How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [132]
Dear Dad,
It’s kind of a big day around here. I cut my hair, which everyone has been trying to get me to do for ages, and it looks good, I have to say, all these curls showing up.
My hobby this summer, as I keep telling you, is flowers. I’ve planted so many it’s crazy—geraniums and dahlias are summer flowers, and I love them. I also like the spring flowers that were blooming when I first got here (which is starting to feel like a different life to me!), which this old lady who visits says are lilacs. She’s a big gardener, and Merlin, my dog, likes her a lot. He acts like a puppy when she’s around. Sometimes I think she’s kind of touched in the head, because the only time she talks to me is when she’s in the garden, and she seems to forget things I’ve told her. But it’s not touched in a bad way, just kind of like being old, you know? She knows everything about flowers, though, that’s for sure.
Ramona got me a library card, so I’m reading a lot. I read seventeen books in June! That’s a lot, even for me.
I wish you would write to me. I miss you and I love you. GET WELL SOON! Love (x10!), Katie
I folded the letter up and looked at him, and there were tears running out of his eyes. Which I took as a good sign.
“Next time somebody brings you some pills, you think about that daughter of yours when she hears the news.”
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I know the words went home.
My grandmother is coming to take me to dinner, so I’d better get ready.
Today is better. I don’t know if he’ll choose to live, but at least I’m back in the right place.
Ramona
My apprentices and I are awake and working by two this morning, just to have that extra bit of time. It’s such a relief to be back at work, to have some way of forgetting about all the trouble in my daughter’s and Katie’s lives. Bread has always given me this, an escape. This morning, the rye starter is as dark and rich as the heart of a wild animal, and the smell of it is like earth and time and desire.
It is going to be a powerful bread, too powerful to be shaped into big loaves. I’m going to make small loaves studded with blue cheese, an old-world recipe that will please a certain contingent very much.
As I open the shutters and write the specials in neon, and the sun starts to tip above the edge of the earth, I feel a sense of possibility. Katie’s flowers are blooming in profusion—exactly the same flowers, I suddenly realize, that my grandmother Adelaide had in this spot.
How extraordinary!
The sight of them draws me. Attired still in my chef’s coat and tight braid, I walk down the sidewalk to admire the mix of daisies and blue bachelor’s buttons she’s planted along the wrought-iron fence.
“Ramona!”
I turn, thinking that the voice sounds very like my grandmother’s, but no one is there. Looking up to the third-floor windows, I see movement, a head or body moving away. Katie must be up. Cheered, I head inside and up the stairs.
There is no one in the kitchen. Merlin is whining upstairs, and with an overwhelming sense of worry, I run up the last steps, panting by the time I reach the landing. Katie’s door is closed, and for a single, searing second, my hand hovers over the doorknob. I’m afraid of what I might find.
Merlin, hearing me, barks sharply, and I open the door. Katie’s bed is empty. Merlin is shut on the balcony, and I head across the room to let him in. He leaps through, whining anxiously, licking my hand, leaping toward the door. On the bed is a note. “Wait, Merlin.”
He makes a noise of urgency. “Okay, okay.” I snatch the note up as I rush toward the door.
Don’t worry, it says. I have something to do, but I will be fine.
Oh, my God. What does that mean? Where has she gone?
Merlin is already at the foot of the stairs, waiting for me, and instead of going toward the backyard, he is most insistent that we go toward the front. After Katie, I suppose.
“I don’t know where she went, Merlin. Wait.”
He makes a pained, yipping noise and comes to take my hand, putting his teeth