by Holly Kerr
But I take my time, feeding the cats and heating up Sunday night’s leftover pasta for myself. And then I prepare some of the mushrooms, sautéing them with shallots as I ready the batter for the scones, sprinkling in the fresh thyme at the last minute.
It’s not until I pop the dozen scones into the oven that I remember to call my mother, but it’s better that I waited. She doesn’t like it when I’m doing something when I talk to her. Margaret Donnelly always demands the full attention of anyone she deigns to speak to.
“You haven’t called your sister,” my mother accuses after the perfunctory greeting.
“Which one?” I bluff.
My mother clicks her tongue with disapproval. “Molly, of course.”
Of course, Molly.
There’s no way I’ll be able to compete with her with another baby. What do I have? Only my own business, my independence, and three cats.
“Your sister is waiting for your call.” Mom gives a disappointed sniff. “What have you been doing that’s more important than your sister? Have you met someone? Were you on a date this week?”
I ignore the question. “Well, Molly’s not going to appreciate me calling her now,” I say drily. “I’ll call her tomorrow after the lunch rush.
“The babies will be sleeping by then,” Mom points out.
“Then it’ll be a good time for Molly to talk.”
“You need to call your sister.” Mom sniffs again, and I’m tempted to ask if she has a cold.
“And I will,” I promise. “I’m sure Molly has had her phone ringing off the hook for the last day. She won’t miss me.”
Part of me wants her to protest, that of course my sisters miss me, but of course she doesn’t.
“I was busy today,” I say to fill the awkwardness. “Someone didn’t come in.”
I regret the words as soon as they slip out.
“Your father always had staffing issues,” she says with disapproval. “He was too lenient, always coddling the employees. They work for you, I’d always tell him. Their schedule is now your schedule.”
“You’ve told me that.” She’s given me a lot of advice with the patisserie, most of which I disregard. The winery under her rule may be a success, but I want to run my business my way.
“Rule with an iron fist. That’s what I always say,” she adds. “Aren’t things much better since I took over the winery?”
It’s ironic how my mother is so consumed with us finding husbands when she has proven, and is proud of the fact, that she’s better off without one.
I shake my head. “Okay, well, you didn’t call to give me advice on the patisserie.” Because you never mention it unless it’s to criticize, I add silently.
I love my mother but she’s a difficult woman to like. I thought living two hours away from her might have helped, but it really hasn’t done much except make her nitpick my life even more.
“How can you say the patisserie is so busy? What do people in that city do all day? I can’t expect you get much business with so few tables. And your hours! You’re only open until four o’clock. What about the evening business? Dinner?”
“I’ve gone for the breakfast/lunch crowd, and I’m pretty busy with that.”
“Is anything else new?” Mom asks.
“No, Mom.” I sigh. “I told you I haven’t met anyone.”
“What’s wrong with the men in that city?” she frets. “I don’t wonder if you should move back here.”
“I’m not moving back to Niagara to find a husband. Has it occurred to you that I don’t particularly want to find a husband?”
“Of course you want to find a husband. It’s time for you to settle down like your sisters. You’re not getting any younger you know, Moira.”
My mother is the only one who calls me Moira, and I cringe every time she says it.
“It doesn’t matter how old I am, I’m still not getting married. Now, I really have to go. I’ve got something in the oven.”
“You need to go on those dating sites,” my mother orders, ignoring anything and everything I’ve said. “I’ve heard they’re a good way to meet men. I want you to put yourself on that Meethimher.”
I pull the phone away from my ear and check the number. It is still my mother. “You want me to go on Meethimher?”
“I think you should try. Maybe you’ll give someone a chance since you never give anyone I introduce you to a second glance.”
I bite my tongue to not mention a few of the winners she’s tried to set me up with. The vegetable guy was the best of them.
“You’re not getting any younger, Moira,” she finishes. “And it’s been two years since Ben. It’s time to move on.”
Her mention of Ben throws me. It has been two years since he died, and it’s been seven hundred and twenty-six days since my mother uttered his name. The last time was to pronounce that she had never trusted him, and certainly never liked him.
Even though we had been engaged for six weeks, his death negated any points I might have earned.
I take a deep breath. “Thanks for the reminder.”
I’m twenty-nine. Even if I was forty-nine and still single, I wouldn’t put myself on Meethimher or any other dating site. But I’m not about to tell my mother that.
“So you’ll sign up?”
“Sure, Mom. I’ll get right on it. And I’ll call Molly later. But—” The buzzer sounds with perfect timing. “I really have to pull that out of the oven. I’ll call Molly tomorrow and anyone else who happens to be pregnant in the family. Which is definitely not me.”
“Someday soon,” my mother sings. “I’m going to make it happen for you.”
And that’s the problem right there. She’s not going to give up, even if I find my own Prince Charming. Ben proved to everyone that I had poor judgment when it came to men.
I end the call, my mother’s squawk of displeasure still ringing in my head, and pull out my mushroom scones.
“These are good,” I say to the cats as they wind around my ankles, driven crazy by the smells. “I’m good. Mushroom scones are good. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
But like always, my mother’s barbs have hit home.
