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Nico nodded. “The fastest-growing bakery chain in America. It started in Chicago and spread like wildfire. How many locations did you have when you sold it?”
“Twenty-six.”
West whistled, but Nico’s face creased in concern. “How the hell did you manage all that?”
“Poorly,” I said with a laugh. “Hence the sale. I hated it. Growing it like that was the biggest mistake I could have made. It took all the joy out of it. I went from spending happy time in the kitchen to spending miserable time around a boardroom table. It was a high-pressure way to learn a lot of lessons very fast.”
I felt the squeeze of Miller’s hand in mine. “I didn’t know any of that,” he said in surprise. Obviously, he’d tuned in enough to catch the gist of things.
I glanced over at him, wondering if I should apologize for some reason. “No, I didn’t mention it earlier. I didn’t want you to…”
Think of me differently.
Have high expectations of me.
Choose me only because of what I’ve done rather than who I am.
“Think it was weird,” I finished lamely. “That I’d rather have one small bakery in Aster Valley than this large chain all over the country.”
Thankfully, Nico, West, and Sassy had made themselves scarce so Miller and I could speak openly.
“I would never think it was weird to want to follow your passion,” he said with a scowl. “I’m upset you’d think that of me. How could you think I’d want you to be unhappy?”
His annoyance surprised me. “I didn’t,” I said quickly. “Of course I didn’t. It’s just awkward. How do you tell someone you sold a multimillion-dollar business without sounding like a braggart?”
Miller sighed. “Yeah. I get that. I just… feel like I missed something huge, especially if you’ve been through all of this in the past year. It must have been a stressful transition.”
Before I could answer, he continued. “And how the hell did my grandmother know before I did?”
He seemed oddly disgruntled by this. I opened my mouth to explain it had been national news at the time and maybe she recognized my name, but I realized I would have been talking to nothing but Miller-shaped air.
Because the man himself had turned around and stormed off, leaving me behind.
11
Miller
Ever since the card game the day before—or maybe longer than that—I’d been having unkind thoughts about my grandmother.
Tilly was everyone’s favorite, the matriarch of this large collection of truly special people.
She was a wonderful woman in many ways. She was educated and refined, polite but also fascinatingly irreverent. Matilda Marian was known for her generosity around the Bay Area, and Rebecca had once told me proudly that Tilly gave even more money away anonymously. Marian House, the home for LGBTQ+ youth that Dante ran, was financed in large part by donations from Tilly’s trust.
But Tilly was also the woman who’d left my mother behind. She’d never looked for her, even when she’d had the resources to do so, and then had refused to see her at first, even when she found out my mom was terminally ill. And no matter how much good Tilly did for the world, none of that could undo the devastated expression on my mom’s face when she’d gotten the news her biological mother hadn’t wanted to meet her.
Yes, Tilly had eventually changed her mind, and they’d gotten to spend plenty of time together before my mom’s death. And yes, my mom had forgiven her because that was the kind of amazing person my mother was. But I hadn’t been quite able to manage forgiveness yet.
So when Tilly had dared to suggest during the card game that my mother had been wrong to be selfless and look for the good in people—the very qualities that had led her to forgive Tilly in the first place, for goodness’ sake!—it had sparked resentment that had been smoldering inside my chest ever since.
Tonight, while everyone had cheered and held up their glasses to Tilly, all I’d been able to think was that my mother, whose dying wish had been to reconnect with the family who’d abandoned her, had never been able to witness this large gathering of her extended family because of Tilly’s selfishness. And that smoldering resentment had flared hotter.
Tilly got to stand up there in front of this huge family and hold court, claiming that family meant a lot to her?
Bullshit.
If family meant so much to her, where the hell had she been when my mother was trying her hardest to hold on long enough to meet her? It was only by the luck of an experimental treatment Mom had ended up with the four extra months at the end to finally get to know her biological parents. Tilly had almost missed it because of her stubborn selfishness and fear.
I understood her reasons for giving my mom up as a baby. But how could Tilly give up her child a second time, at the end of her life when she was sick and needed her?
