My Life Just Turned Pineapple Upside Down Cake—
unprepared for the anxiety of flipping it out of the tin
I squint at my phone, trying to understand why in the heck it’s yelling at me. Slowly I register my childhood bedroom and my son’s knee digging into my back, remembering setting my phone alarm for the 10:00 a.m. “meeting time” my mother insisted on. After a couple of seconds of resistant grumbling, I accept that there’s no possibility of going back to sleep, which is also the moment the events from last night spill into my consciousness. I bolt upright, the awkward motion jostling one leg onto the floor. It doesn’t help that the bed is full-sized and my nine-year-old is occupying ninety-three percent of it.
The motion does nothing to wake Spence, who continues to sleep soundly, mouth open and splayed out like a starfish. We’re both night owls, which I’m eternally grateful for. I’ve told him several times that if he was one of those kids who got up at 5:00 a.m. with a bounce in his step I’d trade him in for a goldfish.
I squint at my disheveled self in my vanity mirror and decide I look exactly how I feel. For a split second, I consider changing out of my Grinch onesie before going downstairs, knowing my mother will frown about it, but I don’t want to risk waking Spence. Kids have spookily accurate radar for sleep defiance. When you need them to get up, you could blast music and jump on the bed with no result. But when you really want them to stay asleep, all you have to do is breathe too loudly and they spring up spouting fun facts you don’t understand about YouTube videos. And right now, I’d rather he didn’t overhear what is bound to be a difficult conversation. So instead, I quickly run a hairbrush through my hair and tiptoe out of the room, easing the door shut behind me.
The smell of fried potatoes drifts past me and quickens my step on the stairs.
“Mmmm.” At least there’s food.
I follow the yummy scent into the dining room, hoping like hell my mother hasn’t heard about the benefit yet. “That smells delicious . . .” I say, stepping through the doorway, figuring my cheery mood will make it easier to break the news to her. But instead of finishing my compliment, my voice trails off and I stop dead in my tracks.
There, sitting at my dining room table like he has any right, is Wilder Buenaventura.
My mother freezes, too, possibly stunned by her dawning horror at my attire.
I whip my eyes to her, instantly remembering her missed call last night, and curse myself for not checking to see if she left a message. Did she invite him here to make me apologize like I’m five years old? Because I won’t.
The only person who does not look completely put out is Wilder, who sips his coffee and leans back in his chair, his overwhelmed look from last night noticeably absent. “Maddi,” he says by way of hello, a small smile appearing on his lips.
And seeing it stings—a smile I once searched for, one that made me feel grounded and whole before it didn’t. Before he changed everything in one fifteen-minute conversation. One day he’s enthusiastically planning a romantic outing to a bakery in Salem and the next he just wants to be friends, giving no viable explanation. The problem was we were never just friends; we were something infinitely more entangled and confusing, attached to each other for our entire lives, spending every waking hour together as kids and then sharing more intimate parts of ourselves as teens. Wilder was my first everything, and I was his. And I could have forgiven him for all of that. In fact, I did, many times. But it didn’t matter because when I needed him most he wasn’t there.
I feel the pang of my old naiveté like a slap in the face.
“What is he doing here?” I say, pointing at him like I’m accusing them both of some nefarious conspiracy.
“As you can see, he’s eating breakfast,” Mom says matter-of-factly. “Now if you’ll just go upstairs and get dressed—”
“No,” I say stubbornly. Not a chance.
“Well, really Madeline, do you think it’s appropriate?” Mom says, her frown deepening and her ever-present ruffled shirt seeming to deflate in an effort to match her dismay.
And then Wilder has the nerve to add, “I don’t mind, really,” like I give a flying rat’s ass if he’s bothered by my pajamas!
I glare at him. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m sure he was just about to leave.” He couldn’t have thought coming here was a good idea. Is he trying to get back at me for yelling at him last night?
His eyebrows rise behind his coffee cup. “Am I?”
My mother clutches her chest, like my impropriety is causing her heart palpitations. “No, Wilder, you’re not. For heaven’s sake, Madeline, he’s here for the same reason you are—to discuss your father’s will.”
Even though I’m standing still, I lose my footing.
My father’s will? But that’s . . . That’s not . . . WHAT?! My thoughts tumble over one another in a jumbled mess with no plausible explanation within reach.
“Sit,” my mother says in a tone that leaves no room for argument, gesturing at the spot across from Wilder.
I’m so taken aback that I comply, my racing pulse unsteady.
She places food in front of me and I stare at it in confusion, looking anywhere but at Wilder. But in my peripheral vision, I can’t help but notice he’s dressed in a black, long sleeve T-shirt with a chunky gray cardigan over it—one with large wooden buttons that looks like it was designed for the explicit purpose of making people look elegant and casual all at the same time, probably hand-knit by grandmas in Ireland from the virgin wool of cashmere sheep butts. I scowl and pour a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table, deciding that whatever is happening cannot be endured without caffeine.
I want to say that Mom could have warned me that he’d be here, but that would only be admitting to him that I might have acted differently had I known, which I would not have. I would have worn this Grinch onesie proudly either way . . . I think.
My mom takes her seat between us at the head of the table, stirring cream into her tea. “Right,” she says, concluding a thought she hasn’t shared, “might as well get started.”
Wilder nods, but I don’t say a word. Having him here is so outrageous that I can’t muster a response that doesn’t involve profanity.
