How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [62]
“ ‘As for me, I’m doing fine, so don’t worry. There is a really great group of women here, and the nurses are excellent, and I have a cute little room, and really—the food is great! You’d be so happy to taste all these breads, I just know it.
“ ‘Give yourself a kiss, and tell Katie I hope she’s settling in okay. Love you both, Sofia.’ ”
While she listened, Katie has shredded the croissant into a billion tiny pieces, a fact she seems to notice only when I finish. Her face falls when she looks at it. “Dang it.”
“That’s all right. Go get another one.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m the boss, remember?”
The very faintest of smiles touches her mouth. “Sorry. I tear things up sometimes without even thinking about it. Once it was my friend’s Valentine’s Day card to me! She got really mad.”
“I guess she would!”
When she dashes downstairs, I turn to the keyboard and write, very quickly,
Thanks for your email, sweetie. Sounds like you are very tired, so get some rest and we’ll be okay. Katie will send you an email in a little while.
Please find some time to call her when you can. She’s really worried and not able to express that.
Love, Mom
I hear Katie tromping up the stairs and hit the send button, noticing only as I do so that there is more than one set of feet on the stairs. “Your mom is here,” Katie says, gesturing. “She brought doughnuts, but I got a muffin instead. Is that okay?” She holds it, normal size but bursting with raspberries and blueberries beneath a crown of streusel, in her hand. “It just looks so great.”
“Yes.” I smile. “That’s actually a muffin I started baking when Sofia was a teenager. She needed a fast breakfast, and that’s a good muffin for it.”
Katie bites into it. Widens her eyes. “It’s good!” she says, mouth full.
Lily breezes into the kitchen, wearing crisp white capris and a sleeveless green blouse with a big collar. Her earrings match, as does her green-and-white watch. “Good morning, ladies,” she says, putting the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the table. “How are things?” She breathes in deeply. “I see you made coffee. Mind if I have some?” Without waiting for me to answer, she takes a cup out of the cupboard and pours herself some coffee. “You want some, Ramona?”
I nod, thinking suddenly of Jonah standing outside on my sidewalk this morning. It seems incredible. Miraculous, even. How is it possible that he’s living this close to me? I mean, I don’t know even a tenth of the people in that five-block radius, but still. It seems I would have noticed him.
I wonder how his life has gone, if he has children, if he married, and think again of the whimsical flower in his pocket, his beautiful eyes. It shook me, seeing him, and as Lily pours coffee, she is hauling me out of the record store again, and the life I thought I was going to have is gone, leaving my world upside down. The emotional echo still has surprising power, and suddenly I am my sixteen-year-old self, overwhelmed and lost and clinging to the kindness of a young man far older than I.
Smiling to myself as I stir sugar into my cup, I think, Today he didn’t seem old at all.
Lily opens the box of doughnuts, and I think of her fury, her fear, that summer. As a mother now, I understand it—a heart broken on one’s own behalf is one thing. A heart broken for the losses of a child is a yawning sorrow that cannot be eased by anything except the happiness of the child. For a moment I am her, looking at me pregnant and hysterical, and love floods me. I press my fingers to my diaphragm, take a breath.
Across the table, Katie is silent, peeling the boiled