“Ivy?”
My dad always said I showed every single emotion I was having on my face the moment I was feeling it. I tried hard to control it, but I was 100 percent sure that I was not successful at masking anything at that moment. “In the flesh.” The response sounded far coyer than I’d wanted to, which I’d actually not wanted to sound at all. I uttered a curse under my breath before saying, “Miguel Baptista. It’s been a long time.”
Olaya cleared her throat, which broke Miguel’s concentration. “You know each other?” She shot me a pointed look since she already knew that we did.
The left corner of Miguel’s mouth quirked up into grin. “Oh, we know each other, Ms. Solis. Very well, in fact.”
The way he said them made the words sound almost ominous. It wasn’t as if we shared some dark, secret past, but we did have a past. I couldn’t get a read on what he meant by his tone or what he thought. His expression was almost amused, although his leaving me the split second he’d graduated from high school, and his subsequent years in the military, were anything but amusing to me. He’d been my first real love . . . and my first utter heartbreak. And here he was, grinning at me as if it had all been one big joke to him.
“Oh yes, we know each other,” I agreed. “Miguel walked out of Santa Sofia without a backward glance, if I remember correctly. And look, here you are, back again. Guess escaping wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.” I regretted the contemptuous tone of the comment the moment it left my lips, given what Emmaline had told me about his father passing and Miguel returning to help his mother with their restaurant. Still, he deserved my anger. He had left me high and dry, after all.
“Guess I realized what a great town Santa Sofia is. Something I couldn’t appreciate when I was eighteen years old.”
“Humph,” I uttered under my breath, but it came out louder than I’d intended.
“Santa Sofia isn’t the only thing I didn’t appreciate,” he said, but before I could even process what he’d said and fully wonder if he was referring to me . . . or us . . . he turned back to Olaya. “Ma’am, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about the other night. The sheriff isn’t pressing charges against Randy. That being said, I think you need to steer clear of him.”
“I always do,” she said.
“What does he have against Olaya?” I asked, wanting to dig a little deeper. Mrs. Branford’s claim about my mother being a bloodhound crossed my mind. Like her, I always wanted to ferret out the truth. After the hit-and-run that had caused my mom’s death, I had gone back to the scene, had looked for skid marks, thinking I could somehow match them to the culprit’s tires. I’d been determined to bring her cowardly killer to justice. When there hadn’t been any marks on the pavement, I was flummoxed. Had the driver not even bothered to slow down? Had he not seen her, or had he thought he could miss her by speeding up instead of stopping? As much as I’d searched for the truth, I couldn’t get any closer to it. There were no leads, and so I’d pushed my questions about how the accident had happened aside and focused on helping my dad get through his grief.
I might never understand the details of my mother’s death, but I could dig a little and figure out why Randy Russell had been in the back parking lot of Yeast of Eden.
Miguel had turned to me as I spoke, but now he looked back at Olaya. “No idea.”
“He is a business rival, nothing more,” Olaya said.
“He looked suspicious to me,” Miguel said. “I saw him in the parking lot. Saw the club in his hand. And when I asked him what he was doing, he got pretty belligerent, said it was none of my business—”
“I know very well how he can be,” Olaya said.
“I talked him down, and then you all found Ms. Makers in her car.” He gave a weighty pause and then said, “Just be careful.”
Olaya nodded solemnly. We stood there in an awkward silence for a few seconds. I didn’t know what I might have said to Miguel if I’d had the chance, but the pastor stepped to the altar and the service began. Coming face-to-face with my past would have to wait. A look passed between us before Miguel walked away and took a seat on the left side of the church. Olaya took my hand and pulled me to the opposite side of the church.
“What is your story with him?” she whispered as soon as we were seated.
I kept my eyes on the pastor but shrugged. “No story.”
She looked at me skeptically, her eyes bright with tears again. “That I do not believe. I loved a man once.” Her voice became melancholy. “I thought James was the love of my life, but there were too many years between us.”
