Union Street Bakery (9781101619292)

by Taylor, Mary Ellen

  I groaned. Margaret shrugged. Rachel smiled.

  “Are we doing all right?” Mom said.

  “Working together or financially?” I said.

  “Both.”

  “The McCrae sisters are a well-oiled machine,” Rachel said.

  Margaret and I snorted.

  “You girls aren’t fighting, are you?”

  “No,” Rachel said.

  “Daisy, are you getting your sea legs back, so to speak?”

  “Doing well, Mom.”

  “You’re sure?” She looked worried as she searched my gaze.

  “Very.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” There was no missing the hint of strain in my voice now.

  Mom, to her credit, knew just how far to push before I lost my temper. “And how’s the till looking?”

  “You just asked. We’re fine.”

  I could deal with Mom when we steered clear of emotions and focused on business. Business I understood. We only ran into trouble when she started worrying over me. You look too thin. I don’t want you to worry but . . . That’s when I got a little nuts. She never quite accepted that quiet is a comfortable, natural state for me.

  The rhinestones in Mom’s glasses caught the afternoon light, twinkled, and drew attention to the deep lines etched by her eyes. “Sounds good, honey. I know you know what you’re doing.”

  I stared at Mom, waiting for a joke or a song or some outrageous story about her knitting club. But she simply smiled meekly at me.

  “Shit, what’s wrong, Mom?” I said.

  Mom blinked. “Why should anything be wrong, Daisy?”

  “Because you’re too quiet. You always have a comment, joke, or show tune to sing. You stopped when I asked you not to rearrange the case. And you’re not pressing for specifics about the money.”

  “Honestly, Daisy, you read too much into everything.” Mom glanced into the display case. “You bake your molasses cookies today, Rachel?”

  Rachel folded her arms over her chest and met my gaze. “I did. But you don’t like them.”

  “Your dad loves them. I thought I’d get him a few.”

  “Dad is on a diet,” Margaret interjected.

  My sisters and I worked as a pack when we were on the hunt. And right now, Mom was our target. She knew something, and she wasn’t telling. Mom always told and blurted. She’d never met a secret she’d wanted to keep.

  “I thought I’d treat Dad to some cookies,” she said. “He’s been doing such a good job with his diet.”

  “All the more reason he shouldn’t be eating sugar, Mom,” I said.

  “What gives?” Rachel demanded.

  “Nothing.” Her eyes widened as if to add an air of innocence to the word.

  “Mom, please,” Margaret groaned.

  “I’ve receipts to enter,” I added. “Spill it.”

  Mom slid her hand into her back pocket and pulled out a letter. “I don’t want you to worry. I know you’re a worrier, and I don’t want to add to your plate.”

  “I’ll worry regardless.”

  “Mom, just blurt it out!” Margaret’s voice snapped with impatience. “We are all big girls.”

  “You always did say it was better to rip the Band-Aid right off,” Rachel said.

  My mind skidded from one disastrous scenario to the next. Dad’s heart. Balloon payment. Foreclosure. All of the above. “Mom, if you don’t start talking I’m going to blow a gasket.”

  “Is it Daddy?” Margaret said. She sounded weak and scared. “Is his heart okay?”

  “No, no, your father is fine.” Mom flicked the edge of the envelope with her thumb. “I received a letter a few weeks ago. I ignored it because I thought it was a bad joke. But I got another letter yesterday. It was certified. I actually had to sign for it.”

  The muscles by my left eye began to twitch. “It’s the bank.”

  “No. Not the bank. Honestly, Daisy your whole focus is on money.”

  I rested my hand on my hip. “It does make life a little easier, Mom.”

  Mom was a lot like Rachel and Margaret. She was all about the creative side of life. She’d learned to care about money but she’d never rivaled Dad in that department. Probably because Mom grew up in a pretty normal house: two parents, two brothers, and no great tragedies to mar her perspective on life. She had a joy of living that could drive me crazy but also had kept me from really turning inward to wallow.

  I was more like my father: Fancy ideas were fine and good but the bottom line was if you didn’t have the dough, it didn’t matter. Dad’s own father had died when he was just fourteen, and he’d put dreams of school aside and come to work in the bakery with his mother. By the time he was eighteen he was working eighty hours a week here. He had seen the bottom fall out of his life and understood it could happen again.

  Renee had instilled in me that same lesson when she left. I might not have detailed memories of that afternoon but the fear that it could all fall apart had never left me. Money at least gave the illusion that happiness could be controlled, invested, and grown.

  “What does the letter say, Mom?” A bit of impatience had crept into my voice.

  “It’s addressed to me, owner of the Union Street Bakery.” She tightened her grip on the envelope as if with her fingers she could seal its secrets in. “It’s from a woman named Terry Miller.”

  “I’ve never heard the name,” I said.

  “Me either,” Margaret said.

  Rachel shook her head no.

  Mom shoved out a breath and in a rush said, “She says in her letter that she visited this café thirty years ago. She said there was a young child left at the bakery. She said she knows the girl’s birth mother.”

