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  William slid past me, then stepped into the hall and disappeared into the prep room just as Sophia came out of the bathroom, looking like her normal self, even though I saw the strain behind the shadows in her eyes. She gave me a bright smile. I returned it, then hobbled back to the prep room. My gaze flitted around, and William’s determination infused me with new spirit. I grabbed all the books I’d gleaned from Mom’s bookshelf—which had been surprisingly full of recipes—and spread them out in front of me.

  I’d make new recipes.

  Then we’d kill it on the new launch.

  “Lexie, I need you to tell me everything you remember about me when we were little.”

  Lexie paused. I pressed the phone harder to my ear, as if that would encourage her to respond sooner, but she said nothing.

  “Uh, okay,” she responded. “Right now?”

  “Can you? Are you busy?”

  “No. I’m definitely not standing outside a gas station talking myself out of a donut because it will only make me feel sick to my stomach. Good timing. Really glad you called. Hold on, let me get back in the car.”

  The rustle of movement and the sudden chime of a bell rang in the background. I heard a door shut and keys clink together. She sighed.

  “Okay, I’m back. What’s going on?”

  “It’s something I’m doing with Janine.”

  “Can we do this over video, then? Way more effective when I can see your face.”

  “Sure.”

  Lexie’s face appeared on the screen with a bright smile seconds later. Her blonde hair fell into her cornflower blue eyes. She blew it out of her way with a light raspberry.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You helped save me from a really bad decision.”

  “Chocolate-covered?”

  “No. Just glazed. I don’t think I would have bought it, but the temptation is real. I—whoa. Chelle. What’s going on over there?”

  Hundreds of photos fanned the floor around me, cluttering the old carpet in my bedroom. Images of a doll-faced little girl with liquid chocolate eyes and brown hair. Princess tutus. Tiaras. Cheesy smiles. Sticky fingers. Me dressed as Sleeping Beauty at Halloween. Mom and me sitting on the couch together when I was three or four. Pictures from my first prom.

  “I’m rearranging the way I think of myself,” I said, glancing at the photos. “It helps to remember who I’ve been.”

  “With baby and prom pictures?”

  “How else?”

  “Fair.”

  I cleared my throat. “You love your niece, right?”

  “That squish!” she cried. “Yes! I could eat her for—wait. Why? Of course I love her. You know that.”

  Lexie listened with rapt attention while I recounted the last session with Janine. She frowned, gasped, teared up, and stared hard at me at all the right moments. Just talking to Lexie was validating.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  I flapped a picture so she could see it. “That little girl had value, so why don’t I? Just like your niece. It’s like I think I lost value along the way, but that doesn’t make sense either. I don’t think you’ve lost value.”

  “Have you pulled out the pictures of five-year-old Rachelle yet?” she asked quietly.

  An icy shiver shot through my chest.

  I swallowed hard. Of course Lexie would go there right away. She’d open the path to the place that I’d been seeking through these pictures but not actually wanting to find. Wasn’t this really why I’d called her?

  Five years old meant she was thinking of the day Dad left. I picked up a glossy photo of me as a toddler, my brown hair curled at my neck, mouth spread in a gummy giggle. Two paces away, arms outstretched, was my father. He had thick black hair, dark skin, and a bushy mustache. I couldn’t believe Mom hadn’t burned it with all the others. It was the only shred of evidence I had that Dad was actually real. The vague memories, mere wisps, weren’t just my imagination.

  “No,” I finally whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why!”

  “You’re trying to figure out if your father leaving is the reason you feel you lost your worth. Like it was your fault that he left. Am I right?”

  That’s exactly what I’d been trying to do. My heart paused for half a beat. “Was it my fault?”

  Her expression softened. “Of course not, Rachelle.”

  “What if he left because of me? What if me being born was the wedge that pushed him away from my mom? Lexie, this could all be my fault.”

  “Could it?”

  The intensity of her question reined in my wild, hysterical thoughts.

  “I-I mean…”

  “Could an adorable little five-year-old who loved her father and her mother, who played in the kiddie pool and ate ice cream, really have caused issues between her parents that drove them to make really rash decisions?”

  “No.”

  “Think my niece could do that?”

  “No.”

  “No way, Rachelle. If that happened to my sister, it would be all about her and her husband’s issues, not baby girl. Your father leaving and never coming back had nothing to do with you. It speaks nothing to your worth but to his issues. His desperation. His fear. Not yours.”

  “Then what could have haunted him?” I asked. “What could drive someone to leave and never return? Never call? Never write? Never do anything?”

  “It’s a good question.”

  “I don’t think there’s an answer.”

  “Oh, there’s an answer. You just may not like it or understand it or ever get it, really. You can talk to me anytime, Chelle, and I’ll be here. But I’m not the person you should be talking to about this. I think you know that.”

  A cold fist of dread settled into my stomach like an icee. Lexie was right. I didn’t want her to be, but she was. My gaze flickered over to the door just as Mom laughed. The unmistakable sound of Seinfeld drifted into the room.

  Mom. I needed to talk to Mom.

  “Think she’ll tell me?” I asked.

  “Are you going to ask her?”

