Bliss

by Kathryn Littlewood

  “Ready?” said Aunt Lily eagerly. Her hair was glossy and clean and dark like Rose’s own, and her dress was white with tiny colored flowers along the hem.

  “Sure am.” Rose nodded gravely. She pulled the Polaroid picture of her and her family from her pocket and looked at it.

  “Isn’t that darling?” Aunt Lily said, leaning over her shoulder. And then she slid the picture from Rose’s fingers and placed it in the trash.

  “Why did you do that?” Rose asked, furious.

  “I can’t let you take any pictures with you, Rose. They mess with the magic of the Forget-Me Biscuits. If you look at a picture of someone who has eaten the biscuit, they’ll be able to remember you. And that would be very painful for them, because then they’ll know you’re gone. So I’m sorry, but it’s got to be a clean break. You’ll have to leave your pictures. It’s best for everyone.”

  And with that, Aunt Lily picked up her little tweed suitcase and stepped out the back door. “Coming, darling?”

  Rose looked at Aunt Lily, her chic haircut, her painted lips, the arch of her perfect eyebrows. Then an impatience flashed through Aunt Lily’s eyes—the same impatience that had made Rose pause so many times before trusting Aunt Lily with the truth.

  Rose hadn’t planned on tossing the Forget-Me Biscuits in the garbage, but that’s exactly what she did. It was as if her hands were working quite on their own. Rose reached beneath the steaming pile of trashed biscuits, pulled out the Polaroid, and stuffed it back into her pocket.

  “No!” Aunt Lily cried. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Lily,” Rose said quietly. “But I just can’t leave my family. They’re not perfect, not by a long shot, but I can’t steal the cookbook and run away. It’s not right. And even if they ate these biscuits and never thought about me, I’d be thinking about them the whole time. What’s the point of being famous if the people who love you most don’t even know you anymore?”

  Rose took the first deep breath she’d taken in a week. There, at last, was the truth of the matter.

  Aunt Lily was fuming. She had lost all her cool. Rose had never seen her crack anything but a smile—now her skin had gone all red, and the corners of her mouth turned down into an angry, ugly growl. “But they don’t appreciate you! When your parents get back, they’ll lock up the book and they won’t let you bake anything, and your brothers will go back to ignoring you! They don’t love you, Rose; I love you.”

  “You don’t even know who I am.”

  “What do you mean?” Aunt Lily shouted. “Of course I know who you are!”

  “You’ve known me one week. If you loved me, you’d have been here from the beginning. You’d have stuck with me, like my parents and my brothers have. You wouldn’t just come around when they’re gone to try to steal our cookbook.”

  Lily didn’t even try to argue that one. Rose finally saw the truth. Lily had come for the book.

  “If you come with me, you’ll be famous. You’ll be glamorous. People will look up to you. I’ll teach you all the tricks! You think boys like Devin Stetson will fawn all over you when they’re not under a magical stupor?” Aunt Lily wagged her finger. “Wrong. You need me, Rose. Without me you’re nothing.”

  Rose’s nose wrinkled in disgust. Something snapped into place inside of Rose. Aunt Lily wasn’t the strong, independent woman Rose had imagined her to be. Aunt Lily was the weak one. Maybe Devin Stetson wouldn’t like her without any makeup. Maybe her parents wouldn’t let her bake magical recipes once they were back home.

  But at least they loved her.

  Aunt Lily loved only herself.

  “Actually, Aunt Lily, I’m doing just fine.” Rose said. “You’re the one who has nothing.” Rose held out her open palm. “Now, give me the key.”

  With a sneer, Lily removed the key from around her neck and plopped it into Rose’s outstretched hand. “Knock yourself out,” she said coldly.

  And then Aunt Lily hitched her tweed suitcase to her motorcycle and sped away.

  At the roar of Lily’s motor and the sound of squealing tires, Ty and Sage hurried downstairs with Leigh. “Did Aunt Lily just go?” Sage asked. “Why didn’t she say good-bye?”

  “She was in a hurry,” said Rose. She couldn’t help but smile. Then she put an arm around both of her brothers, stared down at Leigh, and said, “Now let’s go make that breakfast.”

