Chapter 4

4

Annika

Mama was just barely seventeen when I was born. I know who my biological father is. He knows who I am. That's the extent of his involvement with us.

She raised me on her own. Finished high school with my grandmother's help, then cleaned houses and waited tables and baked morning shift at Duh-Nuts under the old management until she got a desk job answering phones for the county trash collector.

She loved to bake.

Loved to bake.

But it didn't pay enough, and so she changed jobs to take care of me.

She lost her job with the county after having a fling with her supervisor that resulted in Bailey joining our little family, but she got a better job answering phones for a local lawyer who was also a single mom, and she started saving.

And she kept baking.

And teaching Bailey how to bake.

Two years ago, I came home for Thanksgiving and had a foodgasm over her caramel cheesecake, and while I was warm and toasty and a little tipsy on wine and dessert, she asked if I wanted to go into business together.

Mama worked her ass off so I could play softball and go to art camp in the summer, and I was always painfully aware that the trade-off for her affording butter and flour and sugar, and for me being able to participate in sports and camps, was that we ate mac'n'cheese and whatever frozen vegetables were on sale—usually lima beans, because gross , who picks those up voluntarily?—so that she could afford gas and upkeep on the old hatchback that made a rattling noise anytime it went above 35 miles an hour, but still got me where I needed to be so I could have my own dreams.

Of course I said I'd go into business with her.

Help her have her dream, provided I didn't have to bake anything.

It was funny two years ago.

Two years ago, we'd both scrimped and saved enough since I left home that we could afford a down payment together, with money left over for equipment.

Today, life and all the unpredictability is giving me an ulcer, but dammit, I will not let Mama's dream fail.

And when I make up my mind, I succeed.

So while it might seem stupid to open a bakery in the midst of managing the doctor appointments and social worker visits and the contractors we've needed to come into her house and make it blind-accessible, not opening the bakery now isn't an option.

Mama needs this.

She needs hope . She needs to believe in the future. She needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

And seeing— fuck — living her dream coming true, feeling it, hearing it, tasting it, smelling it, are what's keeping her spirits up when her world is suddenly dark and scary because of a previously undiagnosed condition in her arteries that flared up ten years sooner than doctors usually see it.

She thought the dots in her vision that started two days after we signed the paperwork to officially buy Duh-Nuts were from too much stress with finally doing everything she had to do to make her dream work.

Or that she'd scratched her corneas, and they would heal.

Instead, she waited too long to get to the doctor, and her condition is rare enough that the extra time for diagnosis made her blindness permanent before we knew what it was to treat it.

She had her dream for three days before she couldn't see it anymore.

And I'll be damned before I fail her.

But one day after Grady crashed back into my world, the bakery is causing more stress than it's giving hope. So on a whim, after our afternoon naps—yes, naps that I've scheduled onto the calendar, because life right now is exhausting—I ask Mama if she wants to go to the Sarcasm GOATs league softball game.

I'm half-hoping she'll say no, because I know who the GOATs are playing tonight, but it's tradition to go, and she's looked so worn today, like she's aged seven years in the last four weeks, and I have this idea that soaking up the evening sunshine and talking to neighbors and friends and smelling the hot dogs grilling at the snack bar might cheer her up.

Though her chin wobbles, she sets her lips in a firm line and nods. "But only if we take our own popcorn," she declares.

Popcorn, I can make.

And I'm so relieved that she's not shrinking back from the idea of going out in public and braving walking around in a world that she can't see anymore, that I make triple the popcorn I should and let Bailey toss a portion in white chocolate and a second batch in caramel.

We don't have to stay long, which is good, because I doubt I make it past the top of the first inning.

And not just because we have an early bedtime to accommodate being up early for tomorrow's baking.

I thought my schedule was rough in the Army, but there wasn't the emotional toll of dealing with Mama's sudden blindness. And while I can rock a planner like I was born with it clutched in my hands, it turns out I'm not quite as adept at managing all the conflicting feelings that have been swirling inside me.

