The Recipe Box

by Sandra Lee

  ¾ cup buttermilk

  FOR THE FROSTING:

  3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature

  2 sticks butter, room temperature

  4 cups powdered sugar

  2 tablespoons blood orange juice

  Finely grated zest of 1 blood orange or regular orange

  Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and line two 9-×13-inch cake pans.

  MAKE THE CAKE: Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat until well incorporated. In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and blood orange zest. In another separate bowl combine blood orange juice, lemon juice, food coloring, and buttermilk. Add dry mix to wet mix in three parts, alternating between the two, ending with the wet. Scrape down the bowl and mix on medium speed 30 seconds. Divide the batter between the prepared pans, spread evenly, and smooth the tops. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Cake is done when toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean with moist crumbs sticking to it. Let cool.

  MAKE THE FROSTING: Whisk together the cream cheese and butter. Add the sugar. Add the juice and zest. Add more sugar or juice, depending on the consistency.

  TO ASSEMBLE: Remove the cakes from the pans and cut them each into two layers. Frost the layers and sides.

  “Well, that in itself is incredible. She never sets foot in our kitchen.”

  “Like mother, like daughter.” He winked. Everybody, especially Ken, knew Grace didn’t cook, much less bake.

  “Don’t rub it in. I’m a busy single mom,” Grace joked a bit uncomfortably as she positioned an honorary sparkler in the center of the cake. She wished she could love cooking, she really did. Something told her that if she cooked for Emma, she’d be a better mom. The sad thing was, Grace had actually been a great cook once, but she hadn’t cooked or baked anything since high school. The kitchen was not a place of warmth and good memories for her.

  Somehow Ken never bought her arguments. “And I’m a busy single godfather of two,” he said. “Counting one cockatoo.”

  “I hope she didn’t give you any trouble.” Grace took the opening to steer the conversation away from cooking. She was dying to check her cell phone to see if Emma had called back. Something wasn’t sitting right with her ever since she’d left a message on Emma’s phone.

  “We’re talking completely spoiled, with a total potty mouth.”

  “Oh, God…”

  Ken laughed hysterically. “Oh, don’t worry, honey, I’m talking about Mr. Halo. Emma is giving naughty vocabulary lessons to that cockatoo of hers. Now Emma, she was fine. Perfect. No problems.”

  Grace’s shoulders relaxed. Thank God; she’d been worried. It wasn’t funny about Halo’s new vocabulary. Emma had been acting up so much lately, Halo had picked up her wisecracks. “Seriously!”, “God bless America!”, “Really?”, “I am begging you!”, and the one Grace hated the most, “Your point?” It was like living with two teens. “It was wonderful of you to take her again.” Grace put the box from the cake on a shelf, in case there were leftovers.

  “Not at all. Emma and I have an understanding.”

  “Maybe you should give me some pointers.”

  “Sweetie, it’s a phase. Don’t take it personally. She’s a good kid. How could my goddaughter be anything else? Now, let’s get this cake moving.” With great fanfare, Ken lit the single sparkler and motioned for Roberto to open the champagne. “We’ll have to use plastic glasses,” Ken said sorrowfully. “Artie co-opted the real ones for the next shot. Anyway! Everyone! Everyone! Congratulations to all! No Krispy Kremes for us today! In honor of the momentous occasion that we have reached number one in our time slot, I have created a blood orange cake named ‘The Lost Ones Is Number One’ cake.” He waved his arms like Vanna White and pushed the cart containing the large sheet cake into the room while the crew and all the vampires applauded. Roberto and Grace handed out plastic cups and poured the champagne.

  Ken’s confections always made people happy. The Lost Ones cake was no exception. Even Carrie Flannery, the lead, a frosty star rarely seen between takes, seemed to have ESP whenever one of Ken’s creations appeared. The tanginess of the blood orange cake combined with the sweetness of the frosting. “This is heavenly,” Grace complimented Ken as she scraped the last crumbs off her paper plate.