  Half an hour after Aunt Lily left, a caravan of black armored cars pulled into the driveway, and Purdy’s high soprano rang out from the driveway like a Christmas bell. “Kiddles! We’re home! Remember us?”

  Albert and Purdy burst through the backdoor into the kitchen, and Leigh jumped and giggled and catapulted herself into her father’s outstretched arms.

  Purdy pulled Rose to her chest and kissed the top of her head. As soon as Rose felt the softness of her mother’s cotton robes, the wild curls of her hair, the smells of honey and flour and grease on her soft skin, Rose couldn’t believe that she had thought even for one second that she could ever leave her family. That she could ever live without them. And she swore to herself that she would never tell a soul that she had agreed—for a moment!—to go with Aunt Lily.

  “Ooh, I love you, I love you!” said Purdy, kissing Rose over and over again on the forehead like a hungry woodpecker on a tree.

  Albert put down Leigh and hugged Sage and Ty close. “My boys!” he said.

  Mrs. Carlson came down the stairs carrying her suitcase and looking a few decades older than she had when she’d first arrived. “Well! Thank goodness you’re back! It’s a miracle I’m still alive! I’m still exhausted from all their antics!” Mrs. Carlson pushed through the saloon doors and shouted back into the kitchen. “You have very bizarre children! But then again, this is a very bizarre town! I’m moving back to Glasgow, where no one speaks backward! Ever!”

  Purdy looked at Rose quizzically. “What’s she talking about?”

  “Oh, she’s just kidding around.”

  Rose then realized that Janice Hammer had been standing in the kitchen the whole time, looking severely at the loving family with her arms folded across her chest.

  Then she proclaimed, “Your parents are heroes!”

  Sage jumped up and down. “Did you cure the flu?” he asked.

  Mayor Hammer cleared her throat. “They not only cured the flu, they also cured a few cases of short-term memory loss and some broken hearts as well. It was as if the croissants were magic!” She barked out a nervous laugh that startled everyone. “Magic! Ha! But those croissants did have a certain effectiveness that seemed … otherworldly.” Mayor Hammer pulled herself back to reality. “And that’s why we gave them the key to the city.”

  Albert triumphantly held up the thing hanging around his neck, which was a two-foot-long cardboard cutout of a yellow key wrapped in red ribbon.

  “What does it open?” Sage asked excitedly. “City Hall? Can we have a party in there?”

  Mayor Hammer blinked at Sage. “It doesn’t open anything! It’s a symbol of our gratitude and respect.”

  Sage harrumphed. “Respect, huh? Respect is one thing. Me having my circus-themed tenth birthday party in your city hall is another.”

  Purdy broke the tension by turning to her children and lilting, “So! How did everything go?”

  Rose opened her mouth to answer, but Mayor Hammer cut in before she could make a sound. “Well, that’s my cue. I don’t want to hear about your family. I mean—I don’t want to intrude on your family.”

  She bowed to Albert and Purdy and said, “Thank you for everything. Truly.” Then she hustled into her black Hummer, rolled up the tinted window, and sped away with her caravan of armored cars.

  Rose rolled her eyes. “Was she like that the entire time?”

  “Worse,” Albert said, smiling. “Now, answer your mother’s question, kiddles: How did the week go?”

  Rose looked desperately at Ty and Sage, and found that they were looking desperately at her in return. It was obvious tha
t they couldn’t share the truth with their parents, but they had forgotten to come up with a lie.

  “Oh, it all went smoothly,” Rose said, trying to come up with something on the fly. “Chip was wonderful. Mrs. Carlson was very nice to us. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Purdy smiled and waited, pushing her floppy mane of black curls out of her face. Albert stood in the background, his fair, red-haired arms crossed over his thin chest. “That’s it?” she said. “Tell me the good stuff! Who baked what? Did any customers place special orders?”

  Rose was about the settle the matter by shaking her head “no” when Ty interrupted.

  “Umm, I baked all the muffins,” he said, words spilling out of his mouth like vomit. “I… invented new muffins. They were giant muffins. I baked two giant muffins the size of basketballs and I sliced them like a cake and people told me that I had invented a new genre of baked goods called the muffin cake and… I got a prize.”