Worry. Guilt. Anxiety.

You know. The good feelings.

And knowing I'm probably going to see Grady again tonight doesn't help.

I'm driving us out to the fields while Bailey tells Mama all about how we sold out of cupcakes and donuts today. Our cake donut pans arrived yesterday afternoon, and Bailey made blueberry cake donuts with them this morning after I tried to make chocolate lava rock donuts.

She chatters about everyone thinking she was sixteen, and that we have three orders for special occasion cakes for this weekend—which she and Mama will have to make, since the oven and I get along as well as peanut butter and sand that's so allergic to peanuts that it turns into slime shaped like a duck when they get within seven feet of each other, and yes, I know that's very specific, but I had a weird dream during naptime today, and I'm also getting a stomach ache over going to the Sarcasm-Shipwreck softball game.

Which is why I'm blowing out a slow breath and concentrating on Bailey.

One day, she says, she's going to open a restaurant next door to Mama's bakery so we can all work together forever.

She's thirteen .

She could be full of attitude and sass and hormones, and she could be mad at me for not getting home more in the last ten years, and she could be melting down completely at how quickly both our lives have changed since Mama's illness flared up—and we're still not talking about the fact that I'm only on emergency leave, and not actually discharged from the Army, which means I have maybe six to eight more weeks before I legally have to report back to duty if my chain of command can't get my paperwork processed—but she's not.

She just loves us and wants to be with us and completely rolls with things.

Mostly.

"Oh my god, he did not ," she suddenly shrieks.

"What? Who? Where?" I scan the winding state road through the mountains, making sure she's not yelling about a nudist about to jump into our path, because with Bailey, you truly never know.

"That Shipwreck shithead is selling tres leches donuts at his bakery tomorrow!"

I glance in the rearview mirror and realize she's scanning her phone. "Are you on social media?"

Eye roll. "Yes, Sergeant Paranoid. I'm on Facebook and I'm posting nude selfies and telling all the child molesters where to come find me and that they can score a hot lady soldier and a blind chick who still has it while they're here."

So, yes, she's still a normal teenager.

Also, Grady Rock is even more dead to me now than he was when he left my shop, because who steals someone else's donut idea ?

Bailey's right.

Shipwreck shithead. They think they're so special because they made up a story about their ancestor driving a pirate treasure in a covered wagon from the coast to the mountains to hide it from the authorities three hundred years ago so that they can call a mountain town a pirate town .

It's so ridiculous it makes my brain hurt.

"Please get off the internet while I'm driving. All your shrieking is distracting me. And distracted driving is unsafe driving. Remember that. You'll be behind the wheel soon enough."

One more eye roll.

I almost smile, because I know she's still going to curl up next to me on the couch tonight, lay her head on my shoulder, and tell me all her plans for how to best arrange whatever our special of the day will be tomorrow so that we can also post it on social media and lure more customers in, and by the way, did I see the pins she sent me from Pinterest with the geode cookies and can we please get a bubble waffle maker and soft serve machine?

"What Shipwreck shithead?" Mama asks, because that's clearly the more important question.

"Some guy Annika used to know who came over yesterday acting all you can't open a bakery in my county, because I licked it first . Ugh. I am not making friends with any of those kids from Shipwreck when I start at Blue Lagoon County High. Wait! I know! Annika, you should homeschool me. Then I can help with the bakery as part of my classes. It's home ec and economics and math and chemistry and social sciences all rolled into one."

"How is working at the bakery social sciences ?"

"Because you have to be social . And it's a science to be social with some of those people who don't know how to be social."

God, I missed her while I was gone.

Mama too.

"I think she has you there," Mama says dryly.

"I'm not homeschooling her, and you shouldn't support the idea. I'm a terrible teacher. Remember the slime incident last Christmas?"

"I remember you both learned a lot more doing it the hard way than you would've if you'd mastered it on the first try. Tell me again how you learned to bake those delicious blueberry thyme muffins I had for breakfast this morning?"

"Bailey baked those."