  “Or as close to heaven as these vampires are gonna get,” Ken quipped, heading off with a plastic trash bag to pick up the paper plates and plastic forks. Ken was at the top of his field, but no job was too small or trivial. He was such a genuine person with a big heart. It was a wonder Ken hadn’t found a good guy to settle down with, Grace thought. She grabbed a second plastic bag and circled the other side of the room. Artie had enjoyed his two slices of cake, but snapped that break time was over.

  “Ken?” The assistant director, a young woman in skinny jeans and spike heels so high Grace wondered how she could walk in them, much less stand all day on a set, clicked briskly by, clipboard in hand. “Artie needs you. Can you do something about the glass decanters in the refrigerator? They were reflecting too much light during the close-up.”

  Ken nodded briskly. “On my way.” Ken cocked his head in an aside to Grace. “I’m not changing the decanters. They’re perfect. The backups look like beakers from Frankenstein’s lab. Bring the tackle box.”

  Grace had just picked up the box when she felt her phone vibrate. She always set it on silent when she was working. She’d learned the hard way that hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of people’s time and effort were on the line. She’d never make that mistake again. She checked her messages.

  “Hello, Ms. Holm-D’Angelo? This is Pat Seiden at Santa Monica Middle School. We’ve been trying to reach you. Could you please call me as soon as you get this message?”

  The phone buzzed again. This time, Grace got it on the first buzz. “Hello?”

  “Hello. Is this Ms. Holm-D’Angelo?” asked a voice that, unfortunately, Grace recognized as Pat Seiden.

  “Yes. This is Grace.”

  “Ms. Holm-D’Angelo, this is Pat Seiden, from the Santa Monica Middle School.”

  “Yes. Hello. Is Emma all right?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question, Ms. Holm-D’Angelo. Does Emma have a written excuse for missing classes today?”

  “Uh… Isn’t she in class?”

  “No. Is she at a doctor’s appointment, perhaps?”

  “No. Ms. Seiden, isn’t Emma there, in school?” Grace closed her eyes and tried not to panic.

  “No, Emma didn’t come in today, and I’m afraid with her record recently, well, we have a three strikes policy, as Emma is fully aware. She is now on mandatory suspension. When are you and Emma available for an appointment?…”

  “Thank you, Ms. Seiden. You see, I’ve been out of town for a family emergency and I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding. Let me check a few things and I’ll get right back to you.” Grace clicked the phone off. She had a knot in her stomach. Not in school! Where was Emma if she was not in school? Suspension from school wasn’t going to be any kind of meaningful punishment. Emma would consider it a treat.

  Grace knew she couldn’t ignore it any longer. The warning signs were all pointing in the same direction: being perpetually late for school; cutting class; terrible test scores; hours online; missed curfews; older friends who hung out at the beach until all hours; Emma’s beautiful blonde hair dyed black; the halo tattoo that appeared on the back of her neck. She knew, of course, that teenaged girls could be rebellious. Maybe all this was normal, but if it was a phase Grace didn’t see an end in sight.

  She had to talk to Ken, but he was deep in conversation with Artie. She couldn’t interrupt, and she still had to deal with those decanters. She rushed across the room and reached into the vampire refrigerator to grab one of the glass decanters. Suddenly it tipped over and crashed into the rest of the decanters, causing glass and fake blood to explode in every direction.

  Grace couldn’t imagin
e a longer day than this, but she knew she had to get on with it. “There’s an old saying,” said Ken. “No use crying over spilled blood.”

  During the cleanup—or, as Ken dubbed it, “sanity break”—Ken insisted that Grace sit down and drink a bottle of water. “Hydration is key,” he explained. “You’re back in a desert climate. Don’t be afraid, take it, the bottle’s plastic.”

  “Very funny. I have a right to be upset. Our best friend may not make it—I think she will, but what if she doesn’t?—and I just found out from the assistant principal that Emma cut school again. She’s not there. I have no idea where she is.”

  “Viper Lady, you mean?”

  “No joke, Ken. They’re suspending her. This is the third time she’s cut.”

  Ken’s shoulders sagged. “This is all my fault.”

  “No it isn’t. She’s cut before, you know that.”

  “She promised me. We had a deal. No misbehaving—either of us!”

