Back to reality . . .
My cell phone, sitting on a makeshift moving box-turned-nightstand, shrilled an alarm that cut through the silence and startled me. I quickly shut off the glaring noise and checked the time. Three twenty-one.
I could barely think or function, and yet it was time to get up. Tears welled up in my throat, and as much as I wanted to pull my sleeping bag over my head and hide, I didn’t. I swallowed. No tears. Daisy McCrae did not cry. “How did I get here?”
Here was Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. My new—but I have been quick to say, temporary home—was the top floor apartment in my parents’ 120-year-old brick town house. It was the room I’d shared with my sisters as a kid, where I’d played dress-up, dreamed of my birth mother, Renee, and traded secrets with imaginary friends. It was ground zero, square one of my life, and I was back.
Oh God . . .
Mary Ellen Taylor
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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Copyright © 2013 by Mary Burton.
Cover illustration by Alan Ayers.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / February 2013
Berkley trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-425-25969-6
An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.
For Julia
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
What Came Before
Union Street Bakery Recipes
Chapter One
Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF
Alexandria, Virginia
Life can turn on a dime. It’s a common cliché, and I’d heard it often enough. People die or move away. Investments go south. Affairs end. Loved ones betray us. Stuff happens.
In the light of day, I’ve always been able to acknowledge that life’s really bad curveballs are out of our control. I mean come on, who really wants cancer? Who expects lightning to strike a plane and send it plummeting into the ocean? And ladies, how could we really have known that Mr. Say-All-the-Right-Things was such a schmuck?
Bad things happen to good people. When I’m at the office carving into my to-do list, sharing a joke with friends, or running at a breakneck pace on the treadmill, I understand this concept. I really do.
Ask me those same questions during the darkest time of night when there is nothing to distract me, however, and my answer won’t be as philosophical. Without life’s distracting whirl and buzz, my rational logic quickly surrenders to shadowy emotions that lurk and wait to strike. When alone, the promise of control whispers that happiness is mine for the having only if I work very, very hard. Hold on tight. Run fast. Work hard. Dress right. If I can do everything right then maybe, just maybe, the herd, the clan, friends, coworkers, or whomever, will keep me close.
When I was a kid, this gut feeling translated into socks and lunch boxes. In grade school I believed that if my socks matched my dress, if I carried the right Barbie lunch box, and if I made all A’s, I’d be accepted by friends, teachers, and family. I just knew if I could be perfect I’d somehow be more deserving of . . . love.
This obsession with belonging followed me from grade school through high school, college, and into the professional world. No detail was small enough to be managed. No problems were too insignificant to obsess over. My therapist once said, “Life listens to no master.” Good, sound advice that I really wanted to embrace but never quite managed.
And so I did what I did best and focused more attention on all the details, no matter how tiny, believing that somehow I would remain a step ahead.
I’d earned a master’s degree in business administration and a Chartered Financial Analyst certificate and quickly established myself as a rising star in a Washington, D.C., money management firm. I also spent wisely and invested in my company stocks. Donated to the SPCA and the United Way. I had friends, a sublease on an apartment with sweeping views of Rock Creek Park, and jam-packed purposeful days that left little time for worry or second-guessing. Having done everything right, I fully expected that circumstances would never turn on any damn dime, and my life would not only be filled with love, but that the flock would always embrace me.
And then the chief financial officer of our firm swaggered up to the stock market’s metaphorical poker table holding two of a kind and bet most of the chips. The house, however, held a full house and with its better hand swiped the company winnings off the table. I, along with a few others, suggested that the CFO retrench. Back off. Don’t expose us so much. Unmoved by logic and seemingly imbued with confidence, the CFO raised the bet. This time he held a straight—better, but not enough to beat the house’s royal flush.
The staggering loss knifed into the firm’s investment accounts, which quickly started hemorrhaging. No matter how hard the investment team and I tried to stop the bleeding, we could not. Soon, c
lients bailed. The CFO resigned. And finally, in a New Year’s Day panic, the firm’s big boss sold our investment shop to a larger firm, which quickly declared all the members of the investment team obsolete.
