Missed

The cell phone’s ring pierced through the Christmas music like a needle into a vein. I sputtered from my baking nirvana and glanced at the screen, already aware by the ringtone that the caller wasn’t my husband or our daughters’ school but still a number I’d stored. When I saw that it was the oldest granddaughter of Helen, my sweet neighbor, I set my frosting bag down and tapped a pinky fingertip to the green button.

“Nikki, thank God you’re home. It's Rachel. We need your help.”

 “Is your grandmother okay?” I asked.

“I’m leaving work to pick up Mom, but then it'll take us at least half an hour to get there, maybe more with Friday traffic. We need Gigi distracted until we arrive.”

 I wiped my hands on a blue-and-white-striped dish towel and stepped around the island to silence Rudolph. “Has something happened?”

“We think...  My sister...” Rachel’s voice quivered, and she took a breath that was half gasp. “Molly was flying out of Denver this morning and...”  Other than the word down, the rest was lost in sobs.

I moved toward the adjoining living room where I picked up the remote from the end table by my husband’s favorite chair and powered on the huge television. The volume blared, so I muted before changing from Arthur on PBS to local channels, but there were only morning talk and game shows. On CNN, however, the words Breaking News: Plane Crash in Denver shocked in large red letters under an image of deep orange flames and dark, billowing smoke against a snowy field.

“Oh, Rachel,” I whispered, but I doubt she heard over her own crying and the now-added woeful barks of a dog, and then another. In my imagination, she stood at a stainless steel table, behind her a wall lined with cages filled with sick and boarded animals. Her pastel smock with cute kittens and puppies, like she’d worn during her last few monthly visits with Helen, now juxtaposed against her darkened aura.

“Molly’s not answering her cell phone.” Rachel’s voice cracked. “Damn, this will kill Gigi.”

Helen had become frail and somewhat forgetful over the last few years and especially since a heart procedure. Molly had moved in for nearly a month then, a welcome addition to our community, but even in normal times she was a frequent fixture at her grandmother’s apartment, appearing at least once during the workweek and on Saturday after Saturday, when she took Helen to have her hair done, then to brunch, and finally to run errands and shop for groceries. On the previous Saturday, Molly had come to my door before going to Helen’s. “I'll be out of town all week,” she’d said. “Gigi’s getting confused more often. If you see anything unusual, please let Mom or Rachel know.” Her face had grown gray as she spoke; her anguish had been palpable. “We’re trying to talk Gigi into coming to live with Mom, but she’s fighting to keep her independence.”

Rachel’s prediction about her grandmother surviving this could, I feared, come true.

“What do you need, Rachel?”

“Go over and keep Gigi occupied, but don’t tell her anything.”

I said I would as I leaned against the back of Kevin’s recliner. In front of the large window near the TV, festive lights twinkled and danced on my family's Christmas tree.

“Maybe...,” Rachel said. “Maybe Molly wasn’t flying today...maybe she missed the flight.”

“Maybe.” The words flowed like water from a tap, but then immediately slid down the drain.

“We'll be there as soon as we can.” Her voice gave way to sobs, and she was gone.

I turned to go change clothes, and my eye caught sight of my kitchen. Cookies, some ready to bake and some cooling on racks, covered nearly every surface. Others—Santas, stockings, sleighs, trees, and candy canes—were already bedecked with red, green, and white frosting and sparkly sprinkles. These rooms smelled like the bakery I'd owned before my daughters were born, and the taste of an already sampled cookie that had rested sweet on my tongue minutes earlier now turned bitter.

In my bedroom, I put on my best black yoga pants and a long green tunic top I’d worn to my husband’s work holiday dinner the prior Saturday. When I sat down to pull on my socks, I stopped for a second to breathe, just breathe, and another memory of Molly pushed in. A couple of years before, we’d waited together in the breezeway for a summer-afternoon downpour to cease. “I want to see the world,” she’d said in a dreamy voice. A loud thunderclap had thrust her from her travel trance, and she’d jumped before adding, “I want to bring part of the world home to Gigi.” Then last spring, she’d returned from Paris and brought her grandmother a gold Eiffel Tower Christmas ornament, which Helen had displayed on her coffee table ever since.

