Chapter 23

23

Annika

I hate caving, but sometimes, it's necessary.

My stomach is in knots while the morning rush dies down, and I keep looking at the cupcake clock hanging over the front door, because at exactly ten AM, I'm expecting someone.

Several someones.

And I have to talk about everything .

Bare my soul.

Confess my deepest fears.

And also lie my ass off and take responsibility for the delicious donuts that Bailey and Mama tweaked with a new recipe over the weekend, and that Bailey filled with cinnamon-spiced fudge pudding and topped with a salted caramel glaze.

But she didn't stop there, because Bailey is physically incapable of not going to extremes.

Which is why today's dragon donuts—as she named them—feature not simple salted caramel glaze, but a glaze that she's somehow managed to make look like dragon scales.

None of the bakers I've interviewed—all two of them who have answered my ads—can do that .

My phone dings, and I pull it out quickly to check the message.

Holy fuck, Annika. She'll be TEACHING culinary school before she's sixteen.

Grady's attached a screenshot of the Duh-Nuts Instagram post about our dragon donuts, and I can't help a huge smile from stretching so big my cheeks instantly hurt.

She gets a childhood first , I type back.

Not that I have to argue with him about her childhood.

I spend enough time arguing with her about it.

"Who are you texting?" she asks behind me.

"Liliana." I pocket the phone beneath my apron and turn to find her watching me from the doorway to the kitchen, a fresh tray of dragon donuts in hand, her suspicion stronger than it's been anytime in the last week since Grady and I quietly made up, and then agreed to lie to everyone about making up.

But aren't sales better ? he'd said. People love a train wreck more than they love hearing about two friends making up .

And thus we stay a secret.

For the bakery. Bakeries.

We're both benefitting.

"Are those the last?" I ask Bailey with a nod at the donuts.

"We have one more tray. You don't normally blush when you're texting with Liliana."

"I'm nervous. I hate reporters."

"No, you don't."

I do when I'm lying to them. And I've been lying to Bailey and Mama too. In the name of Mama's dream and Bailey's future, but still lying.

Who are you texting, Annika?

My friend from the Army/first duty station/basic training/that karaoke bar I used to go to in El Paso.

That peanut butter cupcake recipe was perfect, Annika. Where did you find it again?

Pinterest.

What's that you were eating?

Not a coconut pecan chocolate cookie from a bag that I found on the back door that almost certainly came from Grady, who texted late last night after everyone else was in bed, to tell me that cookies make life better and I should go check the back porch before the local raccoons or possums did.

I hate lying.

I hate it to my core.

But if that's what it takes to keep raking in sales while I try to find a new baker who can do what Bailey does when she goes back to school in just a few weeks, then that's what I'll do.

"Today, I hate reporters," I tell Bailey. "I don't like fighting wars."

"You were in the Army."

"I'm basically a human resources Excel manager and paper pusher, and that was for a noble cause. This is just a petty rivalry between two towns, and none of us can actually remember why we hate the other."

"It's because Shipwreck lied about being founded by a pirate and tried to poison the founder of Sarcasm," Mama calls from her seat at the worktable, where she's shaping snickerdoodle cookie dough, which she can do by feel, though she seems to lose the cookie scoop every few cookies and has to pat around to find it again.

But this is progress.

Just like getting her out bowling Sunday night.

"That happened three hundred years ago," I call back.

"A hundred and fifty," she says. "And don't say that to the reporter. We don't need those Shipwreck shitheads thinking we've gone soft. Even if they're not actually the shitheads everyone in Sarcasm calls them. I'm just getting in the mood to tell a good story."

There's a knock at the back door. I take the tray of donuts to put them in our display case while Bailey scampers off to answer the knock.

Our supply truck came yesterday, so I'm not entirely certain who's knocking on the back door, but I hope it's not Grady.

Surely not.

He knows the reporter is coming to see me today after she leaves Shipwreck, and if we're going to keep up a pretense of being at war, he needs to not be here.

Although, Bailey is definitely still at war with him, even if I think Mama still secretly likes him.

And I have this feeling his family wouldn't take too kindly to seeing me either.

Especially Tillie Jean, and not just because someone started a Facebook page dedicated to keeping score in who's winning, and is now taunting her mercilessly about the banana pudding thing.

I shake my head, because I'm being dumb worrying about who's at the back door.

It's probably Roger. He's been stopping by and offering to visit with Mama just about every day.

"Oh em gee, are you serious?" Bailey squeals as the doorbells jingle on the front door.