  “Yes.”

  Lexie’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  With a deep breath, I nodded. “Really.”

  “I don’t know, Rachelle. I’ve never really heard your mom talk about anything except food and television.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Maybe she’ll surprise you.”

  I mentally steeled myself. Dad didn’t leave because I suddenly lost value. He left for something. As his daughter, I deserved to know. Yearned to know. Had to know.

  Right now.

  “I’m going to talk to her right now while it’s on my mind,” I said.

  “Good. Then you won’t back out.”

  I managed a half-hearted smile. “Let’s hope not. I’ll call you back later, that okay?”

  “Always.”

  “Thanks, Lexie. Love you.”

  “You too, Chelle. And seriously, call me back ASAP! I’m dying to know what you find out.”

  With one more round of promises, I shut off the phone and slowly stood up. Photos fluttered back to the ground like sheets of tissue paper. My lungs expanded with a deep breath.

  The time to confront Mom had finally come.

  My stomach growled when I swung my way out of my bedroom. Night had started to fall, leaving the corners of the trailer swathed in shadows. An almost-empty bowl of Muddy Buddies rested at Mom’s side. I opened my mouth to speak, lost courage, and continued into the kitchen. It was past 8:00 in the evening, and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. A quick search through the fridge revealed nothing appetizing. I grabbed an apple from the crisper and a water bottle from the door and shoved both into the pockets of my sweatpants.

  “So, Mom, how was your day?” I asked while I hobbled over to just behind the couch. The cap of the water bottle cracked when I twisted it open. Mom glanced up, then back to the television.

  “Uh … fine.”

  “Finish your projects?”
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  She lifted the remote and flipped the channel, eventually settling on an old rerun of NCIS. Trying to predict the killer had been one of our favorite games. Actually, she seemed to have a knack for it.

  “Yep,” she said.

  The usual silence fell. My throat thickened. Could I really do this? Talking to Mom about Dad was the epitome of desperation and need. She never spoke about him. Not even when I’d asked. I felt like this was last-straw kind of stuff. I cleared my throat.

  “Hey, Mom?”

  She glanced up, as if surprised to be addressed a second time. Was it so unusual to hear my voice? Had it been that long since we’d spoken? Losing weight had certainly driven a wedge between us, but this seemed more like a mountain. I shrugged it off. Surely the hours at my new job had something to do with it.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I need to talk. Ask you some questions, if I can.”

  “Talk?”

  “Yeah. Um … can we talk without the television on?”

  Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. She moved aside the mixing bowl filled with powdered-sugar memories and sifted through the crumbs on the bottom. She often ate an entire batch of Muddy Buddies herself. I used to make my own batch. We’d sit on the couch together, eating out of our own mixing bowls while falling into unending Netflix series or RedBox rentals. The conversations hadn’t been all that in-depth, now that I thought back on it. Chatter about school. Lying about my current boyfriends. No, Mom, I’d say in horror. I would never let a guy sneak into my room. You must have heard the wind last night, or me talking in my sleep. She always seemed relieved enough when she heard what she wanted to hear.

  Mom motioned to the couch with a limp wave.

  “Uh … sure,” she said. “Have a seat.”

  She muted the television and turned to face me, except she stared at my shoulder. The words stuck in my throat. How could I ask her about Dad? I racked my brain, trying to remember the last time she’d even left the house. Three years ago, the power had been out for six hours. She’d been in a sheer panic without the television for that long, so she went to the grocery store, then quickly came back because her hips ached.

  “I … uh … I just had a few questions for you,” I said as I moved around the couch and sat across from her. The crutches clattered a little as I set them aside.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “How have you been?”

  Her eyes darted to mine, looking small in the folds of her face. “Fine,” she drawled. “You?”

  “Fine.”

  Panic made me hot. If I asked her questions about Dad, I’d have to explain why I was asking. What would Mom say about Janine? Would she think I was crazy? Mom’s gaze flickered to the TV. For some reason, asking about him seemed like too much. Far too personal when we could barely handle small talk.

  “What was your question about?” she finally asked.

  “Dad,” I said, blurting it out like I was giving birth. “I have questions about Dad.”

  Her head jerked back to face me, mouth open. She readjusted, as if she’d had to compensate for the world suddenly shifting, and looked away.

  “Oh.”

  “Look, I know it’s coming from nowhere, but … I’ve been thinking about how we’ve never really spoken about him. I mean, the last time I can remember is when I was in high school. And I think you just said that he left and, except for divorce papers, you haven’t heard anything.”

  “What questions do you have?”

  Her even cadence, the unruffled tone, all took me by surprise. Had I expected her to burst into flames? Hysterics? Tears? Dealing with her so calm and in control seemed too easy. I didn’t know what to do next. Couldn’t we just resort to yelling at each other the way we did when I was a tween?

  “Well, to start, I guess I was just curious about what happened between the two of you.”

  She shrugged, her face deadpan. “We grew apart. He was pretty closed off for most of our marriage. Didn’t like to talk.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  For half a breath, I thought I detected a softening. A fissure in her icy wall. But it hardened. She blinked.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “How long did you date before you got married?”

  “Three weeks.”

