Heart Like Mine (25 page)

“To friends,” I echoed. “The family you get to choose.”

*  *  *

Thankfully, Sam and his boyfriend, Wade, offered to host Thanksgiving at their house in Magnolia. We’d sort of overlooked Halloween, since neither of the kids expressed interest in celebrating anything so soon after their mother’s death. Thanksgiving would be the first holiday we’d be spending as a family, and Victor and I were happy to hand the organizing over to Sam and his partner.

It was wonderful to see my brother in such a loving relationship, since his first couple of boyfriends had a hard time with the concept of monogamy. Then Wade showed up at the AIDS center as a support person for a mutual friend who’d recently been diagnosed as HIV positive, and sparks flew. Almost two years later, they were still going strong.

“Can we bring anything?” I asked Sam the Saturday afternoon before the actual holiday.

“Well, you know Wade is an absolute
beast
in the kitchen,” Sam said. “But if you want to bring some kind of appetizer for us to munch on while he cooks, and maybe a dessert, that would be great. Tell the ankle biters I’m looking forward to it.”

I hung up the phone and smiled at Ava, who was sitting at the dining room table painting her fingernails bright orange. Max was having a playdate at a friend’s house and Victor was at the restaurant to make sure everything was organized for the holiday rush.

“Sam says he’s looking forward to seeing you two on Thanksgiving,” I said. She didn’t respond but gave the barest shrug of her shoulders. I tried again. “Is there anything you like to eat every year? Something we could make to bring?”

She looked up, then, her eyes wide. “My mom always made the best pumpkin cream cheese Bundt cake.”

Buoyed by the fact that she’d actually spoken to me in a normal tone of voice, I seized the opportunity. “Well, why don’t we do that, then? We can go to the store and get what we need.”

She gave me a doubtful look. “Maybe we should wait for my dad.” She was thinking, I was sure, about my tendency to avoid the kitchen.

I stood up. “I think we should just do it. I actually do know how to cook, it’s just not my favorite thing.” Maybe this was all we needed to get over the tension between us. I’d been holding back, not wanting to push, waiting for her to reach out to me, when it was me, as the adult, who needed to reach out to her.

Ava nodded slowly, her expression lightening the slightest bit. “But we don’t have the recipe. It’s at my mom’s house.”

My spirits fell. “Are you sure? Your dad didn’t bring her cookbooks back with him?”

Ava slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She stared at me, wary, waiting to see what I’d do.

“Well,” I finally said. “Do you still have the key? We can go pick it up and come right back.” She nodded, and I swallowed the apprehension I felt in going against Victor’s wishes, rationalizing
that we’d only be at the house for a minute or two, just to grab the recipe. “We’ll have to be quick, though, okay? Like
ninja
quick.”

She granted me a small smile and less than twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Kelli’s house. I turned to look at her as we took off our seat belts. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

She nodded again and we headed inside. There was a small pile of mail on the entryway table—Victor had asked Diane to put it in the house for him to pick up. He knew he needed to get the house completely cleared out so he could get it listed for sale, but he’d been so busy, he hadn’t found the time. I also suspected that because it had been his mom’s, it was possible he’d have a hard time letting it go.

Ava walked slowly into the kitchen, and I followed behind her, watching for signs that being in her mother’s house was too much for her to handle, but she seemed to be okay.

“Do you know where it is?” I asked her.

“Yep,” Ava said, reaching to the left of the stove, where there was a shelf filled with various sizes and shapes of cookbooks. She pulled down a small one and opened it, flipping through the pages until she looked up and smiled. “Here it is. It’s all covered with splatters.” Her eyes began to fill with tears and she quickly looked away.

I could almost see the memories flashing through her mind—in the kitchen with her mother, laughing together as they baked. A thought struck me. “Ava, you know how the pictures in your mom’s photo albums kind of stopped after she was fourteen?” She nodded but still didn’t look at me. “Well, do you happen to know where she kept her yearbooks from high school? Did she ever show them to you?”

She snapped her gaze back to me and her eyes were free of any tears. “No, I never saw them. I don’t know where they are.” She paused, tilting her head to one side. “Why?”

