How to Eat a Cupcake (23 page)

January

Chapter 25

Annie

A
s the first month of the new year neared its close, Julia and I sat at Treat's counter and peeled the liners off our cupcakes while we ran through our weekly business agenda. It had been impossible not to notice the change in Julia since New Year's Eve. Her smile seemed broader, her eyes brighter, her step quicker. Things had clearly taken a turn for the better with Wes, and I felt happy for her and proud that she'd finally been able to unload the secret that had been weighing her down for so long. Now, as though awakening from an extended sleep, she talked nonstop about her wedding and everything there was to do. It was enough to make a single girl like myself want to scream, but I managed to hold it together. She deserved to feel happy—even if happiness for Julia meant endless discussions of calligraphy and orchids and
custom-dyed parasols
. To each their own, I suppose.

“My mother has been driving everyone in the house absolutely nuts looking for your mom's recipe book,” Julia told me after she'd taken her first careful bite of cupcake that night. I looked up sharply, my heart skipping a beat. She pressed her lips into an apologetic smile. “It hasn't turned up, but she asked me to give you this. I guess it's a consolation gift.”

She pulled from her bag a chocolate-brown box tied with a sumptuous white silk ribbon. Inside, I found a thick blank book, its cover a swirling Venetian pattern of blues and greens. On the first page, in her confident, graceful cursive, Lolly had inscribed:

Dear Annie,

A recipe book for the next generation—perhaps now is the time for new traditions after all.

Love always,

Lolly St. Clair

P.S. I have all the faith in the world that it will not be long before your mother's book joins this one on your bookshelf.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

“It is,” Julia agreed, sighing. “But, still, I'm sorry.”

For the first time all month, Julia's mood seemed damp. She plodded through the week's agenda in a weary monotone. Even our discussion of the projected sales boost from the upcoming Valentine's Day didn't seem to lift her spirits. Most telling of all, her cupcake, since that initial bite, had sat untouched in front of her. And even though the sight of her perpetually perfect manicure no longer annoyed me the way it once had—
because, really, what productive member of society has time for weekly nail appointments?
—listening to said perfect nails drum anxiously against the counter for five minutes straight was enough to test the patience even of those freshly committed to kindness via the power of the new year.

“Okay, out with it already!” I demanded at last, pressing her laptop closed before she could argue. “I refuse to listen to one more ingenious marketing strategy without first learning what has brought on the sour face. You've been rainbows and kittens all month and now suddenly you look like someone slid right down that rainbow and landed squat on your kitten. So spill.”

Julia sighed. “Is it that obvious?” she said. “I swear, I used to have a killer poker face, but I can't keep anything from you, can I?”

“Not when your mood swings threaten to give me whiplash. I have a kitchen to run.”

Julia bit her lip and glanced outside. For a moment, I wondered if something had happened at Treat that she hadn't told me. As far as I knew, there hadn't been any more break-ins or sightings of Our Guy around the shop. At Inspector Ramirez's advice, we'd installed a camera, but so far it had only recorded customers during the day and an empty shop at night. I think Julia and I were both beginning to relax a little, though if I were honest with myself, I'd admit that there were still times when I stood at the front window of the shop, or when I walked around the neighborhood alone, that I felt a prickly, on-edge sensation in the pit of my stomach. But I chalked the feeling up to residual unease and tried not to think about the other possibility—that I was being watched.

So I was a little surprised when it turned out Julia's mood that day had nothing at all to do with Treat or the break-ins.

“It's my dad,” she admitted quietly. She told me that Tad had been misplacing things, and his out-of-character behavior had been weighing on her. I remembered that day in her kitchen months earlier when she had asked whether I noticed a change in him. He'd seemed a little different, I remembered thinking, a little more talkative than he'd been when we were kids, but fine. I hadn't realized just how worried Julia had been. She told me he had been evaluated for Alzheimer's earlier that week.

“But he's okay.” Strangely, she delivered this news with a tight, unhappy smile. “All the preliminary tests have come back totally normal. The doctor thinks it's just age-related forgetfulness.”

“Well, that's a relief. Isn't it?” I asked, confused.

“Of course. It's funny, though,” she said, and then hesitated. “All this time I've been worried about my dad. But if it turns out I shouldn't be worried about him, who am I supposed to be worried about?”

“I'm not sure I follow.”

“It's just that all those things that are missing—they're really valuable. He's not misplacing his pen or his glasses—he's losing jewelry and cash.”

I looked at her carefully. “So you think someone might be stealing from him?”

