Chapter 18
Three weeks later.
The Hartwell cake delivered perfectly. The bride cried — this time while cutting it, one hand on the knife, the other gripping her new husband's arm.
The fig and caramel and gold leaf looked even better in the venue's warm lighting than in my studio.
I stood in the corner and watched a hundred and twenty people eat something I made and I felt — for the first time in a month — like myself.
Suki texted me a photo from the venue — she'd come as my assistant, helped me transport and stack. The photo was of me, mid-placement, adjusting a fig accent on the third tier. My face in full concentration. My hands perfectly steady.
Look at you, she wrote. Surgeon with buttercream.
You literally came as my plus one to a stranger's wedding, I replied.
Free cake. I'm not stupid.
She wasn't my plus one. She was my safety net — the person who'd notice if my hands started shaking, who'd step in with a joke about fondant diapers if my face went wrong. She didn't need to step in. But she was there.
* * *
The December bride booked. So did a January couple and a corporate event in November. Word of mouth is working. My hands are working.
I started therapy on Wednesday. Dr. Patel — a woman in her fifties with silver-streaked hair and a plant-filled office near the university.
I told her everything in the first session — the SD card, the dress, the hard drive, the confrontation.
She didn't flinch. She asked one question I haven't stopped thinking about.
"What did the friendship give you that you couldn't give yourself?"
The answer came two sessions later: witness. Kate was my witness. Someone watching my life and saying it mattered. Evidence that I existed — the way I photograph every cake because otherwise it gets eaten and it's gone.
"And now?" Dr. Patel asked.
"Now I'm learning to be my own witness. To do things without an audience and still believe they count."
* * *
Saturday afternoon. I'm in my studio cleaning — the deep kind, equipment pulled from walls, scrubbing behind the ovens. I find things in corners.
A spatula Kate gave me for my birthday — rose gold, expensive, engraved with my initials. I hold it and I think about the day she gave it to me. Wrapped in tissue paper, a card that said for the best baker I know. I thought it was perfect.
Now I wonder if she gave every wife she targeted something similar. A calculated gift designed to deepen the bond. A trophy in reverse — not something she kept, but something she planted.
I put it in a box.
Behind the stand mixer — a photo. Kate and me at my studio opening.
Two years ago. Someone took this of us, arms around each other, flour on my apron.
I look at it with my professional eye. The expressions are genuine.
The body language relaxed. But Kate's hand — the one around my waist — is gripping.
Not resting. Pressing into my side like she's holding on.
Grip isn't affection. It's possession. Or need. Maybe both.
I put the photo in the box. I close the lid.
* * *
That night I bake at home. Not at 3 AM, not in crisis. Just evening. Liam reading on the couch. Me making brown butter financiers — the December bride mentioned them and I want to test the recipe.
Brown butter. You cook it until the milk solids turn amber and the whole pan smells like hazelnuts. The moment between golden and burnt is maybe fifteen seconds. You have to watch. You have to be present.
I watch. The butter foams, clears, darkens from white to gold to deep amber. I pull the pan. Perfect.
I fold it into almond flour and egg whites and honey. Pipe into shell-shaped molds. Twelve minutes in the oven. They come out with crisp edges and soft centers and the deep nutty richness that only brown butter gives.
I bring one to Liam. He takes a bite and closes his eyes. "God. What IS that?"
"Financier. Brown butter and almond."
"It's perfect."
"It's a test batch."
"Test it on me anytime."
I sit beside him. Close. The financier warm between my fingers. I bite into it and the butter flavor blooms — rich, deep, transformed by heat from something ordinary into something extraordinary.
Brown butter is better than regular butter. Transformed, not destroyed. Maybe that's what this is. What I'm becoming on the other side of Kate.
* * *
Friday night. December. Blankets on the couch. A movie neither of us is watching. My head on his shoulder — the first time in weeks I've initiated contact. His arm settles around me. Careful. Light.
"Liam."
"Mm?"
"I want to try couples therapy. In January."
His arm tightens slightly. A squeeze. "Okay. Yes."
"You're going to have to say it out loud. To someone else."
"I know." His voice is quiet. "I've been practicing."
"Practicing?"
"In my head. What I'd say. How I'd explain the thing I can't explain — why I took the photo, why I didn't tell you. I've said it a hundred different ways and none of them are good enough. But I'll say them anyway."
I look up at him. His face in profile — the jaw, the glasses slightly crooked, the ear with the small scar from a childhood fall he told me about on our third date.
"That's enough," I say. "Trying is enough."
He presses his lips to my hair. One second. The reliable second. Except now I don't count it as routine. I count it as choice.
* * *
The wedding album. I dealt with it last week.
Forty-seven photos. Eighteen with Kate. I didn't remove them all — some are the only images of my grandmother dancing, my college roommate's toast, my parents holding each other under the arbor. Kate is in the background. But she's not the subject.
I am the subject. My family is the subject.
I ordered a second album — same photos, minus the eight that feature Kate prominently. The getting-ready shots, the bouquet handoff, the posed bridesmaid frames. Gone. The remaining thirty-nine still tell the story. Just a slightly different edit.
Sadie offered to reshoot. Not a vow renewal — just photos. Me and Liam, same venue, no ghosts. New images that don't have her in them.
"Maybe in the spring," I told her. "When I'm ready."