Bake Until Golden: A Novel (The Potluck Catering Club)

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  Hello? Hasn’t anyone heard of peanut allergies? I mean, maybe I’m not as “green” as this younger generation, but how are peanut shells environmentally friendly?

  Then there was also a fancy-shmancy stroller that was so smart it was impossible, much to my chagrin, for this grandmother to open without help from her daughter. But Mandy’s all-time favorite gadget was a large, C-shaped pillow called a Boppy. “It’s for positioning the baby ergonomically,” Mandy informed me, as if it made all the sense in the world.

  I didn’t get it until I saw how she balanced Kyle on it as she fed him, using the pillow to fill the gap beneath her cradling arm and her lap.

  “That’s cozy,” I said.

  Mandy nodded. “Babies are more high tech today,” she explained. “It’s better.”

  “Well, excuse me for being from the dark ages,” I teased. “An era you yourself survived, you know.”

  We shared a laugh, and a few minutes later, as if to prove her generational superiority, Mandy repositioned Kyle inside the Boppy on the bed. He looked so cute with his little head supported as he snuggled inside pillow arms. He kicked his legs through the semicircle’s opening, safe from rolling off the bed.

  I looked up at Mandy. “I hate to admit it, but this thing is pretty slick.”

  I sat down on the edge of the neatly spread rose-colored bedclothes and reached for my grandson. He grinned a toothless smile as I pulled him onto my lap. I held his tiny hands as he pushed his bare baby feet against my thighs until he stood in a jiggly stance. “My, he’s strong,” I commented as Kyle and I gazed into one another’s eyes.

  “Mom, put Kyle back in his Boppy and help me with this packing. Kyle doesn’t have to be held every minute, you know.”

  I tried to hide my frustration with a good-natured observation. “With all your high-tech gadgets, you don’t really have to play with Kyle, do you? With his sound-activated mobile, not to mention his baby swing and a bouncer, all you have to do is push a button and the gadgets do the rest, right?”

  Mandy raised one eyebrow and gave me that look I’d so often given her when she’d been in pigtails. “But still,” I pressed on. “How do you know if the baby’s getting enough of your attention?”

  “Oh, Mom! Kyle is not hurting for my attention,” Mandy said as she lifted my grandbaby from my arms and plopped him back into his pillow. She turned back to me, a hand on one hip. “We’ve got to get moving if we’re gonna leave for the Denver airport. That is, if Kyle and I are going to make our flight.”

  I reached over and rubbed the back of Kyle’s little hand with my index finger. I was rewarded when he entwined his fingers around mine. “I love you, little boy,” I said.

  He smiled and my heart soared.

  Mandy’s voice was firm enough for me to look up. “Mom, really.”

  As I stood to help my daughter pack, Mandy’s cell phone rang with Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  “Cute,” I said, meaning it. I wasn’t against technology, unless of course it got in the way of real relationships.

  Mandy gave me a sort of half smile and shook her head before walking to the dresser to pick up her cell phone. “Hello?”

  I opened the guest bedroom closet door and stood on tiptoe to retrieve the missing bag from the top shelf. I’d stowed it there shortly after Mandy arrived last week, mainly to get it out of the way. Before I could pull down the bag, Mandy gasped. I could hear the squeak of the bedsprings as she sat down on the bed, hard. “No!”

  I whirled, slinging the suitcase around me so fast I almost knocked the baby monitor off the dresser.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded. But Mandy ignored me as her hand covered her mouth and her eyes glistened. “How bad is he?”

  “Who?” I demanded, my alarm growing.

  She shook her head and held up one hand, as if she were trying to shush me so she could hear. I whispered, “Something’s happened to Ray?”

  Mandy looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and nodded while I instinctively reached for Kyle. I stood next to the bed and rocked him in my arms as I shifted my weight from hip to hip.

  Mandy looked up. “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  I nodded and scurried to the bedroom desk, shifting Kyle in my arms before retrieving a notepad and a pen from a construction-paper-covered orange juice can, made by Mandy when she was only eight.

