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“Dunno,” Mira said, scowling at the cake she’d spent all day decorating. “Whatever.”
“Isn’t the wedding, like, tomorrow?”
She only groaned.
“Uh, Mom?”
“Yeah,” she replied, plucking a pink frosting rose off the cake and popping it into her mouth. At least sugar still tasted good.
“I’m, um, sorry about Cole.” She looked at Ian in time to watch his narrow shoulders rise and fall. “I liked him.”
Thunking her elbows on the table, rubbing the ache throbbing behind her temples with her fingertips, she said, “Me too, bud.”
“I’m going to Brendan’s,” Ian said. “I…think he might be my boyfriend now.”
Her head whipped up. “Really?”
Ian nodded, and if his hair hadn’t been so outrageously in need of a trim, Mira knew she’d see the tips of his ears turning pink.
“That’s great, pal.” Tilting her head, she asked, “Do his parents know? Are they cool?”
“I think they knew before we did. Yeah, they’re cool.”
For the first time in seven days that felt more like seventy, Mira smiled. “I’m so happy for you guys.”
“Thanks.” He pointed at the cake. “Can I have one of those flowers? Or two?”
Waving her hand at the cake, she said, “Take whatever you want. It’s not the one.”
As soon as Ian left, a Glazed box filled with the cake’s entire top tier in his hands, Mira plopped onto a chair at the kitchen table and stared into space. It was her new favorite pastime, just staring, vacant, motionless, like a zombie.
“I’m worried about you,” her mom said, walking into the kitchen and taking the chair beside her. “Who will take care of me if you go catatonic?”
“I haven’t been doing a good job lately, have I?” Mira said, running her fingers over a tangled mass in the back of her mom’s hair. “We need to brush it.”
Feeling the tangle for herself, her mom sighed. “It’s only hair.” She pointed her chin at what remained of the wedding cake. “This one’s not right either?”
“No,” Mira replied, monotone, defeated. “Nothing’s right.”
Tapping her finger on her lips, her mom said, “It’s very neat. Very tidy. Very pretty, but very tidy.”
“Hmm,” Mira huffed. “I guess.”
“But sometimes, daughter, life is messy.”
“You think I should make a messy cake?”
“No, I think you should make a beautiful cake. But sometimes it’s the things that don’t line up perfectly or fall right into place that move us the most. Sometimes it’s the mess that makes life beautiful.” Picking up another rose from the cake, holding the frilly red decoration between her fingertips, she said, “I think if I’d known that when I was your age, I wouldn’t have told Fred to leave.”
Mira coughed, choking on air. “You wouldn’t have what?”
“Ended things with Fred,” she replied calmly before taking a bite of the rose.
“But you didn’t end things with Fred,” Mira insisted.
Her mom looked confused, but it wasn’t the blank, empty confusion of forgetting what she was talking about or what the next step of a recipe was. “Of course I did. Remember, he’d taken that job in Colstrip? He was still coming home most weekends, but everything was so tense between us I could barely stand it. I think I worried too much, missed him too much, maybe resented him for leaving us, even though I knew he couldn’t find a job here, and I refused to leave Red Falls. I think, eventually, I decided it was all too hard, too messy, so I ended it before it could get any worse. Before he started to resent me too.” Her gaze drifted back to the cake. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have tried harder. I shouldn’t have been so scared.”
“Mom,” Mira said, her entire life reorienting itself, like she’d woken up with her head on backward. “I always thought he left us. I thought he left…because of me.”