Clay
I’m so hungry by the time I get home that I’ve lost my appetite for cooking anything creative, and make do with Cup-a-Soup. But as I wait for the kettle to boil, my gaze settles on my bright blue KitchenAid mixer in the spot of honour on the counter.
I’m the only man I know who is proud of his kitchen toys.
I’m proud of all my things. I like my condo, like the crisp lines, the easy, uncluttered space. Once, when I brought a girl back to my place, she asked if I was a real estate agent.
“No, why do you ask?”
“Because it doesn’t look like anyone lives here. It looks like one of those model condos agents bring people through.”
“No, it’s mine.” I like the minimalist look, but not spartan. I like to think there’s a little bit of personality in my home.
“It’s cool if it wasn’t,” she continued. “Or, you know, if you were a real estate agent and this was someone else’s place.”
“I’m not a real estate agent.”
“Okay,” she said with more than a hint of disappointment in her tone. “Because that would be kind of kinky, you know.”
After our drink, I’d called her an Uber.
I like to cook, and not just barbeque. But I prefer to bake, and I’m good at it. So good that my mother begs me to bring cupcakes whenever there’s a family dinner. So good that employees will happily stay late at work if I bribe them with sweets. So good that when women discover my baking talents, they—
Let’s just say they get excited, and leave it at that.
Baking is fun and it relaxes me. It also gives me a creative outlet, something that’s been lacking since I took on the VP position. I have my graduate degree in marketing and I love it, but some days I wish I was back being a simple graphic designer without the re
sponsibilities and people working under me.
Other days, I love the power and control.
But there is stress to any job, and baking is one thing that helps me deal with it. So as I stand at the counter sipping my soup, I flip through my Martha Stewart cookbook to inspire me.
The jars of honey I bought do their part as well.
An hour later, the soup is gone, I’m halfway through a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, and a dozen honey-vanilla cupcakes are cooling on the counter. But as I set out ingredients to make a honey-cream cheese icing, I prop my iPad on the stand and FaceTime Liv.
She moved to London four years ago and we keep in touch with FaceTime chats. I don’t feel bad that it’s the middle of the night in England because the baby is still waking up every three hours, so there’s a chance Liv might be awake. And if she’s asleep, nothing will wake her.
A heavy-eyed smile greets me as FaceTime connects. “Please tell me you were already awake,” I say quickly. Even seeing her bleary-eyed and half-asleep, my heart expands at the sight of her.
Liv laughs quietly. “I was. I doubt your brother would appreciate waking up to the sight of you.” Two years of living abroad has given her the slightest lilt to her words, almost like she’s pretending to have a British accent.
Maybe she is. Liv has always been dramatic. I would have never picked her for my older, more serious brother Clarence, but somehow they work together. Rance is now a professor of Russian literature at Cambridge and Liv is a freelance graphic artist. When I’m annoyed with my brother, the thought that Liv is better suited for me sneaks in, but I push it out just as quick.
It’s hard enough that I compare every woman I meet with Liv, and they’re never able to measure up.
I know what I feel for Liv is something stronger than the usual sister-in-law feelings, but I can’t help it. I fell in love with Liv the day my older brother brought her home for the first time, and nothing I can do will shake it. Over the years, I’ve managed to convince myself it’s only sisterly, brotherly love, and none of the Flowers in the Attic brother-sister stuff that she used to read, but it hasn’t stopped Liv being one of my best friends.
“How’s the baby?” I ask, cutting up the block of cream cheese.
“I hope you’re not referring to your brother. Because he’s got a cold, and I don’t know who’s more miserable, him or the baby with the bit of diaper rash he’s got.”
“Diaper rash doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“Neither is Clarence with a cold. What are you doing home tonight, all by your lonesome? Did you stash your latest lady friend in the closet to come call me?”
“No lady friend tonight. At least, not anymore.” Liv knows everything about my dating history. She gets a kick out of hearing the PG versions of my dates, chides me if she thinks I’ve led a woman on, and generally tells me to settle down.
“You’re thirty-two years old, Clayton. It’s time to stop playing and settle down,” Liv always says. She’s the only one who calls me Clayton, just like she’s the only one who calls Rance, Clarence.
As I press the softened cream cheese into the bowl, I tell her I’m looking, but I’m not sure for what. Or for whom. There are too many Heathers out there who catch my eye for me to think about anything serious.
“So you already had your date and are talking to me. I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”
“She sends too many texts.” I sigh.
“Says the man who once sent me twenty-seven texts before I could respond.” Liv’s eyes crinkle at the corners when she grins.
“I had something important to tell you,” I protest.
“Maybe she does, too.”
“Trust me, she doesn’t.” I mix icing sugar into the cream cheese, adding vanilla and a dollop of honey, using my spatula and arm muscles, so I don’t have to turn on the mixer. “None of the women I meet have anything important to tell me.”
“What do you want them to tell you?” Liv asks, rubbing her eyes.
“How their day went, without trying to impress me. What they want out of life, without assuming I want to be part of it. I don’t know, Liv. I want someone real, not fake.”
“Clay.” Liv sighs. “You want a relationship.”
