“Probably,” I admit. “I just don’t know how to make things come out right.”
“You can’t,” Dani says bluntly, reaching over me and grabbing the wine bottle. “Stop trying to control everything, Emmie.” She elbows me in the ribs affectionately. “You’ve got to let go a little and see what happens. Take the next right step. See where it takes you.”
I know good sense when I hear it. “You’re right,” I admit. “I’m not going to solve everything tonight. I just need to take the next right step.” I tuck the napkin list back into my purse. The next right step tonight is to go home, wash my hair, drink a tall glass of water, and get some sleep. Then, tomorrow, Canada. And after that…I’ll just have to wait and see.
Chapter 31
The day of the competition starts out so promisingly. I drop Gus off at school, car loaded, ready to head north toward the border. In the drop-off line, he unbuckles his seat belt and clambers from his booster seat, wrapping his arms around my neck.
“Good luck, Mommy,” he says. This morning he smells like protein waffles and maple syrup. “I hope you do good on your test. You worked hard and that’s what matters. I’m proud of you!” I smile hearing my own words parroted back to me. “Here, these are for you,” he says, pulling back and unfolding his hand. In his palm are a few slightly grubby gold sprinkles. “I saved them from my cookie yesterday and kept them in my pocket,” he tells me. He scrapes them into my waiting palm and kisses my cheek.
“Thanks, buddy,” I reply, touched by his thoughtfulness. “Do you want one today too, for school?”
He nods. “We can each have one,” he says solemnly. “So we can both be brave today.”
We each eat a sprinkle. I try not to grimace at the bits of lintand slightly gray hue of my sprinkle. Who knows what else has been in that pocket.
“Love you, buddy,” I tell him. “Go get ’em, tiger.” I ruffle his hair and he squirms away, smiling.
“Go get ’em, Mommy,” he tells me, pressing a quick, sloppy kiss to my cheek.
Then he grabs his rocket lunch box and his backpack and heads into school. I watch him go, smiling fondly at my little guy trudging up the walkway, being brave in his own way. I’m so proud of him, of all he’s weathered, of how he’s growing. Then I pop an aspirin and wash it down with coffee, trying to dispel the headache brought on by the wine last night with Dani. That was a mistake.
Gus disappears inside the doors and I take a deep breath and turn my car toward Vancouver. I’ve got a double-shot latte from Byrdie’s, liberally festooned with gold sprinkles from the jar I’ve wedged in a cup holder in the console, and I’ve got snacks, my passport, and most important of all, the chocolates, nestled like babies in containers wrapped in thermal packaging in the back seat. I don’t have them on ice, as that could negatively affect their texture, so I have to keep the car below seventy degrees to make sure they’re not affected by the heat. Because today, uncharacteristically, is going to be a scorcher, even hotter than yesterday. I can already feel the heat and humidity rising.
While the Pacific Northwest enjoys about eleven months of cool, mild weather, we usually get a few weeks of uncomfortably hot weather in the eighties and nineties. On rare occasions the thermostat might even reach one hundred. Folks like us are used to fifty degrees and rain, so we feel like we’re being baked alive on days like this.
But I’ve got air-conditioning in my trusty old Honda, and inthree and a half hours, if all goes well, I’ll be delivering my chocolates to the hotel in downtown Vancouver where the competition is being held. My entries have to be there by two p.m., which means I’ve got a little more than an hour of wiggle room. The border can get backed up now and then, but I’ll cross midday, so it should be okay.
I slide on my sunglasses, check the air-conditioning temperature and bump it down another degree just to be safe, then put on my girl-power playlist and head north for Canada.
The first few hours of travel are uneventful. I catch a ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle almost immediately and sigh with relief at the first hurdle crossed. Traffic in Seattle is light and I breeze northward to the strains of Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, and my beloved Joni Mitchell. I keep an eye on the temperature inside the car. A quick glance at the weather app on my phone shows me it’s in the high eighties already outside and climbing. Today Vancouver is supposed to reach a whopping ninety-seven degrees. Nervously, I put gas in the car at a gas station north of Seattle and use the bathroom. As I start to pull away from the gas station, I say a quick prayer for my air-conditioning, which, to be honest, in the last few miles has started to make a strained sort of chirping rattle I’ve never heard before.
