How to Bake a Perfect Life (20 page)

Katie, Present Day

  R
amona lost Merlin!

Katie can’t breathe for the fury and terror in her chest, and she careens around the house to the backyard, the last place she saw her dog. In the middle of the grass, she turns in a careful circle, calling him. “Merlin! Merlin!”

She knows it’s her own fault that he got away. She was so tired and she wanted to go back to sleep, but she’s probably just like her mother—not very good at taking care of things that depend on her. The thought makes her want to cry. “Oh, Merlin! I will take care of you. I promise. Please come back.”

“It’s going to be okay,” says a woman from the garden. “He’s only running. He’s a smart dog.”

It’s the old lady who was sitting beneath the tree last night. Katie frowns. The woman is cutting flowers from the border of the garden, where all the tall purple and blue and brown and peach flowers are—some of the prettiest flowers Katie has ever, ever seen. She’s dressed as if she just got up, in a thin white robe with little sprigs of flowers on it and a scarf over her hair.

Still, her words ease some of the heat in Katie’s throat. “How do you know?”

“I saw him.” The woman clips a flower, leaving the stem long,
and holds it up next to the others in her basket. “On my way over here.”

“He was running?”

“Rolling in stinky stuff, actually, but really, he’s exploring the neighborhood. That’s what dogs do.” She holds up a flower that’s exactly the color of the flesh of a banana, edged with a dark nutmeg brown. The petals are as ruffly as a dress. “What do you think of this one?”

“Are you allowed to pick those flowers?”

“Oh, yes. Ramona and I have an understanding.”

“I’ve never seen such amazing flowers,” Katie says, letting her guard down for one second. “I’ve never seen anything that even comes close to being so beautiful.”

The old woman smiles, and Katie sees she has a missing tooth. As if she remembers just in time, the woman gives a very lighthearted giggle and covers it with her hand. “Sorry. I haven’t put my bridge in yet, have I?” Her eyes still twinkle. The color is a bright, powerful blue. “If you like flowers, Lily can teach you.”

“Who?”

“Ramona’s mother.”

Katie shivers suddenly. From behind, she hears her name being called. “I have to go.”

The woman nods. Katie turns and runs around the outside of the house, hoping against hope that Merlin has returned.

Ramona

  W
hen Katie flees toward the backyard, I reluctantly get busy, too. The girls and I fill the cases with our overnight creations, bringing the glorious scent of bread into the front room. Jimmy starts the coffeepot and when all of that is finished, I take a wet towel to the porch and erase the board. When it’s clean and dry, I use my best handwriting and write with neon-blue marker:

WELCOME TO
MOTHER BRIDGET’S BOULANGERIE!

Today’s Specials

Gougères
Raisin Walnut Pain Grenoblois
Sourdough Wheat Rolls
Assorted Muffins

As I’m finishing, a voice says behind me, “Hello!”

I turn to see a man—the man I saw on his porch while I was looking for Merlin—coming up the walk with a dog on a line. The dog is cheerful, tongue lolling.

“Merlin!” I dash down the steps. “Where have you been, you naughty boy?”

“Careful,” the man says, “he’s been rolling in dog perfume.”

The odor slams me, and I cover my nose. “Gross, Merlin!”

The dog sits down, utterly pleased with himself. A big dark mark smears the white fur at his neck, and he’s panting from the good workout, grinning broadly, showing all his teeth and a long slobbery tongue. He’s being held loosely with what appears to be a man’s striped green tie looped around his collar. I’m so happy to see him, I want to cry.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say, looking up. “You have no idea what a huge disaster this was about to be.”

The man nods in a genial way. He’s long-limbed, very lean, and wears a corduroy coat over his jeans. A rose, dewy and perfect, hangs out of one pocket, such a whimsy that I grin and am about to remark upon it, when I notice his left hand. Two of his fingers have been cut off at the knuckles.

In swift, sharp recognition, I think about his voice and look up at a face that was once the most remarkable I’d ever seen in my life.

Jonah.

