How to Bake a Perfect Life (24 page)

Although it makes her feel like a traitor, and a super-spoiled traitor at that, Katie thinks this room is ten times better than the one over the bakery, and that was the prettiest room she’d ever had before this. It scares her even to think it, as if maybe not appreciating it enough might make it go away.

So she acts all bored (
Nonchalant
, she writes in her mind to Madison), like she’s seen these kinds of things a million times, even though she could stare out that window forever. It makes her feel quiet inside. And when Lily asked if she wanted to spend the night, it was really hard for Katie to say, “No, thank you. I have to take care of my dog.”

“Oh, honey, Ramona can take care of Merlin. We can call and ask. If you want to stay, that is.”

But she decides to just have dinner and then go home. She loves being able to get on the computer and surf around. She writes an email to Madison, telling her about the day, and then, looking over her shoulder just in case, she opens another email.

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: from Katie, saying hi

Hi, Mom.

Just checking to see if you got email yet. I’m having a good time here, so don’t worry about me. Sofia’s grandma is really nice to me and she helped me plant a bunch of flowers today, but I miss you a LOT.

She chews on her lip, thinking. What else can she say to her mother? By now she’s probably feeling pretty crummy. Katie has seen her get off meth before—three times, as a matter of fact. Once she lasted only a couple of weeks, another time it was a year—that was when Katie lived with Sofia and Oscar. It wasn’t bad living there; she just felt like a traitor about her mom. So when Lacey stayed clean for a whole year, and Oscar was deployed again, he let Katie go live with her mom, as long as she promised to let him know the minute Lacey started using again.

Don’t think about that now
.

She writes:

I know you probably don’t feel very good, but remember: You can do it! You got clean before and felt really good, remember? Once you get out, I can come and live with you again. I love you! Lots! Lots! Lots!

Your daughter,

Katie

PS—Dad got hurt really bad in Afghanistan. Probably nobody told you, so I thought you should know.

She wants to write more, wants to pour out her worst fear about her dad—not that he will die but that he will look like a soldier who used to shop at the commissary, his nose burned off, the skin of his face all pink and white and stiff. If he looks like that, how can she love him? It makes her shudder.

And that makes her feel like the worst person in the world, that she would be afraid of her dad having a messed-up face even more than she would be afraid of him being dead.

From the kitchen she hears voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and hurries to send off the email. Lily calls up to her, “Katie, my husband and daughters just got here with a beautiful peach pie. Why don’t you come down and have some with us?”

“Sure. I’ll be right there.”

She closes down the computer and heads down the big sweep of stairs, which are made of wood and all open, with a view out the top windows of more mountains and pine trees. She feels as if she’s in a movie, and it makes her stand a little straighter, imagining she’s a singer like Taylor Swift, coming down the stairs of her beautiful house. She’s so absorbed in the fantasy that she starts when a woman comes around the corner from the kitchen. She has streaky blond hair cut in a very straight line at her shoulders, with straight bangs across her forehead, and Katie knows right away she is Ramona’s sister, because they have exactly the same eyes. “Hi, Katie,” she says, holding out a hand as if Katie is a grown-up. “I’m Stephanie, Sofia’s aunt. And this,” she turns, to introduce another woman behind her, also blond with giant blue eyes like Sofia’s, “is my sister Sarah. She just got home from India, so we’re celebrating.”

“Hi.” Katie lifts a hand. Sarah wears a glittery red scarf around her neck and looks exotic. Interesting. For a minute Katie wishes to look exactly like her. “Cool scarf,” she says.

Sarah takes it off, winds it around Katie’s neck. “It’s yours. I have a million of them.”

In wonder, Katie touches it. “Really?”

“Hello there, pretty girl,” a man with a sweep of silver hair brushed back from his face says in a booming voice. “I am so happy to finally meet you.”

Lily says, “Katie, this is my husband, James. You can call him Gramps if you want. Everybody else does.”

“Beware,” Stephanie says. “He’s a terrible tease.”

The man winks at her. “You takin’ good care of Ramona over there, toots?”

“I guess.” Katie shrugs.

“Leave the poor girl alone,” Lily says.

“Where’s Liam?” Stephanie asks. “I hardly see him lately.”

Lily waves a hand. “Nobody does. He’s working or he’s holed
up in that studio of his, or he’s out with some woman. Not that I ever see any of them.”

It’s as big a family as she’s ever met, and they’re all so nice to her. Why, then, does Katie feel so mad all of a sudden?

Ramona

  O
n Sunday afternoon, my brother comes over to help me with a few small repairs around the old house and to help Katie train Merlin. The dog is utterly meek and mild in my brother’s hands, and Ryan exclaims several times, “Dang, this dog is smart!”

After lunch, Katie goes upstairs to read. Ryan and I take tall glasses of iced tea to the backyard. He kicks his long legs up on a lawn chair and slides down, a baseball cap tipped down over his eyes. “How’s business?” he asks, too casually.

“What did you hear?”

“That you’re very thin on credit.”

“How did you hear that? Hardly anyone knows!”

He makes a noise. “Come on, Ramona. Everybody knows everything about everybody in this business. There are spies everywhere.”

I take a breath. “It’s true. Please don’t tell Dad and Steph. I’ll work things out.”

Not looking at me, he nods. After a minute he asks, “You ever think about pooling resources with the Gallagher Group, now that Dane is gone?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Like they would welcome me with open arms.”

“Did you ever think about it? All those resources, the central ordering, the accounting department … Could be sweet.”

“No. The whole point is to prove that I’m not the idiot bimbo they all think I am.”

“Nobody thinks that! Only you do.”

I shake my head. “Ryan, you don’t, but believe me, Dad doesn’t think I could run a truck around the block. If I have to admit that I’m over my head with this bakery, all that is reinforced.”

