought about that before—”

The receptionist clears her throat. “Why don’t you have a seat, sweetheart? Mr. Stokes is still finishing up with his three o’clock. I’ll come get you when he’s ready.” She motions to the waiting area with a smile wrapped in barbed wire—a southern specialty right up there with Civil War reenactments and fried green tomatoes.

I want to argue, but I don’t. When I’m angry, I have a tendency to say things I’ll regret. Instead, I sigh and take the only open seat. Picking up the latest issue of
People
magazine, I flip through the glossy pages.

“Baby girl’s competing in the Upper Crust, and she’s going to win with Elizabeth’s peach cobbler,” I hear my father proudly say to the receptionist. “Did you know Lillie used to make it at the diner every week? People would line up around the block for it.”

His words sink like stones at the bottom of my stomach, dredging up a memory I’ve tried so hard to bury. And just like that I’m sixteen again, back in my father’s
Brady Bunch
kitchen with Nick on the day I first made my mother’s peach cobbler.

The scene feels so real it’s as though I can touch it.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Nick said, taking the recipe card off the counter and reading it over. “Ernie’s Incredible Edible Carrot Cake. Sounds good.”

“I hope so. If only I could find the darn grater,” I said as I kneeled on the floor and rifled through the pantry, gathering ingredients for my latest project. “I swear I had it in my hand.”

A beat later, the grater dangled in front of my nose. I blew wisps of hair away from my face and looked at Nick.

“It was hiding behind the flour canister,” he said with a crooked smile.

Standing, I took the grater, set it on the counter, and got busy shredding carrots.

Nick came to stand beside me and slid the grater toward himself. “Why don’t you let me give this one a try?”

“Cooking isn’t exactly your forte,” I said as I remembered the one and only time Nick tried to bake a cake—eleven years old and all lanky limbs and a mouthful of braces and wild hair. He had forgotten to let the layers cool before icing them, so the frosting had trickled down the sides in clumps. I’d commented that it was the best devil’s food cake I’d ever tasted, even though Nick accidentally confused the measurements for the sugar and the salt and put four extra eggs into the batter. My nine-year-old heart couldn’t bear to tell him I’d gagged down my slice.

“Come on. Making a cake isn’t
that
hard,” Nick said. “I mix together the ingredients, pour them into a pan, and throw the whole thing in the oven. Voilà. Out comes the best carrot cake in the world.”

My “Yeah, right” expression said otherwise. But I let him have his fun anyway, laughing in unabashed amusement as Nick fumbled about the kitchen, baking powder and egg yolks sticking to his skin. I hoped it’d get his mind off the argument he’d had with his parents. Nick was starting at SMU in the fall, where he wanted to pursue a degree in music composition. Charlotte and Dr. Preston had other ideas. Either Nick majored in biology or he would be cut off financially. Medical schools would never consider an applicant with a liberal arts background. He was eighteen, not some foolish child living in a fantasyland, and he needed to be serious, concentrate on his future. No more late nights playing that stupid guitar at the Prickly Pear. No more hanging around Turner’s Greasy Spoons with some misfit girl stuck on a dead-end path.

Once the ingredients were dumped into the stand mixer, Nick scraped down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and secured the whisk attachment. He turned on the mixer and flipped it to the fastest whipping speed. Immediately, batter erupted out of the bowl. Springing into action, I grabbed the power cord and yanked it from the outlet before more damage could be done.

Too late.

Batter was splattered everywhere—on the cabinets, the tile backsplash, the stovetop. Large blobs of it dripped off the counter and were landing in soupy puddles on the floor. When my gaze locked on Nick, I burst into giggles. I couldn’t help it. He was coated in it.

Nick only stood there, a stunned expression on his face. Finally, he shook his head and said, “That was not supposed to happen.” He pulled his polo shirt over his head, revealing a white cotton undershirt, and tossed it into the sink.

I threw a dish towel at his chest. “I told you tripling the recipe was a stupid idea. You should have taken my advice—”

“Your
unsolicited
advice,” he interjected as he cleaned himself up.

“Does it matter? At least we would have something to show for it and the kitchen wouldn’t look like a scene from
Animal House
,” I said, then dipped my finger into one of the lumpy blobs on the counter and smeared it across his cheek.

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Wipe it off.”

“Make me,” I said with a wicked smile.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Maybe. What are you going to do about it?” I said, reaching up to spread more batter across his other cheek. Nick captured my wrist, his gaze intense, making my pulse race.

Then all at once we crashed together, two hormonal magnets colliding. Our mouths connected, and when our lips parted and tongues grazed against each other, I was gone, consumed by him. Nick pulled my waist against his, then lifted me up and placed me on the counter. My fingers curled into his shirtfront, tugging him even closer so that there was no room for a breath between us.

