Chapter 22 Marisa
MARISA
A few days later, Day of Ravenwell Pastry Competition
Competition day.
The words run through my head as I pin my hair up and tug on the apron I have carried like armor.
My stollen waits in its crate, brushed and wrapped, the sugar crust firm as a promise.
Cara has the twins already bundled, bottles lined in the cooler, formula stash in place.
The men move through the lodge like they are readying for war, but in my chest it feels like a holiday morning, nerves threaded with cinnamon.
Nico calls before I can lace my boots.
The screen lights up with his name and a photo from two Christmases ago where he is smiling like a man auditioning for nice.
I answer anyway because part of me still thinks if I walk toward the fire with a glass of water, I can change the ending.
“Morning,” I say, balancing the phone on my shoulder while I zip my coat.
“I heard,” he says. His voice is already tight, like he started this call mid-argument. “Ravenwell. Cameras. A competition instead of a respectable life. And I heard about your arrangement.”
“My arrangement,” I echo, because sometimes you have to let a person show you their thesis.
“Gallivanting with three men,” he says. “Do you have any idea how that sounds? People talk. Our family has a name in this city. You were raised better than this.”
“I was raised to work,” I say. “I was raised to make the table and then feed everyone who came to it. I was not raised to be polite to someone trying to flip the table over.”
“Spare me the poetry,” he snaps. “You think anyone will take you seriously when they know what kind of circus you are running? You have babies with a question mark for a father. You are embarrassing us. You should come home, settle, marry a decent man, and stop chasing attention.”
I close my eyes and count to three, because I do not want to say something that will cost me more later. “Attention would be shaving my head on a livestream. I am baking bread. I am feeding people. I am standing in a town square with a centuries-old recipe and a clean kitchen towel.”
“You always think you are clever,” he says. “You forget who got you into culinary school. Who helped with applications. Who told you which scholarships to apply for.”
“You also told me ambition was ugly in women. You said I needed a man to settle me down. Consider me settled. Consider me fed. Consider me not answering you when you use the word gallivant.”
“Listen,” he says, voice dropping into that slow careful tone he uses when he is about to lie with a straight face.
“There are people in Ravenwell who do not want trouble. I know them. They know me. You do not belong in that world. You will get hurt. You will embarrass yourself and you will embarrass us.”
“Nico,” I say, and my voice comes out soft and fierce together, “you are not us. And you do not get to tell me where I belong.”
The silence on the line is short and sharp. Then he says, “You always were ungrateful,” and hangs up.
I set the phone face down.
Cara catches my eye from the doorway, twins already swaddled like two smug burritos.
She lifts a brow. I shake my head like a person shaking off rain.
“Okay,” she says, brisk as a drumbeat. “We go win a festival.”
The drive into Ravenwell is a winter postcard, glistening snow blankets wrapped around the winding road.
The men ride ahead and behind, bikes steady, jackets dark against the snow-bright morning.
Roman glances back at me in the rearview mirror and I feel the same thing I always feel when his gaze lands and stays.
I can breathe.
Deacon gives a little chin lift like a man who has checked every bolt on the road.
Cruz rides with his shoulders loose as if he can charm the weather into behaving.
Mae drives Cara and the twins in the second car, and from the movement in the rearview I can tell Luca is kicking like a chorus line. Gabe prefers to scowl at the cold.
They both wear ridiculous knit hats with ears because I am a mother and therefore allowed to weaponize cute.
The town square is already alive.
Fir boughs drape from storefronts.
Fairy lights loop from lamppost to lamppost.
The town band warms up in the gazebo with a tune that can’t decide if it is Joy to the World or the theme from a detective show.
The air smells like cinnamon, warm apples, and wood smoke.
Vendors call out names of sweets and soups.
Children run with paper cones of sugared nuts.
The competition tents line the courthouse steps, white canopies with tables underneath, power cords snaking like polite vines.
I find my placard and blink.
My name is misspelled by one letter and my station number does not match the one in my email.