“I have relationships.”
“No, you have three-or-four-night stands. It’s no wonder you can’t find anyone special if women keep flashing in and out of your life. Stop dating.”
“How am I supposed to find anyone then?”
“Let them find you. She’s out there; just be patient.”
My mind flashes to the weekend in Las Vegas, to dark eyes and a blue dress. “What if I already found her?”
And then lost her.
How do I find M.K. again?
Chapter Six
M.K.
Monday morning I make pain au chocolat.
I fell in love with the pastry when I was ten years old during the summer that my parents divorced. Of course I had no idea my family was about to be destroyed when my mother sent me to stay with a distant cousin outside Paris, like some sort of depressing children’s novel.
It had been depressing; I’d been lonely, sad, and very confused. My mother had sent my sisters and me to different family members for the summer. Millie was sent to Sudbury, and never forgave me for being the one who got to go to France. Molly went to Toronto, furious with everyone that she didn’t go farther away from home. And Meaghan, the youngest, cried all the way to Vancouver. During a time we should have come together for comfort, we were ripped apart, and the sisterly relationships never recovered.
But there had been good times that summer. Cousin Edith was unmarried and liked weekend road trips to little French villages. She also took a liking to me, and we explored the South of France together. I fell in love with everything France that summer as I learned about champagne, French architecture, and the way lavender smells when you press it between your fingers.
It also began my love affair with French food, the most important relationship in my life. I loved the savory cuisine, but it was the pastry that got me excited.
It had been Edith who arranged to get me cooking lessons Sunday mornings in any patisserie she could find. It had been Edith who ate everything I made, even when the pastry had been chewy or hard as rocks. She complimented and praised and encouraged, and I lapped it up.
It was a rude awakening when I returned at the end of August to find my father gone and my mother—
My mother is nothing like Cousin Edith.
I’m already elbows deep in puff pastry when Rhoda arrives, this time only ten minutes late for her shift.
“I’m not good with mornings,” she apologizes as she rushes in through the back door. “I tried two alarms but couldn’t remember where I hid the second one, and ripped my bedroom apart trying to find it.”
I continue to place the grated chocolate in a neat pile before folding the puff pastry and wonder how to fire her. Not now, because I really need the help to open. “Could you get the apple turnovers out?” I ask politely. “With the madeleines I made yesterday?”
“Ooh, I love your madeleines,” Rhoda says, apparently thinking she’s forgiven.
She’s not. While the thought of telling her she’s finished here ties my stomach in knots, I value punctuality too much not to do something about her. Just not now.
Once Adam arrives a few hours later, I stay in the kitchen to finish the croissants and make rugelach crescents and palmiers, sorting out schedules in my head and wondering where I can find a new barista who can also bake.
Or at least follow instructions.
My hands ache by the time I emerge, my shoulders sore from rolling out pounds of dough, but I’m smiling with satisfaction. There’s enough puff pastry in the freezer for a few weeks, all the tables in the patisserie are full with happy, eating customers, and already the tray of fresh pain au chocolat is half empty.
“Smells delicious,” Paulo says with a wink as I take my place behind the cash, grateful
that I had time to change into a pale green shirtdress and put on lipstick today.
“I made the good stuff today.”
“All boa.” He smiles. “Excelente. You make it easy for me to go to work. I need to work off all this butter.”
Thanks to Google Translate, I now have a basic understanding of the Portuguese words Paulo drops into conversations.
“Everything is better with butter,” I say, keeping my tone polite and professional despite the flashing white smile and deep-set eyes, the same brown as the chocolate I used earlier. Paulo is almost too good looking, which keeps sending me into thoughts of what if, rather than definitely not.
“O sim, of course it is.” Another smile, this one practically a leer. Adam brings Paulo’s large coffee and gives the white bag with his croissant an extra fold before passing it Paulo with a hopeful smile.
He gets a wink in return.
“He’s so pretty,” Adam murmurs as we watch Paulo saunter to the door.
“O sim.” I mimic Paulo’s accent. “But how can he make everything sound sexual? Like butter. It’s just butter.”
Adam looks at me with pity, and gives me a pat on the shoulder. “Oh, my Boss Lady. You really do need to go out more.”
With a shake of my head, I turn to the next in line and look up with amazement. The man behind Paulo is like Hagrid has stepped out of Hogwarts and into my patisserie. “Can I help you?” I ask the antithesis of Paulo—tall and broad and very hairy.
“I’ve never had a better a pain au chocolat outside France.”
I might need Google Translate for him as well. Scottish, I think, but his accent is thick and rolling and it takes me a moment to understand.
“Thank you,” I say with a smile. “It’s all in the butter.”
“How many turns are you doing?”
“Five.” I stare at him with amazement. None of my customers ever ask about the process of making puff pastry, and I can’t imagine many of them even knowing there is a system of wrapping the butter in dough, then rolling out, and folding to make the layers. It has to be turned and the dough chilled in between, a long progression between the flour and water becoming buttery, flaky goodness. “I chill after two.” He gives a solemn nod, like I’ve told him a state secret. “Do you bake?”
