Chapter 12 Maya
MAYA
Butterberry Oven looked more specialized than Mrs. Sutton’s harvest shop, less homespun and more boutique. The cakes leaned toward edible art, but the staples were all there too: muffins, cookies, and fresh-baked breads.
The sign read “CLOSED,” but just as Sheryn said, I stepped inside anyway. The bell over the door gave a polite chime as it swung open.
The scent hit me—vanilla, almond, and a trace of lemon glaze still floating in the warm air.
It was the kind of smell that clung to good moments.
Like my mother’s kitchen. Distant and faded, but still there if I squinted hard enough through the years.
They were not as sharp as the hours I’d spent in front of the industrial ovens in Billings prison, but this…
this felt closer to something I hadn’t let myself miss.
“Mrs. Appleby?” I called out. “I’m Maya. I’m here for the wedding cake.”
“In the back!” came a very harried shout. “And bring reinforcements if you’ve got ‘em!”
That…didn’t sound great.
Around the corner, I found a pair of toddlers in a mid-frosting war. One had a rosette piped onto his forehead. The other was digging both hands into a bowl of rainbow sprinkles.
And there, right in the middle of the chaos, stood the wedding cake. Sheryn’s wedding cake.
At least, it had been.
The bottom tier was intact. Mostly. The top? A crime scene. Smears where piping used to be. Cream flicked across the table. A little finger-sized dent in what had once been a perfect fondant flower.
“Oh no,” I muttered.
Mrs. Appleby burst through the swinging kitchen door, a tray of lemon bars balanced in one hand and a look of barely restrained panic on her face. “Their mama got called into work, so she dropped the twins here like a tornado in a breadbox. I turned around for one second—one second, Maya!”
I set my purse down. “Which one did it?”
“Does it matter?” She sighed. “They’re a tag team of tiny chaos. And I’ve got two more orders due by noon.”
I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. “Alright. I’ve got this.”
Mrs. Appleby frowned. “You sure?”
“I once made a wedding cake with prison flour and a plastic knife,” I said, tying my hair back. “This? This is therapy.”
She didn’t even ask. She just pointed to the mixing bowls.
“Cream’s in the fridge. I’ll buy you a decade’s worth of coffee if you pull this off.”
“Deal.”
I set to work, assessing the damage, scraping off the worst of it, smoothing the fondant, and piping a fresh batch of almond rosettes. The kids, now occupied with bowls of flour and plastic cookie cutters, made a respectable effort at not destroying anything else.
Ten minutes later, the cake was whole again. Maybe even better. I stepped back, wiping a smear of buttercream off my cheek.
Mrs. Appleby let out a breath. “Sheryn won’t know a thing.”
“She won’t even suspect,” I said, grinning.
She watched me a second longer, then shook her head with admiration. “You ever get tired of whatever it is you’re doing these days, I’ve got an apron with your name on it.”
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “I’ll think about it.”
One of the twins held up a sugar dough blob and proudly declared it was a dinosaur. Or a duck. Honestly, it could’ve been a shoe.
And just like that, the whole morning shifted. The fear, the bruises, the near-death memory—it all faded for a moment.
Here, in the chaos of Mrs. Appleby’s bakery, elbow-deep in almond frosting and kid-shaped dough disasters, I felt something dangerously close to hope.