“Why didn’t the vice principal replace him?” She asked. Her voice was still quiet, low. Why did it matter to her so much? I had a million questions, and I didn’t have enough time to ask them all. Besides, I knew she wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know, anyway. She was obviously too busy to deal with my incessant pestering. Plus, I was in a hurry. I could give Cordelia the proper, politically correct response about why I’d replaced Jeffrey Grey, but neither one of us had time for that.
“Because he was caught trying to have sex with students,” I said. “So he’s in prison now.”
“What the fuck?” She looked up sharply and shook her head. “I knew it.”
“You knew it?”
“We always thought there was something creepy about him,” she said.
“You and Larissa?”
“Yeah.” Her voice went cold, and I knew why. Shit. I shouldn’t have brought her up.
“Listen, about the order...”
“It’s finished,” she said, shoving the package of food toward me. It was lovely. She’d placed it in a cardboard box and wrapped it in plastic with a big bow on top. I loved Hannah’s food, but she’d never decorated it or packaged it up like this before. Cordelia had really gone above and beyond.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling out the money I owed her. I placed it on the counter, and I turned to leave. I stopped in the doorway and looked back. She was staring at the money, but she hadn’t touched it. “I hope Hannah is okay,” I said.
I didn’t expect for Cordelia to say anything at all, but then her voice came. It was only slightly louder than a whisper.
“She has cancer.”
My heart stilled.
Cancer?
Hannah?
I hadn’t known.
Why the hell hadn’t I known?
“What happened?” I asked. I walked right back into the kitchen and set the food down on the counter that stood between us. Cordelia kept staring at the money. She didn’t look up for a long time.
“Stage four breast cancer,” she whispered. “They don’t know if she’s going to live.”
Fuck.
Breast cancer was a tricky monster, and catching it so late in the game, well, it wasn’t good.
“They did surgery,” she said. “And chemo. Ray asked me to come in and run the bakery, and Hannah...” She shook her head, and a cold sort of laugh came out. Then Cordelia met my gaze, and I saw for the first time just how pained her eyes really looked.
“What?”
“She gave it to me.”
“Gave you what?”
“All of it,” she whispered, gesturing to the space. “I mean...she just...she just gave it to me. It’s like it’s her way of saying goodbye,” Cordelia whispered. “And I hate that.”
I couldn’t help myself.
I knew the rules.
I knew she hated me.
I knew I didn’t have the right to go around the counter, but I did. I walked right around it, and I reached for her, and I pulled her into my arms, and I hugged Cordelia. To my utter shock, she melted into my arms and held me back, and a second later, I felt her break down into sobs. I held her tightly as she cried. My phone was buzzing – undoubtedly my assistant freaking out that I still hadn’t come to work – but I ignored it.
There had been so many times when I’d wished I could be holding her, and now I was. I had my arms wrapped tightly around the sweetest girl in all of Ashton, and I wondered how I’d gotten so lucky to be able to see her again.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew there would be no fairy tale second chance for Cordelia and me. I understood that anything that happened after this would be pure chance. There was no such thing as destiny. I knew that. Somehow, though, I’d been given an opportunity to hold her, and I wasn’t going to let her go until I absolutely had to.
Cordelia and I stood in the kitchen until she stopped crying, and finally, she pulled away and wiped her face with the back of her sleeve.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s fine.”
“You should go,” she whispered.
She stared at the floor in front of her, and I knew well enough when it was time to say goodbye, and so I went. I took the package of muffins and lifted it up. Then I walked through the kitchen and back out the rear exit, and I walked around the building to my car. It wasn’t until I sat down and started the engine that I finally pulled out my phone to see twelve missed calls.
Fuck.
3.
Cordelia
AS THE DAYS PASSED, I started to get a feel for how the bakery should look, and an idea for how it should be run. My aunt had managed Savored all on her own for most of her retirement, but I decided that I wanted someone to help me out. I started interviewing potential candidates, and by the time I’d been back in Ashton for two weeks, I’d found two different employees: a high school senior named Beatrix and recent graduate named Kyle. They both seemed like great assistants, and I was looking forward to helping them learn more about baking while simultaneously getting the help I needed to keep everything running.
I loved my aunt, but her kitchen needed some serious upgrading. I’d saved a ton of money while I was working in the city, so investing in my own business wasn’t a hardship for me. I replaced the ovens, sinks, and counters. I had the flooring in the entire building redone. I even hired someone to remodel the bathroom. The only thing I didn’t mess with were the pictures on the walls in the front room. I repainted everything, but I hung every single picture back where it belonged, with the exception of the picture of Cooper.
That one remained off the wall, and I promised myself I wouldn’t replace it. Besides, the chances of my aunt seeing it and becoming upset with me were minimal. She was in the hospital a lot for her chemo, and even on non-chemo days, she mostly rested at home. The drugs really took it out of her, and I wasn’t about to push her to get up and walk around. She needed rest, and if she wanted to sleep, I was going to let her sleep.
I visited with her and Uncle Ray a lot, and I took over a lot of the chores around the house. I paid Kyle to start mowing their lawn for them. That way, they wouldn’t have to worry about it. Beatrix’s mom was a housecleaner, and I paid for her to start going to my aunt’s house and cleaning it, too. It wasn’t that money could buy everything, but it could buy a lot, and it could definitely buy convenience. I didn’t want my aunt doing a damn thing that she didn’t have to do. So even though she fussed at first, after that first visit from Beatrix’s mom, my aunt changed her tune and decided that having someone else come clean her house wasn’t so bad, after all.
Slowly, but surely, I readied the bakery for its grand re-opening. Within a couple of weeks of me taking over, people knew that Hannah was sick and that her weirdo niece was taking over the bakery. People stopped outside to peer in, but I always ignored them, and I never answered the door. After that first week, I expected that Cooper wouldn’t show up for his breakfast basket, but he did. Every single Monday he showed up, came in the back door, left the money on the counter, gave his regards to Hannah, and left.