How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [72]
From the kitchen she hears voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and hurries to send off the email. Lily calls up to her, “Katie, my husband and daughters just got here with a beautiful peach pie. Why don’t you come down and have some with us?”
“Sure. I’ll be right there.”
She closes down the computer and heads down the big sweep of stairs, which are made of wood and all open, with a view out the top windows of more mountains and pine trees. She feels as if she’s in a movie, and it makes her stand a little straighter, imagining she’s a singer like Taylor Swift, coming down the stairs of her beautiful house. She’s so absorbed in the fantasy that she starts when a woman comes around the corner from the kitchen. She has streaky blond hair cut in a very straight line at her shoulders, with straight bangs across her forehead, and Katie knows right away she is Ramona’s sister, because they have exactly the same eyes. “Hi, Katie,” she says, holding out a hand as if Katie is a grown-up. “I’m Stephanie, Sofia’s aunt. And this,” she turns, to introduce another woman behind her, also blond with giant blue eyes like Sofia’s, “is my sister Sarah. She just got home from India, so we’re celebrating.”
“Hi.” Katie lifts a hand. Sarah wears a glittery red scarf around her neck and looks exotic. Interesting. For a minute Katie wishes to look exactly like her. “Cool scarf,” she says.
Sarah takes it off, winds it around Katie’s neck. “It’s yours. I have a million of them.”
In wonder, Katie touches it. “Really?”
“Hello there, pretty girl,” a man with a sweep of silver hair brushed back from his face says in a booming voice. “I am so happy to finally meet you.”
Lily says, “Katie, this is my husband, James. You can call him Gramps if you want. Everybody else does.”
“Beware,” Stephanie says. “He’s a terrible tease.”
The man winks at her. “You takin’ good care of Ramona over there, toots?”
“I guess.” Katie shrugs.
“Leave the poor girl alone,” Lily says.
“Where’s Liam?” Stephanie asks. “I hardly see him lately.”
Lily waves a hand. “Nobody does. He’s working or he’s holed up in that studio of his, or he’s out with some woman. Not that I ever see any of them.”
It’s as big a family as she’s ever met, and they’re all so nice to her. Why, then, does Katie feel so mad all of a sudden?
Ramona
On Sunday afternoon, my brother comes over to help me with a few small repairs around the old house and to help Katie train Merlin. The dog is utterly meek and mild in my brother’s hands, and Ryan exclaims several times, “Dang, this dog is smart!”
After lunch, Katie goes upstairs to read. Ryan and I take tall glasses of iced tea to the backyard. He kicks his long legs up on a lawn chair and slides down, a baseball cap tipped down over his eyes. “How’s business?” he asks, too casually.
“What did you hear?”
“That you’re very thin on credit.”
“How did you hear that? Hardly anyone knows!”
He makes a noise. “Come on, Ramona. Everybody knows everything about everybody in this business. There are spies everywhere.”
I take a breath. “It’s true. Please don’t tell Dad and Steph. I’ll work things out.”
Not looking at me, he nods. After a minute he asks, “You ever think about pooling resources with the Gallagher Group, now that Dane is gone?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Like they would welcome me with open arms.”
“Did you ever think about it? All those resources, the central ordering, the accounting department … Could be sweet.”
“No. The whole point is to prove that I’m not the idiot bimbo they all think I am.”
“Nobody thinks that! Only you do.”
I shake my head. “Ryan, you don’t, but believe me, Dad doesn’t think I could run a truck around the block. If I have to admit that I’m over my head with this bakery, all that is reinforced.”
He sits up and pulls his cap off. Black hair, exactly like my father’s, falls across his brow. “It’s going to be better to just lose the whole thing? Including Grandma’s house?”
“No.” For a long minute I swing back and forth on the glider, my bare feet grazing the top of the grass. “I am drowning.