Chapter 1
Chapter 1
N CAA Final Four cakes were big business. Paley Marshall was glad, not only for the busyness that made her workday go quickly, but for the connection the cakes gave her to the sporting world. If not for writing the names of the remaining teams over and over on various cake designs, she would have no idea who played in the big game.
Her feet hurt, her hand cramped, but the smile never left her face. She was one of those rare individuals who loved her job. On the occasional day when all the cakes ran together and she felt melancholy, she only needed to picture the face of a child as she saw her birthday princess cake for the first time. Perhaps it was corny, but Paley believed all the extra love and attention she put into each cake somehow filtered to each recipient.
“You’re not going to believe this one,” her friend, Carla, called. Her back was to Paley as she sat at the computer scrolling through orders. Everything was automated now. The cakes came frozen from the store’s warehouse. The frosting was premade in giant bags. The only non-computerized parts of the process were spreading the frosting, piping, and writing an inscription. Paley fully believed the moment the store could find a robot to do that, she and her crew would be out of a job.
“What is it?” Paley asked as she put the finishing touches on the last basketball cake. She was amazed by the odd things she had seen and the bizarre things people chose to have written on cakes. Sometimes they were so personal they made Paley blush and wonder about the state of humanity.
“Here.” Carla handed her the printed order, shaking her head. “Men are pigs.”
“What makes you think it came from a man?” Paley asked. They didn’t read who the order was for until the cake was finished and it was time to print the price sticker.
“Read it,” Carla urged.
“I want a divorce,” Paley read out loud. “That’s horrible.”
“That’s why it could only be from a man,” Carla said.
“I hope this is a joke,” Paley said. She pushed the buttons on the color machine to make the proper mixture of blue. Not much was left to chance anymore. It was a brave, new world for bakers. The blue mix squirted into her frosting bowl. She set it to mix, doing some squats while she waited.
“Don’t tell me you’re dieting again,” Carla said.
“No, but I heard people who fidget burn more calories. I’m attempting to add movement into my everyday life.” The frosting finished. She began the arduous process of slathering the cake, once again hoping it was a joke. Sometimes the funny cakes made her day, and Carla’s, too. Last week she decorated one that said, “I’m sorry my pet mosquito gave you malaria.” Not only was it funny, but it had been a real challenge to fit so many letters on a quarter sheet cake. For most of her coworkers, the job was exactly that—a job. They showed up, put in their hours, and went home. And that was okay; it wasn’t as if they were recreating the Taj Mahal. But Paley put her all into the silly little job, going so far as to research and perfect writing techniques in her spare time. Right now she wrote in a modified calligraphy, something with an antiquated feel that was still easy to read. No doubt about it, she really loved her job.
Despite the hateful words, the cake turned out well. The icing was robin’s egg blue, the writing white. It was pretty enough to be a China pattern, though Paley thought it resembled a Tiffany box. She boxed the cake and asked Carla for the ticket. Sometimes they took turns with their tasks, but generally Paley stuck to cakes and Carla the bureaucracy and customer service. They split the cleaning.
“All right, who is this going to? Hopefully someone with a good sense of humor,” Paley said.
The printer whirred as the ticket printed. Carla tore along the dotted perforation, peeled the sticker and froze, staring, mouth agape.
“Carla, everything okay?” Paley said. Surely the cake wouldn’t belong to someone they knew. It was a big city, after all. “That sticker is going to lose its sticky, and then you’ll have to print another.” A naturally efficient person, Carla hated having to redo anything.
“It’s Aaron.”
Paley looked around with a smile, expecting to see her husband standing at the counter. “Where?”
“Here.”
Paley turned back around to see Carla fanning the sticker back and forth. “What?” The smile was still there, waiting for the joke, not realizing she was about to be the punch line.
“Paley, this cake was ordered by Aaron.”
“There are lots of Aaron Marshalls in the world,” Paley said. She tore the sticker from Carla’s fingers to make her own inspection. Her husband’s name jumped out at her. She scanned down to the address and phone number portion of the ticket, saw her own too-familiar digits, and froze.
“Is it some special occasion I don’t know about? Some prank he’s pulling?” Carla gently probed.
All she could manage was a shake of her head. Words were gone, as was the feeling in her fingers and toes. The sticker fluttered listlessly to the table, sticky side down so it stuck immediately to the stainless steel counter. Carla began picking at it, relieved to have something to do.
