by Meg Donohue
Back in the kitchen, Lorena smiled at me.
“How do you know him?” she asked, eyes bright with the promise of gossip. Lorena, ever eager for my stories of the incestuous dating world of young bakers and chefs, swallowed gossip whole like the calcium pills she took to make her bones stronger.
“He’s not a baker,” I said, hoping to leave it at that.
“Oh,” Lorena said. She thought for a moment. “Well, that’s good. He’s very handsome.”
Carlos turned from the sink with a smirk.
“I’ll let him know he has admirers,” I said.
I rolled out the dough for ham and cheese croissants and worked on getting a grip. Away from Jake’s blue-green gaze and heart-crushing dimples, it was a little easier to take stock of the situation and get my bearings. Jake Logan, I reminded myself as I twisted the dough into perfect crescents, is very much part and parcel of that world you hated in high school and have been avoiding ever since. I realized I had no idea what Jake had been doing in the six years since graduating from Dartmouth. Maybe he does community outreach, I thought hopefully. Or maybe he’s a pediatric resident! He had that man-child vibe that probably made kids love him. Plus, that would explain the irregular schedule and casual attire. Or maybe he just hangs out all day, using hundred-dollar bills as coasters for his scotch tumblers. This, I had to admit, seemed equally possible.
As my shift neared its end, I went over the day’s remaining tasks with Lorena, hung my apron on a hook by the kitchen door, and gave myself a surreptitious once-over in the full-length mirror Ernesto had mounted on the inside of the bathroom door. All in all, the situation could have been worse. My dark tangle of hair was pulled back from my face and I was wearing a paper-thin black T-shirt and jeans that showed off my hourglass figure—hips made for baking, not birthing, was my line of choice. My petite frame probably carried ten or fifteen more pounds than it should have (who was counting?), but the extra weight gave me boobs and an ass. So I had that going for me. Besides, everyone knows that a skinny baker is not to be trusted. And who was I to discourage anyone’s trust?
I thanked whatever spirit had prompted me to dab on a little under-eye makeup and mascara at the crack of dawn before work that morning. There were times, I knew, when I looked like a complete and utter wreck by the end of my shift; by some minor miracle, this afternoon was not one of them.
“Have fun,” Carlos called loudly as I pushed open the door to the shop. Lorena giggled.
I ignored both of them, half expecting Jake to be gone. But there he was, leaning against the window, studying his phone. I felt self-conscious under Ernesto’s intrigued eye, so I suggested we walk to a nearby taqueria that served enormous burritos and thick-as-tar coffee.
“You had me at burrito,” said Jake, holding the door open.
At El Farolito, we sat at a tiny bright yellow table and took turns sprinkling hot sauce over our plates. Merengue music, as exuberantly frothy and light as its confectionary namesake, meringue, pumped out of the speakers, interrupted every so often by the same DJ who had been on the station since I was a kid. It was the station my mom always had on while we rushed around the carriage house getting ready in the early hours of the day. Like her embroidered turquoise and orange blouses or the purple hand-knit sweater with its zigzag pattern and zipper, merengue music was one of the things Mom never lost her affection for in all her years away from Ecuador. The music in the carriage house was a stark contrast to the concertos that would spill out and swell up against the walls of the St. Clairs’ courtyard when we opened their kitchen door each morning. Actually, I kind of liked that classical music, too. Once Lolly and Tad were out of the house, my mother would flip the stereo to the Latin music station. Sometimes, if the soulful guitar chords of an Ecuadorean pasillo came over the radio, I’d catch her swaying slightly at the sink, her eyes almost closed. Only then would I see a hint of the dark ocean of homesickness that must have churned inside of her.