He looks back with honey-colored eyes, his expression only gentle, revealing nothing. My lungs have gone airless, and I can’t think of what to say, and maybe he doesn’t realize that the forty-year-old woman standing in front of him is the pregnant teenager who once had a most embarrassing, painful crush on him.

“Um,” I say, “well … thank you very much.” I reach for the tie. My hands are shaking. Visibly. “I’m … uh … we … um …” I touch my throat as if that will help clear the words stuck there. “We have fresh bread. Can I send some home with you?”

“That would be nice,” he says in that resonant tenor, so unique. I can feel it between my shoulder blades. “Thank you.”

From behind me, one of the apprentices says, “Oh, there you are, Ramona! I was worried. Do you want us to finish?”

“Yes. I have a little emergency here, but I’ll get him cleaned up and help in a few minutes.”

I can’t look at him. “Please,” I say, “come and choose a loaf.”

His hand captures mine. “It is you!”

I look up into those beautiful eyes. “Jonah.”

His gaze is unwavering. “I thought it was you yesterday morning at the café.” He inclines his head. “I just didn’t think …” He shrugs, tucks his hands behind his back. “I didn’t think it was possible that you could still look so much the same.”

I’m drinking in the details of him, the line of his jaw and the symmetry of his eyebrows, which I had forgotten, and that full lower lip. I can’t think of anything to say, as if I am still sixteen. “The café?”

“You were with a young girl.”

“Oh, Bon Ton’s. I guess I didn’t see you.”

He’s grown into his angularity, I think, become a man of unusual but compelling attractiveness. It occurs to me that I’m staring, mouth open, and I put a hand to my throat again. “Sorry. I’m being an idiot. I’m just so astonished.”

“Me, too. I’m sorry to be forward, but you are still so very beautiful.”

A rustle moves down my skin. “So are you.”

He shakes his head, gentle smile on a generous mouth. “I have never been beautiful in all my life.” His fingers pinch mine a little. “Except to you.”

I am not sixteen anymore. I am forty, and a mother and a business owner. I straighten, conscious of the curves baking has given my body, of the lines he must surely be able to see in my face in the bright sunlight. “That is not true.”

He inclines his head, almost wistfully. “It is, actually. But thank you. You, on the other hand, look remarkably the same.”

“Oh, not at all,” I protest, gesturing downward. “I’m fat.”

“You were considerably bigger when I knew you.”

I laugh, and it breaks up some of the airlessness I’m feeling.
“I suppose I was.” Suddenly I think of Katie’s terror, ongoing as I stand here. I hold up a finger. “One second. This is not my dog.” Clomping around the side of the house, I call Katie’s name. I wait for her, then call once more.

She comes thrashing along the bushes, sending a shower of loose lilac petals raining down on us both. As she emerges from the cool, shaded cove, she is so thin and her hair so wild that I think of some enchanted, untamed forest creature. She looks at me with such an agony of hope that I am unable to speak. I take her hand and lead her into the morning sunshine, where her smelly dog waits.

She cries “Merlin!” and rushes to him, skidding down beside him on her knees like a baseball player diving for home plate.

He gives a woof and a lick to her face, and then looks over her shoulder at me. I swear he winks.

“You found him?” Katie says to Jonah.

“He was sniffing around in my garden. Your mother was looking for him—”

“She isn’t my mother!” Katie snatches the tie out of Jonah’s hand. “She’s not even my grandmother!”

“Katie,” I say mildly. “There’s no reason to be rude. Take Merlin in the backyard and hose that mess off his neck. I’ll be with you in a few minutes and we’ll take him upstairs for a bath.”

“Whatever.” She takes the tie, and then something comes over her. She looks back at Jonah. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” As she disappears into the cave of bushes again, he says, “She’s not yours?”

“No, she’s my daughter Sofia’s stepdaughter.” I take a breath. “It’s a long story, but I’m sorry she was rude.”

“It’s all right.” He shrugs lightly. “You have flower petals all over you.”

I laugh nervously and brush my shoulders, the top of my head. “Thanks.”

