19

Cady

CADY HAD JUST DROPPED TOBY’S CAKE PLATE IN THE SUDSY sink when she heard the thud from the main storeroom floor. She scuttled out of the kitchen and looked to the top of the stairs just in time to make out the Owner’s surly face. He growled at her and then slammed shut his bedroom door.

Toby was right about him—he was a grumpy old man.

Flung carelessly atop the circular counter in the center of the room was the thing that Cady assumed must be the source of the Owner’s rage (as well as the thud)—a single powder blue suitcase, with three small dimples near the left clasp. It looked exactly like the suitcase the curious man in the gray suit had unstrapped from his bicycle (and also quite a bit like the other powder blue suitcases Cady had noticed under the countertop—some sort of collection of the Owner’s, she figured).

Cady stood on her toes at the counter and pried the suitcase open carefully, wondering what about a piece of old luggage could possibly have made the Owner so furious. But all she found, inside one of the pockets, was a small ceramic bird, its yellow beak wide open in a whistle.

Perhaps the Owner really hated birds.

As Cady moved to snap closed the top, something fluttered out of the ripped lining, just flittered to the floor, as though Fate had wanted her to find it. A slip of paper. Cady picked it off the ground. It was brown like a fallen leaf, and brittle with age. Its creases were raised like scars. As she slowly unfolded it, one corner crumbled completely to bits.

PERFECT PEANUT BUTTER

That’s what was written across the top of the paper. Cady bit her bottom lip as she read the recipe. If anything could make a person less of a grump, she thought, it was a cake baked specifically for him. And maybe, if the Owner were just a little less grumpy, Toby might want to stick around a while longer.

He might want Cady to stick around, too.

Cady hadn’t so much as finished the thought, however, when the words of the man in the gray suit scampered into her head. It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are. Cady shook them free. With the recipe clasped gingerly in her fingertips, she shut the suitcase and slid it underneath the countertop with its brothers. Then she headed to the kitchen. There were only a few hours before the bakeoff, and she had a cake to make.