How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [125]
“We’ll talk.”
Ramona
After the long, sick worry of the day—over Sofia and Oscar, over the whereabouts of Katie, over my chilling calculations of how much cash flow has been lost through this debacle—I find myself in the bakery kitchen at midnight. The hot-water heater was installed but, much to my vexation, the inspector did not make it here, no matter how I begged, meaning yet one more day of lost revenues.
But I have the mother doughs, all breathing and alive, waiting for me. One by one, I take the mothers from the fridge, stir the hooch vigorously back into the sponge, throw away half, and refresh it with whatever materials it demands. The cornerstone, Adelaide’s mix, likes white flour. The one I’ve been experimenting with, a dark rye I want to mix with malt sugar and molasses, likes half white, half rye. The levains, those old-world sourdoughs, like a hint of whole wheat mixed with white, to give them some solid food.
In the still kitchen, with darkness lying over the world outside, I stir and smell and taste the mothers, tending to their good health so their offspring will be healthy and strong, so that the sponges can grow vigorously to leaven the breads they season. Adelaide’s sponge is a stringy, powerful girl, and her acidity leaves giant holes in the bread, for that traditional sourdough look. Meditatively, I pull the elastic strings upward, watching the texture as the bands spring back down, almost like a thick rubber band. The smell is sharp.
I cannot sell bread, but that doesn’t mean I am forbidden from making it. Choosing the Adelaide daughter, I quickly put together a sponge with salt water and white flour and put it in the mixer, with the dough hook turning.
I am not exactly thinking as I work, though I am aware of images skittering by, like goldfish in the depths of a pond—a flash of Sofia, of Oscar, of my mother, who called to let me know she was there and had everything under control.
It’s the picture of Katie, waiting outside the flower show with a box of blooming plants, that surfaces most insistently. When I drove up, I was furious over the worry she caused me, fury that hid the terror over what might have happened to her.
And, in part, some of that terror stemmed from the truth about her father that I am hiding. How will it help her to know her father tried to kill himself?
Except that I promised to tell her the truth, no matter what.
When I pulled up to the building, she was standing against the wall in the sunshine, her skin golden, hair a mass of ringlets in toffee and yellow and gold. She had the flowers in a box in front of her, a parti-color shrub of beautiful blooms, and she was gazing down at them with a pensive expression, part astonishment and part pleasure.
“Get in,” I said, and she hung her head but nestled the flowers carefully in the backseat before she got in the front beside me.
For a long time, neither one of us said anything. Then she said, “Thank you for coming to get me. I would have ridden the bus back, but I didn’t want to hurt the flowers.”
I nodded, mouth set so that I wouldn’t say anything I didn’t mean. Finally I managed, “You know that I worried about you, don’t you? I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know where you were, and terrible things went through my mind.”
“Like what?” She made a noise. “It’s not like there’s some big river to drown in or a lot of creepy neighborhoods or gang-bangers around.”
I looked at her, once again realizing what her world had been, what it is now. “It takes only one bad person, Katie.”
“I know.” She slumped.
“Why didn’t you at least leave me a note? You always leave notes.”
“Because I was mad, okay? You all let me down on this flower show, and it was important to me.”
“It’s not always about you, Katie! There’s a lot going on. It was a flower show, not your only chance to go to college.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “It mattered to me,” she said.
And neither of us said anything the rest of the way. I sent her to her room and made her put the flowers on the back porch in the shade.