by Lisa Graff
“The contestant’s name?” the woman asked drily, eyes scrolling her clipboard.
“Cadence,” Miss Mallory replied. “Right there.” She pointed. “See?”
“Yes, I do,” the woman answered. She flicked her eyes up to meet Miss Mallory’s. “And I also see that Ms. Cadence already has one guest inside and has not marked down that she’s expecting another. Now unless you can produce your ticket, I’m afraid I must insist you leave.”
“I told you,” Miss Mallory said again, patting her pockets to see if perhaps the ticket had hidden itself inside.
She did not finish the sentence.
There was a tug in her chest just as she reached her hand into her pocket. It was not an especially strong tug, and it was not the sort of tug that Miss Mallory usually felt with her orphans. But it was a tug all the same.
From her pocket, Miss Mallory produced the black ceramic bird, the one she’d found in the suitcase in the woods. She regarded it in her hand a moment.
“Is this yours?” she asked the woman in the chef’s hat.
The woman picked the bird out of Miss Mallory’s palm and, as she took it in, her face began to glow, just a titch. It was the sort of glow Miss Mallory had seen thousands of times before. The sort of glow a person got when she’s found something she never knew she was searching for.
The glow of a perfect match.
“I haven’t seen one of these in years,” the woman said softly. She ran her fingers over the smooth contours of the bird’s back. “My granny always used one of these, every time she made one of her blackberry pies. Baked it right inside with the filling, and the hot air funneled out the beak.” She showed Miss Mallory the small round opening in the bird’s yellow mouth. “Granny always said that was the secret to her flaky crust. How did you . . . ?”
Miss Mallory shrugged. “I just had a feeling it might belong with you.”
* * *
As Miss Mallory picked her way through the bleachers to the spot that Toby had reserved beside him, she glanced over her shoulder just long enough to catch sight of Cady, stirring a dark batter with a pained look on her face. And as Miss Mallory did so, she felt yet another tug in her chest. It was a strong one this time, assertive and dogged, the same heart-yanking tug she’d been ignoring all week. For over a decade, really. And even if she thought she might have deciphered its meaning, Miss Mallory already knew that it was too late to do anything about it.
Cady had already found her perfect family and, for better or worse, it did not include Miss Mallory.
50
Mrs. Asher
IT DID NOT TAKE LONG TO GET TO NEW YORK CITY (SPEED LIMITS, Dolores was certain, did not apply to women whose children had gone missing). Parking, however, was another matter. The closest spot Dolores could find was outside Grand Central Terminal, several long blocks from the convention center.
“It won’t take you ten minutes to get there,” a friendly stranger with an obvious Talent for applying blue eye shadow informed her. Dolores clutched Sally tighter to her chest. She could feel the ferret’s tiny heart beating frantically beneath her fur. The poor creature must be missing Will something terrible. “Just get on the express bus at the corner and take it crosstown to—”
With no warning at all, Sally leapt from Dolores’s arms. And before Dolores knew what was happening, she found herself chasing a ferret down the New York City sidewalk. “Sally!” she screeched as she ran. “Come back here!” Dolores would never forgive herself if she lost her son and his pet in the same afternoon.
Sally did not come back. She skittered and jumped, hopping from this pedestrian’s shoulder to that hot dog vendor’s cart. Dolores was close behind, scattering shopping bags and pigeons as she went. The creature scampered through a large glass revolving door studded with brasswork, and Dolores followed, through to the bustling hive of Grand Central Terminal’s main room.
“Sally!”
Down the staircase, up another, around the bend, past the ticket booth Sally ran, and Dolores, too, huffing and puffing till she thought she couldn’t run any farther. And then . . .
Wham!
Dolores smacked directly into her youngest son. He was cradling Sally in his arms, a stunned look on his face.
“Mom?”
“Will!” She swooped him up in a hug. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching everywhere for you.”
Will jerked his head to the train behind him, where passengers were still climbing down the steps. “I was looking for Sally.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stay in one place when you get lost, Willard Asher?” Dolores’s words wanted to be stern, but the second hug she gave her son betrayed her happiness.
Trapped between them, Sally let out a click-click-clack of annoyance.
“I really would’ve rather you had a Talent for cheese-making, you know,” Dolores went on, ignoring the ferret. “When we get home, I’m tying you to the doorknob.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Will said with a sniffle.
“I know you are, sweetie.” She tousled his mop of brown curls. “What do you say we head on home?” When Will nodded, Dolores took his hand, squeezed it tight then tighter, and led him back through the station, while Sally tucked herself into her favorite spot around Will’s neck. “Maybe from now on you could try to find adventures in books,” Dolores suggested while they walked. “They have plenty, you know. Giants and monsters and cake. They’re all right there, and you wouldn’t even have to give your mother a heart attack to go on one.” Will wrinkled his nose. “You don’t like that idea?” she asked him.
“Haven’t you ever had anything you loved doing, Mom?” Will replied. He reached up with his unsqueezed hand to scratch Sally’s head. “Something that was worth getting in real big trouble for?”
