Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Even though Eleanor was an adult woman in her fourth decade of life, with a grown son and a successful business, she was still, it turned out, not immune to her little brother’s teasing.
She had made poor Garrett discuss Shane’s comment about grocery store wine with her for more hours than she cared to confess to, and once she failed to puzzle out what he meant, she decided to get her revenge in another way.
By baking a cake.
As far as revenge went, it was not particularly vicious, but Eleanor was typically a wonderful baker and Shane had never developed the knack.
So. She was going to win by… feeding him delicious dessert. And giving him some wine that, yes, she had purchased at the grocery store, but he would probably be too impressed by her cake to comment upon it.
At least, this had been the nefarious plan that she had landed upon after texting her brother to ask what he’d meant about the comment and only getting “LOL” in response.
Little punk, she thought, shaking her head fondly.
It was awfully fun to be childish with someone who had known her when she was a child.
Goofy, yes. Maybe a little incomprehensible to others.
It certainly seemed to baffle Garrett, who had a cordial but not extremely close relationship with his sister. But it was extremely fun.
Also, Eleanor hadn’t taken on a real baking challenge in a while, not since she had gotten so busy with the bookshop.
So, she had dug out her old stash of cookbooks, then perused a few of the baking volumes that she stocked for the store.
She had ultimately settled on a baklava-inspired bundt cake recipe which looked simply beautiful in the glossy, full-page photograph in the cookbook.
She had carefully chopped and glazed the nuts that went into the topping, then made a pistachio cake for the base.
A honey glaze went into the whole thing to keep the cake as moist as the original dessert tended to be when done well.
The whole project had taken hours. Eleanor’s kitchen was a wreck. And it was all worth it.
Or… it would have been. Except when Eleanor went to flip the cake, half of it stuck to the pan instead of sliding smoothly out.
This caused her to fumble the bundt pan and the plate that she was attempting to turn it onto.
She caught everything before the porcelain plate crashed to the floor and shattered into a million pieces…
But not before the cake broke in half. Some stayed stuck to the pan. The other half landed on the floor with a tragic splat.
For a long moment, Eleanor froze. All she could do was look at the cake, which now adorned several square feet of her kitchen floor and most of her shoes.
“I guess I used too much of the glaze,” she said to herself. Then, because the only other option was to cry over spilled cake, she began to laugh until tears leaked from her eyes.
She kept chuckling to herself as she cleaned up the terrible mess she had made. This was what she got for getting too prideful, she supposed. Or maybe it was some kind of a lesson about revenge, and how you shouldn’t pursue it, even if your revenge took the form of cake.
Or maybe it was just one of those things.
When the last smudges of sticky honey were finally wiped away, she grabbed her phone, thankful that she had at least done most of the preparation for the dinner.
She still had to throw the chicken in the oven so that it would be hot when Shane, Winnie, and Garrett arrived, but most of the actual labor was complete.
She didn’t have the time or ingredients to make another dessert, however, so she dialed Riverstone Kitchen.
“Hello, you’ve reached Riverstone Kitchen. This is Hope, how can I help you?”
“Hope, hi!” Eleanor said, pleased to have reached her friend. She supposed that it didn’t technically matter which restaurant employee answered the phone, but it was always nice to talk to Hope. “I have something of a culinary emergency.”
“Oh, dear,” Hope said. “Well, you’ve called the right place. What do you need?”
“A dessert, stat,” Eleanor replied. “My brother and Winnie are coming over for dinner. We had a bet; it’s a long story. Anyway, I’m cooking to impress, and I made a cake but it ended up all over the floor.”
“Oof,” Hope said sympathetically. “I assume you spent a lot of time and effort on it? Nobody ever drops the thing that they made in five minutes.”
“Of course,” Eleanor agreed with a chuckle. “Anyway, what’s your fanciest dessert that you can have for us in, say, the next half an hour?”
“A tiramisu,” Hope answered instantly. “The one that Jared makes is phenomenal and he always keeps a few full ones for sale. I’ll triple-check to make certain that nobody has already called to reserve them, but I’m about ninety-nine percent certain. Hang on; I’ll be right back.”
Eleanor crossed her fingers as she waited for Hope to get back to the phone. Fortunately, her friend was very speedy.
“Okay, confirming that we have a tiramisu with your name on it,” Hope said after a minute’s worth of hold music. “You can come get it any time before we close.”
“Oh, I’m getting in the car right now,” Eleanor said, doing a quick round of mental math. If she hurried, she could get to Riverstone Kitchen and back before she had to throw the chicken in the oven. That way, it wouldn’t get cold and she wouldn’t be late for dinner with Shane and Winnie.
“Perfect,” Hope said cheerfully. “See you soon.”
