Dark Chocolate Crow Pie—
served with a dollop of whipped humiliation and a shard of cocoa nibs praline
The afternoon and evening are infinitely less dramatic than the day before, but the tension between me and Mom is still thrumming below the surface, and I can tell Spence is worrying about it. So, I suggest we make a whole slew of Christmas treats, including Mom’s favorite eggnog cookies to cheer her up.
Mom goes shopping once again, which is the most I’ve seen her leave the house since we arrived. Spence gives her our “apology” cookies when she returns, and she oohs and aahs over them. But when he tells her I made them with him, she brushes past my involvement and pulls him into the living room to show him some of her spoils, including a wreath for the front door and an early present for him. While I’m thrilled to see the worry lines eased on my kid’s face, I fear I’m developing my own. It’s not that being on bad terms with my mother is anything new, but this level of friction is reminiscent of those horrific weeks before I moved to California. And it’s bringing back that old itch to run as far from her as I possibly can, whatever the personal cost.
After an awkward few minutes of standing in the living room doorway where it becomes obvious I’m a third wheel, I retreat to the kitchen, cleaning up from our dinner and day of baking. By the time I finish, I’ve made a promise to myself that I won’t let this fight fester, that I’ll speak with her the moment Spence heads to bed.
And I do. I intercept her in the foyer about to ascend the staircase with her nighttime glass of water.
“Mom?” I say, my voice less confident than I’d like.
She sighs. “What is it, Madeline?”
“I just . . .” I begin, feeling strange and unsure. If hugs were rare in this family, discussing feelings was even more so. There was an unspoken rule that after a fight both parties would separate for an undisclosed amount of time, never delving into the shadowy details and instead pretending it never happened in the first place. When the fight was really bad, barbed tones and stiff postures were an aftershock, but even those would eventually fade into the gray area of general resentment. “I was hoping we could talk.”
She glances at the stairs. “I think we’ve both done enough talking for the time being.”
“I’d really like to clear the air,” I say, my tone relaying how bad I feel.
“Yes, well, I’m exhausted,” she says. “It’ll have to wait.”
And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t, I get mad. Why can’t she just say yes? I would never deny Spence the space to talk.
“Was that all?” she asks when I don’t respond.
“I’m going out with Liv,” I say, careful not to let my frustration seep into my voice. “I’m just letting you know.”
“Right. And now you have,” she replies, her tone shifting a degree cooler.
For a moment I’m confused by her reaction; she’s always delighted when I spend time with the Buenaventuras. But then it occurs to me that it was Liv I named as my cohort in the will disparagement. I wince, but she doesn’t see it. She’s already walking up the stairs and away from me, holding up the skirt of her nightgown in one hand.
I stare after her, but she doesn’t look back. Why is this always so hard? Why can’t we have a conversation without it being a screaming match or an evidence locker of disappointments?
I stand at the bottom of the stairs for far too long, thinking about all the things she said regarding my rigid abhorrence of this place and my rejection of Dad’s wishes. And the sick feeling rushes back in. I never decided to hate Haverberry. As a kid I loved it more than anything in the world; the rejection was very much the other way around—Haverberry abandoned me long before I ever left. But once again, doubt takes hold, wrapping its long fingers around my heart and giving a warning squeeze.
I look up at the foyer ceiling for answers I’ll never find, instead deciding to go up and check on Spence. I find him in bed all curled up in his Grinch onesie, eyes closed with a movie playing on his laptop, mouth hanging open. The clock on the bedside table reads 9:01, which is early for him, but it was a big day of holiday baking, and the sleep will do him good. I close his laptop and kiss him on the forehead, texting Liv that I’m ready to get that drink.
She tells me to meet her at the Beach Shack, which isn’t a shack at all, but a beachfront bar and restaurant that’s decorated with driftwood and shells. And even though it takes me all of ten minutes to brush through my hair, throw on a sweater, and drive the 1.5-mile distance, her car is in the parking lot when I arrive, the scratch I inflicted on it no longer visible. My guilt reemerges, easing only slightly when I push through the door into the cheery room.
The Beach Shack smells of coconut tanning oil and earthy wicker furniture. The back wall is made of glass, leading to a patio that’s closed for the winter and trails directly into the sand. And instead of bar nuts, the tables are populated by baskets of handmade salty potato chips that make my mouth water.
Liv is seated at a table near the giant picture window, looking like the cover of a magazine in an emerald-green blouse that has a large Edwardian-esque ruffled collar and a pair of high-waisted black pants with gold sailor’s buttons.
“Maddi!” Liv exclaims as I near the table. She stands to kiss me on the cheek.
I take the cushioned seat across from her where there is already a cocktail waiting for me, something amber-colored in a lowball glass, the kind reserved for strong drinks.
“So, tell me, how’s Haverberry’s favorite baker today?” she asks in an upbeat tone.