The sorrow of losing a loved one, especially when sudden, especially when that someone is young and with so many unaccomplished hopes and dreams, especially at the holidays, was one I knew. In my reflection staring back at me from my mother’s vanity mirror, both hands crossed over my heart, holding in memories and panic; distress covered my face. I straightened my shoulders and ran fingers through my hair before picking up my tennis shoes and carrying them back to the living room, back to Christmastime, though now joyful blue and jolly red, bright green and orangey-yellow twinkles contrasted against the nearby television’s aerial shot of wreckage and flames and gray clouds floating in the washed-out winter sky. The screen split, and in the right frame, fire hoses sprayed as first responders worked to put out the blaze. Black smoke drifted toward million-dollar homes, a church steeple, and what appeared to be a school building. On the left side, former NTSB official Patricia McFarland was being interviewed from Chicago. I'd seen her on CNN after other aviation disasters, and I liked how she calmly explained situations. Her face and the anchor’s alternated, and I adjusted the volume.

The plane had been in the air for only minutes when it crashed, the anchor said, bursting into a fireball, cracking into pieces. She provided the airline and flight number and said it had been on time, leaving at 8:15 that morning, Denver time, and I mentally adjusted an hour ahead for Tennessee. An airplane graphic on a map indicated the plane’s flight path to Nashville International. Maybe Rachel had the time of the flight wrong. Maybe Molly was on an earlier flight or in a meeting in Denver, oblivious to the crash or her family's worry. Maybe.

I turned off the television and unplugged the Christmas tree lights. Then I pulled on my shoes and grabbed my coat, but before leaving, I went to switch off the oven and to retrieve a batch of cookies, their round edges the dark brown I loathed, as I did the singed smell of overcooked dough. These cookies would not go to the girls’ school holiday party later that afternoon, and I slid them into the garbage before I started toward the door. Then I realized I needed an excuse for coming across the breezeway, so I returned to the kitchen. Onto a small plate, I placed a half dozen decorated Christmas tree and candy cane cookies. Santa seemed too merry.

A few steps separated my condo from Helen’s, and I only had time to slip my keys and phone from my shaking hand into my coat pocket before arriving at her door, covered by a beautiful blue spruce wreath with holly berries and frosted pinecones. I knocked hard on the frame, and then I waited, shivering. The temperature had dropped more than forty degrees overnight, and my body wasn’t used to the frigid cold. Snow was expected the next morning, snow from the west.

I half-hoped Helen wouldn’t answer, but then the door opened. As always, her hair was perfect, though she was six days after her last visit to the stylist, and she was impeccably dressed in an expensive pantsuit. I doubted she'd ever baked cookies while wearing pajamas. A warm smile developed on her face, and she stepped aside, saying, “Nikki, what a delight. Please, come in.”

“I baked for the girls this morning,” I said, as I strolled past her, breathing in her Joy perfume and the condo’s clean scents of Pine-Sol and Lemon Pledge. “And I thought you might like some cookies.”

She closed the door before taking the plate I extended. “Oh, these are lovely. You are such a fabulous baker. I so miss your shop.”

I felt guilty that I hadn't brought Helen more of my excess baked goods or simply prepared something just for her. “I'm sorry for not calling before coming over,” I said.

“You never have to call.” She took the cookies to the table and excused herself, telling me to make myself at home, and she went into the kitchen. She still had the original louvered swinging doors separating it from the dining room. Saloon doors, they used to be called; café doors was the newer term. I'd had them at the bakery, and I could see myself walking through them, holding a tray of cookies or a decorated cake, ready to make someone’s birthday a wonderful sensory memory.

Helen’s doors swung closed behind her with a smoothness I appreciated, as I did the rest of her home. It was usually hushed, except sometimes classical music played. She was particularly fond of Vivaldi, and with her lively step, I considered it her life soundtrack and this apartment like her film set. Her furnishings were an eclectic mix of elegant antiques and mid-century straight lines. Mine mostly were found, refurbished second-hands mixed with nice hand-me-downs from my Aunt Gabby.

These condos had once been rental apartments. Right after buying ours and before moving in, my husband and I—as had so many neighbors—tore down a wall to create an open floor plan and then updated the kitchen. It was lovely and functional, but whoever thought connecting these spaces was a good idea hadn't lived in a home with children or frequent guests. I was in constant tidy mode. And as a professional baker, my kitchen was my domain. Though uncomfortable to admit, even to myself, I often didn’t like sharing it with my family. I coveted Helen’s doors.