When I saw my mom’s face cloud over like that, or even when I felt she was paying a little too much attention to Julia—which was, of course, her job, but you try explaining that to a strong-willed child and see if heads don’t roll—I’d do a little girl-walks-into-doorjamb slapstick number I’d picked up from television or, better, launch into one of the many impersonations I’d been perfecting. Luciadahhhling, I’d rasp in one long word like Lolly, little girls need ballet. How on earth do you expect Annie to find her core? If comedy failed to lift the cloud from my mother’s head, I’d ask her to bake me something sweet, and we’d sit cross-legged on the kitchen tiles together, licking the bowls and spoons clean.
My mother rarely spoke of her family. I figured that if she didn’t want to talk about them, there must have been a good reason. Through bits and pieces, I gathered that my grandmother was a rigid, fervently religious woman who ran her household like an army base; rules were obeyed, or you were swiftly discharged. I couldn’t imagine treating the bonds of blood so lightly, but then again when you had only one family member, even the slightest tiff felt reckless. My mother seemed so nervous the few times I asked her about my father that I eventually stopped trying. These are conversations we will have when you’re an adult, mi monita bonita, she’d say, wiping her hands on her apron. My pretty little monkey. I began to envision a trove of vital information I would be allowed to open when I turned eighteen, like a bride unpacking the trousseau that would lend beauty and grace to her new life. I never considered that my mother might die before we had our “adult” talk, taking large chunks of critical information along with her.
This was what a little music did to me: it sent me slipping down a dark, slick tunnel to the past. And then as soon as I hit bottom, before I could uncover any answers, I’d be catapulted back to the present.
“So,” I said to Jake Logan, eyeing him over my burrito. “What have you been up to all these years?”
“Time for me to dust off my résumé? Let’s see. After college I spent some years in New York doing the finance thing, but eventually I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had an embarrassingly boring quarter-life crisis. You know, the kind that usually leads to law school or business school.”
“But that’s not where yours led you?”
“Nah. Grad school would have just been laying the tracks for the midlife crisis train. Instead, I moved back to San Francisco and spent a lot of time surfing, trying to straighten myself out.”
“So . . . that’s what you do?” I asked. “You’re Surf Guy?” I’ll admit it was tough to keep the sarcasm from eking into my voice. I’d been struggling to pay rent on my studio apartment, walking dogs during the few hours of the day that I wasn’t baking my heart out for minimum wage, while this guy had been surfing? I realized with a thud of disappointment that we had absolutely nothing in common.
Jake laughed. “In all honesty? Yeah, I surf. A lot. But doing that for hours at a time, being out there on the ocean and looking back at the land gave me a lot of perspective. I ended up deciding to open a surf camp for underprivileged kids. I’m still working out the logistics, but I bought some land down in Costa Rica. We’ll provide scholarships and get some kids out of the concrete jungle and into nature. I figure if it helps me to be out in the water, it will probably help them, too.”
I took a deep breath. “Oh my God,” I said. “You’re one of them.”
“Them?”
“You know. Those people. You’re one of those people out there in the world, doing good things.”
Like stage actors with impeccable timing, Jake’s dimples arrived on the scene. “Does it make you think less of me?”
“A little.”
We smiled at each other. The beginnings of crow’s feet webbed out from Jake’s eyes, giving me a sudden glimpse of the middle-aged man he would become.
“I promise I have much better pickup lines that involve fewer references to children,” he said.
/> “Fewer, huh? You can’t resist throwing one or two in there?”
“Hey, if it ain’t broke . . .”
I wasn’t stupid. A part of me knew, even as I sat in front of Jake enjoying every second of the flirty banter that flowed as fast as summer fog over Twin Peaks, that I should run the other way. I knew I was dealing with a real charmer, a man who was handsome and funny and smart and sweet. A man who, I had no doubt, got exactly what he wanted more often than not. And even though I was a confident, intelligent woman who had received my share of attention from men over the years since high school and could usually sort a dud from a dreamboat within two minutes of conversation, I had to admit there was something about Jake that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Okay, it was worse than that.