  And Rose learned something new about her brother: He was the worst liar she had ever seen.

  “A prize?” said Albert skeptically.

  “From me,” said Rose, trying desperately to cut him off before something truly crazy came out of Ty’s mouth. Why couldn’t he have just said something normal? “I gave him the prize of my … sisterhood.”

  And then Sage made things worse. “And I baked a cheesecake! It was an … onion cheesecake, and everyone thought it was gonna be gross but they loved it so much that I got a bigger prize than Ty!”

  Albert and Purdy squinted at him and didn’t say anything, which only seemed to egg him on more. “Also someone ordered a wedding cake in the shape of a shark, and I made it, and we drove two hours to the beach to deliver it!” Sage snapped his jaws shut a few times. “A shark!” he repeated.

  Albert was starting to grow angry wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You drove? Which of my unlicensed children drove a car?”

  Rose thought quickly. “Oh, don’t worry, it was Chip.”

  “No!” Sage cut in. “It was Ty. He drove the car with his learner’s permit.”

  Ty swatted Sage in the back of the head.

  “Ty, is that true?” said Albert.

  Ty just stared into space like a scared squirrel, not knowing which way to turn.

  Albert and Purdy looked at each other, then Purdy slumped against the chopping-block table. “Okay. We know that you are all lying,” she said, “if for no other reason than there has never been a request for a shark-shaped wedding cake in the history of wedding cakes. Now, what really happened?”

  Rose was about to explain that there had been a little trouble with the cookbook but that Aunt Lily had helped them fix it, but as soon as she conjured the image of Aunt Lily’s tall frame and big hips and short hair and delicate nose in her head, Rose found that her tongue again went limp. Just like a few days before.

  Rose tried to say the words Aunt Lily, but it sounded instead like she was trying to cough out a hairball. The boys were clearly experiencing the same problem, as they both stood there making hacking noises.

  “What’s wrong?” Albert said. “Why can’t you talk?”

  Purdy gasped. “Oh my goodness. Albert, doesn’t it look like they’ve eaten a Hold-Your-Tongue Tart?”

  Albert thought frantically for a moment, then said, “You’re right! But who could have given them a Hold-Your-Tongue Tart? And why?”

  Rose was confused. A Hold-Your-Tongue tart?

  Could that be another name for any of the recipes they’d made that week? Not that it would matter—Rose and her brothers hadn’t actually eaten any of the baked goods they made.

  Then Rose remembered the shimmering, rainbow-colored tart that Lily had made for them her first night there, how they’d all thought it was the most delicious thing they’d ever tasted, and how after eating it, Ty had been too tongue-tied on the phone with their parents to mention Aunt Lily. Had that shimmering little slice rendered them unable to mention its maker?

  Figures. If Lily had come there in order to take the book, of course she would have done something drastic to keep Albert and Purdy from knowing she was there.

  Rose tried to ask about the tart, but it came out all wrong. “We ate a tart—made by—” and then her tongue grew fat and heavy and she could no longer speak.

  Albert and Purdy were chattering frantically when Rose remembered that Leigh hadn’t eaten more than a tiny nibble of the tart.

  She stooped down, gathered Leigh into her arms, and said, “Leigh, tell Mom and Dad who visited us this week!”

  Leigh thought a minute, putting a grubby finger to her lips, then remembered. “Aunt Lily!” she proclaimed.

  Albert and Purdy went silent. There was a frantic look in their eyes that Rose had never seen before. It was terrifying.

  “Lily was here?” Purdy asked, spitting out the name like it was something putrid and ugly. She made fists with her hands.

  Rose and Ty and Sage nodded quickly.

  “Did she feed you a tart that shimmered like the scales of a fish and the iridescent neck of a mallard duck?” asked Albert, his eyes open so wide the lashes practically touched his forehead.

  Rose nodded again. That was exactly what they’d eaten.

  “Why did you let her in?” Purdy asked, exasperated.