I removed my coat, scanning the living room as I did, and my eyes fell on Helen's small but festive Christmas tree centered at the picture window. I'd only seen it from the outside, and my girls loved it. “Momma, it’s the color of Ms. Helen’s hair! Can we get a white tree?” Lacy had asked as we came home from school on the day the tree first appeared. She’d smiled, showing the empty space where her two front teeth had been. And Kacy added, “Can we get lots of red and purple balls, too?” I'd promised that we would visit and see the tree close-up one day, but we hadn't yet. Dinner and dishes, first-grade readers and dance classes—everything ate so much time.

On Helen’s tree in its place of prominence was Molly’s filigree Eiffel Tower ornament.

Nearby, the armoire housing the television was open, and the set was on with an almost undetectable volume. As I started toward it, the kitchen doors creaked open behind me, and Helen's light footsteps fell on the lush carpet. I turned back to her as she set two small plates and two ringed cloth napkins on the table. She asked if I wanted coffee or milk.

“I don't want to put you to any trouble,” I said.

“No trouble at all.”

“I'll have whatever you're having.”

“Coffee then,” she said and turned back.

I was glad for coffee, thinking that might keep her busy longer.

On the television, Patricia McFarland in Chicago spoke words without sound. Under her heart-shaped face, large red letters blared: 136 Passengers and Crew Believed Dead.

I set my coat on a sofa arm and went to turn off the channel, but—damn new televisions—I couldn't find any buttons. I'd just spied the remote beside Helen’s flip phone, both on the coffee table, when she came from the kitchen again, this time carrying a sugar bowl and a creamer. She looked at me and then the screen. “Isn’t that plane crash horrible?” She placed the delicate pieces on the table and came closer.

“It’s dreadful.” My voice was barely a squeak.

“It's in Denver, where Molly is. Just before you came over, I think they reported that the plane was headed to Nashville. If she hadn’t been flying home tomorrow, if it had been today...” She made a sign of the cross, third eye to heart, shoulder to shoulder, a gesture polished as smooth as river stones.

“Tomorrow?” I tried to hold my relief inside.

Helen smiled. “Molly said, ‘I’ll come see you, Gigi, when I fly home on Friday.’”

I gathered my emotions under an umbrella of forced calm. Today was Friday.

“She's been at a big conference,” Helen said, “something about customer software her company might acquire. I don't understand much of what she tells me, but I'm so proud of her. And Rachel with her veterinarian practice. All of you young women are so accomplished.”

I nodded.

“I told you Molly’s engaged, didn't I?”

“Easter wedding.” I forced a smile as my mind flooded with images of pitying smiles and puppy dog eyes directed my way during another dreadful holiday season long before.

“Yes, an Easter wedding!” Helen’s brightness dimmed when she stared at the screen, and I turned my gaze there, too. The headline had changed to Plane Crash Near Denver. “But those poor people. I hope there are survivors, though I don't know how anyone could survive that.”

“It’s dreadful,” I muttered again.

“And right here at Christmas,” Helen added.

I turned my gaze toward the tree and the beautifully wrapped gifts below it and caught a long-ago cry that threatened to escape from my throat.

One December night just after I’d turned seven, I stood by my mom’s vanity table and watched her curl her eyelashes and stroke on black mascara. Her foundation was the color of light wheat and her blush a pale rose. Then she slipped off her robe and stood in her slip and bare feet. She pulled on sheer hose, a shiny dress the color of an emerald, and black high heels. She ran lipstick, a mauve pink, over her lips, and then with a hint of touch, she put some on my lips, too. When I turned to the mirror, I had an almost imperceptible coating.

“In a few years, I’ll teach you to put on makeup, Nikki,” she said. She kissed my cheek, Her hair, already swept up in a French twist, smelled of strawberries. She pulled back and stared at me; her thumb stroked at the lipstick she’d left behind.

Snow was just starting to spit as Momma and Daddy drove me to my friend’s house. Shanna was an only child, too, and her mother was kind like mine. I kissed my parents goodbye and was told they’d pick me up after lunch the next day. As they drove away, I watched from the door, something I’d never done when left in the past. Tears formed as the car’s taillights disappeared. Mrs. Stephens put her hands on my shoulders and turned me around. “It’s okay, Nikki. We’ll have dinner and you and Shanna can play until bedtime.”

Much later, I was in a deep sleep when I heard a whisper, “Nikki.” I thought it was my mom, but when I opened my eyes, it was Mrs. Stephens. She stood there in her blue terry robe, her hair in disarray. “It’s time to go home.”

