Union Street Bakery (9781101619292) (4 page)

“You know Margaret.” Rachel, her baking done, looked relaxed and content, as if she'd had great sex. “Always late.”

I squared an order pad with the edge of the counter and then gently drummed my fingers over the register keys. “Has she ever been on time a day in her life?”

“Doubtful.” Rachel moved toward me, pulling off her apron. “She'll be here soon. Until then, you can work the register just like you did back in the day.”

“I've spent the better part of the last seventeen years blocking out the hours I worked in the bakery.” In my former bakery days, all I could do was dream of better places to live. “I don't remember anything.”

“It's like riding a bike. You'll pick it right back up. I've posted the prices by the register for quick reference. Now, I've got to get upstairs and wake the girls. They're going to be late for school if I don't.”

Shoving aside unreasonable panic, I nodded. The girls needed their mother more than I did but that didn't ease the tension coiling my gut. “Sure. Fine. Go. Leave me to the wolves. Where's Henri?”

“He left five minutes ago, three baguettes under his arm.”

“Great.” I was alone.

Rachel's brow deepened with renewed tension. “Hey, if you want me to stay . . .”

I shoved out a breath. “No, no. The girls need you. I can do this.”

Rachel nibbled her bottom lip. “You're sure?”

“Very. I'm just being dramatic.”

She nodded. “I have confidence you can man the ship.”

“Remember my last ship, the SS
Suburban
, sunk.”

Rachel grinned, and then vanished up the back staircase to her apartment.

I stood in front of the counter, my shoulders back and my body tense. The cupcake clock on the wall behind me ticked as the cappuccino machine on the counter gurgled and hissed. I drummed my fingers and considered dashing around the counter to clean the front window. But that would mean leaving the safety of the counter, so instead I knelt down and readjusted already military-straight pastries in the case.

Maybe no one would come right away. Maybe Margaret would show and . . .

The bells on the front door jingled as the door opened.

I was so relieved to hear the bells. I smiled, determined to swallow all the nasty Margaret curses I'd readied. I just wanted her here so I could escape back to the kitchen or the office.

I stood but instead of Margaret I saw my first customer since high school back into the shop.

She was a burly black woman wearing a white nurse's uniform, and she was pulling a wheelchair. With practiced ease, the nurse spun the wheelchair around to reveal a very elderly woman sitting hunched forward, her head slightly bent, and her right hand drawn up in a
C
shape. The old woman wore a yellow dress that all but swallowed her thin frame; a pillbox hat, which covered thinned, short hair that looked as if it had just been styled, and her white gloved–hands draped a small rectangular purse. A blue crocheted throw blanketed her legs.

I knew the old woman from back in the day, and though I couldn't recall her name I remembered she had a taste for sweets. Cookies? Pies? No, sweet buns. A half-dozen every single Friday. But it was Monday, not Friday.

I stood a little straighter and offered my best Rachel-esque smile. “Welcome.” The word sounded so rusty. I cleared my throat. “Welcome to Union Street Bakery.”

The wheelchair-bound woman raised her head at the sound of my voice. She studied me as if she were sizing me up. “As I recall, you swore you'd never be caught dead behind that register again.”

The direct clear voice didn't jive with the withered body that looked so painfully fragile. “Excuse me?”

The old woman's clear, bright gaze was as powerful as her voice. “Last time I saw you here, you screamed and hollered like a baby. Said you'd never come back.”

My last day in the bakeshop hadn't been one of my finer moments. A woman had come into the bakery, and I'd sworn she was Renee.
My Renee
. As she'd sipped coffee on the sidewalk café, I kept staring, certain we shared so many similarities. Dark hair. Slim, tall build. Wide-set eyes. She even was eating sugar cookies like the ones my Renee had given me that last day.

A bundle of nerves and tension congealed in my belly and when she rose to leave, I'd panicked, feeling I was about to lose my one and only opportunity to meet my birth mother again. I was certain she'd not recognized the three-year-old that had now morphed into a seventeen-year-old. So I had gathered up the courage, introduced myself, and asked her if she was my birth mother. She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind, but I'd been too emotional to read her expression and so I kept babbling.

