Two years later
“Come on, Valerie! You can beat him!”
The cheering came from the dock, where Roger stood excitedly waving his beer. The summer was in full swing, and the lake was filled with people swimming and boating and jumping onto gigantic rafts that catapulted others up into the air before they fell shrieking into the water.
Valerie gave one last heroic push and shot past Nico, then held her paddle up in triumph. Her kayaking had come along beautifully in the last few times they’d come to visit Roger and his family at the cottage.
Rory jumped up and down, her short black hair covered by a ball cap. “You won!” She held out a beer to Valerie as Nico tied up the kayaks, his job as race loser. “That means it’s you and me in the next bracket.”
“I thought it was me,” called Dalia from the chair.
Rory checked the scoreboard. “You’re against Mom.”
Yuting—she preferred that name over Yvette—came down the dock in a pair of cutoffs and a tank top. Her hair was touched with gray, and laugh lines showed how much joy she got from life. “No more kayakinguntil an hour after lunch.” She put down a gigantic platter of dumplings.
Roger looked over with professional interest. “Is this the new Bundle line?” he asked, grabbing a plate. “David said the factory was set for a good run.”
“It is.” Yuting beamed at him and then pulled him down for a kiss that had them all groaning. “That’s enough from you bunch,” she said. “Now eat.”
“Excellent,” said Rory. “I’m starving.”
Roger’s face lit up and they all knew what was coming. “Hi, Starving, I’m Dad!”
Yuting swatted him. “You say that all the time.”
Roger was unrepentant. “Because I finally can.”
Valerie took the plate Nico handed her. The dumplings were from Bundle’s take-home frozen dumpling collaboration with the Bread Company and were amazing. She chose one with ube and corn, and another with tofu, basil, and pine nut.
Then she pulled out her jar and Nico laughed. “Again?”
“Want one?” She opened it to extract the pickled asparagus, having fallen in love with the tangy, grassy taste after her first jar. This was her own batch, since she’d recently gotten into canning. Nico gamely tried her creations, including her experimental kiwi cranberry jam.
“I’ll pass.”
They were all in the Mariposas for the August long weekend, and the weather and the company were living up to every expectation of a perfect cottage trip. Even the mosquitoes had laid off. Valerie glanced over at Yuting and Roger, who were making sure everyone had enough food on their plates. “Rory, do you want to do dumplings for the wedding?” she whispered.
Rory nodded. “I was thinking we’d have a selection for the reception appetizers and then some dessert ones for the sweets table. I’ve got apeach and amaretto flavor I want you to try.”
“With a cinnamon wrapper?”
“You read my mind.”
They started chatting about food. Yuting and Roger’s wedding was set for December, but since both Rory and Valerie wanted it to go perfectly, they’d been talking almost every day about the plan. It had been nice to have a project to bring them closer, as Rory had been reticent at the beginning. Now that they’d met in person, the differences in their physical appearance were more obvious, but they could easily pass for sisters.
Roger made his fiancée take a seat and brought her a drink before arranging an umbrella over her. Valerie watched with a deep happiness that somehow, against the odds, they had found each other.
It had been an intense two years. After the initial phone call, Yuting had refused to believe Roger was who he said until he flew out to Vancouver. Even then, she hadn’t let him meet Rory until she’d been completely satisfied that he hadn’t known about his daughter. Roger had given Valerie and Nico updates from his temporary Vancouver apartment, where he was living until Yuting made her decision. He had been patient.
“I don’t blame her,” he’d said. “She was treated monstrously by my family.”
He lived out west with Rory and Yvette now and worked out of the Bread Company’s Vancouver office. They came back to the cottage every summer for two weeks when Penny wasn’t there.
The full story, when he’d talked to Yuting, was as they’d suspected. Penny had befriended Yuting and had known about Rory. She had been the one Yuting had contacted twenty years ago. Yuting had been told Roger wanted nothing to do with her, but thought he should know about her marriage in case he changed his mind about his daughter. “I didn’t take the check she offered, though,” Yuting said. Roger hadconfirmed the money had gone to fund Penny’s gallery, and apparently she’d been counting on the inheritance to give it another boost.
Penny must have been baffled when Valerie showed up, since Yuting had made it clear she’d kept her baby. “No doubt Penny assumed some manipulative long game was in play,” Roger had said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, and I suppose I don’t care.”
Yuting had led a happy life, as Roger had hoped. Rory had grown up simply knowing Roger wasn’t in the picture, and Alon had cherished her like a father. The two of them were working on what they’d lost, but it would take a long time for the wounds to heal, if ever.
