She types a quick reply and shoves the phone back into her gym bag. “Nothing. Just work drama. Let’s go.”
We hug goodbye, even though we’ll see each other in twenty minutes, and I head to my car.
The sun has claimed the eastern sky, spilling its light across the far hills and turning the barren desert into a shimmering sea of gold. The bougainvillea in the flowerbed next to where I parked is a riotous burst of fuchsia, a brilliant splash of color spilling over onto the asphalt. The faint aroma of creosote bushes and sagebrush lingers in the gentle breeze that lifts the loose hairs coming out of my ponytail, its fingertips sweet and cool. It’s one of those rare moments—fleeting and perfect, halting me in my tracks, flooding my chest with a happiness so overwhelming that it expands within me until I can’t hold anymore.
I inhale deeply.Thank you, I think to my unknown donor, who gave me the opportunity to have mornings like this. My gratitude is bright, like the sunrise, but at the edges lurks a darkness that is my constant companion. I’m enjoying thismoment because the girl whose heart keeps me alive never got to see another sunrise again. I live my life in the twilight of opposition: thanks and guilt, light and dark, two halves of my borrowed heart. The beautiful bloom of scarlet flowers that hide the thorns beneath.
But the bakery—and those bags of flour—will wait for no woman, beautiful sunrises, or any of the inner conflict such a moment elicits. I unlock my car, slide in, and drive home to change and head into work.
The bell over the door jingles, and I glance up from the register to see Talia coming in, hauling the last fifty-pound bag of flour.
“You make it look too easy,” I tease.
“Shut up,” she grunts. “This is exactly why I spend so many hours in the gym. To be your peon at the bakery.”
I shrug and go back to the receipts from yesterday. I should have balanced it all last night, but I decided to finish it before opening today rather than stay up late last night. Today’s Olivia is not very thrilled with last-night Olivia’s choices. Especially because every month, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that with rising costs of ingredients, supplies, and life in general, we’re either going to have to drastically raise our prices ... or face some dire decisions. The beginning of a headache forms between my eyes, a tight knot that beats with the stress of not knowing what to do to keep this bakery afloat.
“You can set it down back here,” Farmor calls from the kitchen, her Swedish accent giving her words a musical lilt. The first time Talia heard me call my grandmotherFarmor,she asked me if that was her actual name and why anyone would call their daughter something so weird. I had to explain that it meant “father’s mother” in Swedish instead of merely sayinggrandmaand not knowing which one you meant. It was a completely normal name to me, but I grew up with it as well as hearing Swedish spoken in my home. Swedish sounds like a song to me—the music of my childhood, listening to Farmor and my dad speak in tones that rose and fell like a brook over smooth stones. Each year, the cadence of their voices grows fainter, leaving me the lingering chords but not enough words. They taught me a few phrases, but I resisted making the effort to learn from my dad when he encouraged me to, certain there was more time ... And then it was too late.
Talia grunts again, and Farmor says, “Tack, you strong little thing.”
“These biceps aren’t just for show,” Talia preens, lifting an arm to flex. She does indeed have impressively lean, sculpted biceps beneath her white, short-sleeve blouse. She hasn’t even broken a sweat.
“I think today is a great day to teach you how to makepepparkakor.” Farmor dusts her flour-covered hands on her ever-present apron.
“Only if it’s also the day I teach you how to make tamales,” Talia returns, brows arched. “Myabuelahas her own secret recipes, you know.”
“What use do I have for tamales? This is aSwedishbakery.” Farmor plants her fists on her hips, every bit as full of fire as my best friend.
“Not to sell. Just to experience—to broaden your horizons.”
Farmor shakes her head. “My horizons are already broad enough. And my old brain can barely manage to hold on to my own recipes. I don’t dare introduce a new one; I’m liable to forget how to make my famous marzipan if I do.”
I snort softly. Unlikely. She hasn’t used a written recipe once in my life. Herold brainis like an iron safe, with all her family recipes and secret ingredients locked in tight. Recipes and ingredients that are now safely ensconced (and password protected, at her insistence) on my laptop. Farmor is in her seventies, but you’d never guess her a day over sixty. Her white hair is elegantly coiffed, her cheeks still a little pink from her daily fifteen-minute walk at five before she comes to Konditori—the bakery she’s owned and run since long before I was born—by five thirty and bakes for several hours straight in order to open by nine.
The Swedish bakery has been my second home since we moved here to help her run it when I was fourteen. A year after my dad died and a few weeks afterhisdad died.
“Will you be done with those receipts soon? I need you to get started on thepepparkakorsince Talia won’t learn it.” Farmor huffs, affronted but in an affectionate way.
“Yeah, almost done.” Sales are solid, as always; it’s the profit margins that keep getting slimmer.
Talia grabs her purse and keys from where she set them down on the counter and waves to us both. “Off to work for me. Liv, we still on for tonight?”
I nod distractedly, trying not to forget the sum in my head.
“I mean it about learning my recipes,” Farmor says. “Then you could quit that boring computer job and come bake with us. It might be less money, but it’s much more fulfilling.”
“For my waistline, maybe.” The bell jingles again as Talia opens the door. “Bye, Farmor. See you tonight, Livvy.”
I wave her off and then groan when I realize there is another stack of receipts in the register that I missed. I zero out my calculator and start over.
Three hours later, the bakery breathes with the scent of almond, cinnamon, and cardamom, an intoxicating tapestry that drapes me in warmth like an old, familiar quilt. The AC whines as it works to combat the Arizona heat that is already going to reach the high 80s, even though it’s barely March. Farmor finally sits down at her desk in the office to rest for a moment.
When I hurry past the open door to unlock the bakery, I glance in and catch her holding the framed photo that usually sits on her desk, sorrow etched deep in her face. It’s the picture with my dad sitting on her lap as a toddler, my grandpa at her side, both of them smiling, my grandpa’s hand on her shoulder and her fingers intertwined with his. People say that time heals all pain, but they’re wrong. The grief on Farmor’s face is every bit as sharp today as it was when I came here at fourteen. The pain of losing the two loves of her life in one year hasn’t lessened—she’s just gotten better at distracting herself from it, or perhaps simply hiding it.
But I know that kind of pain too. It’s a wound that never fully heals. Like the story about a tree when a woodcutter left his ax embedded in it, never to return. Over time, the tree grew around the ax, absorbing the blade into its trunk, no longer seen but still there—an aching reminder that the woodcutter was gone forever.
I slip out to the front to unlock the door without disturbing her, flip the sign to Open, and finish arranging the last of thesemlorbuns.