Barely two minutes later, Eleanor was out the door and behind the wheel of her car. She was just pulling out of her driveway when her car’s phone integration lit up, showing that she had a call incoming from June. She pressed the button on the display that would let her answer the call hands-free.
“Juney, hi,” she said. “I’m in the car. What’s up?”
There was a pause.
“Oh,” June said, something strange in her voice. “If this isn’t a good time, I can talk later.”
June sounded as though she was upset and trying to hide it.
“No, no, I can talk,” Eleanor said. “Is something wrong? You sound like something is on your mind.”
June heaved a sigh. “It’s silly,” she said.
“Silly things can still be upsetting,” Eleanor reminded her friend patiently. “You don’t need to reach some special level of seriousness before you talk about your problems with your friends.”
June let out a breathy laugh that held a tinge of sadness.
“I knew there was a reason I called you. You give such great advice.”
“Well, thank you,” Eleanor said. “So, why don’t you explain what’s going on?”
“Okay, okay,” June said, sighing. “So, last night, Levi came over for dinner.”
“Uh-huh,” Eleanor said, putting on her turn signal as she approached a stop sign.
“And I was running late because—well, honestly, I don’t even know how I lost the time. The kid vortex, probably. But one minute, it was school pick-up, and the next, I should have started cooking twenty minutes ago.”
Eleanor chuckled at June’s turn of phrase. She’d lost plenty of time to this so-called “kid vortex.”
“Well, that happens, honey,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“No, that’s not it,” June said. “Levi came over, and he took it all totally in stride. He didn’t even need help finding anything in my kitchen! He just grabbed the tomato knife and started chopping tomatoes for the salad! I didn’t even know I had a tomato knife!”
Eleanor was laughing again. “Sweetie, if you want me to give advice, you have to stop making this problem sound so hilarious. You’re a great storyteller. If this singing thing ever gets boring, you can try being a comedian.”
“Thanks,” June said, her tone a little wry.
“Anyway, we have dinner, barely even late, and Levi and Benjamin are having a great time chatting about some superhero show that they both like, and Benjamin put the dishes away without me even having to ask him. And Levi just hung out while Benjamin got ready for bed, and then we watched half a movie together, because we were too tired to make it through the whole thing. So we said goodnight, and he gave me this really sweet kiss at the door, and it was just all so… nice.”
Eleanor paused, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, she replied, “Well, not to throw your words back at you, but you said it, babe. That sounds nice.”
“It was!” June practically wailed it.
“So… what’s the issue?”
June let out a grumbled sound. “Well, that’s where the silliness comes in.
I just—whenever I stop to think about how perfect things are with Levi, I start to get this worried feeling.
Like it’s all going to fall apart. Like it can’t last. And then I get caught up thinking about how horrible it will feel when it does fall apart.
I mean, it will just be crushing, right?
And that thought just sticks in my head. ”
Eleanor was pulling into the parking lot at Riverstone Kitchen now, but she wasn’t going to hurry her friend off the phone when she was feeling upset.
“I get how unpleasant it can be when one of those thoughts gets stuck in your brain,” Eleanor said in commiseration.
“I’ve been there. But one thing you have to remember is that just because you think something doesn’t mean that it’s actually true.
And I think that part of this might not actually be about Levi at all. ”
June immediately knew what she meant. “You think it’s about Keith.”
Keith was June’s late husband, who had passed away suddenly a few years before. Eleanor couldn’t imagine losing her spouse like that. It made sense that there would be some lingering trauma over that loss.
“I think it makes sense,” Eleanor said kindly, “that after having your whole life go from being wonderful to having it be filled with tragedy in an instant that it might be hard to trust that it won’t happen again.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s rational,” June said, with the air of someone who had worked through emotions like these ones before.
“No,” Eleanor agreed. “But something being irrational doesn’t mean it isn’t real either.
I mean, you have no reason to think that Levi being steadfast means anything except that he is steadfast. That he cares about you and Benjamin a whole heck of a lot.
But, it’s also true that your feelings are real.
So, let both of those things exist. Know that you’re feeling worried and try to remember that just because something bad happened before doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen again. ”
“That’s… very good advice,” June said on a heavy exhale.
“That’s why you called me,” Eleanor reminded her, letting her smile creep into her voice. “Just… try to trust. It’s hard, but try.”
“Well, Levi makes it easier than most,” June allowed. “Okay, okay, I know you were driving. I’ll let you go. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Anytime, my dear,” Eleanor said. “Talk soon, okay?”
“Of course,” June said. She already sounded lighter, which made Eleanor feel a little better about letting her off the phone. “You’re the best.”
As Eleanor reached to click out of the call with her car’s hands-free system, she noted the time. She would have to hurry if she wanted to get home in time to finish making dinner for her brother, Winnie, and Garrett. Still, she would never think that time spent helping a friend was wasted.
Even so, she picked up her pace as she went into Riverstone Kitchen.