  I handed Mandy the pen and pad, and she scribbled with fury. “Yes, I’ll catch the next plane out. Yes, tonight.”

  The baby and I sat down beside her as she hung up the phone. Her shoulder blades sagged as she absently ran a hand through her hair.

  I fingered Kyle’s soft strawberry curls with my free hand while I rocked to and fro as if the baby needed comforting. “So what happened?”

  “That was Ray’s office. He’s in the hospital.” Before I could ask more, Mandy stood abruptly and looked down at me. “I’m supposed to drive to the Denver airport, where I’ll find a ticket waiting for me, to Cairo, tonight. When I get to Cairo sometime tomorrow, someone from the company . . .” She looked at her notes. “A car will be there to pick me up. He’ll take me to see Ray at the . . . Kasr El Aini Hospital.”

  “But what happened?” I asked again.

  Mandy stared back at me. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Ray’s in a coma, from a fall. He fell off a train platform, I guess. It’s not too clear, really.”

  “Fell or was pushed?” I asked.

  Mandy’s brows knit together. “I . . . I . . . ah . . . don’t know.”

  “But you can’t go. You don’t have your passport with you, right?”

  Mandy nodded. “I do. We’ve started carrying them when we travel.”

  I stood up and faced her, holding Kyle close. “But, you’re not taking the baby to Egypt, are you?”

  “I wish I could, but . . .”

  I finished her sentence, “But it might not be practical or even safe?”

  Mandy nodded and opened the suitcase before walking to the dresser, where she opened a drawer to retrieve a stack of folded jeans and tees. She spoke without making eye contact. “I do think it would be best if I left him here with you and Dad.” She looked at me then, her cheeks splotchy. “Would you mind? It probably won’t be for long . . .”

  My heart lurched to see my baby in pain. I rushed to her, wrapping her in an embrace that included the baby. “Darling, Kyle will be okay here till you and Ray return. You hear me?” I pulled back and looked into Mandy’s eyes. “Okay?” I asked again.

  She nodded. “But are you up for a baby, Mom?”

  I nodded as I placed Kyle back in his Boppy. “Well, yes. I did manage with you and your brother, you know.”

  She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Okay,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear.

  “I’ll help you pack.”

  Hours later, after tears, hugs, and a curbside huddle of prayer, Mandy walked toward the entrance of Denver International Airport, leaving her baby behind. She turned, one last time, and blew us a kiss, then pushed through the door, where she was quickly absorbed into the sunset’s reflection on the glass.

  I had every intention of following her in with the baby in my arms, but Henry stopped me. “You know we can’t leave the car,” he reminded me as he glanced at the policeman observing us.

  I sighed. “Wishful thinking, I guess,” I admitted as I waved baby Kyle’s hand in the direction his mother had disappeared. I stopped waving and turned to Henry. “I’d actually be excited about keeping Kyle, if Ray was okay,” I said, sniffing.

  Henry nodded the way he always nodded. A technique he sometimes used to make it look like he was actually listening whether he was or not. I tested to see. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Very sad,” he said in a tone that showed he meant it.

  I patted Kyle’s little bottom. “It will be nice to give the baby some hands-on attention.”

  “Do you think you can handle him?”

&nb
sp; I felt shocked. “Well, of course. It will be like the old days, Papa. Or don’t you remember?”

  Henry nodded again, and I would have thought he was zoning out of our discussion if it weren’t for the look of concern in his eyes.

  I placed Kyle in his car seat in the center of the backseat and strapped him in.

  “That’s the safest place for a baby in a car crash,” Mandy had explained in one of her many baby tips she’d shared on our way down the mountain. All the while she explained, she scribbled instructions on baby care in a notebook that she’d finally passed to me from the backseat.

  We were soon on the road and driving up I-70 toward the mountains. I was thankful Henry hadn’t turned on his songs of betrayal as we rode in silence, munching on the cashew chicken wraps I had packed for the trip. They were still crisp, and I hoped the two I’d given to Mandy would be this good when she got ready to eat them.