"But I made a lot of mistakes and had to work hard to figure them out first," Bailey points out. "Struggling and keeping at it is soooo much more important than getting it right the first time. Which is exactly why you should stay and homeschool me. It'll make you a better person."

"Oh, look. We're here. Darn." I steer the car into the gravel parking lot at the edge of the softball fields, the two-story tan school building framed in the distance by the soft blue mountains behind it. "We'll have to stop talking about mistakes and homeschooling nonsense."

"But not about those shitheads from Shipwreck," Bailey says.

"Bailey. Not in public," Mama orders.

She raised us both on the belief that words are just words, and the only thing you do in banning them is give them more power. But she's also enforced the don't cause trouble in public since not everyone believes the same rule.

Which is going to prove mighty difficult for me to follow tonight too, because dammit and seven other much more inventive words I've learned during my decade in the Army want to spill out of my mouth.

That motherfluffing pirate ship bus just pulled into the parking lot from the other side.

I thought I was prepared.

I'm not.

I'm so not.

Coming home sucks. Everyone has changed. People stop in the bakery to feel out if I've become somehow weird or different or brainwashed because of being in the Army—spoiler alert, I've always been this high-strung—and I don't know who's married and who has kids and who left and who stayed, and it feels like one big bucket of gossip without anyone to decompress about it with later.

Which means I don't know who I can unload to about the fact that I'm going to once again have to look at Grady Rock, who used to be that person that I'd decompress with .

And instead is now the person I need to vent about.

"What?" Mama says. She swivels her head toward me, and I realize I've let out a long, resigned sigh.

"We're playing the Shipwreck Shitheads," Bailey tells her.

Mama's chin trembles.

Probably because this is the game of the summer.

And she can't see it.

And it will get rowdy. Because this rivalry always does.

I should've told her. I should've told her before we left who we were playing, and then she would've said she didn't want to go, and I wouldn't be here wondering if Grady will notice I'm in the stands and if he'll still be all glowery and upset about me opening a bakery and why I still care, when Mama and Bailey and the bakery are my top priorities.

Not an old high school friendship.

"It's okay," I tell her. "We can go home and try this another night."

"No." She visibly swallows, and though her eyes are hidden behind her dark wrap-around sunglasses, I'm almost positive she's tearing up.

The damage was in her optic nerves, not her actual eyeballs.

Which means her tear ducts still work fine.

"No, we're going to this game." Her voice is wobbly, but getting stronger. That's my Mama. "I never miss it."

"We don't have to stay long."

"Just help me to the stands."

We all climb out, and she struggles to snap her white cane open. Bailey looks away, and I don't know if it's pain at seeing Mama struggle or embarrassment at Mama being different .

Could be both at her age.

The gravel isn't the easiest for Mama to navigate, so we end up flanking her and helping her over to the stands, each of us carrying a tote bag with tins of popcorn on our other arms. A few people from Sarcasm join us, including Roger.

"Maria! How you doing there? Help you up into the stands? I got a seat right here on the end, but you can have it."

"What's that?" Bailey asks, pointing over to a folding table set up between the rows of bleachers and the small snack stand behind home plate.

Roger goes pink in the ears. "We, ah, got a bake sale going."

Three people I vaguely recognize are blocking the sign, and I feel my cheeks starting to twitch, because I could've baked goodies for a bake sale. I mean, Bailey could've. We could've participated and got the word out a little more about Duh-Nuts's re-opening.

"Wasn't going to tell you," Roger mumbled, "but we've been trying to figure out how to help raise funds for all those projects you got going on to fix up your house with you being—you know, now, and thought we'd guilt those Shipwreck shithead—ah, neighbor people into pitching in some."

The crowd gathered at the table shifts, and my eyes blur as soon as I read the sign.

Bake sale to support Maria Williams – we take cash and check, but no worthless pirate coins .

"The table's overflowing with cookies, Mama," Bailey tells her. "They have brownies too."

"All free for you ladies. Or I'll buy it for you," Roger offers.

