Brunch at Bittersweet Café

by Carla Laureano

  Melody had told herself she wouldn’t cry anymore. She had sworn that she would only be upbeat. And yet tears swelled in her eyes anyway. There was no point in keeping up the front; her friends had already seen through it. “Honestly? Not so well. I just keep wondering . . . did I make the right decision? Did I give up the love of my life to stay here? And yet I look around and I can’t imagine not having Bittersweet. I feel so torn, and I feel guilty about being so torn.”

  There went that knowing exchange between her friends again. This time, Ana spoke. “Rachel and I owe you an apology. We feel terrible about how things went down with Justin at the supper club. We did it out of concern for you, but that probably wasn’t the time or the place.”

  “You think?” The sarcasm and anger that spilled from Melody’s lips surprised even her.

  Rachel bowed her head, absorbing the jab as her due. “I want to believe that my motives were pure, but the truth is, I didn’t want you to leave. I didn’t want to do this by myself. But you’ve been so devastated since Justin left, I’ve realized how incredibly selfish I’ve been.”

  Melody just stared at her. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if what you want is to be with Justin, you should go.”

  Melody’s heart practically stopped before it jumped to life again. “I thought you and Ana were against Justin and me. Because of what he said about his faith.”

  Ana leaned forward. “You’re right. We’re concerned about Justin’s beliefs. But then, can you honestly tell me you’re not angry at God right now?”

  Melody avoided Ana’s eyes. Now she knew she was completely transparent.

  “Have you stopped believing in Him just because you’re mad?”

  “No.”

  “So I guess we can’t judge what’s in Justin’s heart either. You’re going to have to pray about that yourself. We should never have tried to make that decision for you.”

  Melody turned back to Rachel. “But you need my money. And without Bittersweet, I don’t have a salary.”

  “The real estate market in my area is hot right now. Alex and I have decided to sell my place when we get married. I’ll move into his apartment. If we do that, I could buy you out.” Rachel reached for her hand again. “Please understand, I’m not forcing you out. I would much rather have you as a business partner and Bittersweet’s head baker and pastry chef. I’m just saying, if you want to go, you have options.”

  The words should have lifted a huge weight from her, but instead Melody felt like she was being crushed by the burden of decision. Up until now, she’d been telling herself that she had no choice but to stay and fulfill her obligation to Rachel. But now Rachel was giving her a free pass. What exactly was she supposed to do with it?

  She looked down at her friends, who were watching her with concern and not a little bit of guilt. She sighed. No matter how misguided their actions, they loved her. They only wanted the best for her.

  “Thank you, guys. Your support means a lot to me.” She hugged each one in turn and reached for her handbag. “I’ll think about it.”

  Which she did. All the way home. What was to say that Justin still even wanted her? She might have forgiven him for his absence and his silence, but it hadn’t exactly been an amicable parting. Maybe in the month since they’d separated, he’d realized that he was better off without her. Wouldn’t he have contacted her if he missed her? At least sent an e-mail or a text?

  You haven’t sent an e-mail or a text, and you miss him as much as the day he left.

  She parked down the street from the apartment building and walked, lifting her face to the sky to soak up the day’s last rays of sunshine. And yet the warmth didn’t quite penetrate to the center of her chest.

  What should she do?

  She made her way up to her apartment, pushed open the door, and dropped her keys on the entryway table. She was halfway to the kitchen when movement in the living room made her whip her head around. She gasped and clutched at the dining room table for support.

  “Mom! You’re going to give me a heart attack! Why didn’t you say something?”

  Janna rose. “Last time I did, you said I scared you. I was trying not to do the same thing.”

  Melody exhaled her breath in a long whoosh. “You know, most normal people would call first.”

  “And you rarely take my calls, so I’m left with surprise visits.” The words were classic Janna, but this time they lacked an edge. If anything, there was a thread of quiet regret in her voice. “I needed to see you.”

  Melody must have been worn out from the emotional turmoil of the last month, because she didn’t have the heart to get into it with her mother today. “Do you want some tea?”

  “I’d love some.”

  Melody wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on, then pulled out two mismatched mugs and dropped a tea bag in each. “What brings you out here this time, Mom? I saw that you had Grandma Bev’s place cleaned out already.”

  “That’s part of it. I’m sorry I missed your restaurant opening.”

  Melody threw a quizzical look over her shoulder. “I didn’t even know you knew about it.”

  “Ana called me.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “For some odd reason, she thought you might want me there.”

  Melody gave a little sardonic laugh. “But she misread the idea that you might want to be there; is that it?”

  “Well, my flight got canceled because of the tropical storm in the southern US, and then it was so late it seemed pointless to go. It would just be another way that I failed you.”

  Melody waited for the jab, the twist that would somehow make it into her fault, but it didn’t come. Odd. Her mother was off her game today. She stared at the teapot, willing it to come to a boil so she had something to do, a reason not to look at Janna.

  “And then when Ana called me again a couple of days ago, I thought, Better late than never.”

  Melody twisted around. “She called you again? Why?”