 “Did we miss lunch?” I asked.

“Shhh, don’t wake Shanna. Change your clothes, dear.”

As I pulled on my turtleneck top and corduroy pants, she folded my pajamas and put them into my bag and started to put my teddy bear in, but I grabbed him. I already sensed in my body that the world had tilted.

When I came into the living room, my aunt, my father’s younger sister, stood there in her pretty red coat. “Where’s Mommy and Daddy?” I asked.

Mrs. Stephens turned away.

“We’ll talk at home,” Aunt Gabby said in a voice that quivered.

In the car, Aunt Gabby wouldn’t answer my questions. We drove in a silence that felt as sharp as any knife in my mother’s kitchen drawer. Out my window, the sun continued its slow December rise, its light glinting off snow-covered lawns and steep roofs with chimneys waiting for Santa to arrive. “He can get through the smoke and fire because he’s magic,” my daddy had told me.

When we reached my house, Aunt Gabby opened the door, and I ran from room to room, clutching Teddy, shouting for Momma, for Daddy. Aunt Gabby took my shoulders to stop me. She took me to the sofa, and I learned that on a slick road and a tractor-trailer too near, my parents had been killed.

Aunt Gabby had raised me and always encouraged me to do what I loved, always said, life is short. For her, for us, it hadn't been cliché.

Patricia McFarland was back on the television screen, and Helen said, “Oh, did I hear wrong? Was the plane going to Chicago?”

Lying had never come easy to me nor had clever responses, so I shrugged.

She grew silent, and I feared she was figuring out the reason for my visit, but a split second later she shook her head, like she woke from an unfathomable dream. “Could you come take down the Christmas China, Nikki dear? Molly has set it up a little high for me to reach.”

The remote seemed so near, but to pick it up and switch off the television right in front of her felt too rude and too obvious. Or was that my sneaky conscience? So, I followed Helen into the kitchen, which was cozy with the café doors closed and the coffee aroma, robust and comforting. I wished we could stay there, working side-by-side together like a mother and daughter, and not return to the potential reality she faced.

But soon, too soon, we made our way to the dining room table with our filled cups on saucers, both ringed with delicate, painted holly berries and leaves. After Helen’s first bite of a cookie, she declared it delicious and then asked about the girls. It was a relief to talk about their improved reading skills and upcoming dance recital and how Kacy had chosen plum for her costume and Lacy turquoise.

“Vibrant, like your daughters,” Helen said. She brought the cup from her lips and set it on the saucer.

As I told her more stories about the girls, she compared these to the younger years of her own daughter or her two granddaughters. And then she said, “Don't tell Molly I told you, but she's going to ask you to make her wedding cake. She always loved your bakery. And after months of looking for her dress, she found it online and ordered it last week, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “It’ll arrive next month.”

I nodded, suppressing my sorrow, unable to speak.

“Oh, the afternoon I spent with my mother and older sister at the Cain-Sloan Department Store, the original one downtown on Church Street. The bridal department was on the second floor, and I tried on nearly a dozen dresses and felt like a princess as I modeled them.”

She described a dress with a satin bodice and long sleeves, twenty-six tiny pearl buttons up the back, and a lace-covered ivory skirt and train. Her mother and sister had gushed when she’d exited the dressing room, confirming what she already knew: This was the dress. Her mother bought it that day. For a moment, I could see a young Helen with smiling eyes, just as in the black-and-white wedding picture I’d often admired hanging on a wall with many family pictures in her living room.

Helen soon returned to the present. “Molly wants lilies for her flowers and her cake to be pastels—like decorated Easter eggs,” she said. “Easter is her favorite holiday.”

Clouds of cream swirled in my cup, and I stirred them away, careful to not splash onto the saucer or the lovely tablecloth. The smell of the coffee was so bitter to me now, I couldn’t drink it.

“Nikki?”

I moved the tip of my ring finger to the corner of my eye to block the tear threatening to slide down my cheek. I wasn’t sure I could sustain this charade until Rachel and her mother, Jeanne, arrived.

“You'll bake for Molly, won't you?”

“Oh my, I haven't made a wedding cake since closing my shop.”