  “A one-way deal, obviously. Well, don’t feel singled out. She’s lying to me these days too.”

  “She broke her word,” said Ken. “I never thought Emma would do that.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Ken straightened up. “Well, I know what we’re going to do.”

  “What?”

  He pulled Grace out of her chair. “What are you sitting there for? We’ve got to find our girl.”

  Grace looked nervously over at Artie. He was busy chewing out the cue card girl.

  “Ah,” said Ken, nodding in their direction. “Another stop on Artie’s endless quest for perfection. Well, let’s go.”

  “What do you mean? We have at least three hours left on set. We’ll probably go into overtime, thanks to me.”

  “MY GOD, GIRL,” Ken said loudly. “Look at your arm! It’s covered with blood! That’s a nasty cut!” He put his hand in the middle of Grace’s back and pushed her toward the exit sign, calling over his shoulder. “People! We’re going to the emergency room! Roberto! Take over.”

  Grace frowned and whispered to Ken, “It’s FAKE blood. They all know that.”

  Ken shrugged as he steered her toward the parking lot. “How can they tell? Workplace injuries need to step out of the shadows and be taken seriously. For all they know, I’m calling OSHA. We’ll leave the van for Roberto, and we’ll take yours. Now, we’re off to find that little juvenile delinquent. This time, she’s going to answer to Uncle Ken, and I can promise you, it won’t be pretty. Now, if you were Emma, where would you be?”

  The Santa Monica Promenade and Mall weren’t far from the studio, and Grace knew Emma often met up with her new crowd there—or at least she said she did. Grace didn’t know what to believe anymore where Emma was concerned. What had happened to her sweet, innocent little girl? When had she morphed into this black-haired, sullen creature who could give the vampire kids on The Lost Ones a run for their money? Grace blamed herself for Emma’s transformation. Before the divorce, Emma had been a typical, happy child. Sure, with Brian trying to launch his business in a recession, their family didn’t have a lot of money, but their apartment in Wrigleyville was sweet. Emma had loved her school and her friends, and she was doing really well. Getting Emma to California had involved dragging, bribes, and threats.

  Emma blamed Grace for her parents’ divorce and for the fact that she had to leave her school, her friends, and the father she idolized. Her sobs seemed to echo nonstop in Grace’s ears. Grace had often been tempted to tell Emma the facts, but she felt—with about 80 percent certainty—that would not be the right path to take. As disillusioned as she was with Brian, she did not want her daughter to feel the same way she did about him. Making this decision was one of the toughest things Grace had ever had to do. Grace knew firsthand what it meant to have a good relationship with your father.

  “Why can’t I stay with Daddy?” Emma wailed. “Daddy didn’t do anything wrong! He’s only trying to make money for us. He’s working so hard, and all you ever want to do is act mean to him! I hate you!”

  It was gut-wrenching. Brian had broken her trust and destroyed their family, but there was no way a thirteen-year-old could or even should come to grips with the fact that her father had lost all the family’s money gambling, and slept with another woman. Grace just told Emma that there were very good reasons for this move, that she didn’t know everything, and that California had much better weather than Chicago. She’d even promised she could learn to surf—a suggestion for which Grace now berated herself. She should have talked up yoga, organic gardening, or maybe even watercolors.

  She and Ken parked in a lot near the Promenade and spent the next hour peering into every store, Starbucks, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The outdoor Promenade, lined with shops and restaurants, was bustling with its usual mix of locals, California hipsters, and street performers. Grace dialed and texted Emma endlessly while Ken got them each a double iced latte to keep their energy up. There was no sign of Emma, so they headed for the next likely destination, the Santa Monica Pier. Emma wasn’t at the pier either. Grace and Ken wound their way through the meandering couples, skateboarders, and a few stroller brigades, but there was no sign of Grace’s daughter. They collapsed onto a bench. The sun was going down. “We’re running out of options, at least the ones I know about,” she said. “What’s next? Do we call the police?”

  “Don’t overthink,” Ken said. “She’s just testing her wings like we did when we were kids. Or did you forget? We weren’t exactly angels one hundred percent of the time either.”