  “She told me what happened with Justin. I didn’t even realize you were seeing someone, but she told me that it was pretty serious. That you were heartbroken. Conflicted. She thought I might be able to help.”

  Melody was going to have a serious talk with Ana. How on earth was her self-absorbed, self-focused mother going to help her out of this mess?

  “I don’t believe it. She knows you and I don’t have that type of relationship.” She gave the range’s knob a vicious twist, took the kettle off the stove, and poured hot water into their mugs. She made up her mom’s exactly how she liked it—light cream, heavy sugar—and then fixed her own.

  Janna’s laugh sounded uncharacteristically brittle. “You misunderstand. She called to yell at me.”

  “What?”

  “She seems to think that you have abandonment issues because of me.”

  Melody stared in shock at her mother, hurt rippling through her that her friends’ meddling had gone far beyond discussing her behind her back. Her mom’s appearance wasn’t a visit; it was an intervention.

  Though if she looked at it objectively, Ana’s assertion was probably true.

  “I’m sure you’d love to hear every word—and she gave me an earful—but I’ve got something to show you.” At Melody’s confused expression, she waved her over to the sofa. Only then did Melody notice the cardboard box on her coffee table.

  “What’s in there?”

  Janna reached in and pulled out an old photo album, its plastic spine cracked and the pages beginning to tear away from the rings. She sank down on an overstuffed cushion and flipped it open. “The liquidators sent me all my mother’s personal effects—jewelry, photo albums—and I thought you should see these.”

  Melody dragged it onto her lap and flipped it open. The photos were old, pre-digital obviously, beginning to yellow with age. They were mostly of her. “What are these?”

  “This right here was our trip to Disneyland.” Her mother pointed
to a photo of Melody wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. “You couldn’t have been more than three. That was a fun trip. We spent nearly a week in California. Went to the park, of course, but we spent most of the time on the beach. See, that’s you in the little bikini.”

  Melody smiled at the image of her chubby self, blonde ringlets pulled into pigtails on the sides of her head. “I don’t remember that. You’d think I’d remember.”

  “You were young. I’m not surprised.” Janna flipped the page over. “This was us at my house in Nashville.”

  Melody was playing in the backyard pool, water wings on her arms, a huge smile on her face. “Who took the photo?”

  “I did. Look.” She pointed to another one at the bottom of the page. Janna was standing in the pool in a glamorous one-piece, big sunglasses covering her face. Melody had her arms wrapped around her neck in the water, like her mother was towing her around.

  When did her mother ever play with her?

  Another page flipped. “And this right here was Christmas in Denver. In Grandma Bev’s house.” A tinsel-studded tree. Melody sat in footie pajamas next to a big pile of presents, beaming. “This was during that time I moved back to Colorado; do you remember?”

  “Right. When you lost your label.”

  Janna didn’t respond, and Melody’s eyes narrowed. “Right? It was when RCA dropped you.”

  Janna looked up. “RCA didn’t drop me. I quit.”

  “What? No! You’ve always said your records weren’t doing well and they dropped you. You moved back home and then you got picked up by Arista and went back to Nashville.”

  “That’s what I told you, I know. But that’s not what happened. My records were doing very well. But I wasn’t happy. You have to understand—when your father and I broke up, I was crushed. We might have gotten married because I got pregnant with you, but I loved him. I thought we could make a go of it. But he had other ideas. He wanted to go back to Sweden. After he left, I threw myself into work. I couldn’t think of anything else, least of all about being a good mother. But gradually, I realized what I was giving up was your life. I couldn’t do that. So I finished my last album, quit, moved back to Denver.”

  Melody gaped. This was a story she’d never heard, one that Grandma Bev had never told her. “I don’t understand. You only stayed for a year.”

  “I thought I could pick up where I left off with you. I was your mother, after all. But I underestimated how long I’d been gone.” Janna pressed her lips together into a semblance of a smile. “I still remember. One day you were riding your little bike out front. You crashed and scraped up your knee and started crying. I went running to pick you up, but you pushed me away and screamed, ‘No, I want Gramma Bev!’”

  Tears glimmered in Janna’s eyes. “I didn’t blame you. You were only a little girl. But it kept happening, and I realized that I’d missed my chance with you. My mother was a better parent than I could ever be. And I thought that maybe it was best if you stayed with her.” She swiped the tears away with her forefinger, somehow managing not to smear her makeup. Funny that thought should occur to Melody now. “But you were still my daughter. I thought maybe if you came on tour with me, you’d get used to me again, that I could make up for lost time. But it was like nothing I did could ever make a difference. I’d already lost you.”

  Melody felt sick. She flipped through the album, page after page of photos of her and her mom. Proof that Janna hadn’t actually vanished from her life. Why couldn’t she remember?

  “No one ever thought to tell me this?”

  “Would you have believed it? You would have thought I was lying to make myself look better.”

  “Mom, I—”

  Janna shook her head. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty. I’m telling you for one reason. Had I thought it was best for you, I would have chosen you over my career. Every single time. But some decisions, once they’re made, they’re too hard to come back from. I kept thinking I’d have another chance. And I never did.”

