by Fiona Grace
Ali was starting to feel a little embarrassed now. She wasn’t up to speed with a lot of youth culture, but took comfort in the fact Piper seemed as confused as she did.
“You’ll have to enlighten me. What is Mad Frank’s?”
“Only the premier competitive eating championship contest in the entire world.”
“Wait,” Ali said. “Is that what the stage is for at the pier?”
“That’s right,” he replied. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a neon red and gold flyer. He handed it to Ali.
“Mad Frank’s Gobble-Down,” she read aloud, as her eyes scanned the bright, glossy flyer. “Everyone’s favorite chow-down, chew-athon championship is back, and this time with a twist. Join Mad Frank and your favorite fatties for the world’s first ever double-dog gobble-down.” She raised her eyes to look at the man, blinking her perplexity. “What’s a double-dog gobble-down?”
“Two hot dogs in one go,” he replied, and he cricked his neck like a boxer getting ready for the ring.
“Right…” Ali murmured. She scanned the rest of the text on the pamphlet. “Watch your favorite eaters battle it out on the California coast. Featuring Beauty Queen Eunbi Choi, Bottomless Pit Bob…” She looked up at the man. “That’s you! ‘…and reigning champion Gilbert The Gobbler’. Well, there you go. You hear that, Pipes? There’s a competitive eating competition rolling into town, and we have a famous eater in our midst!”
From her place behind the wooden counter, Piper became suddenly very excited. She’d been lingering back this whole time but now she rushed out hastily.
“So are you, like, a celebrity?” she asked, racing across the peppermint checkerboard tiles toward Bottomless Pit Bob.
Ali rolled her eyes. Piper was always so enamored with celebrities. Five seconds ago she’d been calling this man gross. Now suddenly she was fawning all over him.
“Yes, I am,” Bob said. “Want a signature, sweetheart?”
“Yeah!” Piper gushed. She eagerly snatched the pamphlet out of Ali’s hand and held it out to him to sign. “Like, how does it work? Is it always hot dogs? I’ve never been to an eating contest before.”
“There’s different foods for each event,” Bob explained, producing a pen seemingly out of nowhere and pulling off the lid with his teeth. “Hot dogs, bagels, burgers, steaks. Pretzels.” He awkwardly attempted to scrawl his signature with his non-injured arm. “Mad Frank is always trying to push the envelope, and this year he’s hosting the first ever double-dog event. The competitors will get ten minutes to down as many dogs as possible. The world record for hot dogs is seventy-six.” He flexed and handed the signature out to Piper with a wink. “My personal best is seventy.”
Ali’s stomach turned as she imagined seventy hot dogs stuffed inside of it, and she cupped her hands instinctively over her belly, like a pregnant woman protectively cradling her growing bump.
“Well, let’s hope that broken arm doesn’t slow you down, huh?” she said, nodding at the very messy signature he’d scrawled onto the flyer. “Looks like you broke your dominant hand.”
She’d meant it lightheartedly, but Bob instantly stiffened and went straight-backed in his chair.
“It won’t,” he said, defensively.
Her comment seemed to have made him a little guarded. Ali wondered if she’d touched a nerve.
“Well, Bottomless Pit Bob, I’d better get started on your batch of cookies,” she said, glad to excuse herself. “Can’t hold up a genius at work.” She looked at Piper, who was still lingering at Bob’s table like a fruit fly to a banana. “Pipes,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Can you give our customer some breathing room?”
Piper snapped to attention. “Right. Yes. Sorry.”
As she walked alongside Ali in the direction of the adjoining kitchen door, she got her cell phone out and started texting her friends about her most recent celebrity run-in.
“The next few days are going to be interesting,” Ali mused aloud. “A competitive eating contest? I wonder what sort of crowd that draws in…”
Piper wasn’t really listening anymore. She seemed glued to her cell phone.
Ali reached the steel swing doors to the kitchen and was about to push them open when her ruminations were interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing over the door.