  An hour later, darkness drifted down the mountain road, covering us in a heavy cloak that seemed to absorb most all of the moonlight that occasionally winked between the tall peaks. Kyle slept and I stared at the shadows, lost in my worries until Sandi Patty began to sing “Majesty.” Glad to have her voice set as my ringtone, I reached for my cell phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Lisa Leann, it’s Wade.”

  Wade and I had gotten close after our time with Team Potluck on the reality TV show The Great Party Showdown. Still, we made an odd pair, me a . . . ah . . . fiftyish married woman, and he, a thirtysomething “friend” of Donna’s.

  I knew she was still the love of his life, despite the fact she had recently been dating David, a little detail that I knew simply broke Wade’s heart. I secretly sympathized. I’d always thought it was a shame that he and Donna had never married and had a family. To tell the truth, those two had seemed to play the part when Wade had taken in his twelve-year-old cousin for a time a while back. If Pete hadn’t gone back to his mom, I think Wade and Donna might have been engaged by now.

  I sat a little straighter in my seat. “Well, Wade, nice to hear from you. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine,” he said. “How’s your visit going with that grandson of yours?”

  “You have the right to ask,” I teased, “as you and Donna helped deliver him. I mean, I call you over to my condo to fix a squeaky door, and you end up delivering my grandchild. That’s what I call service.”

  “Just doing my job, ma’am,” Wade teased.

  I backed up to his question. “I just dropped Mandy off at DIA,” I admitted.

  “I know you’re going to miss those two.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to the backseat. I watched Kyle rub his sleeping face with the back of his hand. The act startled him, but not enough to wake him up.

  “Kyle’s still here with me,” I said, realizing my words sounded like a boast. I softened my tone with genuine concern. “My son-in-law was in an accident in Egypt, and Mandy’s taken the first flight out to be with him.”

  “Thank goodness she could leave Kyle with you. Is Ray okay?”

  “I won’t know until Mandy checks in, though word is he’s in a coma.”

  “Lisa Leann, I’m so sorry.”

  I sniffed. “Me too.”

  “Well, maybe this isn’t a good time to talk,” Wade said.

  I glanced over at Henry through my watery eyes. “Well, Kyle’s asleep and Henry and I are just sitting here, driving up 70. Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Well, ah, Donna, I guess.”

  I propped my elbow on the passenger’s window and held my phone closer to my ear. “What about her?”

  “Well, I need some advice.”

  “How can I help?”

  “I know I made a mess of things. I know she’s dating David, though I don’t think things are so serious between them, do you?”

  I shrugged. “She hasn’t said anything to me,” I said as the eighteen-wheeler ahead of us slowed down. Henry slowed too.

  I looked at my watch, hoping this mountain traffic jam would be short-lived. I had a baby who was going to wake up hungry, probably sooner rather than later. I was glad I wouldn’t be empty-handed tonight, as Mandy had prepared for her trip back home to Houston by pumping several bottles of breast milk, bottles I had inherited.

  Wade took a deep breath. “I miss her, Lisa Leann. I know I’ve blown it, but do you think there’s anything I can do to win her back?”

  “You mean other than hog-tying that mom of yours?”

  Wade almost laughed. “Well, yeah.”

  “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place for advice. I’ve helped many a lad in your situation. But you’ll have to do exactly as I say. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m listening.”

  Goldie

  10

  Bittersweet Sorrow

  Absolutely nothing in this world can prepare a wife for the death of her husband. I believe that even if the husband has been ill for a good long time, even that does not prepare her.

  Jack had been healthy his whole life until this past summer, when he admitted a few cardiac issues. Then, of course, the bypass surgery. And for what? For what?

  Jack, barely into his fifties. Gone. His life cut short entirely too soon.

