How to Bake a Perfect Life (34 page)

“Why isn’t my dad talking to me, do you think?” Katie asks as
they walk back to the bakery. The only free time Ramona ever has is in the late afternoon and evening, so the air smells of roses and supper, and the sun, which sets so much earlier here, is already falling behind the mountains. It’s beautiful, and Katie loves it a lot. Maybe more than any other place she’s ever lived.

And that makes her feel bad, like a traitor. A ripple of annoyance rushes down her neck, which happens a lot lately. She feels grumpy all of a sudden for no reason, like there’s a band of anger right over the top of her eyebrows. Since there’s no reason for it now, she rubs the place and waits for Ramona to answer.

“I’m sure he’s just focused on getting well,” she says. “Sometimes when a soldier has been badly injured, it takes time for him to come to terms with it.”

“A lot of soldiers kill themselves when they get out of the hospital.”

Ramona looks down at her quickly. “What makes you think that?”

She shrugs. “They talk about it in schools on the base. Two girls I knew in El Paso had parents who committed suicide when they came back. One of the girls just got out of the hospital.”

Ramona says nothing for a long while. It’s so quiet Katie can hear their footsteps whispering over the old sidewalk. “Your dad has a lot to live for. You, and Sofia, and the new baby.”

“Yeah,” Katie answers without much enthusiasm.

“Are you excited about the baby at all?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real.” She kicks a stone in her path. “And it’s not like we’ll all live together, anyway.” Saying it out loud makes her feel that pinch in her chest.

“You probably could if you wanted to.”

She nods. “My mom needs me, though.”

“What about your dad?”

“He has Sofia and the new baby. My mom doesn’t have anybody.”

They stop at the gate to the bakery, and there are Katie’s dahlias, growing in happy clumps all along the old wrought-iron fence. They look like women in beautiful blouses, cheering, with hands up high and big smiles on their faces. Katie touches her favorite, a red flower with rolled tubes of petals, called Figaro.

“Well,” Ramona says. “Nothing has to be decided right now.”

Katie knows that Ramona wants her to go live with Sofia and her dad and the new baby, which sounds good in a way, but the thought makes her feel so guilty that she rushes away from it and goes inside.

This morning, Ramona is out doing some shopping and errands. Katie writes her mom a letter on paper, just as she has been doing sometimes to her friend Madison in El Paso, even if Madison hasn’t written back even one time.

Dear Mom
,

Here is a little more money. Sorry it can’t be more, but I have to be careful or everyone will be suspicious and then they won’t let me talk to you at all
.

I hope you liked the care package, which you should be getting soon, if you haven’t already. We weren’t sure what you’d like, so I just grabbed things that might make you happy
.

Katie pauses, rubbing her bare foot over Merlin’s soft ribs. He sighs, hard, and falls back to sleep. It’s always so hard to know exactly what to say. She doesn’t want to sound like she’s too happy, so she doesn’t talk about the flowers too much, and she doesn’t want to seem like she likes Ramona more than her own mom, so it’s hard to talk about that. Finally she says,

I’ve been writing emails to Dad every day. I’m going to take swimming lessons pretty soon, too, and I’ve grown so tall you won’t believe it!

Love
,
Katie

She puts the letter in an envelope and leaves it open so she can seal it after she puts the money order in it. This one will be the best so far—almost thirty dollars—and she feels pretty proud of herself. When Ramona takes her nap this afternoon, Katie will mail it.

Then, since she feels like she should, she gets online to write a cheerful email for Sofia to read to her dad. In these emails, she can sound as happy as she wants, so she tells him about the suppers at Jonah’s house, which she loves, and about how she and Lily are going to a flower show at the City Auditorium in July, which is the biggest flower show for dahlias in almost the whole country. Oh, and about hitting five foot eight.

And then, because the day is so gorgeous and who wants to be inside in the summertime, she goes out to the backyard garden.