She halted and looked back, expecting to see a customer entering the store. Instead, it was the postman. He came in holding a thick package.
“Miss Sweet?” he asked, looking from her to Piper and back again.
“Oooh, that’s me!” Ali exclaimed. Most of her mail these days was bills, so a package was very exciting.
The postman handed her a clipboard with a paper to sign. She wrote her signature hurriedly, her hand trembling with anticipation. But as the postman took the signed form from her and handed over the package, Ali instantly recognized her mom’s handwriting. Her stomach began to churn nervously. She knew exactly what was contained within the package…
“Whatcha got?” Piper asked, peeping nosily over her shoulder.
Ali hugged the package protectively to her chest. “Nothing.” She looked at Piper. “You know, how about you carry on working the counter? I think I’d like some quiet baking time.”
“Are you sure?” Piper asked. “I figured you’d want to switch. I’ve barely lifted a finger all day!”
“Yes, yes, it’s fine,” Ali replied, already pushing the steel door open with her shoulder. She just caught sight of Piper shrugging before the doors flapped shut and she was alone in the privacy of her kitchen.
Ali looked down at the package in her now trembling hands. She knew exactly what was inside. And she knew the moment she opened it, her whole life would change forever.
CHAPTER TWO
Ali sat on the stool at the steel food preparation station, hands shaking, and tore open the package. Then she tipped it up and shook.
Just as she’d anticipated, the contents from inside came sliding out, fanning across the steel counter. Letters. Tons of them. Of various shapes and sizes. Some so old the pen on the front had faded so it was barely legible. Some so new the envelopes were crisp and crinkle free. There were so many letters that Ali felt immediately overwhelmed.
Her heart hammered. She picked up the closest envelope and flipped it the right way around. At the sight of her father’s handwriting, she sucked in a sharp breath.
It had been sixteen years since she’d received any word from her father—a letter, call, card, or anything—and the nostalgic familiarity of seeing his handwriting knocked all the air out of her.
She clutched the letter in her shaking hands, reading and rereading her old childhood address on the front. It was the home she’d once lived in peacefully with two parents, a sister, and a brother, before the divorce had changed everything. The home her mother still lived in now.
Ali glanced at all the letters lying in front of her and couldn’t help but feel hurt that her mom had hidden them away in secrecy from her for all these years. It had only been a few weeks since Georgia Sweet had even admitted to her that the letters existed, explaining she’d kept them hidden away in the belief it would protect her daughter from more harm. And when she had promised Ali she would send the letters on, Ali had really only half expected her to make good on her promise—if she’d kept these letters hidden for so many years, what was another few? But to her surprise, her mom had come through and made good on her promise, and now here was the irrefutable proof that her father had not forgotten about her. That he had never erased her from his mind.
As Ali looked at the culmination of sixteen years’ worth of futile, one-sided communication, she wondered if there’d been a part of her that hoped her mom wouldn’t send them on, at least for a little while longer. Just seeing them now was sending her into a tailspin.
Ali had last seen her father when she was eighteen, shortly after graduation which he’d failed to turn up at. They’d had a huge falling out over it, and Ali had declared
she never wanted to see him again. She, as a stubborn teenager, was not going to be the one to cave first. Her father, she assumed, would be the bigger man, apologize, and at least attempt to repair their relationship. Instead, Ali felt that he’d just let her drift away. Their relationship had turned into special occasion cards and nothing more. At least, so she thought.
Yet here she was, sixteen years later, staring down at the culmination of his attempts to repair their relationship. Attempts, he presumably thought, had reached her and been rejected.
Her heart ached as she realized he’d never actually given up. Despite the wall of silence his letters had been met with, he’d kept on writing them.