“I'm Daisy. And I'm still at the bakery.” I even hugged her.

Her body stiffened like forged iron, and she anxiously glanced around looking for someone to help her. “Really, kid, I don't know you.”

She smelled of Chanel and fresh soap. “You left a daughter here fourteen years ago. That girl is me. I was three at the time.”

Fear had given way to pity in the woman's gaze as she pried herself from my arms. “Honey, I've never been here before. Really.”

“My name is Daisy. I was three when you left me.”

“No, honey,” she'd said softly. “That wasn't me.”

With growing horror, I'd realized my terrible blunder. Shame had burned so hot in my throat I thought I'd pass out.

“You cried like a baby,” the old woman said.

Refocusing on her, I exhaled the breath I'd been holding. “Really?”

Gnarled fingers picked at the edges of the caftan. “Stirred up a real scene.”

Mom had been summoned from the back and had crossed straight to me. As she'd apologized to the woman, she'd tried to calm me, but the more she spoke in soothing whispers, the louder I'd cried.

“Who could just leave a kid like that?” I'd wailed into Mom's sweatshirt.

Carefully the woman had backed away from the table and the nearby faceless customers' chatter had grown unnaturally silent. “I don't know, baby. I don't know. But it had nothing to do with you.”

Sloppy tears rolled down my face. “It had everything to do with me.”

I realized that day that I had been waiting for Renee since she'd abandoned me. I'd been ready to turn down offers to go to college in hopes she'd return and explain her absence in a way that excused everything. I was waiting for her to tell me she loved me.

In that moment, I'd realized Renee was never coming back. Daily fears and hopes of seeing her had been brewing inside of me for as long as I could remember, and I knew then that if I didn't leave, those fears and hopes would eat me alive. My survival depended on me getting out of town and away from Union Street. So I'd grabbed my scholarship to the University of Richmond and ran, swearing never to return.

I slid not-so-steady hands over the apron covering my hips, and I straightened. “You were there that day.”

“I was.”

Just my luck. “You've a good memory.”

The comment pleased the old woman. “People think I can't remember, but I remember it all. The body is failing but my mind is as sharp as a tack.”

Great. She'd used her super-sharp memory to recall the second worst day of my life. I cleared my throat. “What can I get for you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You remember my name?”

“No.”

The woman grunted. “You're young. You should remember.”

Annoyance teased the back of my skull. “I don't remember.”

She coughed, and for a moment struggled to get her breath. The black woman leaned forward, gently patted her on the back, and whispered something in her ear, but the old woman waved her away. “Margaret always greets me by name.”

“Sorry.”

With shaking bent hands, the woman opened the retro purse and pulled out a petty-point change purse. Her hands trembled as she struggled with the purse's clasp. Finally she clicked open the squeaky hinges and dug out a ten-dollar bill. “You said only a sucker would work behind that counter.”

I glanced at the cupcake clock on the wall: five minutes past seven. When did we close for the day? Three? “I'm only here temporarily. I'm helping my sister.”

She smoothed out the rumpled bill. “I heard you lost your job.”

“I'll get another one.”
Keep smiling. Keep smiling.

“Looks like you got one.”

When Margaret showed her pert little face I was going to kill her. Very, very slowly. “May I take your order?”

Her gaze searched the display case now crammed full of cookies, apple and strawberry tartlets, cakes, and all manner of breads. “Six of those sweet buns.”

So I was right about the sweet buns. Too bad I'd not called it out loud before she ordered. I'd always liked the look of surprise on a customer's face when I remembered their favorites.

The nurse leaned forward. “Mrs. W., you know what the doctor says about sweets. Ain't no good for your sugar.”

W.
Wentworth. Welbourne. Williams. I couldn't capture the name.

Mrs. W. waved her away. “I'm ninety-nine, Florence. How much longer you think I'll live anyway? Now bag those sweet buns, Daisy.”

