How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [102]
And yet, as I am settling into sleep with Milo purring against my side, it isn’t fear in my mouth. It’s longing. It’s love. The color of it is soft purple, woven with the gold of Jonah’s eyes.
Katie
For two weeks, Katie has been walking to the 7-Eleven down the street and buying a money order with whatever she has saved. If she doesn’t spend some money, Lily and Ramona will be suspicious, so she buys candy and some scrunchies for her hair and little things like that. Lily bought her a soft knee pad for the garden, and Katie let Ramona think she bought it herself with tips she earns in the bakery. It made her feel bad, but then she thought of her mother alone in the rehab unit, looking for Katie’s mail, and she hardened her heart.
Everybody here has somebody to depend on—some even have a lot of different people. Katie’s mom has only Katie. When Ramona puts together a care package to send Sofia, Katie asks if they can do the same thing for Lacey. Ramona looks all soft and sad when Katie asks, but then she says, “Sure,” and they fill a box with things a woman might need in jail. (“It isn’t jail,” Katie says. “Okay, a hospital, then,” Ramona replies.) Soap that smells like flowers, small bottles of shampoo, tissues in small packs, gum and candy. When they put the box in the mail, Ramona touches Katie’s shoulders. “You have a good heart, sweetie. And you are a very good daughter.”
“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