How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [23]
For a long moment, I stand in the middle of my living room, looking down to the view of ancient sidewalks. It feels as if someone has slammed a bat into my temple. “Do you hear yourself, Cat?”
“You know that’s what I want. What I have wanted all along.”
“All along? From the start, when I came to you for help?”
A slight hesitation. “No, no.”
But in that pause, I hear the truth. He’s like the rest of them—my family, my ex-husband—patting me on the head, never seeing that I do have the brains and business sense to make a go of this. “Did you ever believe in me at all, Cat?”
“I believe in you completely, Ramona.”
I’m shaking my head. “I’ll send you a check. Don’t come by here anymore.”
“Ramona, you’re upset. Don’t be rash.”
“I’m not kidding, Cat. Do not come here. Don’t call me.”
I hang up the phone and stand in the middle of the room. My sinuses hurt. My chest is burning. I’m blinking back tears of—what? Betrayal? Loss? Anger?
All of the above.
From behind me, Katie says, “Ramona, me and Merlin are going upstairs, okay?”
I whirl, dashing tears off my face. The dog is sitting politely next to her, his dark eyes somehow wise. One golden ear is cocked to a point, while the other has a half fold in the middle, and there is a big freckle on his nose. For the first time I see that he’s beautiful. Gold and white patches of smooth short fur cover his body. His paws have gold spats. “Bring him in here for a minute. We haven’t properly met.”
“Come on, Merlin,” she says, and tugs on the leash. He trots over with her, coming to snuffle the hand I hold out to him, then he straightens, giving nothing away.
“Hello to you, too,” I say, putting the phone down on the coffee table. I sink down to his eye level, scratching his chest, which I can see earns me a few points. His gaze is steady and wise. I think of the teacher in Kung Fu, a TV show I loved as a little girl. “You’re an old soul, aren’t you?”
He lifts a paw and puts it on my forearm, then leans forward and very delicately licks a tear off my face.
“I can see why you fell in love with this dog,” I say to Katie. “He has a big heart, doesn’t he?”
She nods, petting his head.
“I guess we need to figure out how to introduce him to the cat, to start the process of getting them used to each other.”
“Maybe I can just feed him and then go upstairs? I’m super-tired.”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
As we pour some of the dog food we bought into a bowl, she says, “I don’t mean to be nosy, but I heard you crying. Is it about … my dad?”
“No. I’m mad at somebody, that’s all.” Merlin sniffs the food and starts to wolf it down. “I promise that I will tell you everything I know about your dad the very minute I see you after I find out, okay? Will that make it easier?”
“Yes.”
I draw a cross over my heart and hold my palm up in a vow. “Promise. Consider it done.”
Once I get the dog and the girl settled, I head back down to finish my breads, thinking about Cat, about my brother’s snide comments, about the rift in our family, and Dane and my sister Stephanie.
Dane is my ex-husband, a man I probably never loved. He came into the business as the operations manager for the entire Gallagher Group.
Until he arrived, the restaurants ran independently, more or less. Dane came in and reorganized the structure so that we could centralize ordering, personnel, storage, bookkeeping, and all that kind of thing. He brought us online, organized accounts, essentially brought the structure of the business into the twenty-first century, and it was a godsend. Within a year, profits were up 23 percent.
He was also good with my dad, jollying him out of his stubborn-mule-who-has-to-do-everything-exactly-his-own-way snits. My dad feels an obligation to make sure the Gallagher Group functions well. His father opened the first Gallagher’s, out on the highway to the top of Pikes Peak. It’s a tourist mecca, beloved, and it shows up on all the postcards—a time machine. My sister Sarah and younger brother Liam run it. They make their own ice cream and pies, and it’s bright and full of postcards