Ramona

  I
’m counting bags of flour when Katie comes into the storeroom and breathes, “Can I talk to you?”

She looks pinched and scared. All day long, I’ve had a feeling of impending doom. Is this it? “What’s wrong? Did you get bad news about something?”

“No, um …” She looks over her shoulder, where the apprentices are working. The dishwasher is humming, music is playing—cheery sounds. “I just think I … uh … might have started my period?”

“Oh!” I’m surprised. She’s young, but Sofia was barely fourteen. Katie is only a few months behind that. None of which is any help to a young girl who probably wishes very badly that her mother was here for this moment. “Okay. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you where everything is.”

“Okay.”

I’m frantically wondering as she trails behind me into the upstairs bathroom if there are any pads or only tampons, which would not be the easiest thing for a girl to manage her first time. There are a few supplies in the bathroom, though, and I show her how to use them, then leave her to it. Merlin waits with me. When Katie comes out with clean clothes and an abashed look on her face, I smile.

“Congratulations,” I say, as my mother said to me. “I have friends who took their daughters to lunch to celebrate this, but I’m guessing you might be more in the category of let’s-keep-it-between-ourselves. Is that right?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and I see the wonder in her eyes. “I’m surprised, that’s all, but I guess that makes sense with how I’ve been feeling lately.”

“How is that?”

“Grumpy sometimes, for no reason.”

I laugh. “Yeah, that would be the feeling. Sometimes. Not always. I have to get some work done this afternoon, but you’ll need some better supplies. What if I call Lily and all of us go out to a nice little supper somewhere? Would you like that?”

Her smile is both shy and winning, and it catches me at the base of my throat. “Can we maybe go to Nosh? Grandma—I mean Lily—took me there for lunch one day.”

“That’s perfect!”

“I’ll be upstairs,” she says, and dances away. Merlin stays in the kitchen, staring at me, as if I need to know something.

“What?” I rub the top of my belly, aware that the sense of doom is still there.

He shifts, foot to foot, the old kung fu master waiting for me to decipher his brain beam.

I shake my head. “Sorry. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

And there on the table is a letter addressed to Lacey Wilson, Katie’s mother. It’s wrong, I know it is, but I open the envelope and read the letter, then fold it up and put it back exactly where it was. If that deadbeat female was anywhere in my realm, I’d strangle her to death right this minute.

And yet what can I do? Leaving the letter in plain sight on the table, I rub Merlin’s head. “Thanks. Go take care of her. I have to get to work.”

As I come around the corner of the stairs, into the bakery,
Jimmy gives me a weird look and cuts her eyes behind her. “There’s a health inspector here. He’s coming to look at the work the pipe guys did.”

“Good.” It has taken much longer than it should have, but I would never say that. I walk forward to greet him. He’s a balding man in his fifties, with the harsh mouth so many bureaucrats sport. “Hello.” I hold out my hand. “I’m Ramona Gallagher, the owner.”

His grip is limp and unfriendly, and I’m suddenly worried. They do sometimes show up to surprise you, to keep things on the up and up, and I’ve had inspections plenty of times. But there’s something sour about him. A no-carb person, I’m betting, one who would find croissants a sin against the belly. “I’ll just have a look around.”

“Okay. We’ll get to work.” I give Jimmy a meaningful nod and take my clipboard into the storeroom to check off supplies. I’m wondering where the dog and the cat might be; they rarely come in, but they have been known to slip by the doors. I once found Milo crouched under the dishwasher, a dead mouse at his feet. When I came into the kitchen, he sauntered away, plainly pleased with himself.

For obvious reasons, animals and professional kitchens don’t mix.

I take a breath, write down an order number. He’s here to check the pipe work. I’ve kept up with everything I am supposed to do, and we’ve had inspectors all along the way; there is nothing wrong with my kitchen. I would put money on it.

