Page 101 of Mom Com

My eyebrows push together, trying to understand. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Everything,” he says with meaning. “Because at the time my mother was already harping on me about college, about going to Oxford and taking over the family business. But of course, you and I had planned to go to—”

“Vassar and the Culinary Institute,” I say, suddenly catching on to what he’s implying and feeling a little breathless.

“Right,” he says, and turns fully toward me like he needs me to see that this is important. “And the less I budged on that decision the more insistent she got. My mother began to see you as the root of the problem. So, when she found the deed error, she didn’t just correct it the way she might have a year earlier. Instead, she brought it to me. Explained what a huge expense it’d be if your dad had to tear out that wall and rebuild—the wall that supported all the hookups for the sinks and housed the brand-new custom ovens.”

My mouth opens, my throat suddenly tight. “He spent his savings putting in those ovens.”

“I know,” he says, and my chest feels so heavy that I fear my ribs will crack from the pressure.

“Your mom...” My voice is so low it’s only a notch above the crackling fire. “Told you to break up with me and go to Oxford or she’d ruin my dad’s business?”

“Yes,” he says, and all the air whooshes out of me. “If I did what she wanted, she’d redraw the deed. That was the deal. The push and pull... It was my fault. I couldn’t seem to stay away from you, and occasionally my self-control would slip, and I’d tell you how I really felt. Those girls I dated in high school? Asking someone else to the prom? I was literally doing everything in my power to distract myself from you and still I failed.”

It’s as though he just inserted a missing piece into the clock of our past, the gears finally clicking into place. Every time I asked him to explain himself, he’d shut down. Every time it seemed like we were getting closer, he’d pull away. He’d tell me he cared, and then shut me out again. “How could you never tell me this?”

He sighs. “At first, I thought I had to keep it from you. That if you knew the truth, we’d never stay away from each other, no matter the consequences. I thought my mother would eventually figure it out and your dad and the bakery would take a huge hit, one my mother so clearly explained they wouldn’t recover from. That bakery was your life, Maddi. It was your dad’s. I couldn’t let that happen.”

I swallow, the implications of what he’s saying over-whelming me.

“And as time went on, I didn’t tell you because I thought you hated me, justifiably so. I even convinced myself that you were better off without me, that knowing would only hurt you more.” He rakes his hand through his hair.

“What changed?” I manage, my world spinning.

He shakes his head. “Honestly... I don’t know. But about a year and a half ago something shifted. My parents asked me to come back to Haverberry to start learning the family business. And it didn’t sound like the worst idea. I was in a bad spot. I’d broken things off with my fiancée in France six months earlier and given up my bakery in London. I was lost.” He scratches his eyebrow. “After I came back, I stopped by the bakery to see your dad. He said I was welcome there anytime. And I thought, yeah, actually, that sounds nice. It’d be a perfect break from everything else.”

I look briefly at my hands in my lap, remembering a time when I felt the same.

“It started as a once-in-a-while thing. I’d drop in on your dad in the early morning and help him get things ready for the day. Or sometimes he and I would work on a new recipe in the evenings.” He glances toward the fire like he’s remembering. “We didn’t talk much, about things that weren’t baking, that is. And I appreciated that. It was the one place I could just be. Most days we worked in companionable silence.”

I nod sadly, because just hearing it makes me remember the comfort I once found in moving quietly around my dad, trading ingredients and commenting on cake decorations.

Wilder pulls his gaze from the fireplace and looks at me. “Then one day, he brought you up, asked me why I never talked about you. It took me by surprise, like someone reached into my chest and shook my heart awake. I don’t know why, I really don’t, but I told him the truth.”

It takes me a second to catch his meaning. “About the deed?” I say, my voice betraying my shock. “Does my mother know—”

He shakes his head. “Your father thought it best to keep it between us. Thought your mom and mine might lose their friendship over it.”

I press my lips together, biting back my response that maybe they should. But the moment I think it, I feel bad. My dad was trying to protect her; can I really begrudge him that? Then it hits me: “So that’s why my dad left you half the bakery? He was settling the debt of the deed?”

But instead of nodding, Wilder looks shy again. “Actually... no, that wasn’t it.”

Wilder leans over the arm of the couch and opens a tiny drawer in the end table. Only what he pulls out of it stops my breath. A letter, just like the one my mother gave me, only with Wilder’s name on the envelope instead of mine.

“When did she...” I start, my voice trailing off as he hands it to me.

“The day we read the will,” he says, answering my question even though I can’t seem to get it out.

I hesitate before opening the envelope, not sure what I’m going to find in there or that I’ll be able to keep it together in front of Wilder.

He leans his elbows on his knees, looking down at his hands. “If you prefer,” he says gently, “I can give you a minute alone—”

“No,” I reply, not even sure why I’m so adamant about it. This would certainly be more comfortable without him, but in a way, it also feels like the easy way out. If he’s brave enough to tell me all of this, to show me his letter, then I’m brave enough to read the thing in front of him.

I exhale, steeling myself and sliding the letter out, written on the same stationery that mine was.

Dear Wilder,