Julia sighed. “I don't know. I'd really hate to think that.”

“Well, it sounds like it's too late. You're already thinking it. Have you talked to your mom?”

“Do you think I should?”

“If I know her at all, I bet she has similar concerns.”

“But the people who have access to our house are people who've been part of our family for years. Which of them would do such a thing to us?”

Julia and I were both silent. I guessed we were both doing the same thing: running through the list of St. Clair employees. Stoic, steadfast Curtis? Of course not. Round-faced, blue-eyed Sonja who had been cooking their meals for a decade? Unthinkable. Quiet-as-a-mouse Jacqueline or chatterbox Angela who, as a team, had managed to keep the house sparkling and dust-free for years? Highly unlikely. Adolfo, the gardener who dutifully clipped flowers from the garden before the sun had even risen so that Lolly would have a fresh arrangement on the hall table each morning? Ridiculous. The whole train of thought was disturbing.

“You should talk to your mom,” I said. I hated feeling at a loss as to how to help Julia, but that's where I found myself.

And then, just as Julia picked up her cupcake and took one slow, almost mournful bite, it happened again. I was swept by that prickly, stomach-churning sense that someone was watching me, or her, or both of us. I gave the street a surreptitious scan, not wanting to alarm Julia, but it was empty. I decided I was simply hopped up on one too many cupcakes, dieting being the one resolution that I'd forsaken within an hour of the new year.

Chapter 26

Julia

O
ur house could seem warm and reassuring one day—every piece of furniture, every rug, each piece of art as familiar to me as my own face—and creaking, huge, and foreboding the next. It had always been that way. I remember afternoons when I came home from a long day of social strategy at Devon Prep and, throwing myself into the maroon couch in the dark upstairs den, felt there was no place where I could more easily be my true self, no place where I felt safer and more secure. Other days—when my parents were off at some event or another, and Lucia and Annie were happily tucked away in the cozy carriage house for the night, and I lay below an airy summit of duvet in my bed waiting to hear my parents' key in the door downstairs and feel my mother's light kiss on my forehead upon her return—I was certain that no lonelier, colder, or more cavernous place existed on earth.

My father's diagnosis was good news, of course. Great news. The very best news. I didn't even like to think about what the alternative would have been—the idea of losing him slowly—or, worse, quickly—to Alzheimer's was . . . unthinkable. And yet, since his return from the doctor, the house had begun to feel more and more like that creaking, cold place of my youth and less like the safe haven I had run to that spring when my world had crumbled around me. I tried to pinpoint exactly what I felt as I walked down the gleaming mahogany stairs, or opened the door to my carpeted walk-in closet, or stashed another wedding present in one of the sun-filled spare bedrooms. It wasn't that I felt antsy, exactly—though it would certainly be nice when Wes and I moved into our own place after the wedding. There was only so much parental contact that any decently well-adjusted twenty-eight-year-old could stand. So, yes, I was feeling eager to move on, and yes, I did have the sense that my time at home had reached its natural conclusion. But it was more than that. I stopped, midway down the stairs at nine in the morning, about to head to Treat for the day, my hand on the cool banister, and probed my emotions. What did I feel? Unease, I supposed. Apprehension. I could hear Sonja in the kitchen, her familiar voice quick and warbled like water running over rocks, and Curtis's occasional low response. They were far enough away that I couldn't make out their words; their conversation was punctuated by the bang of a pan being placed on the range, the click of the gas flame igniting.

Unsafe
, I thought with a start. The word chilled me.
I feel unsafe.

My mother's sudden voice from her bedroom upstairs was as distinct as if she were speaking directly in my ear and I flinched, watching my hand jump on the banister. I hurried back up the stairs.

She was perched on the edge of her bed, one hand tangled in the curlicue cord of the old-fashioned black rotary phone she insisted on keeping on her bedside table. It was a position I'd seen her in a thousand times: one earring off, bolt upright, brow smooth but still somehow emitting an aura of perturbitude. She eyed me in the doorway and motioned for me to come in. I shut the door behind me.

“Faye? Faye?
Faye!
I'm going to have to call you back.” She paused. “Yes, we absolutely are going to need the south field behind the machinery barn cleared and mowed for the wedding—that's where the staff vehicles will go.” Pause. “The
staff
vehicles.” Pause. “No, the
south
field. Yes, that's right, but—” She looked at me and pulled her mouth down at the corners. “Faye? Faye, we're going to have to go over the entire list another time. Just please don't do anything until we talk. There's no point in rushing and getting things wrong.
Don't do anything
.” Pause. Large sigh. “Yes, that's right.
Yes, Faye
. Sit tight. Good-bye for now.”