Ali wondered if there was a similar box worth of letters for Hannah and Teddy. Hannah was emotionally blunt and hated to drag up the past, so she’d likely been more firm and decisive with Richard. Teddy had also had a huge blow-up with him, since the divorce had happened shortly after he’d come out as gay and he always conflated the two. But Ali, as the youngest, didn’t understand any of her older siblings’ misgivings, and was always welcoming of their dad whenever he was around, and just as loving toward him as if he’d never moved out. Until she’d become a teenager.
She picked up another letter, shocked to see with her own eyes by the date on the postmark that this one had been delivered over a decade earlier. A decade? What had she been doing a decade ago? She’d been twenty-four, fresh out of culinary school, busy applying for scholarships abroad. That was before France and Milo Baptiste. Before LA and Otis. Before Eclairs. Her father had missed out on so much, and Ali felt a big fat tear plop from her eye as an onslaught of memories came at her.
She turned the letter over and was about to open it when she stopped herself. This was the closest she’d come to “hearing” her father’s voice since she was a teenager and she just couldn’t go there. Not quite yet.
Just then, the beep-beep-beep of the oven alarm pulled Ali’s attention back to reality. There was still work to be done, and though serving a competitive eater batch after batch of baked goodies seemed even sillier now than it already did, Ali leapt at the opportunity for distraction. She’d had no idea how much emotion would be dredged up just from seeing those letters. She’d need to be very kind to herself and choose the best moment to actually read one.
She retrieved the cookies from the oven, her mind turning over and over as she did. Then she went out onto the bakery floor, the sudden brightness of the hot California sun streaming in through the windows breaking her from her ruminations. She drew up beside Piper at the wooden counter and placed the still steaming cookies down on the surface. The scent of yummy, sugary, fresh-baked dough wafted through the air.
“How is he doing?” Ali asked, nodding at Bob looking very out of place in the window, framed by the beach, ocean, and boardwalk. “Do you think he’ll be finished anytime soon?” She grimaced once again at the thought of all that food sloshing around in his guts.
Piper shook her head of glossy blond hair. “He’s still going strong. It’s kind of mesmerizing. I guess I won’t be able to actually watch the contest though, will I? Since I’m scheduled to work…”
“We can figure something out,” Ali murmured in reply, her mind already going back to her father now the moment of distraction had passed.
Out of her peripheral vision, Ali saw Piper’s head turn toward her. She felt her eyes roving all over her.
“Ali? What’s wrong?”
Ali faltered. She didn’t want to tell Piper about her father’s letters yet. She knew her friend would only try and coax her into reading them, and she didn’t feel ready. But her earlier tears must have turned her face blotchy, and now she had to say something. She silently cursed her pale Celtic genes and turned to face Piper.
“I’m fine. The package was from my mom.”
Piper’s gaze darted all over Ali’s features questioningly. Like Ali, she’d been living in anticipation of the promised letters. Though she was a mere passenger in the saga of Richard Sweet’s disappearance, she took an active role when it came to emotional support. “And?”
Ali hesitated. She knew as soon as she brought Piper up to speed, everything would change. She’d be faced with external pressure and advice and opinions. But maybe that outsider’s perspective was just what she needed. When it came to her father, her thoughts could be extremely conflicted.
“It’s letters from my dad,” she confessed.
Piper nodded with acknowledgment. She squeezed Ali’s arm kindly. “I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk.”
Ali immediately felt some of the heaviness on her chest lift. Piper’s mouth ran away with her sometimes, but when it really mattered, she always came through. Ali was glad she’d taken the risk to hire her.
“Thank you,” she said with deep, true gratitude. “But I think right now, I just want to bury my head in baking. Meditative tasks, as Delaney would say.” She offered a small smile, hoping to reassure her assistant that she wasn’t about to have a nervous breakdown. “Has Bottomless Pit Bob put in his next order?”
“We’re back around to cupcakes,” Piper told her.
“Forty-eight cupcakes, coming right up,” Ali said.