  Melody exhaled in a long, steady stream. She didn’t even know what to say to this. Looking back on her history with her mother, her seeming selfishness . . . was it possible that was all born out of hurt? Out of the fear of being rejected by her daughter again and again?

  She’d demonized her mother and put her grandmother on a pedestal, and yet Bev had let her believe all the horrible things she’d thought about Janna. How could she have done that to her, to both of them? Had she really known her grandmother at all?

  “I’ve been really unfair to you, haven’t I?”

  “No, darlin’, you haven’t. I’m the one who failed you. And I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to guilt you into letting me back into your life. But Ana said—insisted, really—that it was time for me to step up and act like your mother. And she was right.”

  Melody’s lips trembled as tears flooded her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry too, baby.” Janna put her arms around her tentatively, awkwardly. She sat there stiffly for a second and then Melody collapsed against her, sobbing, draining away decades of hurt and misunderstanding.

  Janna held her as she wept, and when Melody rose, she realized that her own shoulder was damp from her mother’s tears. “What do I do?”

  “I’m the last one who should be giving advice,” Janna said softly. “All you can do is ask yourself: Which regret can you live with? And which one would tear you apart?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “WAIT, WHEN YOU SAID you would fly me to Florida, I thought you meant you were going to buy me a ticket.” Melody’s eyes widened when she recognized the all-too-familiar approach of Centennial Airport. She’d been too distracted by what she was about to do to realize they’d been headed south through the city rather than east to Denver International.

  Janna waved a hand. “No daughter of mine is going to fly commercial if I have anything to do with it, especially when it’s something this important.”

  Melody went straight back to obsessing, only momentarily distracted by the revelation that they’d be arriving in Fort Lauderdale on a private jet. Her small roller case was packed with a few days’ worth of clothes—and a bathing suit, on her mother’s insistence, though she hardly thought of this as taking a vacation. She didn’t know what this was, exactly. A declaration, maybe. It was foolish to think that this would solve all her and Justin’s problems.

  But it was worth trying.

  Rachel hadn’t seemed surprised when she called her; Talia, on the other hand, was flustered at the idea of handling the weekday rush by herself. “You’ve got this,” Melody had said, injecting confidence into her words. “You’ve watched me for over a month. If it makes you feel better, skip the rye until I get back. You could do the baguettes and the sourdough in your sleep.”

  She still felt slightly guilty about leaving the bakery, but she had no doubt Talia could manage without her. The woman had an uncanny way with pastry, and the test they’d done with some of her chocolates had gone over better than they could have imagined. So well that Melody had begun wondering if her own presence was really necessary at all.

  “Melody?” Her mother nudged her, and she realized she was staring into space while the driver held the back door open for her. She stepped out and saw that while she’d zoned out yet again, they’d driven directly onto the apron where a small jet waited.

  Someone else took their bags and loaded them into the cargo compartment of the aircraft while the gray-haired pilot walked down the stairs and greeted them with an outstretched hand. She missed his name, because the whole time she was imagining that it was Justin.

  “So this is how you get around?” Melody whispered as they climbed the stairs into the plane. She felt slightly foolish that she hadn’t known. She shouldn’t be surprised, though. The lavish interior with its ivory leather seats and walnut paneling seemed just her mother’s speed.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it? This isn’t my plane—you
can tell from the tail number—but we share planes among AvionElite’s fleet.” Janna seated herself in one of the front-facing seats and crossed her legs, smiling and waving off the pilot when he asked if they’d like something to drink. She leaned over and lowered her voice. “Usually, they’re younger and better looking. You should have seen my pilot when I flew in for the funeral.”

  The creeping feeling of fate overtook Melody. It couldn’t be. Even for her, that was too much of a coincidence. “You’re an owner with AvionElite?”

  “I just said I was. I’m surprised you know of them. You always seemed to feel that displays of wealth were too far beneath you to notice.”

  Melody pressed a cool hand to her forehead, feeling suddenly flushed. “Mom, do you remember the name of your pilot the night you came to tell me that Grandma had passed away?”

  Janna shrugged. “No. I remember he was quite handsome, though. Oh, come now, don’t look at me like that. I may not be as young as I used to be, but I’m not dead.”

  Melody was beginning to feel a little hysterical. She reached into her purse for her phone and brought up her photo gallery, then passed it to her mom. “Was that him?”

  “Yes, I believe it was. Wait, you don’t mean . . .”

  “That’s Justin.” She sank back into the seat and began to laugh. Unbelievable. What were the chances? The reason Justin had gotten stuck outside her bakery was because he’d flown her mother in that night.

  “Melody?” Janna leaned across the aisle, concerned.

  She realized then that her laughter had turned to tears. It was all too much. The revelation that she’d been wrong about her mom. All the seemingly random coincidences that had fallen into place for her to meet Justin—a man who cared about her, who respected her. How quickly she’d turned on God because she thought He’d rewarded her faith with indifference.

  And then the terrifying thought occurred to her—what if Justin hadn’t been put in her life because they were meant to be together? What if the whole point of this was to reunite her with her mother? To show her the shallowness of her faith?