I wasn’t usually the type of woman who met a man and immediately started to daydream about marriage and babies. In college and in the six years since, I’d dated. A lot. But as soon as things got serious with anyone, I always found myself pulling away. I wanted love, I did, but I didn’t want to rely on it, or anyone, for happiness. So whenever I sensed love inching itself my way, I shut down; being acutely aware of what I was doing didn’t seem to make me capable of stopping myself. In the end, I always found myself alone again. Still, I gathered from those relationships that I was lovable. But could I love? A sustainable, lasting love? I told myself I could; I just hadn’t found the right man. As the morning progressed and Jake eventually put his hand on mine and told me how sorry he was about my mom’s passing, albeit nearly a decade late in his condolences, and then later, how delicious he’d thought my cupcakes were at the Save the Children benefit, my mind began to meander down a previously untrodden, happily-ever-after path of thought.
Was it possible that Jake was the key to my whole confusing childhood? Growing up poor among such wealth, an outsider among die-hard insiders, feeling out of place even in the one place that I was meant to feel at home—maybe there would be some karmic retribution if the end result was that out of all that teenage angst I found love? It would be so handy, wouldn’t it? If a relationship with Jake provided enough heat to iron out all the unsightly wrinkles of my life?
Oh, get a grip, Quintana, I told myself, without much hope of success.
Once we’d balled up our burrito wrappers and tossed them into the trash, Jake and I walked several blocks from El Farolito to the home of Gus, a rescued shepherd mix that I walked a few afternoons each week. Jake sat on the stoop while I ran upstairs. As usual, Gus was waiting for me at the door of his apartment; I could hear his tail pounding the floor as I turned the key in the lock. Once I got inside, he hopped around me, nipping delicately at my fingers, nails clackety-clacking at the floor, his tail an ecstatic black blur. I knelt down in front of him, pressed his floppy, expressive ears flat back against his head, and planted a kiss on the side of his long, black schnoz. He whined happily, his whole body shimmying. Gus was one of those dogs who had an entirely different personality at home, where his sense of security gave him the confidence to be joyous and goofy. Out on the street, the shelter pup in him came out and he turned skittish and sorrowful, his tan quotation mark eyebrows pressing together to turn his forehead into a series of anxious wrinkles. Needless to say, I was gaga for Gus and his layered personality.
Downstairs, I could see right away that Jake loved dogs as much as I did. I had to warn him not to try too hard with Gus; too much attention from a stranger would only make Gus more nervous out there in the big loud world. Jake managed to restrain himself for half a block, but soon was cooing down to Gus, running his hand down the length of his silky black-and-tan coat, and passing him a little piece of chorizo from a napkin that he’d somehow slipped into his pocket at El Farolito without me noticing. Gus pressed himself against Jake’s leg and looked adoringly up at him as he gobbled the meat, his tail for a moment wagging as freely as it did at home.
“So, can I see you again soon?” Jake asked, looking up from Gus to me, his eyes crinkling against the sunlight.
YES! Teenage Annie screamed.
“I suppose that could be arranged,” said Adult Annie, finally, if barely, staking her claim.
Chapter 4
Julia
When I heard Jacqueline, the maid, opening the door for Wes, I hurried out of my bedroom, but it was too late: my mother’s throaty voice carried up the stairs to me as clearly as if she were speaking directly into my ear.
“Wesley darling, how wonderful to see you! Julia didn’t even let us know you were back in town. She must be trying to keep you all to herself.”
Wes’s response was too low to make out, but I could hear the warmth in his voice, the drawl of South Carolina hanging in there after all those years. I loved his voice. I loved thinking about him in business meetings all over the world, his honeyed, down-home vernacular and his gracious manner unexpected from a successful American businessman. I loved introducing him to people and watching their reactions when this big, sweet, slow-moving guy began talking about wireless Internet boosters and the socioeconomic complexities of third world countries. He had a pull, a magnetism, that people seemed unable to resist, least of all me. He was not really the sort of man I thought I would end up with, but I suspected I loved him for that reason, too.