My stomach drops so hard, I swear it lands on my big toe.

Not because Bailey's squealing, but because the woman walking through the front door is dressed in black slacks, a maroon blouse, and flats with a leather messenger bag tossed over her shoulder, and she smells like a reporter.

Not that I know exactly what reporters smell like, nor can I actually smell her over the scent of donuts and cupcakes permeating the walls, but she looks like she smells like a reporter.

And she has a photographer with her.

Not the same photographer as the morning of the Cooper incident, thankfully, but he's still carrying a massive camera with a lens that could probably be used to fend off a bear in an attack.

Photographers must have very strong neck muscles to be able to carry those huge cameras with the straps around the neck all day.

And I don't even want to think about the judgments they're making about our little bakery.

It's cozy, with the same ten chipped Formica tables that were here when I was a little girl, because the former owner's kids didn't want anything from inside the bakery when they finally sold it, and keeping the old tables and the glass display cases and the decorations meant there were so many fewer things for us to buy immediately.

Bailey and I repainted the dining room walls a buttery yellow between Mama's doctor appointments not long after I got back, and we washed the windows, but they need washing again. Our coffee machines are used—clean, but clearly loved—and one of the overhead lights is buzzing.

Which means the biggest thing I have going for me right now is my smile.

The Army trained me to make mediocre coffee, do paperwork, fire an M-4 rifle, and complete my physical fitness tests with time to spare.

They did not train me to smile to get my way.

Still, I dial it up as far as it will go. "Hi. Welcome to Duh-Nuts."

The woman glances around at our donut pictures hanging on the walls, then back to me. "Annika?"

"Yes. You must be Bridget. Nice to meet you. Coffee?"

"Oh em gee, Annika! " Bailey barrels out of the kitchen and smothers me in a shoulder-hug from behind. "Thank you thank you thank you . Tell me you have bubble waffle makers coming too, and I swear, I will love you forever ."

"I—"

She pulls back and moves to the back counter and starts rearranging the cake plates and coffee cups. "Here," she says to someone in the doorway. "You can put it here."

A guy in blue work pants, a gray polo with a delivery company logo, and work boots joins us from the kitchen, pulling a dolly loaded with a brown box wrapped in white shipping bands. It's about the size of a dorm fridge, and I'm more than a little confused.

And possibly on my way to a panic attack, because this is not on the schedule for today .

In fact, it's not on my schedule for any day.

There's a reporter standing in my bakery.

With a photographer capturing all of this.

And I have zero idea what's going on.

"What—" I start.

Bailey's gaze catches mine, and the excitement making her brown eyes dance fades. "You…didn't order a soft serve machine?"

I make a noise that might be of course I did or it might be what the hell are you talking about , and it makes the delivery guy stop and squint at me. "You Annika Williams?"

"Yes."

"And this is Duh-Nuts? Like the lady in back said?"

"Yes. Yes, of course."

"Then is this young lady right about where you want your countertop ice cream maker?"

Oh.

My.

God.

No he didn't.

And by he , I do not mean the delivery guy.

"Did my mama sign for that already?" I ask quietly.

"Yes, ma'am. Right here."

I look down at the delivery invoice, and yep, there's Mama's scrawled signature crossing four lines of text near the bottom of the delivery order.

"She can't see," I babble while I scan the rest of the document.

"Yes, ma'am," he replies.

And there it is.

Grady Rock .

I'm going to kill him.

Or possibly hug him.

Or most likely do both.

I can't keep this. Not the soft serve machine, and not the shipping paperwork with Grady's name on it, because if Bailey sees it, she'll blow a stack, and we need to save the stack-blowing until after the reporters have left.

"Cost half as much as the machine cost to ship it back," the delivery guy muses.

As if he's been coached on what to say.

" Bubble waffles! " Bailey shrieks again.

The reporter is taking notes.

The photographer is snapping away.

And Mama slowly makes her way to the doorway too, white cane catching on the corners of the worktables and the doorway. "Bailey," I say, and I jerk my head to her.

Bailey leaps to help her "Mama! We'll do bubble waffles !"

"Oh, I'll bet they don't do bubble waffles in Shipwreck."

" Squee! " Bailey says.

Seriously.

She's so excited she honestly says squee .

"Bubble waffles?" the reporter asks.

"Bailey—" I start, because she doesn't know this is the reporter she's talking to, but she rolls right over me, leading Mama out to one of the tables as she goes.