*
Back in the kitchen, Ali went through the motions of preparing cupcake batter. She was so well practiced at baking now she could practically do it with her eyes shut. Or in this case, with her attention glued to a pile of unopened letters. And when she suddenly had a batch of cupcakes ready to put in the oven to bake, it surprised even herself.
She shut the oven door and turned to look at the letters strewn across the metal counter. Suddenly, she had a thought. While it might be too much at the moment to read the letters, that didn’t mean she couldn’t get something useful out of them.
She rushed over and snatched up the first envelope. Her father had not put a return address on any of them, but she could still find out from the postmarks roughly where he was now residing. That felt like a safe first step. Once she knew where in the world he was physically located, maybe she’d then be able to get the guts up to read his words and invite his voice into her inner ear again.
Ali sank into the swivel stool with a renewed sense of vigor and began sifting through the letters, looking at the dates of the postal stamp to find which one had been sent most recently. They were from the most random of places. Arizona. Oklahoma. Illinois.
Is there anywhere he hasn’t been? she thought, curiously, picturing her father in a Cadillac driving across the country.
Suddenly, it felt like a puzzle. A game. A challenge. Ali’s inner sleuth roared to life. She could much more easily separate her emotions from the actual situation now that she had something fun to focus on.
She began to jot down all the letters’ locations and corresponding dates. Then she got out her cell phone, opened a map app, and plotted them all onto it.
When she was done, she sat back to assess the map in its entirety. She took a sharp inhalation of surprise. To her surprise, her father had spent the last sixteen years traveling on the famous Route 66. All the way from Santa Monica to Chicago and back again, more than once.
“What are you up to?” Ali murmured aloud.
The map app decided to pop up some Route 66 statistics for her. It covered eight states. Two thousand four hundred miles. Three time zones. It took three weeks to travel from end to end at a normal tourist speed.
“Unless you’re Richard Sweet,” Ali commented, with a small twitch of a smile. “In which case it takes you sixteen years.”
As Ali stared at the map she’d plotted, another piece of the puzzle suddenly materialized before her eyes. There was a common denominator for every place her father had been: a local RV park.
“He lives in an RV!”
It made perfect sense. That’s why her father hadn’t left a return address—he had no fixed abode. That was also why he’d lived in such random, far-flung locations.
Ali conjured the image of her father as she reme
mbered him. He had always been such a restless soul. A dreamer who struggled being tied down to one place. After the divorce he must’ve decided to travel. Was that the reason so much time elapsed between his visits to her as a child? Because he was always driving around the country?
Just then, Piper whirled into the kitchen. “What happened to those cupcakes?”
Ali jumped up off the stool. She whirled to face the oven. She’d been so distracted she’d forgotten to set the timer. Luckily, her sleuthing had not taken so long the food had burned.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, racing to the oven. “I got distracted.”
“Don’t worry,” Piper said, flopping down onto the swivel stool Ali had just vacated and theatrically laying her head on her arm across the metal tabletop. “Bob got a phone call and left in a hurry. He didn’t even pay.”
“What?” Ali exclaimed, dumping the metal tray of cupcake bases onto the surface with a clatter.
Piper jumped up, startled. “He said Mad Frank will settle the bill.”
“He’d better,” Ali said.
She sank onto the stool next to Piper. Her assistant was eyeing the stack of letters. She picked one up.
“You haven’t opened this one,” she said. “Wait. You haven’t opened any of them…”
“Not yet,” Ali said. “I decided to do something else first.” She retrieved her cell from her pocket and brought up the map app, then turned the screen toward Piper. “This is what my dad’s been doing for the last sixteen years. I plotted his entire life using postal stamps.”
Piper’s green eyes widened as she took the phone from Ali and took in the map. “Ali!” she said, with a tone of excitement. “This is so cool! This is the closest you’ve gotten to finding your dad, like, ever!”
Ali’s conflicted feelings swirled inside of her. She knew the moment Piper got involved her emotions would get mixed up and confused, and that was exactly what was now happening.
“Yup,” she murmured.