Page 82 of Mixed Signals
Evelyn’s eyes widen, just a touch. “The magazine people,” she breathes. “That’s today, right?”
I nod. Beckett’s mouth settles into a firm, determined line. He props the cat up on his shoulder and turns to jog down the hall.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he calls. He grabs a set of keys off a small hook by the back door. “Evie honey, I’ll meet you there.”
Sandy meetsme at the grocery store with a faintly bewildered look, her keys jangling on the little cord at her wrist as she unlocks the series of deadbolts on the door. She ushers me inside as soon as the door is cracked, her small hand at my elbow.
“Is everything alright?” She looks over my shoulder at my Jeep parked half on the curb, half off of it. Her eyes dart to her cozy little sedan parked in the usual spot, a couple of feet from the doorway. Her brows collapse into a line. “What on earth could you possibly need from the grocery store so early?”
“All of the butter, sugar, flour, and eggs you have in stock would be a good start, I think.” I glance towards the produce section and make a decision. “Strawberries, too.”
She blinks at me. “All of it?”
I nod. “All of it.”
“Were you craving shortcake?” She glances at her watch. She wanders towards the registers and flicks on the lights, fluorescents buzzing to life above us. “At five-thirty in the morning?”
A smile I don’t really feel hitches at the corner of my mouth. “Something like that.”
By the time the bags are loaded in my trunk and I’m turning back onto Main Street, the sun is just starting to creep out from behind the trees. I watch light crawl across the pavement and feel like I’m in a race against time. I hope Beckett has the generator going. I hope Layla has her apron on. If I walk back into that bakehouse and see tears on her cheeks again, I might lose my mind. I’ll probably start compulsively baking things in an effort to help and she’s right. I’m absolute shit at making a decent cake batter.
I roll to a stop and lower the passenger side window. It only takes one bellow of her name across the sidewalk to get her attention from behind the counter.
Beatrice cracks open the front door of her bakery with a frown, long gray hair braided in a crown across her head. She’s wearing her combat boots again, a blood red sundress that falls below her knees.
“What?”
“Get in the car.”
Her face cracks into a grin and she folds her arms over her chest. “While I love an invitation from a handsome man, I can’t go joyriding with you through the sunrise today.” She pushes off her front porch banister with her shoulder. “Come see me after closing,” she says with a wink.
“It’s Layla,” I shout, before she can shut her door in my face. “She has her interview with the magazine today and she lost power. She needs an extra set of hands.”
It’s sort of incredible, the way Beatrice doesn’t hesitate. She pulls a set of keys out of a hidden pocket in her dress and turns the lock on the front door. She hustles down the stone steps and practically flies into the passenger side of the Jeep, leveraging herself up with the handle above the door. She buckles her seatbelt and gives me an impatient look, her hand thrust forward out the window.
“What the hell are you waiting for, then? Let’s go.”
“One more thing.” I hold my phone between my ear and shoulder, backing up into the alleyway between the buildings. It rings twice before I’m greeted with a flurry of Spanish. I wince when I look at the clock. It’s likely I interrupted her morning re-run viewing.
Her huff sounds metallic on the other end of the phone as I turn towards Lovelight. “Lo siento, abuela. I need a favor.”
TWENTY
LAYLA
I don’t quite knowhow he managed it, but I think Caleb’s pulled off the impossible.
The entire bakehouse is a flurry of activity, from Gus aggressively pulling down dried blooms in the front to Beatrice whipping something into submission at my side. I haven’t seen Caleb since he dropped Beatrice off at my backdoor and went running off through the trees again, but I know he’s been in and out. I get a whiff every now and then of dark coffee. Hear the low sound of his voice over the steady thrum of organized chaos that’s descended over my kitchen.
His grandmother arrived shortly after he left with a fleet of his cousins. She took one look at my face, grabbed both of my cheeks in her weathered hands, and said something fierce and determined in Spanish. She then smacked me on the ass and told me to chop some strawberries.
So I chopped the strawberries.
Beatrice drops another tray of shortcake in front of me and thrusts a small round cookie cutter against my chest.
“Cut these,” she says. “Then hand ‘em off.”
I don’t have my picture perfect miniature tartlets with an edible flower halo or the chocolate mousse cups I spent a painstaking amount of time on, but I do have six trays of warm shortcake and a generator pumping power into the place. I have functioning ovens and more helping hands than I know what to do with, a veritable conveyor belt of productivity made up of Stella, Evelyn, Beatrice, two of Caleb’s cousins and a couple of other people from town. Barney, one of Beckett’s farmhands, is shockingly good at cutting the strawberries into tiny flowers. And I’ve never seen anyone whip shortcake filling better than Alex Alvarez.