“I was contacted a few weeks ago by our lawyer, Mr. Horowitz,” she begins. “It seems Charles had an addendum to his will that I was unaware of.”
The sound of my dad’s name makes it suddenly hard to breathe. I look at Mom, expecting to find frustration in her expression. As private as my parents were, they never withheld information from one another. But she doesn’t seem put out the way I’d expect.
“When was the addendum written?” I ask quietly, wondering why the lawyer only just revealed it.
“A couple of months before your father passed,” she replies, and the last word seems to take a physical toll on her, inflicting a heaviness that now reverberates in my own chest. But Dad passed of a heart attack, so this timing doesn’t explain anything.
Mom unfolds the piece of paper next to her plate, taking her glasses from the breast pocket of her blazer. She sighs, opening her mouth to read, but hesitates.
“If it’s easier,” Wilder says with genuine concern, “I’ll happily offer to read it for you.”
My eyes flick to his face, my annoyance surging at his continued intrusion into this deeply personal moment. But I don’t say anything, my voice lost in my tight throat.
“No, that’s quite all right. But thank you,” Mom says and concentrates on the paper once more. “I, Charles DeLuca, declare this to be a codicil of my will, to take effect one year after my death.” She begins slowly. “All allocations are to remain the same, with the exception of There’s Nothing Batter Bakery, which I previously bequeathed to my wife, Eleanor DeLuca, should she survive me.”
My heart thunders in my chest and my stomach twists, guilt grabbing ahold of me like a fierce undertow.
Dad sits on the couch across from me, placing his glass on the table between us. “You’ve been here for less than forty-eight hours and you’re already leaving,” he says like an accusation.
I shift uncomfortably. “My job—” I start.
“Your job at that restaurant,” he says like it’s a fast-food place.
I frown. “Yes, my job at that Michelin-starred restaurant.”
“Where you’re working for free,” he continues.
My chest tightens as he diminishes my accomplishment. “I’m in training, which is how things are when you start.”
“Madeline, don’t snip at your father,” my mother says, stirring her teacup and taking a seat next to my dad. Always in league, these two, so much so that I often feel like I’m on the opposing team.
I open my mouth and close it again, shaking my head instead of voicing the obvious. There’s no winning here.
My mother looks from my dad to me. “I think what your father’s trying to say is that you have a perfectly good job here in Haverberry Cove, yet you prostrate yourself to these flashy Hollywood types for no reason.”
I exhale, trying to rein in my reaction. I worked nights for years so I could put myself through culinary school. I worked my way up from bad to mediocre restaurants, proving my skill in each one, finally landing a job working for one of the best pastry chefs in LA, and they dismiss it like it was nothing. “Besides the fact that I don’t want to live here,” I say, hurt and frustrated. “Working at the bakery in Haverberry is your dream, Dad, not mine. I prefer to make my own way in LA.”
My mother’s eyes widen. “That’s your father’s life’s work you’re talking about. A little respect.”
Why did I come back here? Why did I think it would be any different? “But it’s okay to dismiss everything I’ve done for the past five years?”
“This Los Angeles life isn’t you, all these nouveau riche people trying to step on each other to get ahead,” Mom says with a wave of her hand like I’m too young to see myself clearly. You’d think she was the queen instead of a housewife to a modest baker. “If things had gone the way they were supposed to you’d have gone to Vassar and you’d be here working with your father.”
My eyes flit to Dad, but he stares at the fireplace, his eyebrows pushed forcefully together. From the time I was little, I talked endlessly about growing the bakery. Mom wanted me to go to school first, Vassar, she suggested, just like she and her mother had, so I could learn everything there was to know about business and then bring that knowledge home with me. And I loved the idea, clung to it, maybe because I was on a mission to gain her impossible approval or maybe the reason was softer and more fragile than that, my way of claiming both my parents, binding us together like the unit I so desperately wanted us to be. But things are different now—they’re broken—and there’s no way to put the pieces back together.
I press my lips into a hard line. It always comes back to this. “By things going the way they were supposed to, you mean if I hadn’t gotten pregnant?”
Dad sighs and shakes his head. “You get so worked up, Madeline. You’re so busy being angry with me and your mother that you miss what’s right in front of you.”
My mother looks up at me for a split second and my eyes search hers. “Ownership of There’s Nothing Batter Bakery shall heretofore be transferred to my daughter, Madeline DeLuca.”
Guilt thumps along with my pulse, thundering in my temples and making me contract.
Mom pauses. “And to Wilder Buenaventura in equal parts.”
My heart stutters and I choke on my coffee, wiping it from my mouth with the back of my hand. My mind does somersaults, trying to make sense of her words—her nonsensical impossible words.
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 it to 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 say punishing 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’t need it,” 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 I don’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.”
His eyes meet mine. “With ice cream?”
“Is there another way?”
He pulls his arm down in victory. But before he exits the room, he looks at Wilder. “I like your sweater,” he says, nodding thoughtfully. “But I get the sense my mom doesn’t like you, and like she says, ‘clothes don’t make the man.’” Then he leaves without another word.
I don’t bother explaining his recent honesty obsession or try to make the situation more comfortable for anyone. I just turn on my heel and head for the kitchen. I’m certain my mother is staring daggers at my back, but I also know she’s not going to stop me—Eleanor does not make scenes. And while I get that I’m leaving before the conversation is over, I’m also physically unable to spend one more minute in a room with Wilder without murdering him.