  I reared back. “That’s all?”

  She shrugged. “Felt good at the time. I didn’t have any other offers and didn’t think I likely would.”

  “Oh.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She folded her hands in front of her, threading the sausage-like fingers together. “I suppose it was fast, and there were issues I should have known were red flags, but that didn’t seem important at the time.”

  “What issues?”

  “Can’t remember.” She reached blindly for the bowl of Muddy Buddies and, finding it still empty, frowned.

  “Nothing?”

  “I guess money? He was really tight with his money and was always blowing up about the grocery bills. And we used to fight about food.” Her shoulders tightened. “All the time.”

  “Food?”

  “At first we didn’t really argue, but then we got pregnant with you. I put on a little more weight than he would have liked. Once you were born, he was really controlling about how much you ate and would always get angry with me if I fed you certain things, like ice cream. I thought it was okay to have a treat every now and then, but he didn’t.”

  Something wrinkled inside me. So I was the cause? No, I thought, blinking with the power of a sudden memory. The day Dad left they had argued … over me eating ice cream. No.

  A second ice cream.

  “Do you remember the day he left?” I asked instead, pushing that away to analyze later. For some reason, the details seemed intimately important, as if I could extract the story from them alone.

  If possible, her eyes grew even more distant. I fought off panic. This was the most I’d ever gotten out of her. Whatever magic existed today would probably never happen again. I couldn’t lose the thread now.

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember when he left.”

  “You were fighting, right?” I asked gently. Snippets of memory continued to flit across my mind. A pool. Hot sunshine. Something sticky on my hands. The sounds of screaming from the house. I was outside?

  “Yes,” she said.

  “About an … ice cream cone?”

  Her eyes returned to mine for half a breath. “Yes. Something like that, I’m sure. It was always something with him. I forgot a bill once, and he freaked out. So controlling.”

  “Do you know why he left?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Is there anything you can remember?”

  She blinked once. Twice. Even though the room lay oddly quiet, I felt as if something loud filled it. Perhaps my pounding heart. Or the heavy sound of silence.

  “I remember that I did love him once. I think. It’s so hard to remember anymore. We were very young. And then…” Her voice trailed away. She turned her head, angling it back toward the television.

  In a shot of desperation, I said, “Mom, I’ve been blaming myself for your divorce.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t move.

  “I-I think I’ve … I thought he left because of me. Is that true? I mean … if I had just done or acted differently, somehow, would things have worked out better? Is this my fault?” I asked in a small voice.

  I couldn’t help it—I sounded like a lost little girl. It had been years since I’d been this honest with her. Ten years since I’d admitted anything real to her. The words left me feeling raw and exposed in a way I’d never felt before.

  Her brow furrowed into deep grooves. Beneath all the layers of her body—her graying hair, her muumuu, the shield of skin and girth she wore to protect herself, I wondered if she even knew who she was anymore. What were her roles? What did she believe—probably falsely, like I did—about herself? If Mom asked herself these questions, what answers would
she find?

  She reached over, putting a thick hand on my knee. Tears sparkled in her eyes. For the first time in a long time, the little girl inside me stopped screaming.

  “Whatever your father was or wasn’t, Rachelle, had nothing to do with you. It may not seem like it, but he loved you very much.”

  My eyes watered. “Then why did he leave?” I whispered.

  Her lips hardened. She leaned back, and her hand fell away, taking any trace of the mom I once knew with her. This time, she angled her body away as much as she could and sank back into the couch cushions.

  “Because of me.”

  With that, she turned the volume back on the television—so loud it hurt my ears—and I returned to my room, my thoughts spinning.

  Chapter 12

  Inspiration

  The door to the Frosting Cottage tinkled behind me when I shut it the next day. I stepped into the warm aroma of fresh cinnamon rolls and confectioners sugar, hung my bag on the peg in Sophia’s office, and hobbled into the preparation area.

  “Sophia?” I called.

  “Coming!” she sang. Flour dusted her cheeks and apron when she appeared. A beautiful tower of cake, tulle, and glittery perfection sat on the far prep table. “I’m just about to finish up the McArthur cake. What’s up?”

  I passed her a crumpled piece of paper.

  “Here. Sorry it’s so wrinkled. Mira drove me today, and I thought I was going to die. But I had a few strokes of inspiration on the way, thanks to Mira talking nonstop about her Pepsi addiction unraveling.”

  She unwadded it and leaned back against the counter with her hip. I held my breath at first.

  “Cupcake ideas,” she murmured. “Sweet potato with cream cheese frosting. Pineapple lemon lime. Bacon and maple. Grapefruit with buttercream. Dr Pepper flavored?”

  “That was actually Mira’s idea. I think she wanted to say Pepsi but didn’t dare in case Bitsy’s bugged her car.”

  Her head tilted to the side as she continued without further comment. “Healthy cupcake ideas: Green tea. Earl Grey. Low sugar. Lavender. Gluten free. Java. Cappuccino. Cupcakes sweetened with—or made from—beets. Carrot-cake cupcakes. Zucchini cake.”

  She glanced up, eyes wide. The list fluttered in her hand as she shook it.