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Regardless, I recognized the cookbook instantly, the yellowed cover spawning memories of baking with her before she got sick.
Memories of me at six standing on a chair as my little sister sat in a bouncer. Memories of her showing me the proper way to scoop flour into a measuring cup to make sure you don’t overmeasure.
How to scrape the top off and level it, measuring flour to make Lilah’s first birthday cake.
“Such a good sister you are!”I remember her saying as we decorated the cake during nap time. “Making it perfect for your sister. Remember this, Lola. Friends will come and go, but you’ll always have your little sister. It’s your job to keep Lilah safe, okay?”
Even before the world came crashing down, she was telling me her secrets without my knowing.
It’s like she knew, even then.
She knew she wouldn’t be around to keep her safe, that Dad might crumble if she wasn’t there, and it would become my job.
My burden.
The cookbook brought back memories of me at seven, dumping chocolate chips into dough and scooping the cookies onto a baking sheet while my mom watched with a serene smile.
Memories of her jotting a new recipe she found in some magazine she bought as an impulse buy at the supermarket.
“This one would be perfect for your father’s 50th birthday!” she’d said of some incredibly intricate cake with multiple layers and homemade fondant. I remember that one most of all because we never tested that recipe.
She was gone before his 50thbirthday.
When I found that cookbook, I realized I had found a lifeline to my mom. I could bake and I could bring her to every major event in our lives. Birthdays and holidays and graduations. Cookies for good grades and brownies for breakups and stupid boys.
In high school, it turned into a way to treat my friends.
When I graduated, it morphed into coworkers giving me some cash to make their kid a birthday cake. Some spending money.
In my twenties, it turned into farmer’s markets on Saturday mornings and renting a commercial kitchen, hand-delivering orders.
And at thirty, Libby’s Bakery came into fruition. The bakery named after my mother, who inspired this love, the town my father oversees, in the location she loved most of all.
The Ocean View boardwalk.
The downside of being in Ocean View is that my business has turned into a great PR campaign for Dad: the mayor’s daughter keeping her mother’s memory alive by opening up a shop in town. Once again, it has put me into the spotlight.
The entire town—the state, even—is watching me now, watching my business to see if I’ll make it or if I’ll flop.
And they all have their opinions about me starting my business. Many along the lines of, “It must be nice for your rich daddy to bankroll your bakery in a high foot traffic area on taxpayer dimes.”
If they only fucking knew.
The thought of the press showing up in just a few hours to record my father coming as my very first customer has me nauseous with adrenaline.
It has been for days.
That adrenaline alone is what drove me to get out of bed despite the lack of sleep, take my shower, and dress in the outfit I laid out the night before. It’s what made my hands move as they tied my hair into braids, as they pulled the apron on over my head, and as I walked downstairs to pull out doughs and parchment and cookie sheets.
But different adrenaline is running through me now—not the anxiety of a first day, but the fear of an intruder.
I can hear the clatter over my music and the industrial mixer beating butter and sugar, and when I turn, he’s standing here.
A man—atallman—is standing in the backroom of my bakery, a metal bat at his bare feet.
And he’sshirtless.
And pantless.
