“You mean volleyballpractice,” Ashanti said.
“No, I mean the volleyball match,” she said. “They’re playing Country Day Academy.”
“No,” Ashanti said, covering her face with her hands. “Please, don’t tell me that match is today.”
“Yes, it is. And, yes, Kara is starting at setter. I gotta go.”
Ashanti’s stomach dropped. Country Day was the girls’ volleyball team’s biggest rival. She had promised Kara she would be there.
“Kendra, we need to talk. Soon,” Ashanti said.
“We really don’t. I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
Kendra released an overly exaggerated sigh. “Do you really want to do this now? How do you think Kara will feel ifneitherof her sisters are there to see her first match as a starter?”
“Go,” Ashanti said. “But wearegoing to talk. And tell Kara I’m sorry I have to miss the match. I just have too many orders to fill.”
Kendra’s only response was to tell Duchess to get back as she left through the front door.
“Come here, girl,” Ashanti called. She reached into her mother’s blasphemous ceramic cookie jar of the cat from Alice in Wonderland and slipped Duchess one of the mini treats she’d made last week. Ashanti thought they would be a good addition to her offerings, but she would have to table that idea for now. This was not the time to experiment with new products.
She did a mental tally of how many dozens she still needed to make, and tried to figure out how long she would have to stay up baking tonight if she were to stop for a while and go to Kara’s match.
There was just no way. Even with Evie taking over some of the baking, she still had to decorate and bake at least anotherten dozen before tomorrow. She would be lucky if she carried herself to bed before two a.m.
Her bottom lip began to tremble, but Ashanti closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath before things could get out of hand.
“You’re doing as best you can.” She whispered the words to herself a couple times more, until she felt a sense of calm come over her.
“Okay, now get back to work,” she said.
She was in the middle of adding edible sugar pearls to the crown-shape treats when her phone rang. Not recognizing the number, she let it go to voicemail. Two minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the same number. Ashanti frowned at the phone. The caller had left a voicemail, yet had called right back?
She waited for them to hang up, then immediately listened to the first voicemail.
“Oh my God!” Ashanti screamed.
Duchess came running in on her short legs.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” She rushed over to the junk drawer and pulled out a pen and notepad, then she put the phone on speaker and played back the voicemail so that she could write down the number.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Ashanti ordered herself. She looked down at Duchess. “We got this. We’re professionals.”
She called the number.
“Hello,” Ashanti said the minute the man on the other end of the line answered. “This is Ashanti Wright, owner of Barkingham Palace.”
The words rushed out of her mouth.
Calm down.
She could barely contain her smile as the man repeated the same message he’d left on her voicemail, that he was a producer from one of the local television stations and that they were interested in doing a story about the daycare.
The minute Ashanti was done with the call, she FaceTimed Ridley and Evie.
“Don’t tell me, you got into a fistfight with Kendra,” Evie said.
