How to Eat a Cupcake (27 page)

May

Chapter 31

Annie

J
ulia St. Clair and Wesley Trehorn were set to be married on the sort of mild-weathered, raspberry-sunset-sky, bug-free spring evening on which you might expect a couple like Julia St. Clair and Wesley Trehorn to be married. I had spent the entire afternoon scurrying around the sprawling Woodstone property, trying to help Lolly and the wedding coordinator and her team of vendors as much as possible without imparting sweat stains on my pale pink maid of honor dress. That's right: Julia had asked me to be her maid of honor. And, yes, I was wearing pink.

Over the previous few weeks, I'd finally perfected the Julia St. Clair wedding cupcake: classic lemon cake with a hidden heart of my mom's boldly flavored passion fruit filling, slathered high with Julia's favorite vanilla buttercream icing and glammed up a bit with sparkling curls of candied lemon rind. The entire Treat baking team had worked through a late night of frenzied mixing and pouring and icing to create the three hundred and fifty cupcakes that would be wheeled into the dining tent on an enormous tiered stand after dinner. Despite my desire to keep a close watch on that precariously cantilevered display of cupcakes, Julia, who had made a complete about-face on the whole wedding involvement thing following her New Year's Eve heart-to-heart with Wes, had decided that it was perfectly within her right as bride to micromanage my every move that day. In between trips to ensure the menus lay straight on each plate (“Yes, Julia, they're perfect. Yes, I
promise
.”), the peony to ranunculus to garden rose ratio in the centerpieces was just right (“Three to two to one, Julia. Yes, I
counted
.”), and the espresso-stained Chiavari chairs were in perfectly straight rows (“Straight as an arrow, Julia. Yes, I used the
yardstick
.”), I kept ducking my head into the kitchen to ensure the swarm of caterers and waitstaff hadn't smudged any cupcake icing or knocked loose any candied lemon rinds.

As I was about to pop into the kitchen yet again, Julia, still in her white terry-cloth sweat suit (“Mrs. Trehorn” bedazzled in Swarovski crystals across the sweatshirt's back), strode down the long stone hallway toward me. With her blond hair styled in glamorous, Old Hollywood waves behind her ears, and her makeup a slightly more dramatic version of her usual refined peaches-and-cream look, even the ridiculous sweat suit couldn't keep her from resembling Grace Kelly—a semblance that I was fairly certain she'd cultivated as precisely as a gardener prunes and shapes a rosebush.

“Julia!” I cried. “Why aren't you dressed?” I checked my watch. “The ceremony starts in less than an hour!”

Julia pursed her glossy lips and glared pointedly at my oversized man's watch. I'd chosen to forget that she'd instructed me not to wear any jewelry save the glittery diamond stud earrings—
blood-sweat-and-tears diamonds
, as I'd joked to Becca—she'd gifted to me in thanks for finally accepting my role as her humble servant. Er, maid of honor. Whatever. I put my hand over the watch, and she raised her eyes to my face.

“I need to talk to you,” she said solemnly.

“Okay, sure,” I said. I glanced toward the kitchen door. “Let me just check on one—”

“Annie! I'm about to get married!”

“Right. Excellent point. I can check on the cupcakes later. Let's chat.” Julia had been expertly playing the I'm-getting-married! trump card for weeks, and today, I realized, was not the day to rebel.

I followed her down the hall into the bedroom she was using as a base camp for all things bride. Her sumptuous silk gown hung on the door of an antique armoire, and her whisper-thin, elbow-length veil was draped carefully over a gray velvet slipper chair in the corner.

“Sit down,” she ordered. I flopped onto the bed, my dress rustling loudly beneath me. Julia cringed. “Maybe you should stand. You still haven't mastered the whole sitting-without-wrinkling thing we talked about, have you?”

“No,” I said, gravely. “I'm afraid I haven't. And, geez, time is really running out!” I stood up and leaned awkwardly against the nightstand.