I’d shut down the bakery to raise my newborn daughters, but losing my store had been harder than I could have ever expected. Even now, more than half a decade after closing, Aunt Gabby still encouraged me by paying the rental on the storage unit that held the tools of my trade. “It’ll make reopening less arduous,” she said whenever I suggested selling it all. Each quarter when the statement arrived, a zero balance because Aunt Gabby had already paid the bill, my heart ripped anew. I seldom admitted this loss to anyone, but more and more now, I did to myself, unable to hold in the dreadful ache. I missed making birthday cakes year after year for my regular customers and cookies for parents too busy to bake and knowing people in my Nashville community by name. I missed when my husband came home in the evening and put his nose to my hair, saying, “Sugar cookies,” or “Pumpkin pie,” or my favorite, his voice a sexy growl, his hands reaching around my waist, “Hmm, wedding cake.” And I missed the joy I’d felt when my culinary creativity was being shared daily. That last wedding cake had been simple yet elegant, only three small tiers, white on white. It had been for the civil ceremony of two favorite customers, Stephen and Maxwell, and their cake was beautiful.

How could I now commit to a cake for a wedding I doubted would happen?

She put her hand over mine, seeming to mistake my hesitation for a different sort of doubt. Once in a moment of candor, I'd told her how much I missed the shop. Helen had been widowed thirty years before; and like Aunt Gabby, she often said the words, life is short. I expected her to then, and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t break into sobs, but instead she said, “Your baking is a gift to be shared. You need to get back to your work.”

“I worry about the girls if I reopen.”

Kevin wasn't worried, though. He’d recognized my misery a couple of years before and urged me to set up shop again. He'd even pointed out an available storefront the prior spring, a perfect corner location, but I’d hesitated and then a Hookah shop opened there.

As we’d prepared for bed one night the week before, Kevin called from the bathroom, “Nikki, you need to be happy. Open a new shop.”

“I want to be available to the girls. I don’t want them to be alone.” I turned back the covers, climbed into the bed, and hugged my knees to my chest.

He stuck his head out the door, wiping a hand towel across his mouth, and reminded me that our daughters have two parents.

“We’d have to hire someone to watch them after school,” I said.

He tossed the towel toward the sink, turned off the bathroom light, and came out. “Or you could hire someone for the afternoon shift at the shop,” he suggested, “when the baking is done for the day.” Kevin got into bed and gave me a minty kiss goodnight.

“But what about summers?”

“The girls have several day camps, and when they don’t, they could come with you to the shop or with me to the office. And you know how my parents and Gabby love their time with the twins.”

He’d fallen asleep in two minutes, but I was wide awake, my mind swirling. Every obstacle I’d thrown into the debate, Kevin had shot down with a reasonable response.

Since then, my resistance had crumbled. I wondered if my daughters might be better off with a mom who loved her life as much as I do when baking. For the past three weeks, every day on the drive to and from the girls’ school, I passed a retail space that had a great location, was the right size, and offered a large kitchen, per the online listing. The monthly rent fell inside my projected budget. Every time I drove by, I held my breath that the sign would still be there, keeping hope aflame, knowing one day I’d be crushed by the word Leased.

“At least you made cookies for Lacy and Kacy,” Helen said, “though it seems a little early for Christmas baking.”

“They're for the class holiday party this afternoon.”

“Oh, I remember that last day before the break. What glee!”  She laughed and clasped her hands together. Her blue eyes twinkled. “The chance to turn toward Christmas finally. We didn't start the season so early back when my daughter was young. No Christmas decorations in stores before Halloween. We waited until after Thanksgiving to decorate our homes and until December for Christmas music.”

I nodded.

“It's odd that school is letting out on a Thursday,” she said.

“It's...um...the party is...I...”  I couldn't think of anything to salvage the moment.

And then her eyes widened. And she said, realization in her voice, “Today is Friday.”

I reached for her hand near a small plate that held a half-eaten cookie, a Christmas tree without its star, but Helen already moved shaking fingers toward her mouth. When they rested there, she was silent for long, long seconds. Tears formed and her breathing seemed a little labored.

I’d only been seven in my moment like this, but the familiar shock of loss rose through my entire being as fast and sudden as a tsunami. I held my breath, my body ready to move, uncertain of what to say or do.

Long moments later, Helen blinked the tears away, took a deep breath, and raised her chin. Her face took on a calm that was anything but authentic, and she sat even straighter in her chair, like a soldier about to deploy into battle. “Molly was not on that plane,” she said, her voice overly assured. “She always calls me right before taking off. Always.”

“Could you have missed a call?” I hated asking, but it felt cruel to continue the pretense.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I've been here all morning. I took a long bath and cleaned the bathroom, dressed, and worked on my hair.”