One second I was at my desk talking to a client, assuring him that my investments, though battered, remained tied up with the company like his. And in the next, the new CFO had me in his office and was spouting phrases like: This is no reflection of you, Daisy. We respect what you did. . . . Before I had time to shake off the shock, I had to stumble through a maze of gray cubicles toward the elevators, the buzzing fluorescents mingling with the whispers of coworkers. Tucked under my arm was a single box holding a plant, a framed picture of my parents standing in front of their bakery, a black mug, and my two diplomas. Someone had called out their best wishes to me but I was too stunned and too humiliated to turn. The elevator doors opened and I woodenly stepped into the car. In a blink, the doors closed on the last decade of my life.
Now, as I sat on the edge of the pullout sofa in my parents’ attic room and watched the shadows dance and sway over roughly hewn ceiling beams, I wondered for the hundredth time what I could have done differently to stop the explosion that rocked my life. I had seen the CFO’s moodiness deepen daily and had felt the weight of his stress. I had known something was wrong but had assumed his plight was personal, not professional. I should have pushed through my own worries and spoken to him privately. I should have muzzled my insecurities and demanded to see his trades. I should have stood up on my desk and screamed, Houston, we have a problem!
But I didn’t do any of those things. I kept my head down, basically obsessed over trimming the trees while the forest burned.
“Shit.” I swung my legs over the side of the sofa to the cold wooden floor. My toes curled and my heart drummed faster against my ribs as I stared at the fortress of crates, boxes, and suitcases crammed into the attic room. Beyond the barrier, my road bike leaned against one wall, stacks of books piled high on the floor, and my laptop rested on an old sewing table. All my worldly goods had been wedged into boxes and trash bags and stowed in every available corner.
I dug long fingers through my black hair and then pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead.
Though I might not have always loved my job, I had done it well and it had rewarded me with success and pride. Never had I once thought that the job was me or I was the job. We were two separate entities.
But as I raised my gaze to the moonlight streaming into the room’s single window, I had to concede that the job had wormed into my identity like sprawling ivy vines, which over time, slowly and carefully had burrowed into the mortar, brick, and foundation of my life.
With the job gone, I was left damaged and marked like bricks stripped clean of ivy. I was lost. Adrift. Who the hell was I if I wasn’t Daisy-S-McCrae-vice-president-Suburban Enterprises?
Panic scraped at the back of my head and made my skin crawl. It would be so easy to just scream and cry at the utter futility of this mess. But I’d learned at a very young age that crying never solved anything, nor did it calm the chaos.
“Shit.” I stared at my toes and the chipped red polish from a weeks-old pedicure.
Finance jobs in the area were few and far between in recent months and with each new no, not now, overqualified, underqualified, my sense of helplessness grew. Never in my life had I worked so hard and received so many rejections.
Soon, showers and a clean change of clothes had stopped being an everyday thing. My appetite vanished. I avoided friends and family. I couldn’t seem to untangle the net that had me trapped.
My cell phone, sitting on a makeshift moving box-turned-nightstand, shrilled an alarm that cut through the silence and startled me. I quickly shut off the glaring noise and checked the time. Three twenty-one.
I could barely think or function, and yet it was time to get up. Tears welled up in my throat, and as much as I wanted to pull my sleeping bag over my head and hide, I didn’t. I swallowed. No tears. Daisy McCrae did not cry. How did I get here?
Here was Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. My new—but I have been quick to say, temporary home—was the top floor apartment in my parents’ 120-year-old brick town house. It was the room I’d shared with my sisters as a kid, where I’d played dress-up, dreamed of my birth mother, and traded secrets with imaginary friends. It was ground zero, square one of my life, and I was back.
Oh God.
Dropping back against the lumpy mattress, I did pull the sleeping bag over my head. The money I’d invested with Suburban was all but gone, the furniture that filled my apartment was gone, my designer suits and Prada heels were in storage, my mail now forwarded to a four-by-five-inch PO box in Alexandria. In a blink, I became the loser unemployed kid living in the attic.
“Maybe if I lay very still, I’ll really wake up and find that the last few months have just been a nightmare.”
I waited, hoped, prayed for a miracle even as the spring in the sofa mattress poked my backside and my mind shouted, Get up! You’ve got promises to keep.
I’d never broken a promise in my life, ever. And that quirk was why I’d always been careful about making promises. “Shit!”
