Page 16 of Mom Com

Wilder Buenaventura? WILDER BUENAVENTURA?!

My mother reads a couple more sentences, but they don’t compute. I’m frozen in place, my spine rigidly straight.

“Did you just say...” I start, my voice strangled by shock.

“Yes, I did,” my mother replies, her expression unreadable.

I look from her to Wilder, who’s solely focused on me, not giving away whether or not he knew anything about this. She begins to read once more, but I cut her off.

“Wait, hold on...” I press my palms into my temples. “I don’t understand. Dad left me the bakery... and he also left itto Wilder?”

“He did,” my mother reaffirms. How can she be so calm? How can she sit there like a giant emotional bomb didn’t just blow us to smithereens?

I shake my head in staunch denial. “This has to be a joke.” Except my father wasn’t the joking type, especially not about something so important, which only leads me to believe he truly wanted Wilder to have it. And that thought hurts more than any other.

Wilder puts down his coffee cup.

“You may have a look yourself if you’d like,” my mother says. She offers me the paper, but I don’t take it.

“Wilder doesn’t...” I start. “He isn’t family.” It was one thing when my dad left the bakery to my mom. I knew I was a disappointment to him, that we never became the father-daughter baking duo he dreamed of. But this is a stab to the heart, a confirmation that he thought so little of me that he gave half my inheritance to Wilder effing Buenaventura.

Wilder shifts his weight in his chair, his smile gone.

“There’s more if you’ll let me cont—” my mother starts.

“This is not okay,” I blast. “This is just Dad pun—” I stop before I saypunishing me for not being the daughter he wanted. I shake my head, now looking at Wilder. “You don’t need it. Your family practically owns the entire town. You DO NOT NEED my father’s bakery.”

He sighs like he expected my reaction. “No, I don’tneedit,” he says, his voice muted as though he were concentrating hard on a new recipe rather than discussing my future happiness. “But I do want it. Which, I assume, is the point.”

I suck in a sharp breath, his words cutting deep. “And Idon’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

He breaks eye contact with me, shaking his head, like he knew I’d take it here and he doesn’t want to follow.

“Wilder?” I say his name like a warning, wanting to yell that the problem isn’t my reaction, it’s the big fucking curveball of this inheritance.

Wilder frowns, a small sigh escaping his lips. “Let me ask you, how many times have you visited the bakery in the past year? Or the years before that?” His voice is carefully calm and I hate him for it.

“How dare you,” I breathe.

“Madeline,” my mother intercedes in a tone that attempts to diffuse the ratcheting tension. “I know this comes as a—”

But I’m laser-focused on Wilder, hurt humming inside me. “You don’t know anything about me,” I fire back.

“Maybe not,” he says, still far too composed. “But I do know that your father wanted it this way, and I have every intention of respecting that.”

I see red. “And how’s that going to work, Wilder? You’re telling me you’re actually going to take time from your busy life of screwing French models to grace the bakery with your presence? How long before you get bored and run back to Europe?”

He flinches like I slapped him, and in truth, I feel bad for saying it, but I’m currently in the smashing-everything-phase of wounded and too upset to temper it. My mother’s face goes pale. She and my father told me two years ago that he was briefly engaged to a French model. Both Wilder and my mother open their mouths to respond, but a sleepy voice cuts them off.

“Mom?” Spencer says behind me, worry tinting his tone.

I forcibly take a breath and unclench my hands, the mom in me overriding everything else. I stand up, turning away from the table and focusing on my son, who’s wearing a matching Grinch onesie.

“Hey, little man,” I say in an attempt to normalize my voice. “Want me to get you some breakfast? You hungry?”

He looks from me to his grandmother and then to Wilder, sleepy confusion knitting his eyebrows together. “I could eat,” he agrees, his cowlick bouncing with his nod.

“How about this,” I continue, purposefully moving away from the table. “You head into the living room and pick out a holiday movie for us to watch, and I’ll make you a batch of waffles.”