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“I know, I know,” Leo said. “You hate tardiness.”
“That I do,” Caspian said lightly.
Was that a backhanded comment toward me? I warmed, embarrassed. I hated being late and almost never was. In fact, I was almost always early just in case I ran into any troubles. However, I hadn’t anticipated the lack of phone coverage.
Caspian and Leo left me alone to start in on my audition dessert. Flourless chocolate cake had been a fan favorite at both restaurants where I’d previously worked. Making it and a lot of other recipes I’d developed over time mimicked breathing. Like driving home the same way every day, the work evoked a trancelike state, the motions etched into the memory of my muscles. In fact, I’d made this particular cake so many times, my hands did the work without my mind participating much at all. Some might call thisfloworin the zone. Regardless of its label, concerns and worries melted away with the addition of every ingredient.
After I had the batter mostly mixed, I looked around to make sure no was watching before pouring the espresso into the mix. My secret ingredient. No one had ever guessed what gave my cake an added texture and nuanced flavor. The taste of coffeedisappeared when added to the rich dark chocolate. Even I, who knew what was in it, could not pick up any traces of the bitter drink.
I poured the batter into an eight-inch pan. Any larger made the cake too skinny. I slid the pan into the oven and shut the door, taking in a deep breath, nerves suddenly making butterflies emerge from their cocoons.
I closed my eyes for a moment and did my deep breathing exercise I’d been working on since my recent panic attacks. The last few months had been some of the hardest of my life, which is saying something considering what happened when I was eleven. I couldn’t afford a therapist without health insurance, but the internet had proven to be a great source for meditation and breathing exercises.
Whatever it took to keep me from succumbing to mental illness as my mother had, I would do. The fear of what I could become had been with me since that day I found her in bed, an empty bottle of pills and a note to her baby girl on the nightstand. Would depression bring me to my knees as it had her? Was my fate the same?
I’d decided long ago that I would fight as hard as I could against the demons that had taken my mother from me. Lately, I wasn’t sure I had a strong enough grip to keep from falling.
Montana? Are you the answer? Can you paste together all the broken parts of me? Help me through this crippling grief?
Losing Aunt Biddie had brought the recurring nightmare back and I would wake, heart pounding and drenched in sweat, sure I was still a child.
But I was an adult, pretty much all alone in this world. Aunt Biddie, my anchor, had fought her own battles with such courage, but in the end, cancer had taken her from me.
Aunt Biddie had taken me in when there was no one else to do so. If she ever felt resentful or afraid to take on a damaged,lonely little soul of a waif that showed up in her kitchen with my favorite stuffed animal clutched to my chest, she had never shown it to me. Instead, she just loved me with no questions asked. She gave me the last twenty years of her life, sacrificing dreams I never even knew she had. The two of us had lived together contentedly until it was time for me to leave for culinary school. She’d visited me frequently from her home in Seattle, even when I was in school. My biggest supporter, both emotionally and practically, she was the one person I could always trust and rely upon. And God I missed her. An ache had replaced her in my heart. There were times lately I wasn’t sure I could get through losing the person I loved most in the world. Again.
Aunt Biddie had loved this cake in particular. She’d loved dessert, prompting me to learn more and more recipes just to see the smile on her face when I presented them to her after dinner. No one had ever been more fun to cook for. She’d take a first bite and savor it, murmuring in obvious delight at whatever tastes exploded in her mouth. What had started as a hobby to please her had become my biggest passion.
She would never eat my cake again. I placed a hand against the counter to steady myself. Grief was a cold, relentless wind, arriving out of nowhere to knock us into the darkness.
Once Aunt Biddie’s cancer diagnosis had come, the disease had progressed so rapidly that I couldn’t fully comprehend what was happening. Denial about her fate kept me from despair. I never stopped hoping for a miracle. Until, one day, with me holding her hand, she passed away.
Now I blinked away tears. She would not be pleased to see me wallowing, especially when a cake was baking in the oven.
She’d been brave in the face of death. “There’s a natural progression of things,” she’d told me. “I’m seventy-five years old. I’ve lived a long time and had a great life. The last twenty, havingyou—my sweet girl—have been the very best ones. Who would have ever thought my wanderlust would fade away when a little brown-eyed girl moved into my house?”
Before I’d changed everything, Biddie had been a dancer and performer. She’d traveled all over the world by the time I came to her just weeks after she’d turned fifty-five. Technically, she was my great-aunt, but we never worried about that. She was simply Aunt Biddie. My person.
Aunt Biddie had given up her whole life to care for me. Now that she was gone, the last of my family, I was more adrift than I’d ever felt. The idea that I was the last of my family to survive was both a burden and a tragedy. Who was I really without Aunt Biddie cheering me on and loving me so much that I could almost forget what my mother had done?
Unlike with my mother, Aunt Biddie and I had had time to say goodbye and tell each other all the things one doesn’t when we’re under the false assumption that we have endless time in which to say what’s in our hearts. Before we realize how oblivious we’d been to the inevitable—someday we must part from those we love.
I would meet her again in heaven. She and my mother. And the rest of the family, who had cast my mother aside like garbage. Forgiveness would happen in the afterlife, I supposed. For now, anger at how she’d been treated still ran hot though my veins.
Pushing aside the memories and the ache, I washed my hands at one of the sinks.
Aunt Biddie had wanted to be cremated and have her ashes tossed into the Puget Sound from her favorite place, Alki Beach in West Seattle.
I’d gone on a rainy day in early September with her urn clutched in my cold hands. She’d had a few close friends whoaccompanied me. I’d read a Mary Oliver poem Aunt Biddie had framed on her desk and said goodbye.
That was the first day I’d seen him.
Walking back to my car, rain soaking through my thin coat, I’d noticed a man standing by a light pole, watching me. Tall and plump, he’d worn a loosely knit blue cap that looked like something a novice knitter had made. He’d lifted a hand and charged in my direction. Frightened, I’d gotten into my car and locked the doors, peeling away from the curb like an action movie heroine, my heart beating in my throat. His bulgy eyes and massive, treelike bulk of a body frightened me.
I’d seen him again a week later, standing outside the restaurant. Fortunately, I’d been inside when I spotted him, and one of the guys I worked with walked me to my car. A few days later, he showed up outside my apartment. When he’d run toward me, I’d panicked and pulled my Mace from my purse and sprayed his face. He’d crumpled in obvious pain, giving me ample time to run back inside and call the police. They hadn’t been much help. In fact, they’d been a little condescending, as if I were overreacting.
To keep me safe after my shift, one of the guys at work would walk me to my car. Regardless, when I spotted him from my third-story apartment window waiting for me, I’d had enough. I once again called the police. They actually showed up and took him into the station for questioning.
Turns out, he’d been arrested twice before. Once for assault and another for armed robbery, neither of which he’d served time for because of technicalities. How lucky did this guy get anyway, I’d thought, spooked further by the knowledge of his past.