I hesitate. While I know it’s just a friendly greeting, her words bring me right back to my argument with my mom and by extension, my awkwardness with Wilder.
“Oh,” she says before I get a chance to respond. “It’s one of those days, huh?”
“It’s most definitely one of those days,” I agree and grab my drink, which I discover is a riff on an Old Fashioned only infused with spices and something fruity like blackberry.
“Anything I can help with?” Liv asks, and I sip my drink again.
I’m about to brush off her question in the name of good old DeLuca avoidance, but for some reason, it isn’t sitting right, like an old coat that’s too tight in the shoulders. “Remember when you said that I might not want to poke into that addendum?”
Liv puts down her drink like she’s preparing for something that’s going to require her full attention.
“I was just wondering,” I say, a little embarrassed by how needy this all sounds; I’ve never been good at asking for help. “Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing here?”
“In trying to leave?” she asks, and I nod. Liv goes quiet for a moment, giving it some thought. “Truth? I don’t know.”
And even though her response is gentle, it hits me hard. Liv wouldn’t lie to me, that much I know.
I sip my drink, embracing the tingly burn it creates in the back of my throat. “I’m telling you, I woke up yesterday feeling like I knew exactly what I wanted and who I was, and now I feel like I have no idea, like maybe I can’t see myself clearly at all.”
She pushes her silky sheet of hair behind her ear. “Shit, Mads, I feel that way at least once a week.”
My eyes whip to her in surprise, ready to call bullshit.
“What?” she says. “It’s true.”
“Liv, you display more decisive confidence in five minutes than most people do in a lifetime.”
She purses her lips, debating whatever she’s going to say next and leaning her elbows on the table to level me in her gaze. “Exhibit A: You know my company? That very very challenging company that takes all my time? The one I built from the ground up and still doesn’t do the things I want it to? Well, as you might imagine, I have trouble allocating responsibility, preferring instead to micromanage the shit out of everything. And while that never bothered me before, lately I’ve been feeling like I’m missing out on something.”
“Missing out on what?” I ask, grasping at her candor and the camaraderie she’s offering.
Liv swishes her drink. “Like maaaybe I want more of a personal life than I let on. Maybe I care more about my relationship with Claudette than I admitted the other day.” She shakes her head like hearing it out loud only makes it more confounding. “And I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. Either the cheer of the holidays finally thawed my scrooge soul, or I really am desperate as fuck. Hard to tell.”
I flash her an understanding smile, ready as always to support everyone’s vulnerability except my own. “I’m glad you told me. And it’s a good thing, Liv, not a bad one.”
“The same way people keep telling you inheriting the bakery is a good thing, not a confusing pile of emotional shit?” she replies.
“Okay, I see your point,” I admit, and give her a sympathetic look. “You want my opinion?”
“No, but I know you’re going to give it to me anyway.”
“You’re right. I am,” I say, aware that even though she’s protesting, she wouldn’t have brought it up unless she wanted feedback. “I think you have way, way too much to offer not to share it with another person.”
“Yeah, well, love has never been easy for me. Even saying the word makes me feel itchy. Maybe it’s the fact that our parents employed nannies to raise us for the first thirteen years of our lives, or maybe it’s just something faulty in my wiring. But fuck if it doesn’t make me want to run.”
“Are you in love with Claudette?” I ask.
Her eyes meet mine. “I have no idea what to do with that question,” she says, which is all the affirmation I need.
“You make time for her,” I say with a small smile. “You make time for people who are important to you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” I agree, once again feeling like this conversation is edging against something I don’t want to look at.
Wilder finds me perched on a boulder at the very end of the beach. The waves lap at the multitude of small rocks congregated on the shore. The town doesn’t sweep the sand this far down the main drag and so the winter rocks pile into heaps, making it impossible to walk on barefoot. Good for finding beach glass and even better for being alone.
“Hey,” he says. “Can we talk?”
While some part of me reflexively warms that Wilder came to find me, I know I’m still too revved up and wish he’d given me space so that I could come to the conversation with some semblance of calm. But I don’t say that, because now that he’s here, I don’t want him to go. Instead, I just nod at the ocean as he sits on the boulder next to me.
“So, Jake . . .” he starts.
My stomach clenches, knowing there’s no way to have this conversation without teetering on the edge of all the things we’ve been ignoring these past months in favor of peace.
“I just want to make sure you’re not going to prom with him because you’re mad at me,” he continues.
“Wait, what?” This isn’t about Wilder lying to me, it’s about his rivalry with Jake? And now that I look at him, I see his usual calm is absent.
“He’s not a good guy, Mads. I don’t want you getting hurt because—” But he doesn’t get a chance to finish because I cut him off.
“As opposed to you, who are such a sterling individual that you planned a whole prom limo without ever telling me?” I say, now fired up in exactly the way I didn’t want.