For the first time in over an hour, Dolores’s thoughts drifted to the ancient toe bone, worth millions of dollars, that she’d left sitting on the armrest of her car. Funny how something she’d treasured for over a decade could be so quickly forgotten. “Yes,” she told her son. “I suppose I have.”
When they reached the revolving door at the front of the station, Dolores stopped short.
“Mom?” Will asked, looking up at her. “What’s the matter? Why’d you stop walking?”
Dolores’s eyes flicked to the sign just outside on the sidewalk. BUS STOP.
“I hear it doesn’t take ten minutes to get to the convention center,” she told her son. “Wouldn’t you like to see Cady win that bakeoff?”
At first, Will didn’t seem to understand, but suddenly his eyes went wide. “Cake?” he asked.
Dolores grinned. “You might as well finish your adventure now that you’ve started it, huh?”
Will clapped his hands together and cheered. And—click-click-clack!—Sally seemed excited, too.
“After that,” Dolores continued as they snaked their way out the door and through the crowds to the bus stop, “I have an adventure of my own to finish.”
51
The Owner
IT WAS EASY ENOUGH TO PUSH PAST THE OVERSIZE WOMAN WITH the clipboard guarding the main doors. She was too busy gazing at some silly figurine to even notice him. And at last he spotted the girl, in the middle of the row of ovens. Wisp of a thing though she was, her crow-black hair gave her away. She was just pulling a cake off the rack. She set it on the counter, closing the oven door as the Owner made his way over to her. His feet hit the floor with every step.
52
Marigold
MARIGOLD SPOTTED IT BEFORE ZANE DID. AFTER SNEAKING through the delivery entrance, the two children had wiggled their way onto the main floor. Now they stood between the teeming crowds of people and the increasingly sensational cakes on display, searching for some way they might possibly be needed.
And Marigold spotted it.
There was Cady, at her oven, petite and wide-eyed and unsuspecting. Not fifty feet away was the Owner of the Emporium, approaching her rapidly, his gaze fixed.
“Zane!” Marigold screeched, searching for a path to push herself through to the baking stations. “Zane, we have to get over there!” Cady was one of the biggest-hearted people Marigold had ever met—she tried harder than anybody else to make others happy—and now the Owner was going to steal her Talent, just like he’d stolen Zane’s. If Marigold had learned anything that week, it was that trying hard and being a good person didn’t always mean that good things would happen to you.
But maybe it did mean that others might try on your behalf.
“We have to stop him!” she told Zane. “We have to help Cady.” But there were so many people, and she and her brother were so far away. She yanked Zane past a greasy-haired young man powdered with flour. “What are we going to do?”
“Ow!” Zane shouted, suddenly wrenching to a halt. “My foot! Someone dropped a book on my foot.” He picked it up.
“Zane, you moron, I don’t care about some dumb book. We have to help Cady!” She tugged on his arm again.
They would never get there in time. Marigold’s eyes scanned the room for another solution. There must be something that could stop the Owner. Her eyes landed on the fire alarm on the far wall, and the stringy, gray-haired woman nearby who seemed to be having a similar thought to Marigold’s.
“It’s V,” Zane said.
Marigold nodded. “I know. I think she’s going to pull the alarm.”
“What?” Zane said. “No, I mean”—he held out the book to show her—“it’s V. Look.”
Marigold jerked her eyes from the figure across the room just long enough to glance at the book in Zane’s hands. Face Value. There, underneath the words Author Victoria Valence, was a photo of V.
The woman without any words had written millions of them.
53
V
ALL HER LIFE, V HAD COUNTED ON HAVING HER WORDS AVAILABLE to her whenever she needed to use them. She’d been a master of words, that’s what the reviewers had always said about her. But, V thought as she spotted the red square of the fire alarm, she might have found something even more useful. If she could startle the chameleon just enough, he might show his real face, and V might be able to foil any chameleon-like schemes he’d been hatching.
Her thoughts turned again to the photograph she’d ripped from the book.
The mother.
The father.
A baby girl.
V had been wrong before, thinking she saw Caroline in places she knew she wasn’t. But the mother in that photograph—V would stake her life on it—was Caroline herself, clear as day. V had known her daughter in an instant, if only for the intricate twist of a braid she wore in her hair, the work of Talented fingers. And the baby . . .
Caroline had had a baby. She’d had a baby, and she hadn’t even told her own mother. Tiny, wide-eyed, with a surprising amount of hair for an infant.
Nearing the fire alarm, V tapped her pocket for the reassuring feel of the photo and—with a gasp—discovered that it wasn’t there. Nevertheless, she pressed on. She’d failed to communicate for years when she had the chance; she wasn’t going to give up now.
54
Cady
CADY DID NOT EVEN NEED TO TASTE THE CAKE TO KNOW THAT it was not going to win her any trophies. She hadn’t been able to decide what to make, and so she’d made a disaster. She’d created the whole mess in a daze, hoping for some flicker of inspiration. She’d dumped in the ingredients in a daze, clacked the wooden spoon through the bowl in a daze, and poured the tragic-looking batter into the pan in a daze. And inspiration had not come.
