Page 81 of Mixed Signals
“The bakehouse,” she finally whispers. “The power must have cut out overnight.” A heavy swallow and a ragged exhale. “Everything is ruined.”
It’s worsethan I thought.
With no climate control and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows welcoming in the heat from outside, all of the flowers in the front of the shop have wilted. Pristine and white last night, they’re now hanging limp and faded, tinged with yellow. Petals with curled edges decorate the floor like little fallen soldiers, a haphazard battleground leading to Layla. Layla who is sitting on the floor of the bakehouse with her back to the front counter, her arms over her knees and her forehead tucked into her thighs.
“Sweetheart,” I sigh. It feels like it’s a hundred and ten degrees in here and the sun hasn’t even fully risen yet. I glance at the countertop where she stacked her cookies last night. They look like an amorphous blob under the glass display case. I wince.
“The refrigerators stopped running,” she mumbles without bothering to lift her face. I squat down in front of her and soothe my palms up and down her bare arms. Her fingers twitch, but she doesn’t reach for me. “All of the tarts are ruined. Everything I—” She pulls in a shaky breath. “Everything I made yesterday is ruined. I don’t know what to do.”
“We can—” Two peony blooms fall from the ceiling and land with a soft thud at our side. Layla makes a sad, defeated huff that wedges right in the center of my chest. A knife under my ribs. “We can fix this.”
Layla leans back and I get a look at her red-rimmed eyes, the tear tracks on her cheeks. I want to pull her in my lap and wrap both of my arms around her. I want to fight a defunct air conditioner, apparently.
“How?” she croaks. “How can we fix this? I don’t have any power. My ovens won’t turn on. None of my ingredients are usable.” She blinks, her big hazel eyes filling with more tears. “The people from the magazine are supposed to be here at ten o’clock.”
I glance at the clock above the counter before I remember it must have stopped working when the power went out. The hands are frozen at 10:12pm. Almost six full hours of no electricity. That explains the state of things.
I clear my throat and check my watch. “Then we have a few hours left to work with.”
Layla’s palms dig into her eyes. She has flower petals in her hair, a discarded, crumpled up apron at her hip. Like she came in and grabbed it off her hook like she always does, but didn’t bother looping it over her neck. “To do what?”
I push up to my feet. “Is there anything you can make from what you’ve got? Anything you can get started on?”
She shakes her head, a shaky hand swiping underneath her eyes. “I don’t—”
“Just the first step, Layla. You only need to start.”
I hold out my hand to her. She blinks up at me from her spot on the floor, a frown twisting her lips and her shoulders hunched forward. She looks so small down there like that. Small and sad and diminished. I never want to see her like this again.
“I’ve seen you bake, Caleb,” her voice is watery—scratchy and subdued. “Your cake batter is shit.”
I huff a laugh. “My cake batter is fine.”
“It’s the worst cake batter I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
I tried baking with her once, and it ended with her laughing so hysterically she could barely hold herself up.
“Alright, well. How about you show me how it’s done?” I beckon her forward with my fingers until she heaves out a deep breath and holds out her arms. I clasp my hands around her wrists and guide her up and into me. I brush a kiss against her temple and the bridge of her nose.
“You do the baking, sweetheart.” I wipe the last of her tears away with my thumbs. “Let me take care of the rest.”
Beckett is my first stop.
I set Layla up in the back kitchen with a small battery-operated fan I find in the dash of my Jeep, clipping it to the edge of a shelf and angling it so it blows her hair off her neck. She gives me a thin, wobbly, grateful smile and I disappear out the back, hopping in my Jeep and tearing across the farm at a speed that tests the limits of my suspension on the bumpy, rocky dirt roads. I turn into Beckett’s driveway and send a shower of gravel over the bottom two steps of his porch, narrowly missing the row of daffodils I’m pretty sure his sister Nova planted.
I pound on his front door with my fist until he answers with a ferocious scowl and a rose gold baseball bat clutched in his left hand. I spot Evelyn over his shoulder, swimming in an oversized flannel, two of the cats perched on her shoulders. Evelyn gives me a little wave.
Beckett drops the bat with a heaving sigh, hands on his knees. “What the fu—”
“Do you have a generator?” I’ll apologize later this week and maybe ask a question or two about why he has a pink baseball bat covered in gold sparkles in his front closet. “Somewhere on the farm?”
“Caleb.” Beckett straightens back to his full height and scratches roughly at the back of his head. He tosses the bat … somewhere … and stoops to stop one of the cats from dashing through the door. Prancer meows at me and bats her little paw in greeting. It’s cute, but I do not have the time. “Why are you at my house at five in the morning asking about generators?”
Evelyn pads down the hall and nudges him out of the way. “Do you want some coffee? We’ve got a pot on already.”
I shake my head and glance across the fields towards the bakery. A thick layer of humidity hangs heavy over the grass fields, blurring everything until it’s just streaks of color. Evergreen. Copper and gold. Even now, I can feel the heat clinging to my skin. The back of my neck and the hollows of my wrists. It’s going to be hot as hell today.
“Power went out in the bakehouse overnight.” I turn back to Beckett and Evelyn. “She lost air conditioning, refrigerators, ovens. All of the food is scrapped.”