  “Oh, God, just what I needed to hear. What if she’s with some boy?”

  “All kids do these things at Emma’s age. Or did you forget that too? I certainly haven’t. I think I lived every fight you ever had with Brian right along with you all through high school, right down to the night you married him, and then fast-forward to the night you left him.”

  Grace shook her head. “I was tragic. I can’t believe you put up with me.”

  “Neither can I. At least you didn’t marry that Von guy. Such a cliché, Grace. The hot foreign exchange student who sweeps the innocent Midwestern girl off her feet. Then again, maybe you should have, in hindsight.”

  “Von was just a fling, as you well know. I loved Brian. He loved me. And besides, Von went back home to Switzerland and is now engaged.” Grace’s cheeks burned whenever she thought of Von, even all these years later. Talking about him made her nervous. Good lord, if Emma had inherited anything of her own reckless streak, they were all done for. “What if Emma was in an accident or something while I was in the air?”

  “There wasn’t an accident, Drama Queen.”

  “What if she tried to reach me and I was in the air with no signal? Emma’s right I’m a terrible mother. I’m never there when she needs me.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. That’s my role! Let’s walk up the boardwalk. I bet we’ll spot Emma and her crew before too long. Tell me about Leeza. How’s Snoopy doing?”

  Grace smiled. “She’s still weak, but I think she’s finally turned the corner. Poor Jonathan’s still a wreck. Though he’s holding it together for Sara. Did I tell you when the doctors give her the all-clear they’re going to keep trying?”

  “Well, at least somebody has some good news.”

  “Don’t you ever wish we were back in high school, when life was so simple?” Grace asked.

  Ken looked at her sideways. “Did we go to the same high school? Life was anything but simple, as I recall. Especially for you! Things were worse then. Way worse! Now that I think of it, Emma should be up for sainthood compared to us. Well, except for Leeza.”

  Grace agreed, “Leeza was something else.”

  “Still is. Oh my God, my phone!” Ken jammed the earpiece into his ear. “Hello?” Then he mouthed, It’s Emma!

  Grace grabbed his wrist and leaned over to whisper, “Tell her to call me this minute!” Why wasn’t Emma calling her mother back, Grace wondered. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t gotten her calls
and texts. She reached for Ken’s phone.

  He held up his hand and gave her a look. She knew that look. It was the look that said, Brace yourself, girl.

  So Grace braced.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh, and where are you?” Ken didn’t sound angry with Emma or even worried. His voice was soothing and calm. Too soothing and calm, Grace thought. He was using his it’s-a-disaster-but-I’m-in-control voice. That alone was cause for panic. This tone meant something really bad was being said on the other end. “OK, sweetie. You stay right there.” He paused. “No, I won’t tell her.” He looked at Grace apologetically and hung up.

  “Tell ‘her’ what? Why didn’t you just give me the phone?” Grace demanded.

  Ken turned to her and took her hand. “Grace, there’s been an accident.”

  How they got to the police station, Grace never knew. Later she’d only remember that for once Ken didn’t try to make a joke out of the situation.

  “Emma is OK, but someone has a broken clavicle, and I don’t want to scare you, Grace, but the kid who was driving, Suki somebody, had been smoking pot.”

  Grace felt sick. Emma had always hated drugs, sworn she’d never be around kids who used them. Grace knew who Suki was—a boy from the surfer crowd who was at least three years older than Emma. A lot of Emma’s new friends were older, but Grace had assumed the surfers were like athletes. Clearly, she’d been deluding herself. They were obviously more like a bunch of young hoodlums. Now she’d have to tell her ex, Brian. When he learned what Emma was up to he’d snap back into their lives. He might even demand custody. Right now, Brian had Emma on alternate holidays and part of the summer, but he’d been asking to change the arrangements. This was all the ammunition he’d need. Grace felt like crying just thinking about all the things that were falling apart around her, and how off-track her daughter had gotten.

  “She didn’t want me to tell you, Grace.”

  That, especially, stung.

  “She wanted me to come get her by myself. I said I would.”