  In the whoosh of a second, all coherent thoughts tumbled out of my head. There was the tick-tock of the cupcake clock on the wall behind me. The drip, drip of the coffeemaker and the thunder of my heartbeat rumbling in my ears. “Can I see the letter?”

  The utter calm in my voice was astounding to me. I should have been ranting, screaming, jumping up and down at such a colossal moment, but I held on to the calm like a life raft.

  Mom hesitated, then handed over the letter. “It’s typewritten, but she signed it.”

  I dug the letter out of the envelope. The paper’s crisp folds remind me of the way I creased my letters. Carefully, I opened it.

  Dear Mrs. McCrae,

  I see from the local directory that you and your husband own the Union Street Bakery. The listing does not say how long you’ve owned the bakery but I was hoping you could help me. I visited the bakery thirty years ago. There was quite a bit of confusion the day I visited when a young child was found. Over the years, I have often thought about this child and I am interested in discovering the fate of this child. I believe I know the child’s birth mother. If you can help, I can be reached . . .

  Sincerely,

  Terry Miller

  I reread the page at least three times before the room’s deafening silence nudged me to look up. My mother and sisters were staring at me. They reminded me of deer caught in a car’s headlights: wide-eyed, stunned, and anxious.

  “Do you think she is my birth mother?” Handing the letter to Margaret, I let her and Rachel read it.

  “I don’t know,” Mom said.

  “She doesn’t admit to it.”

  Mom frowned. “No, I suppose she wouldn’t.”

  “That would be admitting to a crime,” Margaret added.

  Rachel stared at the letter shaking her head as she read. “Why else would she ask about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rachel carefully refolded the letter. “My girls are only five. I can’t imagine leaving them alone for ten minutes, let alone just walking away from them. What kind of woman just walks away?”

>   Margaret uttered a curse. “I always forget you’re adopted.”

  That surprised me. “You do?”

  Margaret arched a brow. “You can be a pain in the ass, but you’ve been and always will be a McCrae. This woman doesn’t change that.”

  I wished it were that simple. I wished I could just toss the letter and accept the fact that I did have a pretty good life. Yep, there’d been a few bumps/mountains to deal with lately, but the foundation Mom, Dad, and my sisters had given me were rock solid. In my brain I knew that.

  But it was my heart that was the stubborn holdout. Logical arguments and sane reasons why I shouldn’t care about the woman who had left me just didn’t make much headway with my heart.

  “I wonder why she’s looking for me?” I wanted to tread carefully. This was my family, and as much as I groused about them, I did not want to hurt them with all my unanswered questions.

  Mom set her jaw as she did when she was hurt. “I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t care. I know she might have been the woman who gave you life, Daisy, but I’ve been wanting to get my hands on her for more than thirty years.”

  The anger took me off guard. “Why?”

  “Daisy, I’ve always prayed that you never remember the day I found you. I really do. Because it was not a good moment in your life.”

  We’d never really talked about that day. We touched on it a couple of times but that was a very long time ago and the story was always sugarcoated. The day was lovely. You were nibbling on your cookies. You were such a happy girl.

  “What happened that day, Mom? And let’s skip the Father Knows Best version.”

  Mom pulled off her glasses and stared into the lenses. Carefully, she wiped a smudge with the edge of her T-shirt. My sisters and I stared and waited. That day was as much a mystery to them as me.

  “The bakery was packed. We were slammed, as a matter of fact. Rachel and Margaret were with your dad’s mother, who was here for the weekend because it was the Easter rush. I knew I wouldn’t have time to work and take care of you girls so you were upstairs with your grandmother.” Mom and my grandmother had always been cordial but there’d been a distance between them as if they both were trying to ignore something unpleasant that had happened between them years ago. Grandma was kind to me but I always felt like an afterthought to her. “Of course she was thrilled to take the girls. And I was angry and resentful. God rest your grandmother’s soul, but she had a habit of making me feel as if I fell short. It gave her great pleasure to know I needed her help.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Rachel said.

  Mom put her glasses back on and made an effort to smile. “I’m not sure where that came from.”

  Rachel gave Mom a hug. “It’s okay. We get that Gammy had a different side.”

  We’d veered off the main path and were wandering toward a rabbit hole that would lead to nowhere. “Mom, about that day.”

  Mom sighed. “We were slammed, I was missing my girls, and I’m running around the café picking up plates and trash. People can be such pigs. Did you know I found a plate under the trash can outside last week?”

  “Mom, please.”

  “I saw you sitting at the wrought-iron table by the fence. The honeysuckle was in bloom. Anyway, I noticed right away that you were alone. I stopped and glanced around the patio half expecting to see your mother lurking close by. You know, dumping trash but still with one eye on you. But I didn’t see anyone, and you looked quite upset.”

  “You said I was smiling.”

  “I only told you that, honey. Your little face was drawn up tight and your fingers in little fists. You didn’t have a proper coat on and your socks did not match. So I hovered and waited for another minute before I set my dishes down and went to talk to you. I asked you your name and you told me Daisy. When I asked about your mother, you said she was coming back soon.”

