Chapter 1 #2
“What?” That might be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. “You know that since the explosion, Luca hasn’t… he… he’s a recluse now. He told the guy who came to write an article about him that it was karma that cursed him. A curse for a curse.”
That just lights a fire under my dad’s ass, and here I am, trying to put it out.
“We need to break those curses. Both of them.”
“Dad!” That’s it. The sweater has to go.
I know it’s just a thin layer of cotton, and it’s not any warmer in here than it normally is, but I’m sweating through my clothes.
That breath I’d like to take? I doubt I’ll ever be able to do that again.
“It’s not some magical force that decides life. It’s our own decisions!”
What Luca did was wrong. He hurt my dad, and in turn, my dad’s been despondent for years.
Luca went to New York without a backward glance, and just a few years later, he opened up his own fancy high-end restaurant, and then another and another.
He basically became famous and was at the top of the world when there was a fire in the kitchen where he was working, followed by an explosion.
That’s all anyone really knows. That, and he retreated from the world to take care of himself and never came back.
“He said he was cursed,” Dad insists. He’s having that stubborn streak that he inherited from my grandfather on full display right now.
“We don’t know he said that. That writer could have twisted his words to give them a more dramatic flourish.
He got that story by camping out for days and days, pestering Luca and his family until Luca caved and finally spoke to him.
He also said that. Is that a man you can really trust to be honest? ”
“How he got the story isn’t important. Luca said he was cursed. He believes it, like I do. It’s time to break it for both of us.”
I don’t mean to sigh, but it spirals out of me anyway as the pies bake on.
We’d just put them in when my dad said he needed to talk.
My dad’s a great man. He’s good and kind, and he is an amazing father, but talking?
That’s something he really doesn’t do. Ever.
I mean, he talks, but not talks. The pies aren’t burning.
They’re going to come out perfectly golden brown, gorgeous, and still… lacking something.
“Why would you want him to come back here?” Wait. What the fuck, rubber duck? I’m not seriously considering going to New York.
A terrible hope glows in my dad’s dark eyes. Mine are almost the exact same shade as his.
“It’s just time,” he answers.
“If he hasn’t told you he’s sorry in all this time, it’s because he’s not!” My hands ball up into fists. “He’s a selfish butthole of a turd bag who thinks of no one but himself. He threw away friendship for money and fame. He’s not the good guy in this. He’s the villain.”
“Villains are heroes who just got twisted around.”
Seriously?
My dad’s never talked badly about Luca. Most of what I know about what happened is from what my mom has told me over the years. And defending him right now is taking it too far.
“You need to go save him.” Dad taps his head. “Me. This place.”
That has me unclenching my fists and my jaw so fast. My hands literally get thrown up in the air. “Why me? I don’t even know the guy. I’ve never even met him!” Luca was gone before I was even born.
“Because he wouldn’t see me, and your mother would never go. I love her and she loves me, and that’s the point. She thinks I need to be protected.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just head there and be kind about him sort of wrecking our lives and now our business? Start spouting stuff about breaking curses?” Tell him that he basically shaved off twenty years of my father’s life, and for that, he deserves to rot in a dungeon filled with bugs?
“That’s just kind of…” Deluded. Insane. Ridiculous.
A pie I don’t want to have my fingers in. “A lot.”
“We need to end this. There’s nothing that forgiveness can’t heal.”
I’m all about not letting the demons of bitterness take over your life and wallowing in regret and what-ifs that never helped anyone, but this is too much.
“Forgiveness isn’t just for those who ask for it, or even for those who know they need it,” Dad continues.
I know that. It was my parents who taught me that. I always knew Dad missed Luca. That he had heaps of regrets and wished he could find the courage to call and the right words to say when he did.
My dad is a good person. It’s not just pies that run in his family.
It’s this extraordinary kindness, wild loyalty, and na?ve trust. That’s one trait I didn’t inherit.
Kindness, yes, but I’m not na?ve about who I put my faith in.
And the loyalty thing? Unfortunately, that’s ingrained deep, deep in my blood.
My name stems from the Latin word for sweet, but there’s nothing sweet about me if I can’t save my family. I owe everything I am to my parents.
The truth is, I’d do anything to see my dad happy again. I can’t remember a time when he’s had that light in his eyes that my mom talks about so wistfully.
What if doing this small, incredibly irrational thing could bring back some of his joy? If the bakery closes and we have to move on, at least I could truly say I did everything in my power to try to save us.
Even if it means going to some spooky, probably haunted mansion, finding the villain dwelling within, and coming back here with some bullshit apology that never happened.
The likelihood is that I’ll go and get turned away at a set of wrought iron, monstrously spiked gates. It’ll probably be raining. Storming furiously. And even if I shout and rail, I’ll be denied entrance. That’s how things like this go, isn’t it?
Okay, that’s a little too fairytale, but it could be a perfectly bright, sunny day, and the guy’s house could be all sunshine and blue skies and cheerful flowers with statues peeing onto the fake grass and no scary gates or gothic architecture.
I could come bearing one of our family’s famous pies and still get denied entrance.
It’s a hundred percent likely, given that apparently, the only person to speak to Luca from the outside world in the past few years was that reporter who camped out on his doorstep for a long arse time.
I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but the one thing I do know, as I stare into my father’s dark eyes, which are wet with a sheen of tears again, is that this man is my hero, and I’d do anything for him.
There are smudges of flour all over his apron and a few smears along his cheek, just above the beard net he wears.
For the love of banana cream pies, I already know I’m going to find a way to do this.
The first timer goes off. My dad walks to the bank of ovens and stops it, but he doesn’t remove the pie yet. He inhales deeply, knowing just by scent that it’s not quite done.
“Three more minutes,” I venture.
“Four and forty-two seconds.”
I’m getting closer.
“Dad…” I want to say something. I want to find the perfect words and make him a promise from the depths of my heart, but I trail off, leaving us in silence, with just the hum of the ovens and all our unspent thoughts, spooled-up emotions, the weight of the past, and the shadow of the future.
I swallow thickly. Then, I finally just say, “It’s going to be a pietastic day. ”
On hearing the words that he’s opened with every day for as long as I can remember, his face breaks into a grin, and the lines carved into his forehead smooth ever so slightly.
“Thanks, sweetheart. You’re right. It’s going to be a wonderful day because we’re here, working together as a family.
” My mom will be here soon. She helps out every single day.
For better or worse, this bakery is my heritage. It’s my dad’s, and his dad’s before him.
I know the possible closure isn’t on me. If I do nothing, or if I throw my whole self into this place, I won’t fix the real problem. It won’t give my dad the peace he so desperately needs. Curses aren’t real, but pain is.
So.
All I have to do is book a flight to New York, search out some eccentric billionaire, and make an effort to either get him to come back here or record a heartfelt message from him for my dad. Even that would mean something. It might mean everything.
That’s it.
That’s all I have to do.
Why is it that walking to the ends of the earth carrying one of every pie ever made, all heaped on my shoulders and in some old-fashioned pie cart pulled by a big fantasy creature like a troll, because I like trolls, seems a whole lot easier?