“What do you mean, last designs?” Monica asked as something cold spider-crawled its way down the length of her spine.
Mrs. Garza’s bottom lip trembled. “We lost her last week. Initially, the doctors were optimistic, but then her body rejected the heart, and she went into cardiac arrest. It all happened so fast.”
Monica brushed a tear from her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Garza. I…”
She didn’t know what else to say. Why hadn’t she gone to visit Vanessa? Why did Vanessa’s body reject the heart? Why was her world—once so utterly mundane and predictable—now spinning out of control?
“Here,” Mrs. Garza said and handed her the bag of dresses. The plastic crinkled between them. “Vanessa loved designing dresses. She dreamed of making it big. Wear these and keep her spirit alive. Follow your dreams, Monica. Use this time and be grateful for every opportunity.”
“I will, I promise,” she answered, but Mrs. Garza had already started down the street.
Monica unlocked the bakery and went inside. She closed the door behind her and scanned the space. No Gabe. No Oma. None of the part-timers who helped out during their peak hours. She tried to get her bearings, but it was as if her mind had already turned this place into a memory. She was a butterfly looking down at her cocoon and wondering how she had gone from one life to another in the blink of an eye.
She walked up the stairs and entered the apartment. Oma was still at church. Her needlepoint sat idle on their small kitchen table. Gabe was helping Michael. He likely wouldn’t be back for hours. She was completely alone. She went to her room and pulled a suitcase out from underneath her bed. She could almost smell the crisp mountain air coming off of it. The luggage tag had her name and Colorado address on it, all written in her father’s handwriting. The last time she had used this, she had been a five-year-old thinking she was on her way for a weeklong visit with her grandparents in Langley Park, Kansas.
She placed the case on her bed and unzipped it and waited for something terrible to happen. Something to tell her she was acting selfishly. Something to tell her she was making the wrong choice. But all remained quiet. In a fog, she packed the dresses Mrs. Garza had given her. She operated on autopilot, tossing a toothbrush, a makeup bag, and undergarments into the case robotically.
She began to zip the bag shut but stopped. She gazed at the photograph of her parents on her nightstand next to her bed. In the photo, her parents were surrounded by sweeping views. Their rosy cheeks and elated grins told her they had probably just completed a difficult climb. They’d followed their dreams. They’d traveled the world. What would they have thought of a daughter who never took a chance?
She opened the frame, removed the photo, and placed it inside her bag. Only then was she ready to zip it up. She checked her watch. She had a little time. She could take the last bus out of Langley Park and transfer to a line that would take her to the airport in Kansas City. She twisted her wrist. The silver Eiffel Tower charm had worked its way under the face of her watch. She unclasped the bracelet and brought it to her lips. She kissed the charm then left the bracelet next to the empty picture frame.
She carried the suitcase downstairs and set the bag next to the front door. She listened. She waited. Nothing. Nothing was standing in her way. It was like the universe had mapped out this escape down to the very last detail, but she had one thing left to do. She pulled two blank order forms from a pile on the counter and sat down in Oma’s office. On the top of the first sheet she wrote, Dear Oma. On the top of the second, Dear Gabe.
It was late. Gabe had stayed longer than he had planned at Sadie’s Hollow. He told himself he would have one drink and then he would go back to Langley Park. Back to the love of his life. He’d hardly seen any of his classmates all summer, and one conversation led to another. After chatting with old friends, it was after ten before he realized what time it was. Now, back in Langley Park, it was closer to midnight, and Monica hadn’t appeared in her window. He threw another pebble at the glass and waited.
There was a good chance she had fallen asleep. They’d hardly had any rest thanks to her midnight birthday celebration. The fatigue would set in soon, but he was flying. Twenty-four hours ago, Monica had told him she loved him. They had lost their virginity to each other. The girl he had loved from afar loved him back.
He was about to throw another pebble when the back door to the bakery opened.
Gabe grinned. “I was worried you fell asleep.”
His excitement turned to panic when he found himself face to face with Oma.
Despite the late hour, she wasn’t in her pajamas. Oma lived by the motto early to bed, early to rise. He and Monica had snuck out almost every night that summer. As far as he knew, Oma was usually fast asleep by this time.
She held the door open. “Come inside, Gabriel. We need to talk.”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
He was about to launch into an apology when he remembered, Monica was eighteen. She was allowed to date. Sneaking out in the middle of the night didn’t look good, but Monica was an adult.
Oma led him into the work area. One hanging bulb shined a golden pool of light. Two stools sat catty-corner to each other at the end. On the table, where the plates would have gone had this been a meal, were two envelopes.
Gabe glanced around the bakery. “Where’s Monica?”
“Sit,” Oma said and gestured to the stool.
His stomach hollowed out. The energy that had pulled him to this place since he was just a boy was gone. Everything in the bakery that had once seemed so cozy and warm now appeared cold and empty.
Panic flooded his system. “Oma, is Monica all right? Did something happen to her?”
“Monica did not get hurt or injured,” Oma said. She sat down on a stool and gestured to the other. “Please, Gabriel, sit with me.”
