by Lisa Graff
He’d spent his whole life searching for one thing, and now it was gone.
58
Cady
AS THE SPRINKLERS GUSHED DOWN, CADY’S GAZE FOLLOWED the curious mist, traveling up from the Owner on the floor to the crowd around her.
And then her eyes settled on one face in particular. The face of someone who was rushing her way. It was Toby.
And then it wasn’t.
With every drop of water that landed on Toby’s face, Cady noticed something new about him.
His upturned eyebrows.
His crooked nose.
His cowlicked hair.
Cady turned to the terrible cake she’d baked and ripped out the photograph that had found its way inside.
“Dad?” she breathed.
There was no doubt about it. The man standing before her was one and the same as the man in the photo. Cady’s father.
Toby looked from Cady to the photograph, slowly seeming to understand, while from the slick floor the Owner let out a low moan. Toby wiped a soaking lock of hair from his forehead and blinked the droplets from his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cady. I should’ve . . . I never meant . . .” He blinked again. “I’m so sorry. For everything. What can I do to make it up to you? Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”
Cady took in Toby’s new face, from his unruly hair to his pointy chin. “I . . .” Her brain whirled slowly. Her forehead ached with a slight chill. What did she want? Cady looked around the soaking mess of a room. The screeching alarm, the panicked bakers, the sopping cakes. And then, Cady couldn’t help it.
She laughed.
“I think I just want to go home,” she said.
And Toby—with his imperfect, crooked-nosed face—offered her a real smile. “Whatever makes you happy,” he told her.
59
Will
WHEN WILL AND HIS MOTHER FINALLY ENTERED THE CONVENTION center, there was rain indoors, and lots of it. Screaming, wailing, shrieking, too. A fine mist wound its way inside Will’s nose, making him feel like—of all things—baking. It was chaos, that was for sure.
But Will didn’t pay too much attention to any of it. With Sally snuggled tightly around his neck, he made his way through the rain to the biggest cake he’d ever seen—a fifty-layer-high masterpiece of sugary wonder. “Can I try some?” he asked, and the baker beside the cake, clutching his floppy wet chef’s hat, merely shrugged.
“Sure, kid,” the baker replied, surveying the mess around him. “Why not?”
And as Will and Sally leaned in for their first bites, Will couldn’t help but grin.
It really had been an adventure.
One Month Later . . .
Epilogue
CADY STOOD ATOP A SHORT STACK OF POWDER BLUE SUITCASES behind the circular counter on the main floor of the Lost Luggage Emporium, tapping her toe. “That’ll be”—tap, tap, tap—“fifty-seven fifty,” she told the customer.
Across the counter, the customer smiled and dug into her wallet for the correct change. “A steal!” she said.
Business at the Lost Luggage Emporium had never been so good. Today the customers snaked almost out the door. There were probably many reasons for the store’s success: its new management, for one thing. (All of the building’s operations were now in Toby’s hands, as sole heir to the property after the Owner had disappeared without a trace. There were rumors the old man had been sighted in New Mexico, but no one had tried very hard to track him down.) The building’s new coat of paint had probably made a difference, too, as had the newly planted flower beds out front and the smartly placed advertisements in newspapers all over the tristate area. But Cady suspected that the credit for most of the business’s recent prosperity lay with Miss Mallory. Cady could see her now, over by the sweaters, matching a lanky blond customer to the perfect green V-neck. It seemed Miss Mallory’s Talent for matching extended well beyond orphans (although there were orphans occasionally, too, at the Emporium; they came and went faster than Cady could blink).
Not ten feet away, Will Asher tumbled out of an air vent and somersaulted to a stop. Sally, wrapped snugly around his neck, click-click-clacked irritably as Will ducked under the countertop.
“Mom says I’m s’posed to take over for you so you can set up for the party,” he told Cady.
Cady swept the last of her customer’s change into the cash register and wiped her hands on her red knitted apron. “It’s all yours,” she replied.