“I can see this is a bad time,” he said. “But I’d love to have a cup of coffee sometime, catch up.”

I’m captured by the faint hints of ginger and peaches that come off him. “Yes,” I say. “I would love that. I’m free after two.”

“I’ll come back then.”

A wistfulness pierces me as he turns to walk away. “Jonah,” I say, breath high in my chest.

He turns, waiting.

“Do you want some bread? It’s fresh. You should try it now.”

He pauses, comes back. “Yes, I would like that.”

I lead him inside, call to Heather, one of the college students who rotate the front-end shifts. “Give him a loaf of whatever bread he would like.”

“Sure.” She smiles and whips a piece of parchment from the dispenser. “What’s your pleasure, sir?”

Jimmy rings a bell in the kitchen. “Call later,” I say to Jonah. “I’ve gotta go.”

By the time Katie and I get Merlin bathed and dried off, we’re both starving. We feed the dog, then Katie takes him out on a leash to poo. Afterward she leads him upstairs to sleep on her sunporch.

When she comes back into the
boulangerie
kitchen, she’s had a shower and put on clean clothes, the ones we got at Target, and says, “I’m sorry I was rude to that man.”

“Thank you for the apology, but I was a little upset with you. He did something good.”

She bows her head. The hair, a mass of curls and waves, stands out from her head like a caramel-colored hat. “Sorry.” The word is sullen, but I’ll take it.

Heather rushes into the kitchen. “Are we out of raisin bread already?”

I glance at the clock. Is it only eight-thirty? “Check on the cooling racks, but if none are there, we’re out.”

She scrambles through the racks, pulling out a handful of sourdough baguettes, still warm enough to give off a heady scent, and torpedoes of multigrain. Then she cries out as she discovers two loaves of raisin bread. “Thank goodness! It’s Mrs. Klamkein. You know how she is!” And she scurries back to her customer.

I like hiring college students for the front, and I admit to hiring a certain wholesome, fresh-faced sort of girl for the position. It makes the breads seem more appealing if the clerk looks like she has been raised in the Swiss Alps on a diet of milk and honey. Sofia was the first, with her smooth olive skin and enormous blue eyes.

I wish she would call me. What is she doing? It must be nearly dinnertime in Germany. She must have more information by now. “Let’s take our breakfast upstairs, shall we?”

Katie is standing with her arms akimbo, biting her lip as she eyes the pastries left in a pile on the table for the staff. Little
pains au chocolat
, big flaky croissants, a few muffins of various sorts. “Can I have any of these?”

“Of course! And I have some boiled eggs upstairs, maybe some strawberries, though they are not at their best yet.”

She reaches for a croissant and looks it over, puts it carefully on her plate. I pluck a
pain au chocolat
from the pile and put it on her plate, too. “You’ll like these, trust me.”

We carry our breakfast upstairs to the kitchen, and I pour Katie a glass of milk and start a fresh pot of coffee for myself. “I want to check email to see if Sofia has written anything.”

“Can I check mine after you?”

“Sure.”

While I’m waiting for the coffee, I pull up my email and scroll through the meager offerings. A reminder from my dentist, a note from a friend in Alabama.

And, yes, an email from Sofia. I scan through it very quickly
to see if there is anything disturbing, then read aloud to Katie. “Listen. Sofia says,

“ ‘
Hi, Mom
,’ ” I read aloud in the most upbeat voice I can manage. “ ‘
Sorry I didn’t call, but there isn’t much to report. We’re still in Germany—we might be flown to San Antonio in a couple of days. Maybe Tuesday. I sit by Oscar’s bed and read him books, because they say that he might be able to hear me and, at any rate, it doesn’t hurt. If Katie will send me an email, I’ll read that to him, too. Tell her he is doing okay, and we will know a lot more when he wakes up. The amputation is just above the knee, and they say there are really good prosthetics now, so not to worry about that
.

“ ‘
As for me, I’m doing fine, so don’t worry. There is a really great group of women here, and the nurses are excellent, and I have a cute little room, and really—the food is great! You’d be so happy to taste all these breads, I just know it
.