"You didn't have to do that," Mama chides softly.

"Don't you go being all proud and humble," he replies, which would be funny if I wasn't so simultaneously touched at the sweetness of it all and also dealing with the sudden fury that Mama's accident happened at all.

Accident?

Illness?

Curse ?

Every time I think I've grieved for her sight, the pain and anger and denial comes roaring back unexpectedly.

All the things she'll never see.

Having to live in total blackness and knowing there's a vibrant world all around her that she can only imagine now.

Fury makes me want to hit something, but I tamp it down, because now's not the place. I'll go for a run later. Or something.

"We're neighbors," Roger continues. "Neighbors who give a shit, and who don't know how to go back to giving you regular shit now that you're—you know—so we're helping the best way we know how. And we're fixing to get that railing on your front porch fixed tomorrow too, and I don't want to hear a word about it."

"I'm blind , Roger," Mama says softly. Her spine's so straight and rigid it could double as a ruler. "You can say the word. And thank you. Girls, say thank you too."

We dutifully thank Roger—we are grateful, though I can see Bailey fighting tears too, and it's a huge relief when someone suddenly shouts my name from the dugout.

"Annika! Thank god. Get your ass over here. We need a third baseman. You still got your arm?"

I look at Mama, who can't see me looking at her, but she snorts softly anyway. "Don't go using me as an excuse," she says before I can say a word. "Get your little tush out there and have some fun."

"I don't have a glove," I tell her, which is only half the reason my heart's in my throat. The other half is that all of Shipwreck's softball team is staring at me.

And that team includes the dark-haired, green-blue eyed, dimpled-cheeked Grady Rock, who's filing toward the field with a goat on a leash.

A goat .

If that's not a taunt, then I don't know what is. We're the Sarcasm GOATs, and here he is, bringing a goat with him, though our team name is actually Greatest Of All Time , and has been for as long as I've lived in Sarcasm, but it doesn't fit on the team T-shirts when it's all spelled out.

Some things, at least, don't change.

But if Grady sacrifices the goat as some sort of ritual meant to terrify us like that New Zealand rugby team's haka dance, then the Grady Rock I know is well and truly dead.

"Shoot, you know Julio always carries three extra gloves in his coaching bag," Roger says. "You don't want to lose to Shipwreck on account of not having a whole team, do you? You go on. I'll watch over Bailey and your mama."

"I can play," Bailey says.

"No! I'll play," I say quickly, because the last thing I need is her getting hurt on the softball field while playing with a bunch of rowdy adults.

I glance over at the opposing team's dugout again.

Grady's still staring.

So is his goat, though the goat's also trying to pick its own nose with its tongue and it seems to be pulling on its leash like it wants to charge me.

I toss my hair back.

There might be a baseball diamond between us, but I swear he scowls harder.

"Do you have a spare hair tie?" I ask Bailey.

She pulls a black rubber band off her slender wrist and hands it over, and maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I push my chest out and lift my head to show off my neck while I tie my thick hair back in a sloppy ponytail.

"Oh em gee, are you flirting with him?" Bailey squeals.

"Who? Who's Annika flirting with? Who's here?" Mama demands. "Is it that Rock boy? He was always so kind for a Shipwreck shithead."

"Was," I agree. "Mama, I don't have to play if you don't want to stay."

" Play ," she says. "I can sit at home or I can sit here. I'll sit here with the python."

Roger's eyebrows shoot up and he dances around.

A few people jerk their feet off the stands and look at the ground.

Even I jump, despite knowing what's going on.

"Hallucinations," I tell them all. "It's actually normal. She sees tigers and elephants too."

Mama's lips curve up.

The hallucinations are real—the doctors say it's a known side effect of sudden blindness, and now that Mama's getting used to randomly "seeing" animals that aren't there, she's started making jokes of it.

I lean in to hug her and kiss her cheek. "I'll take care of the python. And the Shipwreck shitheads."

"You always take care of everything," she replies.

I try.

I just hope I don't ever let her down.