Chapter 18
Noah
Students will be able to recognize and accept when they’ve lost.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I grumbled. “Why can’t you just fucking behave?”
The bowl of butter, sugar, and cocoa glared back in lumpy, petulant silence. The cake hadn’t betrayed me like this. The cake had been a simple matter of following the directions on the box. This was like a secret handshake.
I grabbed my phone and tapped the number for the bakehouse. It rang twice before the manager answered. “Little Star Bake Shop, you’ve got Nyomi.”
The offending bowl in hand, I cut a glance toward the stairs as I stepped into the pantry. “Ny, it’s not working. It looks like grout. Buttery grout.”
“Then add a dash of milk,” she replied.
“I added milk to the last batch and it’s”—I glanced at the bowl I’d hidden in here twenty minutes ago with disgust—“it’s a mudslide.”
“Sounds like you added more than a dash.”
“What—what is a dash, Ny? Quantify that for me.”
She hummed. “Probably an eighth of a cup. Not much more than that.” After a pause, she asked, “How much did you use?”
“I don’t know but I am out of confectioner’s sugar and I’m running out of time,” I said.
“I can have someone run a pound of sugar over to you but I still don’t understand why you won’t let me give you some frosting. I have loads of chocolate buttercream here.”
“Because it needs to be homemade,” I ground out.
“I can come to your home and make it there. It will take me ten minutes.”
I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “I can’t do that either.”
Technically, I could do whatever the hell I wanted.
I could ask Nyomi to bake and frost a birthday cake for Shay and I would willingly admit the bakehouse prepared it because my culinary skills didn’t extend beyond canning and preserves.
I didn’t have to do this simply because Jaime threatened to send the mafia after me.
But I was going to do this. I was going to get it right.
“You’re the boss,” she sang. “Try adding a dash of milk. Start with a tablespoon. Mix for a few minutes. Add another tablespoon, mix again. And don’t forget to taste it. You’ll know when it’s right.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Nyomi chuckled. She enjoyed laughing at me. She’d been doing it since I hired her a couple of years ago, right after she dropped out of pastry school. “Remind me again how you make jam.”
“Jam is scientific,” I replied.
“Baking is scientific,” she countered.
“You just defined a dash of milk as probably an eighth of a cup.”
“Sounds scientific to me,” she replied with a laugh. “What is scientific about raspberry rose jam? It must take dozens of test batches to get the rose right.”
“Not really.”
“So, then, your first batch comes out flawless and nothing accidentally tastes like soap?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a batch that tasted like soap.” I rested my forehead against a shelf. “I can’t discuss this right now. I have to solve my buttercream problem.”
“Should I send someone over with sugar?”
I scowled at the bowl. “Yeah. Just in case. But tell them to be quiet about it.”
“Do you have much history with noisy sugar deliveries?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” I grumbled. “Just send the sugar. All right?”
“Sure thing, boss,” she said. “And if a pint of chocolate buttercream disappears from my kitchen with that extra-quiet sugar, no one will be the wiser.”
I didn’t argue with her because there was a strong possibility I’d need that assist.
Exiting the pantry, I listened closely for any sound of Gennie or Shay. Gennie had promised to keep Shay upstairs for today’s tutoring session, and while I trusted my niece, I knew there were limits to the child’s persuasive powers. Also, her attention span.
Back at the counter, I measured out a precise tablespoon of milk and mixed it into the frosting.
Though I doubted it would do anything, the consistency loosened up.
It was still uneven but I let the mixer run, gradually adding small amounts of milk.
It was thicker than frosting ought to be and some of the sugar wasn’t completely incorporated but it wasn’t grout and it wasn’t a mudslide either. Progress, possibly.
One of the baking assistants arrived with the sugar as I switched off the mixer. Dante waved through the kitchen window but said nothing, which meant Nyomi had put the fear of god in him. And that was why she was the best baker in the state. Fear—and kickass pies.
I opened the door, spoonful of frosting in hand. “Taste this,” I said.
“Tastes like chocolate,” Dante said around the spoon. “It’s good. Whip it a little longer. Needs a dash of vanilla too.”
“So that’s an eighth of a cup of vanilla, right?”
“Hell no.” He handed the spoon back. “More like an eighth of a teaspoon.”
“Nothing makes sense,” I muttered to myself. I took the sugar and the backup buttercream stored in an ice cream pint container. “Thanks for this. And thank Ny for me.”