Whenever my mother set that phone down on its cradle, I understood her attachment to it. Ending a cell phone call could never hold the same delicious finality.

“How is she?” I asked. Faye was the house manager for Woodstone, our family's home and vineyard in Napa where Wes and I would be married. We'd inherited her from the home's previous owners. Faye was now partially deaf, though my mother insisted the deafness was simply a strategy she employed to do exactly what she wanted with the home that she'd lived in most of her life and—probably rightfully—thought of as her own.

“Oh, Faye is Faye,” my mother said, clipping her earring back into place. “Faye is fine. You might need to be married in a field steaming with horse manure, but Faye is just dandy.”

I laughed. “We'll tell the guests to bring their mucking boots.”

“We will
not
,” my mother said.

I dropped my smile. “No,” I said. “Of course not.”
Without Lucia and Annie around when I was young
, I wondered,
would anyone in this family ever have cracked a smile?

“What is it?” my mother asked. “You look worried.”

“I've been thinking about Dad and all of those missing things.”

My mother waved her hand, and her diamond ring caught the light for one blinding moment. “Oh, that? But he's fine. You know what the doctor said. He needs to do more brain teasers. Crosswords, that sort of thing.” She sighed. “Aging is a beast, Julia darling, but you've got to take the bull by the horns. I've been telling your father that for
years
.”

“So you think it's as straightforward as that?” I asked.

“Well, yes.” Something in the tense set of her jaw when she said this made me feel apprehensive. I thought back to when we'd talked about my father before, how I'd had the sense that she was not telling me everything. I bit the inside of my lip, trying to think of how to get her to be open with me. Now she tucked her chin down toward her chest and studied me, her gaze darting back and forth between my two eyes. “Julia, you're being uncharacteristically quiet. What is it?”

“The things going missing,” I began slowly, swallowing. “That started happening right around when I came home, right?”

“Yes,” my mother said. I tried to keep my expression nonchalant, but encouraging. “Well, no. Not exactly. I suppose it had been going on for some time before that. Years, maybe. But sporadically. Nothing that alarmed me. I really didn't think anything of it. I still don't.”

“You don't?”

“No.”

“I don't think I believe you.”

My mother sighed. “Julia, will you please tell me what on earth we are talking about? I don't particularly enjoy feeling like a character in an Agatha Christie novel.”

“Do you ever wonder if maybe one of the people who work for us has had something to do with the lost items?” I took a deep breath, then said quietly, “Like maybe Curtis?” With his access to my father, he was the only one who truly made sense, but he was also the one whose betrayal would hurt the most.

My mother pressed her lips together, a habit I'd long ago realized I'd acquired from her but nonetheless could not shake. “Curtis has been with our family for ages. Forever.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“He is one of your father's closest friends.”

I didn't say anything.

“I'm not sure you realize how incredibly difficult it is to find trustworthy people to work in your home. These people that we surround ourselves with—they're privy to everything. We
must
believe they are good, loyal people or the equation simply does not add up.” My mother seemed to be steering herself toward something, so I didn't interrupt her. She gazed at me calmly the whole time, but I could sense her mind working furiously behind her cool blue eyes.

“Lucia Quintana,” she said. “Now
there
was a loyal person.” She held a thin finger aloft. “A loyal
friend
. Lucia was a completely open book—such a refreshing characteristic in a person. Just like Annie, wouldn't you say? I would have trusted her with my most valuable possessions. And I did, of course. I trusted her with you. I trusted her judgment unconditionally.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. This mention of Lucia threw me—of all the possible scenarios I had steadied myself for leading up to this conversation, none had involved Lucia.

“Curtis has struck me as . . . less than ideal over the years. He's
not
an open book. I consider myself an excellent judge of character, but Curtis is remarkably tough to read. There's something unnerving about having someone know the intimate details of your life while you know next to nothing about his. Not that that ever seemed to bother your father.”

“So that's why you never let him go? Because of Dad?”

“Well, yes, of course. Your father was a big part of it. But it was Lucia, really, who convinced me all those years ago. I trusted Lucia and she trusted Curtis, so, transitively, I believed I could trust Curtis.
Believe
,” my mother said, correcting herself. “I still believe I can trust Curtis.”

I thought about this. “How did you know Lucia trusted Curtis?” Even as I asked, I realized I knew the answer.