“I don’t understand?”
Oma folded her hands on the work table. “Monica has her mother’s spirit. My daughter, Ingrid, wanted to fly before she could even walk. My husband and I wanted our daughter to have the American dream. We wanted her to be happy. It’s why we left Germany. We wanted a better life. When Ingrid left to go to school in Colorado, we were sad but very proud. Neither of us had opportunities like what Ingrid had. She studied geology. That’s how she met Monica’s father.”
Gabe nodded politely. The hollow feeling in his stomach had turned into a heavy ball, wound tight with uncertainty and anxiety. “Oma, where’s Monica?” He couldn’t help the catch in his voice. He couldn’t help remembering how this felt so much like when he’d asked his father, “Where’s Mommy?”
Oma slid one of the envelopes over to him. “She left us each a letter. I read mine after I returned from mass.”
“Then you know about us?” Gabe asked. His hands were shaking.
“Yes,” Oma said, her expression neutral.
He unfolded the letter and scanned the page. His eyes couldn’t focus. They bounced over the paper erratically. Phrases and words came at him like bullets fired from a shotgun.
I’m so sorry.
Paris.
A real modeling job.
Can’t pass up this opportunity.
I promise to write.
I’ll always love you.
He read the letter over and over until he couldn’t see past the tears welling in his eyes. He crumpled the paper and rested his head on his fists. “We had a plan. I was never going to stand between her and her dreams. I wanted to be there, right beside her.”
Oma remained silent.
Gabe jumped to his feet. “I can go to the airport. I have to try at least.”
“She’s gone, Gabriel. Her flight left two hours ago.”
Gabe ran his hands through his hair. His skin crawled. While he stood in a goddamn field shooting the shit with his former classmates, everything he loved had disappeared. His future was gone.
He pounded his fist on the work table. “I let her slip through my fingers.”
“No, Gabriel,
you didn’t. Monica was never something that could be held or kept. I thought by sending her to that school, by keeping her in the bakery with me, I was protecting her. I have buried my daughter, my son-in-law, and shortly after Monica came to live here, my husband. I couldn’t lose her, too. But I realize trying to hold on to her was like trying to keep smoke in a cage. It cannot be done.”
Gabe shook his head. “She could have waited. She could have talked to us. I would have gone with her.”
“This is her dream, Gabriel.”
“I thought I was her dream! I thought we were going to do this together!”
He was yelling. The words crashed out of him like a tidal wave.
Oma hadn’t moved. Her hands remained folded on the butcher block table. “I wanted that, too, Gabriel.”
He spun around and stared at her. “You don’t understand how much I care for her. I love her.”
She held his gaze. “I know you love her because you weren’t the one who threw the brick through the front door.”
The breath caught in his throat. “How do you know that?”
Oma gestured toward the ceiling. “I saw and heard everything from up there, Gabriel. I heard the awful things the Wilkes boy said to Monica. I heard you come to her defense. I watched you surrender to the police.”
Gabe shook his head. It was all too much. “Why, Oma? Why did you insist I come to work for you this summer? Why did you want me here?”
The hint of a smile pulled at her lips. “I’ve watched you deliver the paper for many years. I could see the way you looked at Monica. The night the door was vandalized, I could only hear the Wilkes boy, but I could see and hear you. You would have done anything for my granddaughter. You would have done anything to keep her safe and out of trouble. I wanted that for her. I wanted you for her.”
Gabe slumped down on the stool, physically and emotionally deflated.
He stared at the knots in the wood. It reminded him of the knots in the tree where he’d just carved their initials. “It looks like we both failed then, doesn’t it Oma?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. She smoothed it out on the table. Then folded her hands again. “It’s time for you to find your dream.”
He released a cynical huff of laughter. “I don’t get to have dreams. I’ll be back lugging boxes for my father.”
Oma shook her head. “No, no you won’t.”
“My family has no money, no connections. My brother got out because he’s smart, and he earned a scholarship. I’m nothing special, Oma. Monica was the best thing going for a guy like me.”
“That’s not true. By the end of the first week in the bakery, you knew how to make everything. Strudels, scheumrollen, cakes, tarts, cupcakes. All of it. You saw it done once, and you could execute it perfectly.”
He shook his head. “You want me to stay here and work for you? I can’t, Oma. I can barely stand being here now.”
“No, I don’t want you to stay here, Gabriel. As I said, it’s time for you to find your dream. This is how you are going to do that.” She tapped the paper. “You are going to begin a chef apprenticeship in New York City.”
Gabe released a sharp breath. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s pretty self-explanatory. Chef. Apprentice.”
Oma spoke slowly like she was trying to explain something to a child.
“I get it, Oma. But a chef? I know how to bake a few things. How does that translate into me becoming a chef?”
“It’s your calling. I have watched you, Gabriel. Do you remember the first thing I told you when I was teaching you to make strudel?”
“Precision, timing, and attention to task,” Gabe answered.
“Yes, you have a gift, Gabriel.”
“What about my dad? The cost of moving to New York? Everything, Oma!”
“Done,” Oma replied.