“It will be fine,” I tell myself firmly. But just to be safe, I turn around and buy a bag of ice at the gas station and stash it in the trunk. If something happens, it’s better to have chocolate that got a little too cold than half-melted chocolates ruined by the heat. I text Dani and let her know how things are looking.
Ask your Abuela Rosa to say a rosary for my air-conditioning!I tell her, then shake a few sprinkles into the last inch of my latte and put my foot on the gas, heading north again, pushing the speedlimit, eager to get to the hotel and register my entries. Dani texts back with a thumbs-up and a praying symbol.
Everything okay?she asks.
So far!I tell her.
Everything holds steady as I whiz past Everett and Bellingham. The peculiar sound coming through the vents is getting louder though, and I turn the temperature up a few degrees, hoping that will ease the strain on the cooling system and maybe help a little. Even though it’s comfortable in the car, I’m sweating through the underarms of my one professional-looking linen sheath dress from stress. I google “car ventilation is chirping,” and the results are varied, though none of them are good. I keep driving.
Mom calls as I near Canada.
“I’m almost to the border,” I tell her. “Say a prayer for the air-conditioning though. It’s sounding weird and I’m worried.”
“Okay, sweetie, I will. I’ll get the ladies praying too. Drive safe and don’t worry,” she tells me. “And remember, Emmie, nothing is really the end of the world, okay, sweetheart? No matter what happens.”
I know she means those words to reassure me, but they are not reassuring at all. They feel a little ominous. She’s right though—nothing is the end of the world, but the stakes are high for this one. We need the money to pay for the plumbing upgrades and the rest of the renovations. And even more than that, winning this competition would be a tremendous boon to my visibility and reputation in the chocolate world. Although it’s just a chocolate competition, it feels weighty with significance.
I put my hand in front of the vent. Is it my imagination, or does it feel like the air coming out now is warmer than it was a few minutes ago? I push the accelerator down further and zoomtoward the border as fast as I dare. Ten minutes later, as I slide into an unexpectedly long line at the Canadian border, the air-conditioning goes out entirely. I feel the warm puffs of air blowing against my face.
“Oh no, no no.” I glance in the rearview mirror, wondering if I can turn around and make it back to Blaine to buy some more ice, but I’m already trapped by half a dozen cars behind me. I’m stuck in this line until I get through the border. There are an unknown number of cars in front of me. The line is snaking around a bend and I can’t see the border checkpoint booths ahead of me yet. This is not good. I check my phone. It’s ninety degrees and the car is sitting in full sun. Feeling jittery and starting to panic, I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, praying desperately for the line to move. It doesn’t. I turn the cooling system on and off, over and over, to no avail. The air-conditioning has given up the ghost. I can feel the temperature steadily starting to climb as I sit in the sun. The line does not move. Time for the emergency ice.
Jumping out of the car, heart pounding with adrenaline and dread, I open the trunk and grab the bag of ice, which is already partly melted from the heat. Hopefully it will be enough to keep the chocolates cool until I can get to the hotel. Nervously, I make a little nest of ice cubes in a plastic grocery bag and place the containers of chocolates carefully in the bag, surrounded by the ice. I cover the entire thing with the picnic blanket I keep in the back of the car, trying to insulate the cold and keep the ice from melting.
From my phone’s playlist, Bonnie is plaintively singing about not being able to find her way home, and it feels so grimly ironic I skip it immediately. Joni comes on, a relief. I shake some sprinkles from the jar into my mouth. They help a little. But as the minutes drag on and the temperature climbs, I find myselfpanicking by degrees. I’m stuck in this line, completely helpless. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and try not to scream in sheer frustration. How stupid was I to trust my old Honda’s ancient cooling system? Why didn’t I think of a better backup than a melting bag of convenience store ice? I text Dani another update, letting her know things are not going well. She texts back a tearful emoji.