I didn’t want to tell her about the yearbook I’d found, since Victor had never brought the issue back up after our talk the day of the memorial. It was bad enough I had brought Ava here when he had specifically instructed her not to come.

“No reason, really,” I said. “Just curious.” I glanced at my watch. “We should probably go so we have time to make the cake before your dad gets home.”

“Are you going to tell him we came here?”

“Yes,” I said, though inside I wanted to say no. “I’ll just explain about needing the recipe and he’ll understand.” This time, she followed me into the living room. She stopped in front of the table by the front door, grabbed a pile of letters, and began to thumb through them.

“Are you expecting something?” I asked. “We should take them with us, so your dad can make sure any bills get paid.” Not seeming to hear me, Ava set the bulk of the mail back down, held on to a single envelope, and then tore it open. “Ava. That’s not yours.”

“It’s from a doctor in California,” she said, ignoring me. “Why would she get a letter from there?” She read it out loud, quickly. “ ‘Dear Ms. Hansen: I’m sorry to inform you that I do not have you listed as a patient in 1993 or 1994. I wish you luck in finding whatever it is you’re looking for. Sincerely, Dr. Brian Stiles.’ ” Ava looked at me. “Do you think she was sick back then? Do you think it might have had something to do with what happened to her?”

“I don’t know, honey,” I said. “Maybe we can ask your dad, okay? Maybe he knows.” I doubted that was true. Victor had
made it clear to me that Kelli didn’t like to talk about the specifics of her past. But after I did some quick math in my head, I realized that 1993 and 1994 would have been her freshman and sophomore years of high school, right when the hole in her life appeared. My mind flipped through possibilities and landed on one that made the most sense: If she had suffered from depression, maybe her parents sought treatment for her and she was looking for her medical history. Not being in contact with them, she might not have known—or remembered—the doctor’s name. I smiled at Ava, gently taking the letter from her hand and slipping it into my purse. “Let’s go, okay? We can talk about it with your dad later.”

On the way home, we made another quick stop at the grocery store to pick up the ingredients we needed for the cake. Soon we were back in the kitchen, and I was happy to focus on something other than Kelli’s past. “Okay,” I said. “What do we do first?”

“I don’t know,” Ava said quietly. “My mom always made this. I just watched.” She was obviously distracted by the letter we’d found at Kelli’s house. I was, too, but I was also determined to finish what I’d started with her—to bake her mother’s cake.

I hesitated. She wasn’t going to make this easy on me. “Well, let’s look at the recipe, then. What does it say?”

She leaned over the cookbook and told me we needed to cream the butter, cream cheese, and sugar until it was fluffy. I grabbed the three cubes of butter and two packages of cream cheese from the refrigerator with feigned confidence. I really wasn’t a baker—in a pinch, I could do decent tacos, spaghetti, or meatloaf—but I couldn’t stop and call Melody or Victor for help now. “Here,” I said, “you unwrap these and put them in the mixer while I measure out the sugar.”

Ava complied and put the cubes in the mixer. I added the
sugar and turned the machine on, horrified by the sudden
thunkthunk
ing noise it made. “That butter’s pretty hard, huh?” I said.

Ava gave me a pointed look. “It never made that sound when my mom made it.”

Of course it didn’t.
I sighed internally and kept a bright smile on my face. “Now, what do we add?” Eggs came next, the recipe said, and over the next five minutes, we added the rest of the ingredients to the mixer according to the instructions on the page.

“ ‘The batter should be light and creamy,’ ” Ava read, then looked at the gloppy mess in the bowl. Hard little bits of butter and white cream cheese chunks floated to the surface; the batter looked about as appetizing as spoiled milk. “I don’t think this is right,” she said.

“Let’s bake it and see what happens,” I said. “Maybe the clumpy bits melt and disappear when it’s in the oven?”

She looked at me, one eyebrow raised, but handed me the buttered Bundt pan, and I poured the mixture in, then slid it into the preheated oven. “Voilà! We did it.” Half an hour later, when the timer went off, I pulled the cake out of the oven. It was a hard, dark brown, and lumpy mess. “Well, at least it
smells
good,” Ava said, and we both looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

Just then, we heard the front door open. “Dad!” Ava yelled, scooting into the living room. “You’ll never guess what Grace did! She tried to
bake
!”