“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” she muttered as her fingernail scraped the last vestiges of the sticker. Scrape, scrape, scrape. The sound grated, pulling on Paley’s overwrought nerves. She shook her head again. It wasn’t a mistake. Somehow she knew that much. All the space between her and Aaron from the last two years came rushing back at her. She had blamed it on his law school; she had been wrong. He hadn’t been busy with work. He had been busying himself to get away from her, and now he wanted a divorce.
The next shift streamed in, laughing and talking as if Paley’s world hadn’t imploded, as if her husband hadn’t humiliated her in the worst possible way at her place of work. “Don’t say anything,” she whispered to Carla.
Carla shook her head. She was good for her word, but gossip this juicy would surely leak. Someone somewhere would check the cake log and know. Paley had a day or two at the most before her mortification became fodder for the masses. She bundled up the cake and tucked it under her arm, making her escape before she would be forced to converse with anyone. Her coworkers would find this odd; she was friendly, and they had a good working relationship. She couldn’t care about it today, though. She had to see Aaron, had to clear up the mistake.
She tossed the cake onto the passenger seat and started the car, belatedly remembering to buckle her safety belt. Two miles from home, the car started to shudder and shake, warning lights came on, and smoke poured from under the hood. She made it to the end of the driveway before it gave out completely, chugging to a stop inches from the road. On a normal day, the death of her car would have distressed Paley. Today it didn’t make the list of things that fazed her. She gathered the hateful cake and went to the front door where she faced a new surprise; her key no longer worked.
She rang the bell, holding the wretched cake to her chest like a shield. Aaron answered the door and crossed his arms, blocking access.
“Your cake is ready,” Paley said, for lack of something else. She tried to shove the cake at him, but he refused.
“You can keep it,” he said. His tone lacked rancor, but neither was it warm. It was bland and impersonal, exactly like their marriage.
“How could you tell me like this, Aaron?” she asked. “Why didn’t you give me any warning? Why didn’t you tell me in person?”
“Warning? Paley, I’ve done everything but engrave it on a letter. You can’t tell me you think our marriage has been a success.”
“You’ve been busy with law school,” she said. “You work long hours.”
“And you live in your own little world of unicorns and rainbows. I don’t know what it’s like there, but I would love to visit sometime,” he said, some bitterness leaking into his tone.
“You’re divorcing me because I’m cheerful and a dreamer?” she asked.
“No, it’s because we’re too different now, we’re different people who want different things. You’re happy with your cakes and your books and your garden.”
“What’s wrong with any of those things?”
“Nothing, but they’re not me. I want more; I want better.”
“We can work this out. We haven’t even tried.”
“That’s because we’ve barely spoken in months,” he said. “We have separate lives already. I’m making it official.”
“I don’t want to make it official. I don’t want a divorce. I want to work things out,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“How can you let this go without even trying to save it?” she asked. “Three years of marriage, two years of dating, and you’re willing to toss it away without a backward glance?”
His eyes slid to the right of her face and he faltered, possibly for the first time in years. “There’s someone else.”
“Oh.” It was one of those crisis moments every woman dreads, and Paley had no time to think of what she was about to say. All she knew was that her marriage was worth fighting for, and she didn’t want it to end, even if it meant she had to forgive the utmost betrayal. “I still want to try to reconcile.” The words hurt, but she meant them. She had taken her marriage vows seriously and only planned to say them once in her life, even if it meant she had to overcome a mountain of hurt.
“She’s pregnant. As soon as the divorce is final, we’re getting married.”
“Oh.” The cake felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. She dropped it and pushed it to the side with her toe. “I need to get my things.”
“I sent your things to your mother’s house,” Aaron said.
“You’re not going to let me in my house, to let me say goodbye?”
“Goodbye to what, Paley? You didn’t want this house, you didn’t want these things. You wanted to stay in our cheap little rental with the secondhand furniture. That was your house. This is mine. I already filed, and that gives me the advantage. A friend is handling the proceedings, and he’s good. Don’t make this worse than it has to be.”
The worst part wasn’t that he was right; the worst part was that she didn’t even want to argue. She was decimated, an empty shell, a husk of the person she had been this morning. She turned. He closed the door. She saw her car and rang the bell again. He jerked it open with an impatient frown.
“What is it now?”
“My car is dead,” she said.
He sighed at the imposition she presented, as if she were a Girl Scout with an order form who wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Fine, I’ll take you to your mom’s.” But you’re on your own from there, was an unspoken guarantee.