My mother looked at me and blinked. “Well, they were together, of course. Lucia and Curtis. They were—let's see—I suppose you would say they were dating.”

As my mother spoke, a long-forgotten memory flashed through my mind. I must have been ten or eleven years old at the time. I was walking down the hall to the kitchen when I spotted Lucia and Curtis standing close together in the little room off the hall where the staff ate their meals and stashed their coats and bags for the day. I remember feeling there was something vaguely off-kilter about what I was seeing, the slant of their bodies toward each other was both unfamiliar and unsettling. Curtis looked over then, suddenly, and without changing the look on his face at all, without saying anything, abruptly closed the door. I remember thinking that he must not have seen me there—the hall was dark—and that, anyway, there was probably nothing strange at all about what I had seen. This was simply the other side of the lives of the people that worked for us. Even my beloved Lucia had a whole other life that didn't involve me. That sounds like it was a weighty moment for me—some pivotal awakening. The end of ignorance. It was not. I simply kept walking down the hall and forgot the whole thing had ever happened. Until now.

“I can't say I ever understood exactly what Lucia saw in him,” my mother continued. “But she saw
something
and I decided that was enough for me. I certainly didn't want to let Curtis go and risk losing Lucia—and little Annie!—to boot. That was out of the question.”

“But Mom,” I said, “we lost Lucia and Annie years ago. Why have you kept Curtis around all this time if you don't really trust him?”

My mother's eyes softened. When she spoke, her voice, too, had softened. “Well, because Lucia loved him. And I missed her. She was a dear, dear friend. She took care of all of us really, not just you and Annie. With Curtis still around, I could imagine Lucia was still here, too. I suppose it made me feel that I remained close to her, even in her death. I couldn't lose all of you in one fell swoop.”

I thought of my mother clicking briskly around our huge house in the year after Annie and I had left for college and Lucia had died. It had never occurred to me that she might feel unsettled by the house's yawning quiet in the same way I sometimes did. I always pictured my mother hurrying toward something, always busy, always efficient, never allowing herself to linger too long over unproductive feelings like loneliness or sadness.

As though reading my thoughts, my mother sat up a little straighter on the bed and toyed with the thin gold band of her watch. “The whole thing is really very silly. In fact, I remember having the distinct sense that things between Lucia and Curtis had cooled a bit that fall before she died. So, there you have it. The truth revealed: I'm a sentimental fool and I can't bear to let him go.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “No, no. Really, the fool is your father. He is very attached to Curtis, you know. I'm sure if he caught Curtis trying to steal the shirt off his back he would just throw open his closet to give Curtis a few more options.”

My mouth fell. “So you really do think it's been Curtis all this time! Why haven't you said anything? Why hasn't anyone confronted him?”

“Oh really, Julia darling, what's the point?” my mother asked airily. She stood from the bed and busied herself with an examination of her forehead in the mirror over her nightstand, her long, arched brows raised high, undoubtedly checking to see if this unpleasant conversation had noticeably aged her in any way. “We have the money to spare. If he needs it that badly, let him have it. He's practically a member of the family at this point.”

Our eyes met in the mirror. “If he's stealing from us,” I said, “I don't think he feels the same.”

The corners of her mouth quivered. She looked at me for a long beat of time in the mirror before turning around to face me. “Julia darling,” she said, not bothering to mask the sorrow in her voice, “I'm afraid you're probably right.”

T
hat night, after we'd locked up the shop and I'd dropped Annie off at her apartment, I pulled a sheet of paper from my bag and studied it below the light of my car. It was a list of the contact information for each of our family employees; I'd printed it out in my father's office that morning after the conversation with my mother. My finger moved slowly down the page until I reached Curtis's name. I knew he lived down in Daly City, but I'd never been to his house before. I don't think any of us had.

It was ten p.m.—late to show up unannounced. But I knew my parents were staying in that night and didn't need Curtis to drive them anywhere, so he'd likely be at home by then. I don't know what I wanted from him exactly. But I knew I didn't want to embarrass him or make the situation any more awkward by confronting him in our house. I wanted him to be honest with me. I guess, really, I just wanted some control. I wanted things back to normal, back to the way they were supposed to be. My body had betrayed me, but there was nothing I could do about that. This, though, I could do something about. I wanted to feel safe again. If I'd learned anything from my newly strengthened relationships with Wes and Annie, it was that I needed to be brave, to take risks, and to be honest. I plugged Curtis's address into my car's GPS and pulled out onto the street.