He combs through the front and then comes into the kitchen, X-ing things off on a big sheet. I’ve finished the orders and have begun to assemble the next day’s menus when he returns to the room, a grim look on his face.

“I’m sorry, but I have found a problem. You want to come with me, ma’am?” He looks genuinely apologetic. “Your hot-water heater is leaking through the top.”

“What? That’s impossible. It’s only a couple of years old.”

“It looks like it might have been damaged at some point. There’s a lot of evidence of water leaking over a long period. Mold, some other issues.” He shakes his head. “It’s a miracle it hasn’t stopped functioning completely.”

“How long can you give me to fix it?”

Again he looks regretful. “I’m sorry, Ms. Gallagher, but I’m going to have to ask you to close until this situation is resolved. It’s too dangerous to run it the way it is, and you can’t be open without hot water.”

I close my eyes. Swear.

He gives me a sheet of paper with the order and his telephone number. “Call me here, and I’ll make a point to get right back and clear you to open.”

“Thanks.” I promise myself that I am not going to cry in front of my own employees.

Who are grouped in an apprehensive little knot, facing me, as he leaves. Jimmy looks sick, and so do the dishwasher and apprentices. “What do we do?”

“Fix it. I’m sorry, you guys, but there won’t be any work until they let me open again. I’m guessing at least a couple of days. Maybe more.”

Heather gets tears in her eyes and wipes them away with a corner of her apron. “This makes me so mad! I wanted to buy the good bag of fireworks this year.”

I can’t bear for them to be cheated. “I’ll give you half pay. I wish it could be more.”

Heather blinks. “Really? Even though you won’t be open?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m cool,” says Roberto, the dish kid. “I’ll just go chill with my girl until next week.”

I put them to work shutting everything down for a few days, and I head into my small office overlooking the backyard to make phone calls. Katie and Merlin and Milo are out there,
moving through the vegetable garden. It’s hot this afternoon, and if I were her, I’d be upstairs under a fan; instead, she’s walking through the rows, pinching blossoms from tomatoes and squashes into a basket, talking aloud to Merlin, who walks beside her, his long pink tongue hanging out.

With a sigh, I turn my attention back to the less-thrilling task inside my office. I’m trying not to panic, which won’t help any of us, but this is a huge blow. Lost wages, lost income, huge outflow of cash. I need advice.

The first person I call is my brother Ryan, but he has no ideas. “Call Dad.”

The last time I asked my father for advice, he said I should have thought of how hard it was going to be before I opened a restaurant to compete with him. Which is how he sees the bakery: in competition with the Gallagher Group restaurants.

And yet I’d rather call him than Cat, who is probably angry with me. I haven’t taken any of his calls or even listened to the messages he has been leaving.

Gnawing my lip, I juggle the two possibilities and wonder if my sister is right that I use people.

Steph. Steph will know what I should do.

I punch in her number before I can chicken out, and she answers on the second ring. By the background noise of radio and horns, I can tell she’s in the car, which explains why she answered so readily. “Stephanie Gallagher speaking.”

“Hi, Steph, it’s Ramona.”

“Ramona?”

“Yeah. I need advice on how to get my hot water fixed as fast as possible.”

She’s silent. Then, “Why not ask your sweetie?”

“Because, as I told you, he isn’t my ‘sweetie’ at all, and I’ve been trying hard to set boundaries between us. Unfortunately, I now have a huge problem and I need some advice. He’s been my go-to guy. I’d rather ask other people.”

“You’re kind of putting me on the spot.”

“How?” My mouth goes tight, and I think of the inspector’s pinched face. Deliberately, I move my lips around, making them soft again. “Come on, Stephanie. We have to get over this.”

A horn honks loudly and she swears. “Look, I’m in Denver and the traffic is really heavy. I have to go.”

“Steph! Please, I’ll do whatever—”

She hangs up on me. For a moment I’m so breathlessly angry with her that I want to fling the phone across the room. Instead, I take a breath and dial my father’s telephone number.