Secondhand Purses (23 page)

chapter twenty eight

I stood back and looked at the Nonna wall at the bakery. I had thirty photos hung up, some from her personal photo albums at the house, but the majority were from people stopping by the bakery in the last couple of weeks to hand over their photos. Most of them were funny, Nonna trying to skateboard with the neighborhood kids. Dressed up to the nines for teatime with someone’s little girl. The ones I loved the most were the candid shots that people had taken of her when she didn’t know they had the camera pointed at her.

There’s one where she’s sitting in a chair, looking up and out a window to her left. Her face is relaxed and you can see that she had aged significantly from when I knew her. The sun shining through the window illuminated her face with this amazing glow, but also really highlighted the wrinkles that lined her eyes and cheeks. Where most people would consider wrinkles a sign of age only and never a sign of beauty; on her they were both. The deep lines around her eyes and cheeks spoke of a woman who spent so much of her time smiling and laughing. Knowing what I knew about her earlier years, I realized that this was an amazing thing, because she had chosen to live her life with happiness as opposed to choosing to live in the sadness and let it overtake her.

I remembered what she’d said about secondhand purses, how they were getting a second chance at life, and that was all she had wanted for herself. Looking at this wall, I realized that Nonna had become her own secondhand purse, because this wall spoke of an amazing second chance that she had been given, and she lived it to the fullest.

Sniff.

I impatiently swiped the back of my hand past my cheeks. The closer we got to the opening, the more emotional I was getting. I was turning into a blubbering pile of goo these days.

Two days.

In two days I would be opening the doors of Nonna’s Baked Memories to the people of Onset. I smiled when I thought of the name that had won the competition. It was the overwhelming winner, with seventy two percent of the online votes. As I looked around at the photos on the wall and the carefully chosen antiques that I had around the bakery, I realized that there couldn’t have been a more perfect name chosen. This bakery was all about the memory of the woman who started it over sixty years ago.

I rolled up my sleeves and put away the inventory that had just been delivered. I really hoped that I had chosen the right amounts, because I didn’t think I was going to have time during opening week to run to the grocery store to get extra bread, milk, butter, flour or sugar. I could always send Ashley for it. I laughed evilly to myself. Way to use a new friend.

The menu had been chosen. I was definitely going with the dual menu, traditional and amped classics. I also would be having fresh baked breads on hand every morning. I chose the hours of six in the morning to one in the afternoon, Tuesday through Friday. I would work seven in the morning to three in the afternoon on Saturdays, seven to noon on Sundays. I would come in at three in the morning to start baking fresh bread and the day’s pastries. Whatever things I could make in advance would be done the day before. Monday’s I was going to take off, because I probably would need to. I knew I was going to be putting in a crazy number of hours, but I needed to if this was going to work. Hopefully it would be so successful that I would have to hire an employee. That would be an awesome problem to have.

I wanted to put together some goody boxes for my business neighbors, to try to help encourage them to point business my way, so that was my goal today. I had to put together twenty boxes. I wanted to have a traditional and amped classic of each sample I made. They were going to get some cannoli, cornetto, almond ravioli cookies and, of course, zeppole. Definitely my go-to pastries. Today was kind of like a dress rehearsal in my bakery kitchen, getting a chance to get to know my new equipment more personally before I really had to turn out the high volume.

I went and opened the door. With the ovens running it was bound to get really hot in here. Plus, on a marketing aspect, it wasn’t a bad idea having the smell of fresh baked goods floating out onto Onset Avenue.

I pulled my hair up and back into a high pony tail so that it wasn’t in my face or in the zeppole. I giggled as I pictured the look on someone’s face taking a bite of pure heaven only to pull back with a long, dark hair hanging out of their mouth as a parting gift. Ick. That would be horrible for business so I shouldn’t find it funny at all. But I totally did. It reminded me of a meme Ashley had sent me. It had two overlapping circles. On the left was ‘things that are offensive’. On the right, ‘things I find funny. They overlapped for all but a teensy tiny sliver on each side. Down below was written, ‘why I’m going to hell’. Yup, it was like that.

I decided to start with the cannoli, because I could get the shells done in advance and just fill them before packaging. It would be good to get them out of the way. Then the cookies, cornetto and of course, the zeppole. Baking in that order would ensure that the flakier pastries were the freshest.

I was in the middle of my first batch of almond ravioli cookies when I heard a very deep male voice clear his throat. My heart leapt as I looked up, but then shattered when I realized it was someone I didn’t recognize. Probably just someone with another picture for the wall.

“Hi, may I help you? We’re not really open yet.”

“Oh, I know, I was hoping to speak to the owner.” He looked a little closer at me, and had kind of a surprised look on his face.

“Vicki?” He sounded shocked.

I narrowed my eyes and took a step back. The only people around here who knew of Vicki were Nonna and Nick. One was dead and one hadn’t spoken to me in three weeks.

“I’m sorry, no one named Vicki works here. You’re more than welcome to come back in two days when we open.”

“Vic? Holy shit, it
is
you. That’s right, Nick told me. You go by Alex now. I guess Nonna finally won that battle, eh?” He smirked at me, as if he knew the punchline to some joke he wasn’t telling me, but I was done with this psycho.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but obviously you think you know me. If you have something to sell, I’m not buying. If you’re looking to buy something, come back in two days like a normal person would. If you have something to say to me, spit it out or get the hell out. Now.”

His smile and confidence level slowly dropped as I advanced on him, waving my wooden spoon around as if it were a sword. I was seriously considering using it as a weapon.

“Wow, you’ve changed. I remember you being quiet and like, scared of your own shadow.”