I tried to mask the surprise on my face. I didn’t know why Olaya was opening up to me, but it proved that she felt the same connection to me that I felt to her. My heart swelled just a little bit. “What do you mean? He was older than you?”
“Yes. By fifteen years. I didn’t care, but he was married, and, well, he loved his wife. He was a rule follower. I could never fault him for that, although I wish things had turned out differently.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that Olaya had loved a married man. I tried to lighten the situation. “Love. Who needs it?”
She grimaced and said, “You do. There’s nothing more important. You feel it. You need it. You just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”
This gave me pause. Just like my mom, Olaya seemed to have a sixth sense about me. Given that I hardly knew her, I couldn’t imagine how she had her pulse on my history and my emotions. But I realized in that moment that it wasn’t worth trying to hide anything from her. I knew she’d already figured me out . . . and I hadn’t even figured me out. “Miguel and I were high school sweethearts,” I said, “but, you know, he left. That about sums it up.”
“That I also do not believe. There has to be more to the story. You thought he was the one—”
I nodded, just once. “But he didn’t,” I said, finishing her sentence.
She glanced at Miguel, then at me. “I’m not so sure about that, m’ija,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Sometimes the one comes around again, and you have a second chance together.”
My view of Miguel was of the back of his head. He looked straight ahead, listening to the pastor delivering the sermon for Jackie’s funeral. Whatever Olaya had seen between us in the brief few minutes we’d spoken, I couldn’t say, but all I saw was our past, and it felt just like the bridge Emmaline had said was uncrossable between her and Billy. Any connection Miguel and I had had was long gone.
I felt the unmistakable sensation of someone’s eyes on me. My attention shifted and was drawn to the man next to Miguel. A chill ran down my spine. Randy Russell was looking over his shoulder, but not at me. He was staring menacingly at Olaya.
Chapter Six
I stood in the cocina at Yeast of Eden, ready for my second baking lesson. Olaya had postponed for a week after Jackie Makers’s death, and she still didn’t look ready to launch into class again. She’d wanted to cancel altogether, but I’d talked her out of it. “You’re always going to miss Jackie,” I’d told her, “but doing normal activities is the best thing you can do. Plus, remember you told me I belonged here. That you’d teach me the art of baking bread.”
“Keep busy,” she’d said in response, but her voice had been flat.
“Yes, keep busy.” It was another thing I knew from experience. Going about everyday activities was the only thing that had kept me sane after my mom died. Being idle meant only that I had too much time to think, and thinking was the one thing I’d wanted not to do at the time.
Olaya had agreed, but her heart wasn’t in it. If only she could eat a slice of some magical bread to mend her broken heart. But with the depth of her grief, I suspected it didn’t work that way. In fact, I hoped that her sadness wasn’t instead seeping into the bread she made daily, only to be passed along to her patrons.
“Do not worry,” she said, as if she’d just read my mind. “Our bread is as pure as it ever was.”
“What are we baking?” Sally asked.
Last time there had been a chalkboard with the word Conchas written in beautiful cursive, colorful drawings of the sweet breads alongside. Today the chalkboard was blank. Olaya walked into the bakery’s kitchen. She stopped at the chalkboard, her back to us, and wrote on the black surface with a practiced hand. A minute later she turned around and revealed the day’s task: fig and almond loaf. She’d also sketched a picture of a bâtard-shaped loaf of bread, its markings crisscrossed on the top.
“Bread is healing,” she said, and a sliver of relief wove through me. She was turning to what she knew, to the comfort of her baking. Yes, she was grieving, as I was, but we’d both get through it.
“I can attest to that,” a voice said.
We all turned to see who had spoken. My jaw dropped. Penny Branford, dressed in a coral velour sweat suit just like the lavender one she’d been wearing the first time I met her sashayed right into the kitchen, cane swinging, a lightness in her step. On her feet were snazzy white leather sneakers, and her snowy hair was wound into tight curls on her head. I couldn’t help but smile. She was a sight to see, and I knew she was a force to be reckoned with.
