How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [103]
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