"Oh my gosh, you've never heard of bubble waffles? Mama, step left, you don't want to run into the counter. There. Bubble waffles are like waffle cones but ten million times better. They're from Hong Kong but they're exploding all over the world, and we're the very first bakery in this area to offer them."

So maybe she does know this is the reporter.

"And you are?" Bridget asks.

"Bailey," I say quickly. "My baby sister. Bailey, this is Bridget, from Virginia Blue Magazine . And Bridget, this is my mama, Maria. She owns Duh-Nuts."

"Co-owns," Mama says, her hand outstretched and floundering like she wants to shake. Bridget quickly closes the distance between them and takes Mama's hand in hers, the photographer with the massive neck but still no name continuing to snap away. "My daughter, Annika, left the Army to come home and run the bakery with me when I went blind right before we were scheduled to open."

"Annika's making all our dreams come true," Bailey pipes up.

"You…went blind?" Bridget asks.

The delivery guy rips a knife through the shipping band, and oh my god , unlimited soft serve ice cream.

Delivered unplanned in the middle of the interview .

Is it possible to kill a man with a hug?

Because I might want to take that option so I can get both in.

Mama's telling Bridget the short version of the story—her vision started going fuzzy and getting floaters, and she thought she'd scratched her corneas, and by the time she finally asked a neighbor to take her to the hospital, a rare artery condition had rendered her completely blind in both eyes.

But I came home, much to the horror of those unforgiving people in Shipwreck who previously had the market cornered on baked goods in this county, and now we're all doing the best we can, working sunup to sundown to make a living for our little family so Bailey can one day inherit Duh-Nuts herself.

This is bad.

This is so bad.

Because Grady is going to look like a first-class asshole.

He's going to look like the festering, infected asshole that develops on the asshole of an asshole creature.

And I just stand there.

While a guy installs—not just delivers, but also installs —a soft serve ice cream machine on my counter, and my mama and sister tell the reporter all about how Grady used to be my best friend, but he's changed .

And now he's out for blood.

Oh, god.

Bad doesn't cover it.

This is a horror flick.

Not even the people of Shipwreck will support him after this.

"I got him though," I announce. "I racked him in the nuts in our annual softball game."

Every head in the shop swivels toward me.

The delivery guy, who's fiddling with a screwdriver behind the machine, eyes me and takes a healthy step back.

And the four locals who are all watching the reporting go down give me the thumbs-up.

"Mama and Bailey are being nice about it," I continue, the words flowing out of my mouth before my brain has a chance to jump in and do its job, "but I'm glad we're fighting with Shipwreck. Their town is so high and mighty, acting like being a pirate town in the mountains is special, when they're just jealous that they can't move on past pirates, and that ship sailed at least ten years ago on the internet. Seriously, how many pirate memes do you see nowadays? None. But when corn went out of style, we rebranded to unicorns. Unicorn pirates aren't a thing. And also, we have the better town name."

"Sarcasm is a really good name," Bailey says.

Mama shushes her.

"You have a unicorn festival here?" Bridget says. "Unicorns don't seem so…sarcastic."

"That's the beauty," I babble. "It's like it's so sarcastic we go all the way to rainbows and glitter. It's meta sarcasm."

I have no idea what I'm saying, and I probably need to shut up, but this is not going to be a two-sided story.

Because there's literally nothing Grady can say that will compete with This mean man from a pirate town called a blind lady and her teenage daughter names and tried to run them out of business .

Which means I need to be a stark raving mad bitch if this story is going to have any balance to it.

"Meta sarcasm," Bridget repeats slowly.

"I knew Grady had a huge crush on me in high school," I add. "I led him on because he was really smart in chemistry, and I knew he'd help me if he thought he had a chance, and I really needed grades high enough to get into the Army. So I could shoot things. So it's kinda fitting that we're rivals now. We always were. He just didn't know it. Mama, are you tired? You look tired."

The door opens, the chimes ring, and Roger steps in the front door.

All of us stare at him.

Except Mama, obviously.

He looks at her, then the reporter, then Bailey, who's giving me the are you smoking burnt cookie dough? look, and then at the delivery guy, who appears to be wishing he'd worn a cup to work this morning, and finally, Roger's gaze lands on me.

All while the photographer keeps snapping away.

"Roger! We hate Shipwreck. Don't we?" I say.

"Roger?" Mama perks up. "Roger's here?"

"Ah, hi, Maria. Shitter running okay?"

Yep.

He just said that.

In front of the reporter.

I am officially over this entire day.