As my smile lit up, Olaya’s dulled. “Can I help you?” Her voice was almost accusatory.
If Mrs. Branford noticed the lack of warmth in Olaya’s welcome, she didn’t let on. “I’m here to bake bread. Like you said, it’s healing. It’s one of the things that keeps me so young and spritely.” The twinkle in her eyes seemed to have extra glow going on, and I wondered if she had a personal testimonial about the healing powers Olaya had mentioned.
Despite Mrs. Branford’s enthusiasm, something about Olaya’s expression made me think she might turn the spritely woman away. I surged forward and took Mrs. Branford’s free hand in mine. “You can be at the station next to me,” I said, thankful that it wasn’t the area Jackie Makers had used during the first class. I felt, as I think Olaya did, that that space needed to remain a tribute to Jackie, which meant no other baker should use it. At least for the time being.
Olaya frowned, but a moment later the grimace vanished as she got the materials ready for Mrs. Branford to join the class. “Here you go,” she said, holding out a floral apron with layers of ruffles, a little smirk on her face. “You definitely want to protect that lovely sweat suit.”
I flinched at the sarcasm coming from Olaya. I’d never heard that from her. Her reaction to Penny Branford’s entrance had raised a red flag, but now I knew. There was some bad blood between these two. I’d bet my life on it.
Mrs. Branford’s expression tightened as she started to reach for the apron, but then she dropped her hand, gave a weighty pause, then up and marched right past Olaya. She bent to look in the drawer the apron had come from. Ten seconds later she straightened up, a triumphant smile on her face and a bright blue half apron in her hand. No frills. No ruffles. But stylishly cut and sewn, and definitely more her style than the one Olaya had initially proffered.
As Penny Branford’s smile grew, Olaya’s faded. This, I thought, was going to be interesting.
Olaya flung her shoulders back, stood up straighter, and headed to her workstation. I could tell that she was ready to move on and stop letting whatever existed between her and Mrs. Branford interrupt her class. “As I was saying,” she said, her voice crisp, “bread is healing. Anyone who doubts it has not experienced authentic bread made by hands with the power to heal.”
As if we’d been prompted by her words, all of us class members, including Penny Branford in her newly donned apron, studied our own hands, flipping them over to look at the palms, then back to contemplate the backs. My hands looked ordinary, and I doubted that I’d ever get to the point where they had the power to heal. I did, however, notice a few more wrinkles than I’d had the last time I’d taken a close look.
While I was pretty sure I’d never be a bread-making healer right out of the gate, an hour later I was also positive I’d never be a professional bread maker. We’d dusted a jelly-roll pan with cornmeal, had snipped the stems from a cup of Calimyrna figs and let them steep in boiling water, had let the yeast froth in warm water, had mixed the dough and let it rest, and had added unblanched almonds and chopped figs to the mixture. Now we were letting the dough rise in a covered bowl. None of it was particularly difficult, but the stress of exact measurements and hoping the mixture would turn into a delectable bread had worn me out. The process of baking didn’t seem to come naturally to me.
Despite the conflict between my perfectionist nature and my baking struggles, I was, I admit, excited for the outcome. We went through the steps to turn the dough, a bowl of water nearby to keep the sticky mess off our hands.
“Why can’t we just knead it?” Sally asked. Working side by side for two sessions now had allowed me to discover something about each of the women in the class. Sally was on the whiny side. I imagined her with her siblings, one of them catching her with an arm over her shoulders, giving her a noogie, and her struggling and saying in her best ten-year-old whine, “Stooop. Dooon’t.”
“We allow the dough to develop as it ferments,” Olaya said. She demonstrated the process of grabbing the underside of the dough, stretching it up, and folding it back over the rest of the dough. We dipped our hands in the water after each turn. Thirty minutes later, the dough had started to puff.