Apple caramel mocha poppy seed, that’s what she’d ended up with. It certainly wasn’t Cady’s favorite. It wasn’t anybody’s favorite. She dropped the cake on the counter and yanked off her oven mitts. Cady had lost for sure, and now she’d let down Toby and Miss Mallory, too. She was as big a disaster as the mess in the pan, and all because she didn’t know what kind of cake she’d like. She’d spent so many years wondering what other people might want that she’d never bothered to figure it out for herself. Suddenly, Cady felt like she didn’t even know who she was.
Cady gazed down at the disastrous cake she’d just pulled from the oven. It didn’t merely look unappetizing. It looked . . . unnatural. She sloped her nose nearer to the counter.
At the top of the cake, barely visible underneath a thin layer of crumbs, was a fist-size piece of paper. A photograph.
A woman.
A man.
A baby girl.
Cady brought her nose so close to the cake that she nearly nudged it. The woman had a braid, a beautifully elaborate one, trailing down her shoulder. And the baby—Cady blinked once, then twice—the baby girl had a braid as well. Cady was looking at a picture of herself. The woman with the braid must be her mother, and the man—with the crooked nose and the cowlicked hair—was her father.
Cady was so busy staring at the photograph, her mind swirling with questions, that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until it was too late.
There was a sudden, icy spark at her forehead.
55
Toby
EVERY TIME THE MEMORY WEASELED ITS WAY BACK INSIDE Toby’s brain, it stung, just as fiercely as though not a single day had passed. It twisted his stomach and made his cheeks burn. Caused his heart to shrivel and shrink inside him. Watching Miss Mallory now, the way she was examining her hands so closely to avoid watching Cady at her baking station, he remembered it all. And it stung.
“Please don’t take her away from me,” Toby said softly. “Please. If that’s what you were going to say tonight. Please don’t take Cady away. I don’t . . . I don’t think I could stand it.”
Miss Mallory kept her gaze on her hands and said nothing.
Toby knew what it was to lose a child. That terrible day in Africa, just one week after his wife had died, he hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known how it would be, the guilt and the worry that he would suffer every day to follow. So he’d made the decision that he’d come to regret for the rest of his life. At the time, it had seemed wise. After all, what had he understood then about fatherhood? Absolutely nothing. Better his precious baby Cora grow up with new parents who could give her everything she wanted than with a half-wit like him. That’s what he’d thought at the time.
Afterward, he’d run. Changed his face, changed his name. Taken the job he’d never wanted at the Emporium. But Toby had never forgiven himself.
Beside him, Miss Mallory cleared her throat quietly. “I won’t take her away,” she said, still studying her hands. “Even if I wanted to, I . . . You’re the father she was meant to have. I can tell.” She clutched her fist to her chest, as though a severe pain stung her there. “And all I want is for Cady to be happy.”
Toby nodded at that, hope beginning to rise inside him once more. “I guess that’s all we can ask for, isn’t it?” he said slowly. “All we should ask for.” He did want Cady to be happy. Cora, too—the daughter he’d never see again. Sometimes he found himself wondering what had happened to her after Dolores Asher had taken her to the orphanage that day in Madagascar. Had she found happiness, that tiny pixie of a girl with her beautiful braided hair? He hoped so. He hoped that, somewhere, she was half as happy as—
Down on the main exhibition area, there was Cady, just as she had been a moment before. But someone else was there, too.
The old man. His palm was pressed to Cady’s forehead.
Toby leapt to his feet. “Stop!” he cried. It might be too late to help her, but he had to try anyway. That’s what fathers were meant to do. “Dad! Stop!”
56
Zane<
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THERE WAS A PIERCING SQUEAL, AN ALARM, AND FROM THE ceiling the safety sprinklers sprung to life, showering water down the entire length of the floor. The crowd screeched and began bumping this way and that, all of them. It was chaos.
“Zane!” Marigold hollered at him. He turned his focus from the book to where his sister was pointing, across the room. He could just make them out through the screaming crowd and the gushing sprinklers. Cady was staring down at her cake, bewildered. And the Owner, with the icy stone of Talent poised to melt into his skin, was grinning. “We have to stop him!” Marigold cried. “We have to stop him, Zane! Oh, I wish I had the Talent to do something.”
Zane turned to her, eyes wide. What was it the man in the gray suit had said, about shooting in a healthy direction?
“You do,” he told her.
57
The Owner
THE OWNER DIDN’T NOTICE IT AS THE FIRST SPRAY OF THE sprinklers hit his skin, but the arc of spit that flew from across the room was so perfectly aimed that there was no way it couldn’t have hit his hand.
Smack!
It knocked the icy stone of precious Talent to the floor.
The Owner dropped to his hands and knees, scrambling to retrieve it. But even as he grasped at the Talent, the spray from the sprinklers began to melt the stone, right before his eyes. A fine mist rose from the pale pebble, slowly at first, then faster and faster. And soon everything Mason Darlington Burgess had ever wanted slipped through his fingers and floated up into the air, where it spread like a fog throughout the entire wide room. The Owner screamed. He shouted. He wailed. But his cries were lost in the piercing screech of the fire alarm, and he knew it was useless.