At the front door, Cady found Mr. Asher, who was handing samples to customers as they headed to their cars. (The Ashers never had moved back into their twelfth-story apartment. “There’s so much more room for Will to get lost here,” Mrs. Asher was fond of saying. And Cady didn’t so much mind the company.) “Care for some peanut butter?” Mr. Asher asked a passing customer, offering one of the two dozen tiny paper cups perched on the tray in his hand. “A sample, ma’am? Sure, take one for your son, too.” He handed out another. “Hi there, Cady,” he greeted her. “Here, try the new batch. I think they’re almost ready to sell, what do you think?”
Cady took a sample of her own and squeezed out a taste. She’d had a vat-load of peanut butter in the past few weeks, but surprisingly, it seemed to get better every time she tried it. She let the peanut butter settle on her tongue. Velvety smooth and mouthwateringly delicious. It might not have been quite as good as the original Darlington stuff, but with Cady and Toby and Miss Mallory and V and the Ashers working together to create it, it was pretty amazing. (And why wouldn’t it be? Every one of them had received a bit of Cady’s Talent that evening at the bakeoff. Well, every one of them except Mr. Asher, who seemed pleased as punch to act as business manager.)
Cady returned the empty cup to Mr. Asher’s tray. “I bet we’ll sell them by the truckful,” she declared. “Oh, and”—she dug into her pocket and produced a small square of candy, wrapped in orange wax paper—“Marigold told me you have a soft spot for orange nougat.”
The grin on Mr. Asher’s face as he took the candy was proof enough that Marigold had been telling the truth.
A gorgeous afternoon awaited Cady outside. Bright and green and breezy. The perfect weather for an Adoption Day party. Cady straightened the corners of the polka-dot cloth on the picnic table, while beside her, V set up her music stand. V was growing astonishingly good at playing oboe—Marigold, it turned out, was quite the teacher. Cady suspected that Marigold’s many years of Talent-hunting had taught her a thing or two about patience.
It was frustrating, sometimes, having a grandmother you desperately wanted to talk to, who couldn’t talk back. But as soon as V set her fingers on the keys of the oboe and began to play, it was almost as though she could talk. When she played, Victoria Valence seemed to find a way to express herself. All the sadness she’d ever felt, all the happiness, everything—it was all there in her music. And Cady felt like she could understand her.
As Cady organized the various parts of the party—table, games, food—slowly the others came out to join her. Mr. Asher placed a sign in the front window—CLOSED FOR ADOPTION DAY PARTY—and the stream of customers reduced to a trickle. Cady plunked a handful of plastic forks into a polka-dot cup, while Mrs. Asher filled Toby in on recent developments at the museum—including her fifth authorship on the paper about the discovery of the infamous toe bone.
“Zane doesn’t want anyone to know this part,” Mrs. Asher said, her voice low—but not low enough that Cady couldn’t overhear. “But it’s really thanks to him that they let me come back at all. He wrote a letter on my behalf. Said if anyone understood about mistakes, it was him, and I’d done wrong but that didn’t mean I was worthless.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye. “Can you believe? What a doll, that one.”
Cady looked up just in time to catch the doll karate-chop one of Marigold’s spit bubbles across the parking lot.
>
“Cady!” Zane called when he noticed her gaze. The three shiny silver beads on his red Talent bracelet caught a ray of sunlight. “You have to watch this! Mari and me came up with a new trick. Look.”
And before Cady had a chance to respond, Zane zipped across the gravel on his skateboard, until he suddenly—slap, wham, splat!—jumped off the board, jerked it over his head, and whacked the perfect loopty-loop of spit that his sister had spat at him across the grass.
“Perfect!” Marigold shouted with a giggle. “Cady, wasn’t that perfect?”
“Where’s the cake?” Will asked, suddenly appearing at Cady’s elbow. “Mom said you made cake.” Click-click-clack, Sally agreed.
Cady had indeed made a cake. It had been difficult, at first, figuring out the perfect kind of cake to bake for her own Adoption Day party. Because it was a hard thing to know exactly who you were, especially if you’d gone and lost nearly all your Talent. But Cady thought she’d figured it out in the end. She pointed to the front door, where Miss Mallory was just bringing out the platter. “There it is,” she told Will.
Wha-pop! went the door on its hinges. (There were still a few things about the place that needed fixing.)