“Fermentation!” Olaya’s giddy expression was contagious as each of us noticed our own bowl of dough rising with air. We all looked around at each other. Martina and Consuelo nodded at each other, holding out their bowls to show the other. They each shot a glance at Jackie’s empty workstation, a wash of sadness skimming both of their faces. The vacant spot in the kitchen left a heavy feeling of darkness hanging over the space.
Jolie, with her perfectly straight black hair, which was once again pulled back into a carelessly perfect ponytail, stared at her bowl, her mouth downturned. “Mine isn’t doing that puffy thing. It looks flat.”
Olaya strode over and stood by Jolie’s side, and the two of them studied the failed almond and fig dough. After a moment, she raised her gaze to Jolie’s and asked, “Did you add the yeast?”
Jolie rolled her eyes. “Of course I did,” she said, her tone calling Olaya out for asking such a ridiculous question.
Olaya ignored the attitude and focused only on the bread. “No, I am quite certain you did not, actually.”
“But I did.” She held up the squat brown jar of yeast. “It’s right he—” she started to say, but she stopped when Olaya took the jar right from her hands.
“See this depression in the lid?” Olaya ran her finger over the top. I looked at my jar of yeast, and from the corners of my eyes, I saw the other women in the kitchen do the same, each of them feeling the top of the lid.
“This is still sealed,” Olaya said. “Once it’s opened, this little button area is raised.”
“Is your dough rising, Ivy?” Olaya asked me.
The depression in the yeast jar was not there, and my dough was fluffy. It was coated with a fine layer of tiny air bubbles. Yeast successfully added. “Rising,” I confirmed.
One by one, Olaya checked each of the bakers’ doughs, nodding as she looked and poked and sniffed at each station. As she approached Mrs. Branford, her expression once again tightened. “I didn’t know you still baked, Penelope.”
“Once you learn, you never forget. I’m eighty-six years old, but I’m not senile. Or incompetent.”
“If you say so,” Olaya said with a smirk. “Did your dough rise?”
“Like the sun every morning,” Mrs. Branford said. She pulled her bowl forward so Olaya could see.
Olaya frowned “So it did.” I got the feeling Olaya would have grinned happily if Mrs. Branford’s dough had been a fail. As it was, she said, “Ladies, entertain yourselves for a moment. We have a bread emergency.” She glanced at what had been Jackie Makers’s workstation, a veil of sadness clouding her face. I saw her steel herself against her emotions,
pushing away her grief, as she turned back to Jolie and they began the recipe from the beginning.
“Well,” Mrs. Branford huffed, “this is going to take longer than a moment.”
I’d thought that Olaya Solis and Penny Branford would get along, that they were two peas in a pod—both strong, smart, assertive, and accomplished. But maybe they were too much alike, because a friendship between them clearly wasn’t going to happen. They had some history, these two. The bad blood I’d sensed was simmering just below the surface, and I wanted to know more.
“How do you know Olaya?” I asked.
Mrs. Branford wasn’t biting. At least not at this moment. “That, my dear, is a story for another time.”
“I’m holding you to that,” I said, pressing. “When?”
Mrs. Branford laughed, her already wrinkled face compressing into a crisscrossed map of lines. She considered me for a moment, her hand over her chin, her fingers on one side of her mouth, tapping. “Hmmm. I do believe I could use a bit of help around the house.”
I cracked a smile. “Do you, now?”
“Those cupboards in my kitchen are abnormally tall.” She looked me up and down. “And you’re, well, perhaps not abnormally so, but you are also tall.”
I was a mere five feet eight, but that was definitely taller than her five feet five inches or so. I went with it. “I guess I am.”
“Tomorrow morning, then. Eight o’clock. Don’t be late, my dear.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, liking Mrs. Branford more and more with each passing second.
Sally strode toward us, drying her hands on a kelly-green dish towel. “Don’t be late for what?”
Mrs. Branford grinned. “This lovely girl is going to help organize my kitchen tomorrow.”
Judging by the frown on her face, Sally didn’t seem to think that sorting through Mrs. Branford’s dishes and pans sounded all that appealing.
Kneaded to Death Page 5