“Ha-ha. Okay, listen.” Julia suddenly began wringing her hands—an uncharacteristic gesture that made me straighten up a bit. “As you know, lately I've been doing a lot of
soul-searching
 . . .” She paused, wincing at the expression. “ . . . and I just can't seem to shake some of the second thoughts I'm having.”

I'd been dreading this moment. I looked around the room, wishing that by sheer desire alone I could summon another, better, more practiced bridesmaid for Julia. But alas, I constituted her entire wedding party. “Oh, Julia,” I sighed. “You know I don't know the first thing about marriage, or relationships, or, you know, normal, earnest human interaction, but I feel like I've heard that it's totally common to have cold feet right before the wedding. The important thing is to remember that you really do love Wes. Focus on that.”

Abruptly, Julia laughed, her expertly made-up face breaking into an affectionate, cockeyed grin. “You are absolutely bizarre,” she said, shaking her head. “
Of course
I love Wes. We're about to get married, you moron. I'm talking about Treat.”

I breathed. “Oh! You are? Thank God.” I blinked. “Wait, what? Why? You're about to get married!”

In the months after the fire, we'd rebuilt the cupcakery as quickly as we could—Julia's old affirmation that lots and lots of money really could make people, even
contractors
, move more quickly, proved irritatingly accurate yet again—and reopened within two months. In the meantime, we'd filled catering orders out of the St. Clairs' kitchen and managed to maintain, maybe even grow, the positive buzz for the cupcakery right up through our grand reopening party. It had felt indescribably
right
to step back into Treat's kitchen again in April, to hear Julia out front in the shop, charming customers with her old flair, and to listen as the register rang up order after order, the air filling all the while with the sweet smell of cupcakes, the dank, bitter smell of smoke and water damage a quickly fading memory. That first day back at the shop was when I decided that all of the drama of that year had been worth it; stepping through Treat's door with Julia by my side felt like coming home, and there was no better feeling in the world.

Now, Julia rolled her eyes. “Getting married doesn't mean the rest of the world stops, does it?” I eyed her, not sure if this was a trick question. “Treat's business has been booming since we reopened,” she continued. “We've been written up in a slew of papers and there's that article about innovative cupcakes coming out in
Food & Wine
next week—plus the mention that's going to appear in our wedding announcement in the
Times
‘Vows' section tomorrow. I'd say things are right on track, wouldn't you?”

I nodded. I had no idea where she was going with all of this, or what “track” she had in mind for Treat, but I knew Julia well enough to know she was working herself up to something big.

She put her hands on her hips and grinned. “In other words, I think the timing is perfect to consider expanding Treat to other cities! Los Angeles, New York—can't you just see a Treat shop nestled into one of those darling little streets in Nolita? The neighborhood is practically
begging
for a cupcakery!”

I didn't have the slightest clue as to where Nolita was, but I decided to brush over that and get right to the point. “But Julia,” I said quietly, “you're leaving. You've always said you just wanted to help get Treat off the ground, get married, and then go on your merry way. Which is totally fine—I get it. Running a cupcake shop wasn't how you envisioned your career when you were networking your way through business school. But I can't handle expanding the shop by myself. It's hard enough to run one kitchen, let alone multiple ones spread across the country. And besides, I'm happy being a one-shop gal. I don't need to run a cupcake empire.”

Julia fiddled with the zipper on her white sweatshirt, pulling it up and down. She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “What if I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I wanted to stay on,” she said. “If I wanted to stay your partner—would you have me?”

I breathed out, a swell of relief rising steadily inside of me as I understood what she asking. “Of course!” I said quickly. I hadn't even realized until that exact moment just how much I'd been dreading the idea of running Treat on my own, how much I'd sensed I would miss Julia when she left. “It's
our
business. We built it together. We're
building
it together.”