“Okay, dude, seriously, for the last time, who the hell are you and why the hell are you here?” I over enunciated each word, as if he was hard of hearing.

“It’s Eddie, Nick’s cousin.” Ice water filled my veins.

“You can leave now.” My voice took on a dead cold tone. I was
not
dealing with this douche rocket two days before my opening. He’d already ruined one moment in my life, I was not allowing him even remotely close to another one.

I walked over to the front door and held it open a little wider, in case his thick skull couldn’t manage to fit back through the way he came in. I was very close to physically removing him from my bakery. I stood there, glaring at him, while being fully entertained by the visual I had of me picking him up and tossing him on his ass while wearing my frilly pink polka dotted apron.

“Please, Vicki. Listen, Nick told me what’s been going on. How you’ve been kind of seeing each other but that you were on the fence about making it real, because you were afraid he’d break your heart. I know you heard what I said that day you left. I have no excuses. What I said was really horrible, and I’m sorry that you heard it. I was a stupid seventeen year old kid whose whole world revolved around football and chasing cheerleaders. I couldn’t understand that Nick wanted to spend time with someone who wasn’t one of the popular kids. And I’m sorry, Vic, but you know this. You were the opposite of popular. I mean, you were kind of a dark mess.”

I sighed. He wasn’t lying, so I really couldn’t hate him for the words he was saying. I closed the door to the bakery, and walked over to sit at one of the tables. I indicated that he should sit down, and he did, but he pushed the chair a little bit way from me. Smart move. I hadn’t let go of the spoon yet, and the idea of physically removing him from my bakery was not quite off the table yet.

“When you left, Nick changed. It was his senior year, the year he should have been on top of the world. But instead, it was like he was going through the motions. He wasted so much time trying to get in touch with you, but you made sure that you were unreachable. It took months before he started smiling again, but it never quite reached his eyes. Since you’ve been back, it was like having the old Nick back, well, until a few weeks ago.”

He got up and started pacing around the bakery.

“Three weeks ago, he came to my house. When I opened the door he sucker punched me and left a shiner that lasted about a week. And then he cried. Broke down and cried. Let me know that you had pushed him away because of what happened ten years ago, that you were still running scared because you didn’t think you could trust him with your heart.”

I couldn’t look him in the eyes. Nick had cried over me? I thought he had just walked away from me, made a clean break, and got the closure he needed from our past to move on from me. But I didn’t want him to be able to move on from me. God. Eddie was right. I was a mess.

Eddie took a deep breath.

“I guess what I’m asking is that you give him a real chance. Put the past away, give him a fresh start. He is happiest when you are in his life. All I want is for him to be happy. And no more black eyes.”

I gave him a watery smile at that. Oh man. I had been so concerned about me and my broken heart, that I’d never once thought about the fact that he might be broken, too.

“Vicki, will you please talk to him?”

I nodded. I knew if I opened my mouth to talk nothing but sobs would come out. I needed him to get out of my bakery, now, so I could have my meltdown.

“I’m really sorry I said those hateful things back then. I didn’t know you, but I judged you. You made my cousin, my best friend, happier than anyone had ever made him. I guess I was just jealous of you. I hope you could someday find a way to forgive me for hurting you so badly.”

He reached out and squeezed my hand, then got up to leave.

“Thank you for listening, I know you wanted me out. I appreciate you giving me your time. This… this is really great what you’re doing.” He motioned to the whole bakery.

“She would have loved it.”

“Thanks, Eddie.” My voice was weak, yet thick with emotion. Man, I had a lot of thinking to do. I’d just promised to speak to Nick, but what if he wasn’t open to talking to me. I didn’t get the impression that Eddie had come here at Nick’s request. What if he shut me out? If he did, I figured that maybe I deserved it a little.

I shook my head against the negative thoughts and the fears. I had a lot of work to finish up here before I figured out how to go about talking to Nick. I returned behind the counter and set to work, taking solace in the routine of measuring, mixing, rolling and shaping.

***

“Thank you so much, these look delicious.” Sandy, the owner of the salon two doors down was practically drooling in the box. The look on her face said that her employees may not get a chance to taste anything I brought over.

“No problem, I really hope you enjoy them. I open up tomorrow morning at seven in the morning, hope to see you and your crew during the day.”

“Oh, don’t you worry one bit, I will definitely be there. I can’t wait to see what you’ve done with the place.”

“It’s a cute little space. Thank you so much for bringing by that picture of Nonna under the dryer drinking a martini. That was a riot.”

“She was a hoot. We still miss her a lot.”

“Yeah, me, too.” We hugged and I turned to leave. That was the last one. Twenty boxes of happiness delivered. It was finally done, and tomorrow was opening day.

I checked the mailbox on my walk up to the house and was surprised to see an envelope with Nonna’s familiar handwriting on the front.

To My Alex

How had this gotten in the mailbox? I looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching to see me open this letter. No one.

Huh.

I walked into the house, and dropped everything by the door and sat down on the stairs to open the letter.

Alex, if you are reading this, then you are opening our bakery tomorrow. I couldn’t be more excited to think that it’s finally happening. I am sitting here, writing this letter and trying to picture how you would do it. What does it look like? What are you going to make? I hope you do some of your new recipes you send me but that you also do the old family recipes I shared with you. Baking is all about heart and soul, my sweet girl.

I am proud of you. I know you had your reasons for staying away. I have a feeling they had to do with whatever happened between you and Nick that day. That poor boy was a mess for a very long time after you left. I hope that the two of you have allowed yourselves to be drawn back together. You both were wonderful as teens; you’ve become phenomenal as adults. I have no doubt that you should give it a shot.