But this time he’s not balancing me out with his comforting steady tone, he’s matching my frustration. “Look, it’s not like that. Asking Elaina just—”
“Elaina?” I say, my sinking feeling increasing. She’s a gorgeous Cuban-American with a wicked sense of humor and a kind streak a mile long. It’s impossible not to like her. “Are you seriously going to try to tell me that you asked her and then forgot? It just slipped your mind for . . . How long has it been exactly?”
He leans his elbows on his knees, momentarily looking at his hands. “A week.”
I swallow, trying to hold back the wave of hurt and failing, my hormones tap dancing on my nerves. “Tell me, Wilder. Did you hope I just wouldn’t find out so you wouldn’t feel obligated to perform some sort of charity and invite your pregnant friend as a tagalong?”
“Hey,” he says, looking up. “That’s not what’s going on. I could never be embarrassed by you. I don’t know how you could even think that.”
“Maybe because you’re acting like I’m a third-tier friend.”
He hesitates, annoyed at me or himself, maybe both. “Look, things were finally going well with us. I just didn’t want to complicate it by . . . You want the truth? I was actually working up to telling Elaina I can’t go with her.”
I stare at him, my upset spiraling into something unruly. Since I’ve gotten pregnant, it’s as if I vibrate at a more intense frequency, unable to shrug off slights or pull back the reins. It’s one of the reasons I’ve kept to myself so much. But right now, Wilder is poking at my biggest insecurity, the one I try to hide more vehemently than all the rest, the nagging voice that keeps telling me I’ve changed for the worse and that no one will ever love me the same way because of it.
“Fuck your pity,” I fire back. “Don’t you dare break it off because of me. You think I wouldn’t be happy you had a prom date, that I was incapable of handling that news?” I know I’m not doing myself any favors, but it’s too late; I’m strapped to the board and headed down the slope at a dizzying speed, backward.
“Come on, Mads. You know I don’t mean it that way.”
“No, actually I don’t.”
He gives me a look like Please don’t do this.
“Tell me, why would you having a prom date complicate things, as you so clearly claimed?”
He huffs but doesn’t answer, which increases my fire tenfold. This is what we always come to, him and me, a place in a conversation where he just shuts down and lets me dangle with my emotions all on my own. And today I’m not having it.
“Is it because you think I’m still in love with you?” I say, my tone barbed and dangerous. “Because, if that’s the case, I can tell you with the utmost certainty that I most definitely am not.”
He looks out at the ocean, his expression hardening. And I know without a doubt that his emotional drawbridge is lifting, sealing me out.
“Great. Silence,” I say. “I want to say that I’m surprised, but I guess I should have expected this from someone whose mother told them to break up with me.”
Wilder goes so still that I think he might have ceased breathing. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
He looks like he’s falling even though he hasn’t moved an inch. The color drains from his face and then is replaced by tensed muscles. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then explain it to me!” I say, giving him one last chance, imploring him to tell me something that makes sense, something that explains why after seventeen years of friendship he’s suddenly decided to close part of his life off to me.
“Just let it be, Maddi.”
“And if I can’t?” I say, drawing a line in the sand, and even as I do I kind of wish I didn’t.
“Then I guess you can’t,” is all he says. And even though he’s sitting next to me, I feel him slipping away, our truce evaporating into the air like a misty memory.
“Okay then,” Liv says, rolling her glass between her palms, “as long as we’re doing whatever this honesty thing is, let me ask you something. Is the bakery important to you?”
My heart stutters like it hit the brakes too hard. “That’s not—”
“The same thing?” Liv says, finishing my sentence. “Because I would argue that it is.”
I frown.
“Look Mads,” she says, “I know this is tough as shit for you. I’m not diminishing that. But just like you gave me advice, I’m going to give you some. Don’t let what happened all those years ago take away something that might be really good for you now.”
I stare at her, wanting to argue, to tell her she doesn’t actually know what happened all those years ago because she wasn’t there. But I know that’s unfair and more importantly, I know she’s saying it because she cares. “I kind of hate you,” I say, in a tone that suggests the opposite.
“Well good, then I’m on brand.”
We both reach for our drinks.
“You know what?” Liv says, swallowing. “I have an idea.”
I give her the side-eye. “Why does that make me nervous?”
“Because you know it’s going to be on point?”
I’m unconvinced.
“Remember that bet we made? I would argue that I won,” she says, and as I open my mouth to protest, she lifts her hand. “And you, I’m certain would argue that you did. So why don’t we call it a draw?”
“Okay,” I say slowly, not sure what I’m agreeing to. “I think I can get on board with that.”
“Great. Because then we both get to pick a prize.”
Curveball.
“Why didn’t I see that coming?”
“I really can’t answer that for you, Mads. It was broadcast like a mile away.”