“Well, surprise or not, I’m very glad you’re here,” my mother was saying as I descended the stairs. Her hand, I could see now, rested conspiratorially on Wes’s arm. “Julia’s been moping around this house night and day for weeks. Your visit couldn’t be better timed.”
“Mother, you’re exaggerating,” I said as I crossed the foyer to join them. “Wes knows I don’t mope.” I kissed him on the lips. “Hi.”
“Hey there,” he said, hugging me tightly so the side of my face pressed into his crisp linen shirt. He was one of those men who managed to make even off-the-rack clothing look perfectly tailored to his broad frame; the combination of that stylish, yet unfussy wardrobe and his debonair good looks created an overall impression of confidence without cockiness. There was something so unquestionably manly about him, and seeing him still gave me butterflies even after all our time together. I wasn’t so head-over-heels to not realize that some of the spark between us was undoubtedly flamed by the fact that we had yet to actually live in the same city as each other, and had in fact only seen each other, at most, once every couple of weeks for the entirety of our relationship. Even now that we were finally living on the same coast, we were unlikely to see each other with much more frequency in the year leading up to our wedding. Wes owned a condo in San Francisco, but spent most nights at a hotel near his company headquarters in Silicon Valley and probably caught the majority of his sleep on airplanes, living out of a suitcase as he traveled nationally and internationally to raise funds and establish manufacturing operations. He’d already warned me that the months ahead would be no different; he’d be away from the Bay Area more often than he was there, determined to get his business ducks in a row so he could properly enjoy our wedding and subsequent honeymoon in Fiji.
When he released me, he looked over at my mother and said, “With all due respect, Mrs. St. Clair, Julia’s right—I don’t think moping is in her DNA. She must have her mother’s dynamite genes to thank for that.”
It was just like Wes to find a way to take my side and still manage to charm my mother. I could see the tiniest hint of a flush make its way across her smooth cheeks, her lips working to not break into too pleased a smile. “Wesley darling,” she rasped, “it’s Lolly. If that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue just yet, I’ll be forced to make matters worse by insisting you call me Mother. I don’t think either of us want that, do we?”
“No, ma’am,” Wes drawled, laughing. “Lolly it is.”
“So, tell me, what do you make of this whole cupcake scheme?” she asked. “Here I thought my daughter and I were going to spend the year planning a fabulous wedding, and instead she’s starting a busines
s with her old friend Annie.”
“Mother!” I cried. Wes looked at me with quizzical amusement, his brows raised high above his square-framed glasses. “I haven’t had a chance to tell Wes about the shop yet. He just walked in the door!”
“For heaven’s sake, haven’t you two heard of telephones? What’s with the secrecy?”
“I wanted to give him the news in person.” I glanced at Wes. “I’ll tell you all about it at lunch.”
Wes’s dark eyes twinkled. “You know me—if there’s one thing I like better than surprises, it’s talking new business ventures over a heaping plate of food.”
“Where are you going?” my mother asked, pulling a tiny, wayward thread from the cuff of her white blouse.
“Rose’s.” I glanced at my watch. “We should get going. Our reservation is in ten minutes.”
“Union Street was a zoo this morning. Curtis will drive you so you don’t have to deal with parking,” my mother pronounced. She shook a finger at Wes. “The chopped salad followed by the roasted turkey on brioche. Don’t let anyone talk you into ordering anything else.”
“What’s all this about a cupcake shop? You’re taking up the domestic arts? Business school to baked goods . . . you’re liable to give me whiplash!” Wes joked as Curtis eased the Bentley out of the courtyard, through the front gate, and into the street.
I tried not to bristle at Wes’s teasing tone, but now that we were alone I felt on edge. There was so much unsaid between us, so many half truths that had built up so quickly. I leaned my head back against the cool leather seat and took a deep breath. If I could have foreseen the repercussions the conversation that followed would have over the course of that year, I would have avoided it all together. Instead, I plowed blithely forward, hoping that full disclosure in the seemingly innocuous area of cupcakes would act as a smokescreen for the nondisclosures in other, darker areas of my life.