She spoke my name with force as if to say,
I remember you
. Unsettled by the sound of my name, I ducked my head, grateful for a task, and concentrated on arranging six sweet buns in a white pastry box that I carefully sealed with a gold sticker embossed with
UNION STREET BAKERY
. “That'll be nine dollars.”

The old woman raised a trembling, bent hand and offered me the deeply creased bill. She wrapped bony fingers around my wrist when I reached for it. Her touch was cold, but she possessed unexpected strength. “I dreamed about you last night.”

I stiffened. “What?”

“I dreamed about you.” Clear blue eyes pierced right through my skin, making me feel as unsure as I did that last awkward day in the bakery.

Bravado stiffened my spine. “How could you have dreamed about me? You haven't seen me in seventeen years.”

Narrow shoulders shrugged, but her gaze did not waver. “Dreams don't worry about time. They come when they come.”

I pulled my hand free. “I'll get your change.”

She fisted gnarled, pale fingers. “Don't you want to know what I dreamed about?”

“No.”

“Your loss, Daisy.” Mrs. W. ripped the seal on her bakery box, lifted the lid, and pinched a piece of sweet bun. She popped it in her mouth, and for a moment closed her eyes as pure pleasure softened the lines in her face. Finally, she opened her eyes. “You were strolling down by the river with your mama and that little imaginary friend of yours. What was her name?”

My hands trembled a little as they hovered over the register keys. “What are you talking about?”

“The dream.”

“I told you I didn't want to know.”

As if I hadn't spoken, “What was her name?”

“I don't remember.”
Susie.

“You don't know your mama's name?”

“Oh, I thought you meant my little friend.” Irritation snapped. “My mother's name is Sheila.”

“Not that mama, the other one.”

For a few long tense seconds, I was stunned. “No one knew the other one.” I cleared the rasp from my voice, which had suddenly turned unsteady. “She abandoned me.”

“I remember.” She pinched another bite of sweet bun. “I just always thought you'd remember her name.”

I'd not spoken aloud about Renee in years. “Why would I remember her name? I was three when she left.”

“Three's old enough to remember.”

The headline in the
Alexandria Gazette
had read: “Abandoned Bakeshop Baby
.
” “You're remembering the articles in the paper. Mom said the town talked for months about me.”

“I remember the articles. And I remember you with your mama.”

“Mrs. W.,” the old nurse said, her tone low and warning. “Best we get going. This young lady has got work to do.”

Mrs. W. waved a bent hand. “Not yet. I ain't finished.”

How could a crazy old woman know my birth mother? Surely if she'd read the articles and seen Renee she'd have come forward to the police.

Shifting my gaze to the keys on the register, I punched buttons. In my haste, I hit the wrong keys, which required more keypunches as a fix. I tossed in a few silent curses aimed directly at Margaret before the damn register dinged and the drawer finally popped open. I dug out a single and leaned over the counter toward the lady. “One dollar is your change.”

Mrs. W.'s eyes narrowed. “I saw you. You and Mama, plain as day.”

The certainty in the old woman's voice was more evidence of senility, I was sure. “Really?”

For a moment she closed her eyes, her breathing grew very deep, and I thought she might have nodded off. “You ate peppermint sticks by the docks.”

The peppermint reference caught me off guard because I'd always associated peppermint with Renee. I laid her change on the counter. “If you saw us, why didn't you say something when the articles ran? The police searched everywhere for her.”

Leaving the question unanswered, she reached out, scraped the rumpled bill toward her and tucked it in the change purse nestled in her lap. “Funny I should dream about you after all this time.”

Hilarious. The tightness returned to my throat. “The police kept requesting any information. Why didn't you come forward?”

Mrs. W. shook her head. “I didn't have anything to say to the police.”

“Because you didn't know my birth mother.” I needed to convince myself as much as the old lady. “You just think you remembered.”

“I knew her.”