  I had no memory of that moment, save for the scent of honeysuckles and the sugar cookie sprinkles on my skirt.

  “I asked if I could pick you up, and you said yes. You were as light as a feather and your legs were so chilly. You didn’t feel like Margaret or Rachel. You didn’t have their energy. Their weight. Their alertness. My heart broke. Dad came out about that time and saw us. I filled him in and he called the police. They came right away and started a search.”

  “They never found her.”

  “Not a trace. There were folks in the café who remembered seeing her. Some said she had brown hair, was tall and thin and very young. Others said she wore a red sweater and had blond hair. The police told us later that eyewitness testimony was unreliable.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It was all hearsay. And they never found anyone like her so I thought they were just wrong.”

  “You said once the social worker tried to take me.”

  “She did. By then you’d fallen asleep on my shoulder. When you started awake and saw the social worker, you started to scream. I’d never felt such sadness. I asked then and there if I could just keep you. I didn’t even ask your Dad because I knew it was the right thing to do.” A wistful smile teased the edge of her lips and her expression transformed to one of pure love for my father. “When the social worker started to argue, Dad intervened. He said you would be staying with us and called a friend of his in the district attorney’s office. In the end you did not leave.” She cleared her throat. “I gave you a bath that night and put you in one of Margaret’s sleepers. You were already too tall for anything that belonged to Rachel. We fell asleep in the La-Z-Boy together.”

  Sudden hot tears stung the back of my throat. I’d spent a lifetime driving my mother crazy and confounding her on many levels but if not for her and dad . . . I wanted to lean over and hug her and tell her how much I really did love her. But the emotion got all tangled up in fear and hurt. A moment passed before I could speak. “You never heard from this Terry woman.”

  “No, I never heard from her. And the Alexandria Gazette ran several articles on you. It was never printed that we adopted you.”

  “Why?”

  “That was my request. Of course, our friends and family knew, but I had this fear that if the information were printed, this Terry woman, or whoever she was, would just show up and take you. Silly, but I worried about that a lot when you were little.”

  “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t want my worry to become yours.” She tugged at the edge of her T-shirt and straightened her shoulders a fraction.

  “You said there was another letter?”

  “I burned it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was vague enough that it could have been written with information from one of the old articles. And I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “I wish you had.”

  She frowned. “Well, you’ve got the letter that really matters.”

  “Have you told Dad?”

  “Not about the first letter, but he opened this one. He said you are a big girl now, and we should leave it up to you to contact her when and if you wish.”

  “Why isn’t he here now?”

  “I told him to let me handle it. I know Dad is like you. Emotions don’t agree with him.”

  I couldn’t fault him for that. And if not for him, Mom may have burned the second letter.

  Curiosity warred with a deep sense of loyalty I had for my family. All those nights of longing for Renee aka Terry. All the unanswered questions about my past. All the hurt. This Terry woman could fill in so many pieces.

  I folded the letter, skimmed my fingers along the crease, and tucked it back in the envelope. “I don’t need to talk to her.”

  That wasn’t true. I did need to talk to her. But I wouldn’t dig for answers at my family’s expense. I made a show of walking to the large trash can in the café, tearing up the letter, and dropping the bits into
the can. “I’ve got enough going on in my life right now. Terry can just wonder.”

  Calling her “Terry” gave me a bit of much welcome distance. In my mind she was Renee, not Terry. I knew Renee. I’d loved and missed Renee. Terry was a stranger.

  Margaret shook her head. “You’re making a mistake, Daisy. You need to call her.”

  “Why?” The word sounded as if it were torn from my body. “Why do I want to see a woman who left me to fend for myself when I was just a baby?”

  Margaret’s expression held a hint of pity. “Because she is a piece of your puzzle and you need her.”

  “I don’t need her!” Too much anger leaked into the statement.

  “I don’t mean need in the sense of Need.” Margaret’s tone sounded adult and careful. “But there are basic considerations here. Like medical information. What if cancer runs in your birth family? You might be a McCrae in every sense of the word but genetically you are different.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, stop being a drama girl about this,” Margaret said. “This Terry chick might have valuable information for you.”

  Rachel laid her hand on my shoulder. Small fingers projected surprising strength. “One day you might have children of your own and you will want to know.”

  “I’m on the no-kid plan, remember?” That point had been another bone of contention between Gordon and me. He’d dreamed of a half-dozen children whereas I couldn’t quite summon the excitement to replicate my unknown DNA. He’d never seen the logic, and I’d never been quite able to fully explain.

  Rachel shook her head. “You have nothing to lose.”

  “Rachel,” I said, “I am holding on by a thread right now. I’ve lost my real job, my health insurance, and my apartment, and my ex-fiancé just walked into the bakery yesterday.”

  “Your what?” Mom blinked.

  “You were going to marry him?” Rachel exclaimed.

  “Shit, Daisy,” Margaret said.

  “Never mind about Gordon. That’s another day’s drama. Long story short, guys, I don’t have the reserves to deal with this woman now. I’ve got a full plate.”