  Why, God? Can you tell me why? Can you give me even the slightest hint? I’m not asking to understand all the complexities of the world. Just this one thing. Just tell me why you’ve left me here all alone. And why now . . . after Jack and I were finally making our marriage work. After it had begun to sing such a sweet song. A melody of love . . .

  ———

  I now have only vague memories of those first few minutes. Hours. I called Olivia, our daughter, but I didn’t speak to her. Her husband answered, and I told him about his father-in-law. Told him to tell Olivia. Told him to tell her gently.

  The two of them came as soon as they could get the children settled at Tony’s parents’ home. Immediately, Olivia took over placing calls to family members, friends, and my boss, Chris Lowe. She called the Department of Education office and the high school principal. I’d not have thought to do that.

  She called our family physician, who came right over as though we were living in the sixties and making house calls was the norm again. He gave me something to calm my nerves and help me sleep. I told him—told them all—that it wouldn’t work, that nothing could, but in the end, it did. I slept as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It had been a run-of-the-mill day in my less-than-ordinary life. When I woke the next morning, the sun was slicing through the half-opened blinds. I was wearing my favorite French terry pants and matching hoodie as though I were about to go for a leisurely walk. In spite of their warmth, I shivered in the early morning chill and rubbed my arms with my hands.

  Shifting on my bed, I realized another body was beside me. Initially I assumed it was Jack. Why, of course it was Jack. But, opening my eyes, I saw that it was Olivia, whose green eyes were focused on me. “Olivia . . .”

  “Hey, Mom,” she said. Her short red hair spiked against the crisp white linen pillowcase.

  It took a moment for reality to set in, to remember that Jack had died the day before. The realization must have registered on my face. My daughter smiled weakly and then whispered my name again.

  And I began to cry.

  ———

  The initial business of dying keeps those left behind from spending too much time grieving their loss. Before we’d had a chance to even make coffee—as soon as the blinds opened across the house—the doorbell rang. And rang. And rang.

  At some point Olivia ushered me out of the house and into my car, which she then drove to the local funeral home. We were greeted by Wendy Morrow Mitchell, a woman I’ve known since Jack had brought me to Summit View and whose family has owned this funeral home for at least three generations. She met us in the front parlor of what had once been a part of an old miner’s mill, took my hands in hers, and spoke her condolences. “Goldie, we’re so
sorry . . . the whole family . . .”

  The whole family.

  It was all I could do to speak. Wendy’s sister Amy had, many years ago, had an affair with my husband. One of his many affairs over the years. She’d been no more special than the last or the next.

  I slipped my hands from hers as I cast a glance at Olivia, who nodded ever so slightly as she said, “Tell your family thank you from all of ours.”

  If Olivia knew about her father and Amy Morrow Jenkins, she certainly wasn’t letting on. She was, as she always is, the epitome of grace, charm, and control.

  We were escorted down a long and narrow hallway whose walls were lined with old black and whites of the way things had been at the turn of the last century. Old miners with weathered faces and tattered clothing stared after us as their big floppy hats worn low provided shade from the sun or snow. Many carried battered pans in their gnarled hands. Others were wrapped in frayed blankets, standing just outside makeshift lean-tos, their dark boots laden with mud and slush.

  I thought of how—just twenty-four hours earlier—I’d been sitting in a television studio, listening to Evie speak of the old miner legacies and myths. It was an odd thought, but there it was.

  At the end of the hall was a white-paneled room dominated by two cluttered desks, no less than a half-dozen chairs, and several filing cabinets. Wendy turned, indicated with a sweep of her hand that we should sit in one of the vacant chairs in front of one of the desks. “Hugh will be with you shortly,” she said.

  Hugh was her son. His nameplate sat straight at the front of the desk we were being led to.

  Hugh managed the funeral home along with his cousin Andrew.

  Olivia and I sat. We took deep breaths. We released them.

  A few minutes later Hugh Mitchell—a rather gangly man who was a few years older than Olivia—entered the room, then closed the door ever so quietly. “Mrs. Dippel,” he said, extending a hand.