How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [116]
The protective person in me, the one who has made so many mistakes, wearily warns against it, but even she knows this is already in motion. She says there could be things lurking, says that we don’t really know each other.
It doesn’t matter. Now, in this very moment, when I am forty years and eleven months into my life, I am in love with Jonah.
He catches my gaze and lifts my hand to his lips. “It was that expression that used to haunt me when we were young. No one, ever, has looked at me like that.” Tenderly, he rubs his thumb over the palm of my hand. “Am I giving it back to you the way I hope I am? I had to hide it then.”
“You are not hiding it now.”
An older woman, tucking her hair under a sun hat, gives us a look. “You two must be newlyweds,” she says.
He tucks my hand close to his ribs. “Something like that.”
RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS
SUNSHINE FRUIT AND HONEY BREAD
Sometimes a recipe is born from a moment, and this is the recipe that I came up with after my first night with Jonah. Filled with light and juice and tenderness, it is one of my favorite things. Try it with a cup of sweet chai.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup raw sugar
½ cup dark honey
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp orange extract
2 tsp grated orange zest
2 eggs
1 cup raspberries, whole
1/3 cup slivered toasted almonds
Juice of 1 orange, mixed with enough powdered sugar to make a thin glaze
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9 × 5-inch loaf pan. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cream butter, raw sugar, honey, extracts, and zest. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in the dry ingredients until just moist, then very gently fold in the raspberries and toasted almonds. Bake for 55–60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool for 20 minutes, then tip bread out onto a wire rack and cool thoroughly. Drizzle the top lightly with glaze.
Katie
A long bar of hot sunlight wakes Katie. She notices right away that the cramps are gone. She still feels kind of grouchy, but maybe that’s from not sleeping enough last night. Lily told her that teenagers need ten solid hours of sleep a night, sometimes even twelve when they’re growing.
She changes into jeans and a cute little halter top Lily got her, then heads downstairs to find the note from Ramona. She’s left some pain au chocolat on the table, too, and Katie honestly doesn’t mind. She’s been noticing that Jonah really likes Ramona, and he’s a good guy. Katie likes that he cooks, that his house is so clean, that he’s so … classy. From all that Lily has let slip, Ramona has had a broken heart for a long time, so this is a good thing.
She pours a glass of milk to go with the pain au chocolat and carries both to the computer nook. There are three emails there this morning. One is from Sofia. One is from Madison, her friend in El Paso. The third is from her mother. She reads them in order. Sofia’s is short. She talks about Oscar and thanks Katie for writing emails every day. They help, she says; he listens carefully.
Katie writes back, Why won’t he reply to my emails?
Then she reads the note from her friend. It’s been less than two months, but already that friendship seems like something from another life. Madison tells her all about meeting a boy at the swimming pool, about sneaking a cigarette from her mother, about getting a bra in a B cup!
Katie can’t believe this has been her best friend for seven years.
Last, she reads the email from her mother.
HI KATIE BABIE!
YOUR OLD MOMMA IS SURE PROUD OF YOU FOR GETTING SO MUCH MONEY TO ME. YOU MUST