I sat up, tossed aside the sleeping bag and again swung my legs over the side of the sofa bed. Groping fingers found my worn sweatpants and a faded University of Richmond T-shirt, which thankfully I’d laid out before bed. Shrugging off my nightgown, the cool night air hit my bare skin and sent a chill through my body. Cursing my life, I quickly slipped on my clothes.
Bare feet went begrudgingly into worn clogs as I pulled my crooked ponytail free and combed fingers through my wavy hair. I weaved through unpacked boxes toward the moonlight streaming through the window that overlooked Union Street in Old Town. It was a clear night and the stars twinkled.
I had never felt more lost or alone.
You are not lost. . . .
The whisper-soft words rattled in my head now as they did the night prior when I first climbed the stairs to the attic. I’d not heard the voice in years. Most might have fretted over hearing a voice, but it was as familiar to me as the house’s clanging pipes, flickering lights, and squeaky floorboards.
You are not alone.
“Go away.” My voice was gravelly and rough with sleep.
Hearing myself respond out loud reminded me of the time I had a friend sleep over when I was a kid. Millie had heard me talking to someone she could not see, and when I’d told her the house had a ghost, she’d tried to laugh it off but I could see the worry take root. That night, as the shadows swayed and my room filled with the steady familiar sound of footsteps on the attic stairs, she’d freaked. I tried to calm her with assurances that the ghost was good, but the more I spoke the more hysterical she became. She’d called her mom shortly after midnight and begged to go home. She’d never slept over again.
I’d always feared the future but I’d never been afraid of whatever dwelled in this house. In fact, whoever was here was more like an annoying friend than foe.
You are not lost. . . .
“Want to bet?”
The temperature plummeted, and the scent of honeysuckle permeated the air. Follow the stars. . . .
“Is that the best you got? What the hell does that mean?”
Follow the stars. . . .
I waited, listening for specific details, but heard only the sway of the wind through the trees outside my window.
For generations, my parents’ town house had not only been home to the family but to the family business as well. Long before I was born, the building’s first floor and basement were dedicated to the Union Street Bakery, which has been owned and operated by a McCrae since 1852.
Below my window stood the bakery’s sidewalk café furnished with a collection of bare wrought-iron tables. The tables’ umbrellas along with the potted red geraniums had been pulled in last night, as they had bee
n every night for as long as I could remember.
The trees lining the land between the garden and the Potomac River hadn’t bloomed or filled with leaves so I could still see the lazy waters meander past. Lights from the Maryland side winked back. Soon green foliage would blossom, fill the empty branches and blot out the Wilson Bridge, which joined the shores of Virginia and Maryland, and the development on the north side of the river. And this corner of Union Street would then feel as if it had slipped back to the time of carriages, cobblestone streets, schooners, and the first whispers of the Civil War.
The first McCrae of the clan’s American branch, Shaun McCrae, had been an Irishman known for a quick temper, a mind for business, and the devil’s luck in cards. He’d settled in Alexandria in 1842, coming to America with his daughter when his first wife died in the potato famine. He’d found work in a slave auction house but over time lost his taste for trading human flesh. For a few years, no record of Shaun surfaced, and his life slipped into the shadows. And then, in 1851, city records mentioned that Shaun McCrae was the new proprietor of the McCrae’s Bakery, later to be known as The Union Street Bakery. His specialty was sea biscuits or ship’s bread, a hardy cracker that fed sailors who labored on the barges, schooners, and other ships docked in Alexandria’s thriving harbor. Seamen, and later, Confederate and Union soldiers, drawn to the thriving seaport talked about McCrae crackers and biscuits with reverence.
In 1865, Shaun married his second wife Sally Good, a young girl from Ohio. She became his partner in every sense and some said her eye for business rivaled his own. They passed the business to their oldest son, and he did the same when he retired. Ever since, a McCrae has operated the business. And now I have returned to the city to do what so many of my clan did before me: to bake bread.
I pushed open the window, closed my eyes, and inhaled the early morning air. The scent of honeysuckle laced the air. The twisting, twining vine had bloomed a month early this year, and reminded me of the day my birth mother kissed my cheek on a crowded Saturday afternoon at the bakery. She pushed a plate of butter cookies toward me and whispered, “Be a good girl. I will be back soon.”
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