Julia shook her head. “No, it's your business,” she said adamantly. “That's the agreement we made at the beginning. As of today, Treat is yours.” Julia played with her zipper again, seemingly searching for words. “Listen, I know how you felt when you agreed to this whole thing. You wanted to own your own business and my involvement was a means to an end.” I tried to interrupt, but she held her hand out and smiled. “It's okay! It's okay. I know you don't feel the same way about me now as you did a year ago. But I would understand if you wanted to uphold that contract. Really, I would. I know how it is to have a dream. And you're right—the cupcakery was never mine. I was just borrowing it when I really needed something positive to dream about. At least, that's what I was doing at the beginning. Everything is different now, but I would never want you to feel like I was forcing something on you. I want you to know this is entirely—legally, even—your decision to make.”

I laughed. “Oh, Julia, come on. Legally? I think we've been through enough in the last year to not resort to invoking the law here. Treat is
ours
. Even if I wanted to, I would never be able to think of it in any other way. And honestly, it would be a huge relief to me if you remained my partner. You know I'd take balancing flavor profiles over balancing checkbooks any day. Besides,” I said, shrugging, “it turns out we make a good team.”

Tears sprang to Julia's eyes. “We do, don't we?”

“Oh no. None of that!” I ordered. “The makeup artist already left and if I'm required to do touch-ups you're going to walk down the aisle looking like a cross between Tammy Faye Bakker and Lady Gaga.”

Julia grimaced and waved her hands at the corners of her eyes, drying her tears. “I just wish,” she sighed, “that your mom was here today.”

I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Me, too.”

The knowledge that my mom's death had been caused—accidentally or not—by Curtis still pierced me as sharply as it had the day I'd read her final journal entry. She'd written, her cursive growing long and shaky, that she'd confronted Curtis about his stealing and he'd shoved her against a wall.
My head
, she wrote,
still throbs
. Those words were written three days before she collapsed in the St. Clairs' kitchen. I wasn't sure if the acute pain of that knowledge would ever lessen for me, nor was I sure if I would ever want it to. The fact that Curtis was now in jail—and would be for a long time—didn't help me feel any more at peace with what had happened. It confused me that a part of me still mourned the loss of the Curtis I had known and loved for my entire life. On the other hand, I burned with rage over what he had done to my mother and felt immeasurably relieved that he was out of all of our lives for good. As much as I wanted to come to terms with everything that had happened, I understood that for the pain to truly lessen I would have to let go of my mom in some way, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be ready for that. I wanted to feel her with me every time I baked. I wanted to think about how proud she would have been of Julia and me and our bustling little business. I wanted to read the recipes in her book and hear her voice reciting them to me, as clear as if she were standing beside me. Still, I knew my mom would not have wanted Julia to dwell on the past on her wedding day.

“But at least we're not alone,” I said brightly. “
Your
mom is here. And your dad.”

“And
your
dad,” Julia said, smiling.

“Yes,” I said. “How crazy is that?”

After the fire, Miguel had returned to Ecuador to see his children, but had flown back to San Francisco a couple of weeks before Julia's wedding so we could spend some time getting to know each other. He was helping me with my Spanish, and as I improved in the language, I realized that underneath his shy exterior and halting voice, he had a wicked sense of humor and a loud, crackling laugh. Julia had pressed him to extend his visit long enough to be a guest at her wedding, and to my surprise he'd accepted. I'd caught a glimpse of him through the window earlier as he'd stepped off the bus the St. Clairs had chartered from San Francisco. It was hard to believe that this man who looked so dapper in a gray suit, his hair slicked back against his head, had once terrified Julia and me on dark nights in the Mission.
There's my father
, I thought when I saw him. Even thinking the word still felt like a trial run—the title didn't yet quite hold. But I was getting there. He was trying to convince me to visit him in Ecuador later in the summer to meet the rest of my family.
Strange how things turn out
. I wasn't ready to meet everyone, and of course Treat was just getting back off the ground, but maybe, I'd said.
Maybe in the fall
.

“And Ogden,” Julia said. “He'll be here, too. Have you seen him yet?”

“No, but I'm sure he's out there. He's always early.” I rolled my eyes. “Farmers.”

Julia eyed me appraisingly, looking disconcertingly like her mother for a moment. “He's going to say you look beautiful.”