A car alarm blared somewhere outside, loud and angry, and we broke apart, gasping, our breathing erratic. Nick dropped his head to my shoulder and let out a soft laugh.

I ran my fingers through his hair and said, “I guess that’s our cue to clean up this mess and finish the cake before my father comes home.”

Wiggling out of his grasp, I hopped off the counter, readjusted my tank top, and smoothed down my hair. Then I walked over to the counter and found the recipe card so we could get started again.

Nick followed me. “I say we forget it,” he said, reclaiming my waist, a mischievous grin on his face. Then he took the card from my hand and flung it over his shoulder.

I tried catching it in midair but was too late. The card fluttered in between the kitchen cabinet and the refrigerator. “Now look what you did,” I said, poking his shoulder. “Go get it.”

Nick pushed the fridge flush against the wall and extended his arm as far as it would reach, searching around until he pulled out an index card. Using the fridge door handle for support, he hoisted himself up off the floor and handed it to me.

It was a recipe card, but it wasn’t for Ernie’s Incredible Edible Carrot Cake.

Summer Peach Cobbler was scrawled across the top. The card was covered in dust and grime, the paper yellowed, edges tattered, ink faded. I cleaned off the filth with the hem of my shirt and stared at the elegant script, knowing immediately it had belonged to my mother.

Tracing the outline of her words, I found myself wondering about her. “Your mother needed to fly, baby girl,” was all my father would say anytime I asked. He rarely talked about her or their life together. I knew my father still loved her. The framed photo he kept propped up on his nightstand said as much. In it, my mother’s face glowed above a single candle placed haphazardly atop a red velvet cupcake, a tiny bundle swaddled in pink cashmere resting snugly against her sweat-stained hospital gown. The blue of her eyes flickered in the soft, yellow light and her smile, wide and bright, consumed the image. Written on the back in my father’s chicken scratch were the words
Elizabeth with Lillie, twenty minutes old.

A tear tumbled down my cheek and fell onto the recipe card. Then came another. Followed by another. I didn’t bother to wipe them away. At the edge of my consciousness, I heard my name being called.

“Lillie, what is it?” Nick said, resting a firm hand on my arm. “What’s wrong?”

I peered up at him, my vision blurred. “Can we make this instead?”

His brow knit as he took the card from my hand, smudging the ink when he wiped away my tears. From his unsure expression, I could tell he knew its origin. Nick met my gaze, his eyes concerned.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want you upset by this.”

“I’m not upset,” I whispered, smiling through my tears. “Promise.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because it was hers.”

Nick searched my face. Then he absently linked our fingers together, swinging our arms back and forth, and said, “What do you need me to do?”

For the remainder of the afternoon, we stood side-by-side, Nick blanching the peaches in boiling water and peeling away the skin, while I mixed the filling and prepared the drop-biscuit topping. Before long we were sitting at the kitchen table, treating ourselves to a second helping of bubbling, gooey, peachy goodness, the carrot cake long forgotten.

The distant sound of the front door closing jolted us out of our seats. We looked at each other with wide, frantic eyes. But it was too late to do anything. My father was already striding toward us.

“Baby girl, can you move Big Blue? It’s block—” My father came to an abrupt halt, eyes bulging as he took in the obliterated kitchen.

“We made peach cobbler,” I blurted, thrusting my still-steaming portion at his chest.

My father looked down at the plate in his hand and scrunched his nose. “By the looks of this kitchen, should I be eating this?”

“We had a small episode earlier,” I said, casting a wry glance at Nick, who fidgeted like he wished he could eject himself from the situation.

“In my defense, that crazy electrical appliance had no warning label on it,” Nick protested. “Had I known it might get violent like that, I would have used a wooden spoon instead.”

“Son, not even a tornado could have caused this much damage,” my father said.

“Try some, Dad,” I said. “It’s delicious. Really.”

Tentatively my father picked up the fork and speared a peach segment. He popped the bite into his mouth, and to his surprise, his eyes lit up. “You’re right. This is darn good, baby girl. Did you use those white peaches I bought at the farmers’ market?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t have any yellow ones, so I improvised. Hope that’s all right.”

“Mmm-hmm,” my father hummed while he chewed another bite. “It tastes familiar.”

“We used Mom’s recipe.”

My father dropped the fork onto the plate and stared at me, blinking rapidly, before he replied in an oddly strained voice, “Whose recipe?”

“Mom’s recipe,” I repeated, showing him the index card. “Nick found it on the floor next to the fridge. I made a few adjustments, but it’s mostly the same.”

My father cleared his throat. “Would you two hang on a minute? I’ll be right back.” With shaking hands, my father placed the plate on the counter and bolted from the kitchen, leaving Nick and me standing there, dumbstruck.

We found him on the porch, bent over the railing, his arms outstretched and forehead resting against the weathered wood.

“Dad?” I said, my hand hovering over his shoulder.