Cady watched as Toby helped Miss Mallory place the cake on the table, nestled between the bed of petunias on the left and the pansies on the right. Scattered throughout both beds was a third type of flower, an impeccable mix of the two others. Miss Mallory had brought the new flower with her when she’d moved to the Emporium. “It took me a while to figure it out,” she’d explained to Cady as they’d planted, “but it turns out there are some things in this world that can fit perfectly in more than one spot.”
Yes, Cady thought, perhaps it had taken her a long time to have an Adoption Day party of her own, but in the end she’d found not one but two perfect parents—the person who’d been so concerned with her happiness eleven years ago that he’d changed his entire life to get it for her, and the person who’d been concerned with it every day since. Tobias Darlington Burgess (Cady loved him even more with his real name and his real face—crooked nose, cowlicked hair, and all) and Jennifer Mallory. Cady was adopting them both. And although they were three very different people, Cady couldn’t help thinking that when they were woven together, they fit exactly right, like the three strands of hair that Cady’s birth mother had once tied up so intricately.
As the first few lilting notes of V’s oboe drifted into the air, Cady’s eye caught a movement far down the length of Argyle Road. She might have thought it was a customer if the man hadn’t been walking away from the Emporium.
A giant of a man, wearing a pressed gray suit.
As quietly as she could, Cady left her friends to sneak down the dirt road. She caught up with the man in time to see him turn the corner onto the main highway. But just before he disappeared from view, the man in the gray suit paused to stretch his leg into a bush. With the toe of his shoe, he nudged something out onto the dirt road. He turned to Cady, and he winked.
Then he was gone.
Cady scuttled to the bush and picked up the object. It was a jar, a small one, with the lid sealed tight. No label. It appeared to be empty, but Cady suspected that it might, perhaps, be a Talent, one of the Owner’s that shattered in the road a month before.
Only this one hadn’t.
Cady raised the jar above her nose, gazing at the emptiness. She could be holding a Talent for tightrope-walking, or making rocking chairs, or finding gold coins. Cady could open it right then and there and breathe it all up at once. Or she could give it to Zane, who was now nearly as Talentless as she was. Or she could smash it in the road and leave it for the squirrels.
Cady grinned a sideways sort of grin. She wasn’t certain, but she thought perhaps it was a grin that suggested she knew more about the world than she was letting on. Because Cady seemed to remember a bit of advice she’d been given not so long ago.
It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are.
Cady tucked the jar inside her pocket. She’d have plenty of time to decide about things like that. Just at the moment, she had a cake to taste.
Cady’s Chocolate-Almond-Cherry Cake
a cake that perfectly braids together three very different flavors
FOR THE CAKE:
2 cups granulated sugar, separated
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 1/2 cups flour (plus extra for preparing the cake pan)
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks), at room temperature (plus extra for greasing the cake pan)
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup milk, at room temperature
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp cherry extract
1/2 tsp red food coloring
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 10-inch tube pan or Bundt pan with butter, and flour lightly.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the sugar and all of the cocoa powder. Set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Gradually add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of sugar, beating until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. With the mixer on low speed, add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, combining well. Add about a half of the milk and combine. Then add another third of the flour mixture, the last of the milk, and then the last of the flour, combining well each time.
6. Divide the batter evenly between three clean medium bowls. Add the cocoa powder mixture to the batter in the first bowl, and combine thoroughly with a spoon or clean beaters. Spoon the batter into the bottom of the cake pan. Do not smooth down.
7. Add the almond extract to the batter in the second bowl, and combine thoroughly with a spoon or clean beaters. Spoon this batter over the chocolate batter already in the cake pan. Do not mix.
8. Add the cherry extract and red food coloring to the batter in the third bowl, and combine thoroughly with a spoon or clean beaters. Spoon this batter over the almond and chocolate batters already in the cake pan. Using a small spatula or butter knife, cut through the layers of batter from one side of the pan to another, lifting slightly as you go, to create a marbled design. Do not overmix.
9. Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake completely before serving.
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Also by Lisa Graff:
Double Dog Dare
Sophie Simon Solves Them All
Umbrella Summer
The Life and Crimes of Bernetta Wallflower
The Thing About Georgie