Chapter 22 A Recipe For Goodbye
Long after the snow had settled from its earlier storm, and the stars had sprinkled themselves across the sky like a topping to a complicated recipe, Eliza did what Eliza did best: she baked. Lachlan truly wasn’t coming back.
He’d left at the first opportunity, probably hopped on the first class train to be with his mum and sister for Christmas instead of being here.
Or he might’ve just driven straight home, going ninety to nothing to get out of this crazy town so he could get back to selling his million dollar coastal mansions.
Eliza knew that once they both traveled their separate ways home, and left the gingerbread walls and enchanted kitchen behind, they both would chalk up this entire week to being some odd fluke. A sugar-coated fever dream.
Puffcake tried to console Eliza by wrapping himself around her on her shoulder, nestling his nose into the crux of her neck. She stroked his spine lazily, the tears seeming to come at random.
The house had also tried to console her plenty of times.
The kitchen egged her on into using the recipe books in the cabinet, and sugar and butter made their way onto the kitchen island without Eliza even having to pull the ingredients down herself.
It knew exactly what she had in mind, except she didn’t want to look at a single recipe card.
This time, she wanted to bake straight from memory.
This was her nan’s recipe. Which, she supposed, most of them were. At least, the fundamentals were always her nan’s. But this one was something her nan was famously known for back in her quiet corner of London: her Victoria sponge.
It was a five-layered cake with a thick homemade buttercream icing between each piece of fluffy vanilla cake, spread with raspberry jam in between. Her nan made it every year for Christmas, but that was about the only time of year she did because it was about as extensive a recipe as one could get.
But that was the point tonight.
If she started now, she might finish before sunrise, but she wasn’t in a hurry.
Eliza wrapped her apron around her waist, tied her long blonde strands into a pony, and pulled her last scrap of dignity together.
She wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. She came here to do exactly this: bake in the best kitchen in all of Britain—possibly all of the world.
Lachlan only did her a favor by leaving her alone.
“Guess this is what I wanted from the get-go, isn’t it, Puffcake?” she sighed. “Good riddance.”
At least that’s what she told herself, anyway.
Even Puffcake seemed to see straight through the lie.
They were never meant to last. Their love—if it could even be called that—only lasted a week. She’d known biscuits to have lasted longer before they grew stale.
It was her fault for thinking it could last, her fault for even hoping.
But it was Christmas Eve, and she wouldn’t think about him anymore. He was gone, never coming back, and so she would put him behind her, too.
This time, there would be no magic to help her bake.
She didn’t want it. Didn’t need its help.
What had the magic of this house really helped her do besides show some memory-preserved recipes, a sad love story, and that love is cursed?
She mixed the cake batter without a lick of magic, even hand-poured her own extracts, and opened the drawers on her own.
After about the third or fourth offer from the house, and Eliza’s refusal for help, it seemed to get the hint. She wanted to be left alone. Completely.
She just hoped the house wasn’t offended enough for the oven to not work.
She placed the first round of cake batter inside, and didn’t know she had been holding her breath. She was waiting, staring into the oven for several seconds.
Surely, something else is bound to go wrong tonight, she thought. But it never did.
She absentmindedly pulled the first cake out of the oven when it was done and set it aside to cool before pouring the batter into the pan and repeating the process. Add the ingredients into a bowl, stir, and pour into a pan. Add the ingredients into a bowl, stir, and pour into a pan.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
She didn’t want to think. Only wanted to bake a cake ten stories high if she had to. If that’s what it took to forget.
Her hands and face were coated with flour and sugar, and for a moment, she could feel his hands brushing hers. The warmth of his laugh, the way they threw heaps of flour at each other, and the warmth in Eliza’s chest as he leaned in to kiss her.
And the way he looked at her … It was like she was the only person in the world.
How could that have only been last night?
Everything changed in a day. Not even a full twenty-four hours.
Now, nothing would be the same again.
Nope. She wouldn’t think of him. Wouldn’t allow him space to tear her heart apart again.
She decided to check her phone. When all else failed, some mindless scrolling always did the trick, right? Four texts from Piper, two from mum, and one from Gretel.