I want to laugh, but I’m not sure I’m going to think whatever she chooses is funny. “What kind of prize?”
“Considering our conversation—”
I cut her off. “No, definitely nothing related to our conversation.”
A small smirk appears on her red lips. “Considering our conversation, I think we should each choose something that’ll be good for the other, something that might help us solve these issues we don’t know how to deal with. Not something broad like spend more time with my girlfriend or really think about what the bakery means, but something tangible, like a one-off event just to dip our toes in and see how it feels.”
I stare at her, chewing on the inside of my cheek, both intrigued and wary.
“What do you say? Are you brave enough to run a little experiment with me? Are you still that daring girl who once roller-skated across the teachers’ lunch table because Matt Mazzeo said she didn’t have the balls?”
I huff. “Don’t do that. You know I can’t say no to a dare.”
“How about this, if you’re worried, you can go first. Pick whatever you want, and I promise mine won’t be worse.” But by the way she’s looking at me, we both know she’s got me, that she’s pushing all the right buttons.
I glare at her in response. “A one-off event, right?”
Liv’s smile widens in victory. “Yup.”
“Okay then,” I say. “Give me a minute here.”
“Take all the time you need,” she says, reclining in her chair and popping a potato chip in her mouth.
But it only takes me a moment to run through everything I know about her and her girlfriend, one detail in particular standing out above the rest from that dinner I had at her house last week. “Okay, Liv . . . Invite your girlfriend home for the holidays.”
The calm composure she brandished a minute ago vanishes as she sits up so fast, she chokes on her chip. “Wow. You went right for the throat.”
“What?” I say, the picture of innocence. “Even if she’s spending the holidays with her family, it’ll let her know how much you want to be with her. She’ll think it’s sweet and considering tomorrow is Christmas Eve, it’s a low-risk ask.”
Liv shakes her head. “She’s not spending the holidays with her family. She’s in the city.”
“Oh,” I say, instantly realizing that what I thought was nothing more than a thoughtful gesture is something much bigger, and worse still—I’m the one setting the bar for Liv’s rebuttal. “If you want me to pick something else—”
“I do,” Liv says.
“Okay,” I say, ready to oblige and get us both out of the hot seat. But something stops me. Maybe it’s the conflicted look on Liv’s face or the way she seemed so sad when she talked about loving Claudette. “If you’re really sure.”
“Are you trying to reverse psychology me? Because I invented that game.”
“Actually, no,” I say. “Hand to heart. I’m just making sure that you’re not going to spend the holidays thinking about her and wishing she were here but are just too scared to actually tell her that.”
Liv opens her mouth and closes it again.
“Liv?”
She purses her lips, clearly warring with herself. “Fuck you, Madeline DeLuca. I’ll do it. But I want to be clear that it’s under duress and also that I’m taking responsibility for being the imbecile who came up with this plan.”
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“No, the fact that I don’t want to is exactly why I have to. In fact, I’m going to drive to the city tonight, ask her in person,” she says, and I can’t help but admire her resolve.
“Tonight? But it’s nearly ten.”
“Yup, which is why I’m going to have to cut this evening short,” she says, and takes the last sip of her drink. “But not before I give you your assignment.”
I wince, deeply regretting picking something so big for Liv. What kind of stupid am I?
She assesses me. “Here’s the thing . . . I was thinking about having you write a letter to your dad about the bakery, something that would be just for you, to sort out your feelings.”
“That actually sounds—” I don’t get to say reasonable before she continues.
“But now I’m thinking that’s not quite right, that like me, you’re happy enough to keep your emotions in your head where you can manage the living hell out of them. So instead, I want you to have an honest conversation about the bakery . . . with my brother.”
I gulp. “I don’t think—”
“I want you to tell him how you really feel about the place, lay it all out in the open. No one loves that bakery more than you two. He’ll understand better than anyone. And maybe you’ll get that clarity you’re after, or at least put your decision about leaving in perspective.”
I take a beat, feeling all kinds of uncomfortable. I can barely talk to Wilder about little things much less bare complicated feelings I don’t understand myself. I’m about to tell her no, that she has to pick something else, but before I can formulate a response, she’s typing into her phone.
“Tonight,” she adds, and I just about slide off my chair. “I’m texting him to come here now. That way we both get this done before we come to our senses and call the whole thing off.”
I rub my hands down my face, hoping Wilder’s busy or maybe his phone fell in the toilet. “Liv, this really isn’t a good—”
“He’s on his way,” she says, and looks up at me. “And yeah, it turns out this was a shit idea of the highest caliber, but there you have it. We’re in it now and who knows, maybe it’s exactly what we both need.”
“While I love that you’re trying to look at the bright side here, I’m just not there yet. I’m pretty sure I’d like to hide under this table.”
She laughs. “Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be right there with you, cursing us both.”