He jogged down the steps toward the four-wheeler he’d driven over here, saying, “She says she wants to be thanked in the form of Ceylon cinnamon.”
“Fantastic.” I closed the door behind me, abandoned the sugar and frosting, and went hunting for vanilla.
I didn’t have much time. Even if Gennie kept to the plan, they were bound to finish within the next fifteen minutes. I needed everything to be as close to perfect as I could get it by then.
Shay and I hadn’t spoken much since Friday night.
I told myself she was busy with school. I didn’t want to consider that she was busy taking me up on my offer to end our marriage.
One of these days, I was going to have a conversation with this woman without choking on my words or being a damn fool.
Probably not today. That seemed like too much to hope for.
I added the vanilla and mixed the frosting a little longer, and it slowly took on a familiar consistency.
I knew I’d stepped over some lines with Shay, and I’d been aggressive with her in ways I hadn’t before.
It was possible she’d come downstairs in a few minutes, take one look at this party, and walk right out the door.
If she did stay, it would be purely for Gennie’s benefit.
I was the guy who yelled at her about choosing terrible friends and threw her into bed and dared her to file for divorce. She wouldn’t stay for me.
With one eye glued to the clock and both ears listening for the creak of the staircase, I spread frosting over the cake.
I couldn’t get it even to save my life but the cake was fully covered.
Maybe Shay would assume this was Gennie’s handiwork.
That would help. This could pass as the work of a six-year-old.
As I shoved every single measuring cup and spatula I owned into the dishwasher, I heard Gennie loudly say, “We should go downstairs now, Shay. Maybe you can stay for dinner. That would be lots of fun.”
I had to press a hand to my mouth to swallow some hysterical laughter at her mechanical tone. If Shay didn’t already know what was going on, the jig was definitely up now.
“That’s very sweet of you,” Shay replied, a laugh ringing in her words. She knew. She totally knew. “Let’s talk with Noah first. Okay?”
“Noah will say yes,” Gennie said, confident as could be. “Promise.”
Gennie crouched down on the step so I could see her face and flashed me a thumbs-up. I braced both hands on the countertop and went along with this ruse, asking, “Finished already? What did you work on today?”
“We read about a shipwreck in Newport Harbor,” Gennie said as they cleared the final stairs, “and it might be the ship from a famous exploration and then we did some—happy birthday, Shay!”
Gennie bounced and danced as Shay blinked from the Happy Birthday banner on the wall to my haphazard attempt at a cake to the bouquet of sunflowers on the table.
I wasn’t sure whether they were still Shay’s favorite flowers.
We had a ton of late-season sunflowers out near the bee colonies and grabbing a few had seemed like a safe gamble this morning.
Now I wasn’t too sure.
“Happy, happy birthday,” Gennie said, still holding Shay’s hand, still bouncing like the floor was a trampoline. “I made the banner and all the letters are right. See? And I made special placemats too. Noah helped me spell your name. And there’s cake and we got you a present and—”
Shay stared at me, her eyes narrowed as if she didn’t understand what was happening here. “You did all this?”
I shrugged. “It’s your birthday.” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder, toward the oven, adding, “Gen and I have dinner, if you can stay. The meal delivery people threw together something”— don’t say special, don’t tell her you’re hanging on by a goddamn thread here, don’t say special, don’t put more pressure on this than you already have, do not say special —“different. For us. For you.”
Yeah, no pressure whatsoever.
Her lips parted, her expression softened even more.
“Oh.” She blinked quickly. Her eyes were shiny.
“Oh my goodness.” The words were clogged with emotion.
She swallowed hard, pinched the tiny diamond pendant on her necklace and dragged it along the chain.
Zip zip zip. “That’s—that’s so sweet of you.
” She glanced down at Gennie, who hadn’t stopped bouncing yet.
“So sweet of both of you to think of me.”
“Will you stay? Please, please, please?” Gennie pressed her hands together. “You have to stay. Say yes. Say yes!”
Shay ran a hand over Gennie’s hair as she met my gaze. “I’d love to.”
I clapped my hands together, saying, “Gen, give the coops a quick check. Then I need you to work your salad magic.”
I opened a cupboard to keep from staring at Shay. To stop myself from asking why this brought tears to her eyes. To prevent a flash flood of apologies from flying out of me.
“Salad magic.” Gennie sang this like a jazzy jingle.
“What can I do?” Shay asked.