Christmas morning tomorrow at your place? We’d love a round two of the snowball fight if you’re down!
Eliza read the message, and read it again, her throat aching. She backed out of the text thread, not emotionally ready to respond to her friend just yet.
She’d failed. The cottage’s curse had won. Eliza just wasn’t ready to admit it, yet.
She checked the messages from Piper.
did you build a snowman today and watch it come to life?
what’s next, a reindeer with a glowing nose?
i just don’t understand how you’re so lucky.
HAVE YOU GUYS KISSED YET
So much for some mindless scrolling.
She needed to bake. Thinking would come later.
Eliza resumed building the cake layer by layer, laying the cake and then spreading the cream cheese on thick.
The process was almost as mindless as the first portion had been, except she allowed her mind to wander back to her nan.
Back to simpler times, when the only worries Eliza had was getting batter on the table because she wasn’t quite tall enough to see over the counter.
She embellished the finished cake with vanilla curls, letting them fall onto the top of the finished dessert like snow. Then, she stepped back to admire her work. It was almost too beautiful to eat.
But when Eliza went to take the first bite, she didn’t even worry about slicing off a piece. She dug her fork right in, ruining the wondrous work of art, and scooped up the biggest bite she could muster.
Upon taking that first bite, she remembered her nan’s giggle, crisp and jovial.
Suddenly, it was so sharp in her mind that it brought tears to Eliza’s eyes.
Not sad ones, as they usually were when she thought of her nan.
These were happy ones. Ones that spoke of the years of happiness and wisdom her nan had lived.
The legacy she left behind in both love and sugar.
Eliza couldn’t help but be grateful for this week away, even if it wasn’t how she envisioned it. Even if she was still really sad about how things were left off with Lachlan. She knew the one person who she could talk to.
Her mobile began vibrating on the table. She answered with a sigh, and an excited “Hello?” from her best friend came through before she could even put the screen to her ear.
“Hey,” Eliza’s voice cracked.
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. Then, finally Piper’s voice again, this time clipped and worried. “Oh no. What happened?”
Eliza guffawed, “Seriously? All I said was ‘hey.’”
“You’re my best friend,” Piper reminded her. “I know your ‘hey.’ This is a sad ‘hey.’ So, spill the tea. What’s wrong?”
Eliza glanced at the tree. The colored lights blurred together behind fresh tears. She swallowed down what felt like shards of glass, her throat tightening as she managed to say, “He left. For real this time.”
The house even helped him pack up his things. The house had known he was ready to go.
Piper sighed heavily. The kind of heavy breath that said everything. “I’m so sorry, Eliza.”
“It’s okay.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I just feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. You let someone in. Do you know how rare that is for you? What he did says more about him than it does about you.”
“It feels like a dream. Like I made it up,” she murmured. “Like it never should’ve happened.”
“You didn’t make it up. Just because it ended fast doesn’t mean it shouldn't have happened. Maybe it was to help you get back out there again and not be so hung up on Davis. Never liked that tosspot, by the by,” Piper added in, (as if she hadn’t told Eliza before).
“Anyways, you were there. He was there. The flying gingerbread dragon, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about . ..”
Eliza gave a half-smile. She’d told Piper about Puffcake, but she didn’t believe her, even with a picture to prove it. Eliza swore up and down it wasn’t AI, but Piper still was unconvinced.
“It just sucks. I was starting to trust him. It felt like maybe it was the start of something good. It felt so different from Davis.” Eliza swallowed hard. Her hands shook all over again, and she tossed a hand towel aside in frustration.
“I know,” her friend said softly. “You deserve better. You always have.”
“Why are you so good at this?”
“Because I’ve had practice. Remember the Great and Tragic Banana Bread Incident our freshman year?”
Eliza laughed despite herself. “First off, I thought we both took an oath to never speak of that ever again. And second, if we were going to speak of it, that was different. I set the entire oven on fire in food tech. I wasn’t crying over some dumb boy.”
“And still, I was there for you. Just like I’m here for you, now,” Piper said.
“Thank you,” Eliza blinked back a tear.
“Always.”