For one second my pulse jumps, then a volunteer arrives, flustered and apologizing.
“Clerical error,” she says, making a face like she stepped in something small and annoying. “The spreadsheet crashed twice last night and printed an old version. Bakers, please stay at the numbers posted on the tents.”
My number is not the one I was assigned, but the tent is good.
Not a wind tunnel.
An outlet that looks like it knows how to be reliable.
I nod and unpack.
The stollen sits in its crate like a grandmother taking one last look at the family before walking into church.
I unwrap one loaf, brush it with a whisper of butter, and dust it lightly so the sugar catches the light.
For the live challenge I keep it simple.
The judges announced it yesterday: a small on-site bake to show skills beyond maturation and patience.
Ten portions. Forty-five minutes. Any style. I set out flour, eggs, sugar, butter, orange zest, and cardamom.
I pick madeleines because they are quick and honest. A good madeleine is a heartbeat with a crust.
It is also a quiet way to tie the new to the old.
The first hiccup arrives in the form of a festival official with a clipboard and a worried brow. “We are missing your updated sanitation certificate,” she says. “I cannot put you through to judging without it.”
“I filed that a week ago,” I say. My voice stays level because yelling at a clipboard never made a problem smaller. “It was accepted.”
She taps the screen and shows me a red X.
In the corner of the screen there is a notation that says FILE CORRUPTED.
A clerical error again, or something less innocent.
Before I can swallow my annoyance, Deacon materializes like a tall ghost with a printer.
He pulls a folder from his messenger bag and slides the paper across the table.
He has the acceptance email printed and the certificate clipped behind it. He smiles without showing teeth.
“Keep your originals,” he says to the official. “We like to file in triplicate.”
She blinks, relieved. “I do too,” she confesses and stamps my placard with a green check.
The second hiccup is theatrical. A rule steward wanders by and says, “Pre-baked goods must be prepared on site,” with the tone of a person who learned power late and wears it like a hat two sizes too big.
“Stollen is matured,” I reply. “The rules allow matured entries with proof of production steps. I have logs and ingredient receipts.”
Roman steps in then, not looming, just present. “Page seven,” he says in that soft voice that makes people behave. “Paragraph three. Subsection b. ‘Traditional matured holiday breads may be prepared off-site. Entrants must provide proof of date and method.’”
The steward flushes, flips pages, and finds the exact sentence. “Correct,” she says quickly, then she flees toward a kettle corn stand as if caramel can absolve embarrassment.
I breathe.
Cruz hands me a water bottle with a sticker that says drink me like a dare. “How is your heart?” he asks, quiet and close.
“Rude,” I say. “It keeps trying to leave my chest and go flirt with the judges.”
“Tell it to stay where it is loved,” he says, tapping my sternum with one knuckle. “Also tell it to taste the batter first.”
I laugh and whisk.
The batter comes together with a silkiness that promises lift. Butter foams in the pan.
I brush the scalloped molds and pour with care. Isla appears with a small bag of freshly milled sugar she bartered for with two hand-drawn coupons for “one free chicken story.” She taps the bag like a magician doing the reveal.
“Insurance,” she says. “In case the powdered sugar here tastes like sadness.”
“You are my favorite chaos agent,” I tell her.
The third hiccup is practical and smells like disappointment.
My power outlet dies mid-bake with a small click.
The madeleines sit pale and stunned in their tray.
I look at the cord, at the box, and back of the oven.
Panic scratches the inside of my throat, then Deacon kneels at the pole and resets the GFCI like he has been waiting for it to fail just so he can save the day.
Power returns.
The madeleines finish their rise and crack at the top like blessed little shells.
Someone tries to bump my table in the rush of a photo op and a sack of flour tilts ominously.
Roman plants a hand on the corner and the flour decides to behave.
A vendor drops a tray near my foot and pretends not to notice.
Cruz lowers a shoulder with the gentle authority of a man who can remove your teeth and still apologize nicely.
The vendor finds interest in the far side of the square.