I noticed then that her hair wasn’t perfect as it was on Saturday afternoons, as I’d thought it to be always. A strand here out of place, a strand there. Nearing a needed wash, a trim. And her pantsuit was a bit faded. And the café doors behind her needed a coat of paint. Helen’s life wasn’t perfect. No life was perfect. We all had to find our way on the paths we had taken and the paths we were presented.

I couldn’t bring myself to outright suggest she’d missed hearing the phone ring that morning, missed a call from Molly, so I asked in as gentle a voice as I could muster, “Would she have left a voicemail on your cell?”

“There are just so many buttons on that thing, and I never could find messages, so I made Molly take voicemail off.” Then she nodded her head once. “She's okay. I'm sure. She would have called again if she couldn't get me the first time, or she'd have tried the home phone.”

My heart lurched, but I held my reaction inside. When the cost had gone up yet again the prior summer, with reluctance, Helen had disconnected her landline.

“I'm sure her flight is later,” she said. “Molly’s busy with work, but she'll hear about the crash and call any time now to tell me to not worry.”

I nodded and forced a yes from my mouth.

“They might close the airport there, so then she won't visit until tomorrow.”

I nodded again. “Yes.”

“Did they ever say the plane's destination? It was Chicago, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I mumbled. I knew I’d confess this fib to Kevin that night.

“I think they said Chicago,” she said, her tone uncertain. Then she stood, an abrupt move unlike her usual graceful ones, and she picked up our coffee cups, sloshing some from my full cup over the saucer’s edge, the brown liquid spreading like a shadow across white lace on the table. “Let me top these off.” She burst through the café doors, and they swung wildly a few times. My stomach pitched at their motion.

The second the doors rattled shut, I hurried to the living room, ignoring the Christmas tree, knowing gifts to Molly would be under it.

My last Christmas presents to my parents, bought with the help of Aunt Gabby and wrapped poorly in Santa paper by me, sat in the bottom drawer of my mother’s vanity. Shalimar and Aramis, murky and soured.

My eyes scanned the television screen only long enough to witness a multitude of massive snowflakes falling in Denver, a near white-out of everything except the red-orange flames on the ground. I grabbed Helen's flip phone from the coffee table, opened it, and the small screen blinked awake. The words Missed Calls were there, and I'd just found the function I sought when there was a knock on the apartment door.

Helen came from the kitchen, the doors swinging less wildly, and I moved the phone behind me. “It's Grand Central Station here this morning,” she said, adding a nervous chuckle.

As she opened the door and called Jeanne's name and then Rachel’s, I turned toward the tree and pushed buttons on the phone to retrieve Call History. At first my heart soared at the words on the screen.

Molly 8:57 a.m.

Molly 9:03 a.m.

Molly 9:07 a.m.

But then Helen cried aloud behind me, and I remembered the one-hour time difference between Denver and Nashville. I darkened the screen and returned the phone to the coffee table as I sat on the sofa, trying to be obscure in the midst of emerging grief.

But soon I helped in the only ways I could: by making more coffee, providing tissues, and greeting family friends and Helen’s priest as they arrived. When there was nothing more I could do, when my own sorrow rose, billowing like ominous smoke from internal flames that threatened to suffocate me, I took my coat and slipped away.

Sobs erupted once I reached the vacant breezeway, and my hand shook when I unlocked my apartment door and dialed Kevin. “Come home,” I blurted as best I could in a quivering voice.

“Nikki? Are the girls...”

“They’re okay. Come...come home.”

“On my way.”

I burrowed into his chair and bawled for Molly and Helen, for Momma and Daddy, for all that was missed and for all that would be missed. I wrapped my arms around the seven-year-old girl still inside me. And then I started to think of how I wanted to spend the remainder of my too damn short life. Fully immersed, was the answer that came, and as a wife, a mother, a niece, a daughter-in-law, a friend, and a baker who served the customers she cared about. I wanted my hands in dough every day, and I wanted the smell of cakes and cookies and pies in my hair.

On the dark television screen, my reflection lifted, and I went to the kitchen where I turned on the oven before calling about the retail space I’d driven by. After the realtor appointment was set, I put a sheet of cookies into the preheated oven and had just set a timer when Kevin came in. Our eyes met across the large room, and then I ran straight into his arms, happy there were no walls to divide my life, no missed calls to regret.