He sits up and pulls his cap off. Black hair, exactly like my father’s, falls across his brow. “It’s going to be better to just lose the whole thing? Including Grandma’s house?”

“No.” For a long minute I swing back and forth on the glider, my bare feet grazing the top of the grass. “I am drowning. That’s the truth. It was a good business plan, and I had plenty of capital and plenty of experience. It wasn’t as if I heedlessly dove into something without knowing what I was doing.”

“I know that.”

“The old-house building stuff has been more of a problem than I anticipated, but I probably could have managed that if the economy hadn’t tanked. I lost so much capital and lost value in the building and—”

He reaches for my hand. “It’s been hard for all of us, Ramona. I know so many small businesses that have gone under. It’s not your fault. What I want you to do is recognize that the answer is not to go under out of pride or stubbornness.”

“I don’t think I’m stubborn.”

He laughs. “An unstubborn Gallagher has never been born. What can I do, sis?”

“Help me brainstorm. Help me come up with ways to generate more income without a lot of extra overhead.”

“That I can do.”

By the time he leaves to open the pub, we have mapped out an entire list of possibilities. I can use the Internet to offer the breads to a different set of customers, perhaps using frozen
doughs, and I’m going to brainstorm some more ideas about that with Jimmy and my Web designer.

There are a lot of intense athletes in the city. Runners who train for the Ascent to the top of Pikes Peak every summer and other extreme races at high altitudes. Cyclists who ride the mountain passes to train for their races, whatever they are. They burn a bazillion calories and need high-quality carbs. They would love my healthy breads. Ryan and I come up with two plans to get the word out to them: I’m going to look into the possibility of offering my wares at race events, and I’m also going to take Katie with me to the trailheads and offer samples.

The final idea is to open on Sundays, with a skeleton staff. I’m tired as it is, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And you don’t get into the business for the short hours.

Armed with a plan, I take a good long nap.

It will work. It has to.

Katie absolutely refuses to go to Jonah’s house. She wants to stay home and read and not talk to anyone. Maybe she wants to get online. But, really, she’s thirteen. I’m going five blocks. She deserves to be alone sometimes.

I’m somewhat disconcerted since the invitation was for two of us, but at five-thirty, I head for his house. I’ve bought a beautiful bottle of wine, tied with a ribbon, and I’m bringing one of my best loaves of bread, the rustica, made with a slow European
levain
. It takes three days to make this bread properly, and the taste is worth every second—the crumb filled with classic sourdough holes, the crust perfectly crisp and golden. I bake it in the wood-fired oven that was so costly and so right, and we sell dozens of loaves every day.

The light is angling deep gold over the mountains as I walk to his house. It falls in dappled patterns over the aged sidewalk, squares of crumbling concrete with grass growing between
them. Impossible to avoid stepping on the cracks, but some girlhood part of me always tries, so I don’t break my mother’s back. The skirt I chose, an ethnic print in soft purples and greens, floats around my calves. My toenails are painted peach.

Stephanie and I stayed overnight with my grandmother often. She loved walking and taught both of us to love it, too. After supper, we’d amble around the neighborhood, winter or summer, and admire the gardens or the new paint. We had our favorite houses, about which we would make up stories.

Jonah’s house was a favorite with all of us. In recent years it has grown a little weary, but it boasts two things that were of particular interest to my sister and me. There is a square tower with windows looking in all directions, and a balcony juts out from the back, overlooking treetops and mountains. We thought it was wildly romantic.

The house sits on the corner of a pair of quiet backstreets, on a vast, grassy lot bound by a turn-of-the-century wrought-iron fence. As I come around the corner, I see Jonah sitting on the porch, wearing jeans and a simple long-sleeved shirt. His feet are tucked into Tevas, and he looks exactly like what you might imagine a well-tended fortysomething native Coloradoan would look. Healthy. Tan from taking his exercise outdoors.

But there is also something not quite so obvious that gives off an aura of elegance. Wealth. Perhaps it is his well-cut hair or some scent he wears. I can’t decide.

At the foot of the steps to the porch, I halt. “Hello,” I say, and touch my diaphragm. “I’m sorry, but Katie wasn’t able to come. I hope that doesn’t put you out.”

For one long second I am afraid he’s going to call dinner off. There’s a wall that comes up, chills the air. He doesn’t speak immediately.

I lift a hand. “I can see this is not a good thing. Sorry. I just didn’t have a phone number for you.” I’m backing away. “We can reschedule.”

He steps down to grab my waving hand. “I’m sorry. That was rude. Please stay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He lets go of my hand. “Come in. Please.”

Giving him the wine and bread, I say, “If you put that in the oven, it will be warm for dinner.”

“Thank you.” He lifts the loaf to his nose and sniffs. “Mmm. That’s nice, isn’t it?”

I smile, a little of my nervousness bleeding away. He holds out a hand and I reach for it, letting him pull me up the steps. “Thank you for coming, Ramona.”

“You’re welcome.”

He opens a white-painted screen door and gestures me inside. The house is an updated 1920s bungalow, and within it’s been very carefully renovated, with polished hardwood floors and a wall or two removed to give a sense of more space. “Oh, it’s lovely!” I exclaim. “My sister and I always wanted to see inside. Have you changed it a lot?”

“Yes.” He opens a bottle of wine that’s sitting on the counter. “It’s a quirky place, as you see. It needed to be opened up, but I kept the general feeling.”

“It’s hard when you have an old place, balancing grace and convenience.” I trail my hand over the walls, touch a cabinet, put my hand flat on the counter. It’s uncluttered to the point of spare, with no plants in the windows or statues sitting on the low tables. Art with a South American feel graces the walls. “Have you been to Peru?”