Chapter 17
Friday. She's supposed to leave today.
I don't drive by. I don't check. I go to my studio and I work on the Hartwell cake because it's due in six days and because the Hartwells deserve my full attention and because some woman's wedding should still feel sacred to me even if mine doesn't.
I torte the frozen sponge layers — slicing each one horizontally with a serrated knife so long it looks surgical.
Four tiers, each split into three layers, twelve individual discs of vanilla bean cake.
I fill between layers — fig compote, vanilla buttercream, a thin line of caramel that I pipe from a squeeze bottle with surgical precision.
Stack. Level. Check with the turntable and the straightedge. Stack again.
This is architecture. Structural engineering, even — Liam would appreciate the parallel. The bottom tier holds the weight of three others. The dowels I press through the center are load-bearing. If anything is off by a millimeter at the base, the whole structure leans by the time you reach the top.
Foundations matter. I know that now in a way I didn't before.
I crumb-coat all four tiers. Thin layer of buttercream to seal the crumbs. Into the walk-in to set. Out again for the final coat — the semi-naked finish means deliberately scraping back, leaving patches where the cake shows through. Imperfect on purpose. Controlled vulnerability.
The Hartwells want controlled vulnerability. They want it to look homemade but taste professional. They want imperfection as aesthetic.
I wonder if that's what Vanessa wanted too. Imperfection as aesthetic — show just enough vulnerability to seem real, never enough to actually be exposed.
* * *
At 2 PM, Rachel texts the group: Checked with the building management at Birchwood Lane. She terminated her lease yesterday. Effective immediately.
Lauren: Did they say where she's forwarding mail?
Rachel: No forwarding address.
Nina: Of course not.
She's gone. It's real. Katherine Holloway has vacated 44 Birchwood Lane, Apartment 3B, Hartford, Connecticut.
The vanilla candle and the succulents and the IKEA desk with the locked drawer — all of it, packed or abandoned.
The space where my best friend lived is now just an empty apartment waiting for someone real to fill it.
I put my phone away. I go back to the cake.
The fig accents need dehydrating — fresh figs sliced paper-thin, arranged on silicone mats, into the dehydrator at 135 degrees for six hours.
They'll emerge translucent and leathery and beautiful, like stained glass you can eat.
I arrange them precisely — each slice fanned so the interior pattern shows, the seeds radiating from center like tiny galaxies.
I photograph them before they go in. Force of habit. My Canon R5 in hand, macro lens, natural light from the studio window. The image on my screen is gorgeous — warm reds and purples, the geometry of fig seeds, one glistening droplet of honey I brushed on for shine.
This is what photographs should be. Beautiful things captured honestly. No deception in the frame. No hidden meaning in the metadata. Just fruit and light and skill.
* * *
Saturday. One week after the confrontation. I wake up and reach for my phone and there's no text from Kate.
There will never be another text from Kate.
I lie in bed and I feel it — the absence. For three years, my phone buzzed every morning. Good morning Danny! or Coffee today? or Look at this insane cake I saw on Insta — you could do it better. Small things. Constant things. The background hum of a friendship that made my days feel populated.
Now: silence. My phone shows texts from my mom, a notification from the Hartwell bride about table numbers, a weather alert. Normal people. Real communications. But no Kate. The Kate-shaped hole in my morning is enormous and absurd because she wasn't real and I shouldn't miss her but I do.
I miss the version of her that existed in my head. The woman I invented based on the character she played. That woman was kind and funny and loyal and would never — could never — do what the real woman did.
I'm grieving someone who never existed. That might be the cruelest part of all.
* * *
I get up. I go to the kitchen. Liam is there — Saturday, he doesn't work. He's making eggs. Scrambled, the way I like them — low and slow, curds barely set, chives on top.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning."
We eat together. Quiet. Comfortable enough. The silence between us isn't hostile — it's careful. We're learning new edges. What can be said and what can't yet. Where the bruise is and how wide.
"I was thinking," I say, halfway through my eggs. "About therapy."
He sets his fork down. Full attention.
"Not for us. Not yet. For me first. I need to — there's something about the last three years that I need to process with someone professional. What it means to trust someone completely and be wrong. What that does to your ability to trust anyone else."
"That makes sense."
"And then maybe for us. After. When I'm ready to talk about the marriage part without the Kate part attached."
"Whatever you need," he says. "I'll be here."
I look at him. Eggs on his plate, chives on his lip, Saturday morning sunlight catching the streak of gray at his temple that appeared the year we got engaged. He looks like a man who is trying. Not performing — trying. There's a difference and I'm learning to tell it.
"I know," I say.
* * *
I spend the afternoon on gold leaf. The Hartwell cake needs accents — thin sheets of 24-karat applied with a dry brush to the edges of each tier and scattered across the fig arrangements.
Gold leaf is impossible. It's thinner than tissue paper, lighter than breath.
It moves if you exhale too close. It tears if you touch it with anything that has moisture.
You work with it using a dry brush and steady hands and the kind of patience that borders on meditation.
I tear three sheets before I get the first one right. It floats onto the buttercream and settles and clings and the cake looks expensive. Elevated. Like something worthy of celebration.
I keep going. Sheet after sheet. The gold accumulates — organic, imperfect, catching light from every angle differently. Some pieces are large and dramatic. Others are flecks, barely there, discovered only when the light hits a certain way.
Like truth. Some of it is obvious — large, unmistakable, impossible to ignore. And some of it is barely there. A glint you catch from a certain angle. A detail in a photograph that only matters if you know to look.
I knew to look. Eventually. Not soon enough — but eventually.
* * *
The cake is done by Sunday morning. Four tiers, assembled on the final board, doweled and stacked.
Semi-naked buttercream with patches of golden sponge showing through.
Dehydrated figs cascading down one side — arranged like a waterfall, organic but deliberate.
Gold leaf scattered across every surface.
Fresh rosemary tucked between the figs for green contrast.
I photograph it. Multiple angles — overhead, three-quarter, detail shots of the fig arrangement, close-up on the gold leaf where it meets the exposed cake. The images are stunning. I know they're stunning because I made both the cake and the photographs and both are honest work.
I post one to Instagram. Caption: For the Hartwells. Fig, vanilla bean, caramel, 24K gold. Delivering Thursday.
Fifty-seven likes in the first hour. Three DMs asking about availability. One from a woman getting married in December who wants something "just like that."
Work. Income. Purpose. Things that exist because I'm skilled, not because someone manufactured a path to me.
I reply to the December bride. I'd love to chat! Here's my booking link.
Then I close Instagram and I sit in my studio with the cake beside me — four tiers of beauty that took a week to build — and I think about what comes next.
Not the Hartwell delivery. Not the December bride. Not the marriage or the therapy or the group chat.
What comes next for the woman I was before Kate arrived. The woman who went to a photography workshop alone because she was new in town and needed to learn about lighting for her cake shots. The woman who was open and trusting and walked in ready to meet people.
Can I be her again? Do I want to be?
I don't know yet. But the cake is done and it's beautiful and Thursday it'll be eaten by people who love each other. And for now, that's enough.