  Rose tried to explain. “She—said—” but she couldn’t form the words. Rose pointed to her own shoulder blade, then lifted her pant leg a little bit and pointed to the ladle-shaped birthmark on her calf.

  “Did Lily show you her ladle birthmark to fool you into thinking that she’s part of our family?” said Albert.

  Rose nodded a third time.

  “Wait—she’s not part of our family?” Sage asked, his voice aching with disappointment and fury, like he was being told for the first time that the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real.

  “Well, technically she’s part of our family,” said Purdy, pacing back and forth angrily. “But she’s from the side of the family that we don’t talk about.”

  “The Albatross side?” blurted out Ty.

  “Yes,” said Purdy. “Their side is a tricky bunch. I know Lily because she came here years ago, when Ty was a baby, and she tried to steal the Bliss Cookery Booke.”

  Rose shook her head in disgust. “Blech—” Rose coughed. She still couldn’t say Lily’s name. “She claimed didn’t know about the book!”

  “Well, not until we showed it to her!” said Sage. “She loved it!”

  Purdy gasped like she’d been punched in the stomach. “You showed her the book? How could you?”

  Rose felt her eyes well up. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of the world and she was still there, floating in a gelatinous goop of terror and shame. At least I didn’t run away with her, she wanted to say. At least I got her to leave, and the book is still here and safe.

  Then Rose’s tongue got its groove back. It was as if the pain of disappointing her mother had released the tart’s icy hold.

  “L … ll … llll … llll … ily!” she managed. “Aunt Lily!”

  After a moment of extreme concentration, suddenly Sage and Ty could say it out loud too: “Lily!”

  Apparently the Hold-Your-Tongue Tart had a loophole: extreme, all-consuming fear.

  Sage began to explain why they had shown the book to Aunt Lily in the first place. “Aunt Lily would never steal anything!” he screamed. “Aunt Lily is the most beautiful, interesting, helpful, fantastical person we have ever met! She wanted to see the book because she wanted to help us fix the town! If it weren’t for her, everyone would still be walking backward!”

  Albert narrowed his gaze. “And just why were they walking backward?”

  Then Sage spilled the whole story from start to finish. It was confusing, but their parents didn’t seem too interested in the details. When Sage was done, he smiled and sketched a little bow, as if he’s just finished the showstopping number in a huge, lavish musical.

  But life was not a musical, of course.

  Rose couldn�
��t remember ever having felt worse in her entire life. She was speechless.

  “That woman is very dangerous,” Purdy said slowly. “My gosh, what has gotten into you children?” She glanced around the room as though she had never seen them before, as though this were not her home.

  “But she’s so nice and pretty!” Ty protested.

  Albert stopped his puffing for a moment to chime in. “The scariest ones always are,” he said. “That’s a life lesson, Son.”

  Purdy pressed her fists against her temples. “Enough of this. Where is she? And where is the cookbook?”

  “Rose?” said Albert, not hiding his frown. “May we have the copy of the key we gave to you, please?”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. She’s gone. I have the key.”

  “And is the book safe?” Purdy and Albert asked simultaneously.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Rose said, fishing out of her pocket the little silver whisk that Lily had given back.

  Rose shivered as she moved through the frigid corridor—not from the cold, but from the realization that her gut been right all along: Aunt Lily was a shady character. She thanked goodness that she’d turned down Aunt Lily’s offer and had the presence to take back the key before her aunt could steal the cookbook.

  Rose pulled back the green tapestry, put the key into the lock, and turned. Albert, Purdy, Ty, Sage, and Leigh looked on from behind her. She yanked the chain on the overhead bulb. The podium was empty, except for a small cream-colored envelope.

  The book was gone.

  Rose felt her knees go out and heard her mother screaming her name, as if from a mile away, under water. Rose didn’t remember what happened after that.

  CHAPTER 18

  Disappearing Acts

  Rose woke up in her bed with Leigh bouncing up and down next to her. She looked up and saw her mother and father and Ty and Sage staring down, worried. There was a wet towel on her forehead.

  “What happened?” Rose whispered.

  “You fainted, honey,” said Purdy, her face washed with concern. “You swooned like a Victorian woman in a melodrama.”