The twins arrive near the end, tucked into their stroller like marshmallows.
Cara parks them in a corner of the tent where the breeze is soft and the light makes their cheeks look edible.
Luca hiccups again.
Gabe scowls at a string of lights, then relents and flirts with a passing grandmother.
Isla ties a ribbon to the stroller that matches the one in my hair.
We are ridiculous and I love it.
Judging begins.
The head judge has the same skeptical mouth from a week ago.
He is already writing things in his head, probably words like rustic and earnest that magazines use when they don’t want to love a woman who isn’t apologizing.
I keep my hands still at my sides.
They taste the madeleines first because warm things should go first.
The spoon of glaze hits while the shell is still hot.
Cardamom lifts the orange.
Rum softens the sugar.
The judge chews.
His expression does something human.
He takes another bite, then another, as if he forgot how to be measured.
Then the stollen.
I slice with the good knife and hand over a plate with a piece the size of faith.
The sugar dust catches on my sleeve.
The scent pushes up like a memory.
The judge hesitates, looks at the crumb, then takes a bite.
Silence swells.
The square holds its breath the way a person does when they are thinking of Christmases they pretended to forget.
He closes his eyes.
When he opens them, they are not skeptical.
He nods once.
The other judges follow, then one asks to see my log.
I show her the dates, the temperature notes, the brush schedule.
She smiles like a woman recognizes a woman.
“Your grandmother would be proud,” she says, and my eyes sting all at once.
The ribbon finds my hand.
Blue.
Deep as evening.
The sound that rises is a cheer and a laugh and a relief. Someone hands me a mic.
Reporters push. “Miss Conte, what would you name the flavor of victory?” one asks, leaning in with a hopeful face.
“Home,” I say without hesitation. “It tastes like home.”
Cameras flash.
People clap.
The twins blink and then giggle like they planned the whole thing.
Cara wipes a bit of glaze from Gabe’s chin that appeared by magic.
Isla holds the ribbon with me like a co-winner.
The men stand back enough to keep me centered and close enough that I can feel them at my shoulders.
Roman’s mouth softens and a muscle jumps in his cheek like something finally let go.
I should be floating.
I am, a little.
But the corners of the day keep trying to curl.
The misprinted placard.
The certificate “corruption.”
The outlet.
A man with a too-nice jacket walked by twice and never looked at the food.
He looked at me.
He smiled like a man who thinks he built the road you are walking on and can dig a hole in it whenever he wants.
We pack slow.
We share slices with two city workers who have been refilling salt buckets all morning.
We give the band a tray of madeleines and listen to their fiddler flirt with O Holy Night.
My apron is dusted with sugar and a little glory. My hands smell like orange peel and rum.
At the edge of the square, I catch a shadow pausing where the lights do not quite reach.
It is nothing and it is something.
He is already turning away by the time I focus. I taste metal and swallow it.
On the way to the parking lot, Roman touches my wrist. It is brief and careful and still manages to ground me like a nail in a beam. “You did that,” he says.
“We did,” I answer.
It turns into a promise as it leaves my mouth.
I am tired of running.
I will stay. I will bake. I will feed.
I will find whoever keeps unscrewing the light bulbs in my house and I will teach them about candles.
We drive back under a sky that is the color of cold steel and new beginnings.
The ribbon rides in my pocket like a warm coin.
The babies sleep.
Isla sings to the flashlight as if it can appreciate harmonies.
Cara texts a prospect to put the kettle on.
The bikes run clean.
The lodge lights appear through the trees like a map you can trust.
I am not done being scared.
But I am done letting fear choose my route.
The flavor of victory is home.
It sticks to your ribs.
It keeps you warm when some man with a nice jacket and bad intentions thinks he can make you small.
He cannot. Not anymore.
Back in the lodge, as I hold the ribbon over the kitchen table, Roman’s phone buzzes.
He looks down and his face closes like a book.
He walks to the back room without a word.
I wipe sugar from my sleeve and tell myself not to follow.