I followed her and saw Victor hugging his daughter. He looked up and smiled when he saw me, his eyes lighting up in a way they hadn’t for over a month.

“ ‘Tried’ is definitely the operative word,” I said. “I think it’s more of a science experiment than a cake.”

Ava looked up at her father, craning her neck. “The batter was
gross
,” she said, and I chuckled.

“
Really
gross,” I said, agreeing with her. “We’ll make another one on Wednesday, okay? Maybe your dad will be kind enough to give us some helpful hints.”

“I can do that,” Victor said, still smiling. He looked down at Ava. “I need to talk with Grace, honey. Can you give us a minute alone?”

Ava’s smile vanished as she let go of Victor and walked down the hall to her bedroom. I waited until I heard her door click closed, then looked at him, concerned. There was no way he could have known that I’d taken Ava to Kelli’s house. It had to be something else. “What’s up?”

He sighed, pulling off his coat and hanging it in the closet by the front door. “Spencer slipped in the kitchen a little while ago and landed hard on the cement floor. I’m pretty sure he broke his arm.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Did he go to the hospital?”

“He’s there now,” Victor said. “And I’m down my head chef for Thanksgiving.”

I felt something in my belly drop down a notch and realized the last thing I needed to do right then was tell him where Ava and I had gone. It would only give him more to worry about. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m screwed. I gave a lot of people the holiday off and there’s no one else to cover. Spencer was supposed to manage all the catering we’re sending out plus the reservations we have for dinner tomorrow. Now I’ll have to do it all.”

I didn’t respond right away. I thought of the huge pile of work I needed to get done before Monday—the client files I needed to review, the budget that needed tweaking before the end of the year. I had hoped to make some headway on it before the holiday weekend, so Victor and I could actually enjoy some
time together. A tiny thread of irritation shot through my veins, but then an idea struck me. “Can’t you hire someone to cover for him temporarily?”

He shook his head. “There’s not enough time. And even if I hired someone next week, I’d have to be there to train them on the menu, anyway, which is really more work than just biting the bullet and doing it myself.”

I thought about how Victor would have to run the restaurant at night on his own until after New Year’s, and the holidays were his busiest season, when he needed to make enough money to make it through the leaner times. From Thanksgiving on last year, he’d worked fourteen-hour days, six days a week—I was lucky to see him at all. And now, with the kids to manage on top of the restaurant, I couldn’t fathom how he’d make it work. It was doubtful he would hire someone to babysit the kids—I’d suggested this right after the kids had moved in, thinking an after-school nanny would alleviate the pressure he was feeling to be with them when they weren’t in school, but he’d nixed the idea. “They need
me
,” he told me. “Not some stranger. I don’t want them to feel like I’m shoving them off on someone else. Like they’re somehow inconveniencing me.” I understood what he was saying, but now, considering the circumstances, it seemed like a good time to reevaluate. Kids had caregivers other than their parents all the time. I knew from years of being in HR the challenges parents faced in the workplace—rare was the family who didn’t employ the help of day care or a nanny to enable both parents to be at their jobs. But there was something deeper in Victor driving him to be so completely hands-on with the kids. He was worried after the loss of their mother that if he hired a babysitter, they might feel he didn’t want to be with them.

“Couldn’t the kids be alone for a few hours after school?”
I suggested now. “I was already taking care of Sam when I was Ava’s age.”

“And you enjoyed that so much, right?” he said, raising a single eyebrow. I was silent, so he went on. “Christ. If Spence really is totally out of commission, I’ll need to rework my whole schedule. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull it off.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I said, wishing I were entirely convinced that he would.

I sat on my bed, staring at the boxes of my mother’s things. They were clothes, mostly, plus some of the romance books she loved to read. Daddy didn’t know that Mama hadn’t let me read them, but now I wanted to—more than just the sex parts. I wanted to better understand what she saw in them. I’d asked her once and all she’d said was, “Hope, baby girl. They give me hope.”