“How?”
Oma couldn’t have orchestrated a whole new life for him in only a few hours, could she?
She leaned forward. “When my husband and I came to America from Germany, we lived in New York City before we made our home in Langley Park. The New York immigrant bakers and cooks supported each other. We befriended a talented Italian cook, Leo Russo. He has done very well and owns several restaurants in the city. He’ll sponsor you, and you’ll apprentice in one of his restaurants for three years. It’s learning on the job, but you’ll be paid. You’ll also attend culinary classes during the week.”
“My dad will never go for it.”
“He’s already agreed.”
Gabe’s chest tightened. “You’ve spoken with him?”
“Your father carries a lot of pain, Gabriel. He masks it with criticism and negativity. But he loves you. He wants you to make something of yourself.”
“I don’t know, Oma.”
Was this what it was like for Monica hours ago when she had been offered her dream?
She patted his hand. “You’re meant to do this, Gabriel. This is your gift. This is your calling.”
Gabe nodded and gazed at the slip of paper. He’d never been happier than he was working in the bakery. He had juggled a glaze on the stove, sixty charm rolls to fill, and the oven beeping all while he worked a batch of puff pastry into perfect rectangles. He thought he loved it because Monica was always by his side. Maybe, he also loved it because he was good at it.
He lifted his chin and wiped away the lone tear that trailed down his cheek.
Nothing was holding him back.
“Thank you, Oma. I promise I’ll make you proud.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I know you will. But let me give you this one piece of advice: In the kitchen, you are not measured by where you come from or what you have or don’t have. You will be measured by what you do. You will be measured by how hard you work.”
He stood and allowed himself one last look around The Little Bakery on Mulberry Drive. He inhaled the scent, Monica’s scent, of fresh cut apples, cinnamon, and spice. He met Oma’s gaze. They didn’t speak, but something stronger than words passed between them. He slid the slip of paper off the table, tucked it safely inside his pocket, and said goodbye to Langley Park.
9
Present Day
“I made these for you,” Monica said and held out a plate of six perfectly iced cupcakes.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Monica smiled at her friend, Jade Adkins. Baking those cupcakes had been the last thing she’d done before getting evicted from her tiny San Francisco studio. She’d sold off all her furniture and packed the few possessions she had into her car.
“If I didn’t feel so terrible, and if I didn’t have a shoot in three days, I would eat the entire plate,” Jade said and ushered Monica off the porch and inside her house.
Monica glanced around Jade’s modest home. The place was barely over a thousand square feet, but it was probably worth at least a million dollars. The house, squeezed into San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood, had been in Jade’s family since the early sixties. She’d inherited it from her grandparents and lived there rent-free. In pricey San Francisco, this was the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail.
Jade sat down on the sofa and blew her nose. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I’m sorry about your place.”
Monica donned a brave smile. “I’m sure things will pick up.”
“Have you booked anything lately?” Jade asked, pulling a quilt over her legs. “It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since I met you on that jewelry campaign. I can’t even remember what company that was for.”
It was more than six years ago when Monica had met Jade on that shoot. But she didn’t want to correct her friend, and she didn’t want to think about how long it had been since she had booked something big. “I’m doing some fit modeling for a few companies. It’s not flashy. I stand there while they drape fabric over me or try on new pieces for the designers to evaluate.”
“No shows?
No campaigns?” Jade asked, concern clouding her eyes.
Her career, if she could even call it that now, had started with a bang. Cora Leigh Designs had skyrocketed to the top. During her first few years with them, she’d traveled the globe. She walked the runways of Milan, Paris, New York, and Tokyo. Her face was everywhere, gracing ads in publications all over the world. Cora and Leigh’s cutting-edge gowns wowed the fashion world until, one day, it all fell apart.
Monica could see her oma now, shaking her head. “Easy come. Easy go.”
She called her grandmother each month. She’d sent her postcards and gifts over the years, but she hadn’t returned to Kansas in over a decade. She wanted to come home as the shining star, the girl who had accomplished her dreams. But by the time the fanfare of the Cora Leigh fame died down, she was just another pretty face trying to claw her way back into the world of modeling. She couldn’t return to Langley Park a failure. After everything she had given up, her pride was all she had left.
Jade gestured toward the back of the compact home. “Your room is the door right after the bathroom. I’ve got a bunch of dresses Saks gave me for doing that benefit strewn all over the bed. You can throw them in the closet.”
Monica nodded. She felt like that orphaned, five-year-old girl forced by circumstances to live in a home that wasn’t meant to be hers. Her stomach twisted in a sick pang of disappointment and humiliation. “If there’s anything I can do to help out, I will, Jade. I can pay some rent. I just sold a bunch of my stuff.”
Jade started to shake her head, but then her eyes went wide. “You can do something to help me. I need you to be me.”
Monica patted her friend’s leg. “You must have one heck of a cold. We may be the same height, but there’s no way I can pull off your California-dreamin’ blond waves.”
“It’s not for a job, not really. It’s a party.”
Monica cocked her head to the side. “You get paid to go to parties?”
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 86
