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“Yes. Because it rattled you as much as it did me.”
Sam stays silent.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Maybe,” she says.
“And you wanted to finally see me in person. Because you were curious about what I was like.”
“Oh, I already know everything about you,” Sam says.
She leans back onto the sofa, finally allowing herself to get more comfortable. She crosses her legs, the left boot thrown casually over her right knee. Her arms unlock from her sides, spreading like wings across the cushions. I perform a similar unfolding. My arms fall from around my chest as I lean forward in my chair.
“You’d be surprised.”
Sam arches one of her brows. Both have been drawn on with black eyeliner, and the movement exposes a few downy hairs beneath the dark smudge.
“An unexpected challenge from Miss Quincy Carpenter.”
“It’s not a challenge,” I say. “Just a fact. I’ve got secrets.”
“We all have secrets,” Sam replies. “But are you more than the young Martha Stewart you pretend to be on your blog? That’s the real question.”
“How do you know I’m pretending?”
“Because you’re a Final Girl. It’s different for us.”
“I’m not a Final Girl,” I say. “I really never have been. I’m just me. Now, I’m not going to lie and say I don’t think about what happened. I do. But not a lot. I’ve moved past that.”
Sam looks like she doesn’t believe me. Both fake brows are now raised. “So you’re telling me you’ve been cured by the therapeutic value of baking?”
“It helps,” I say.
“Then prove it.”
“Prove it?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Bake something.”
“Right now?”
“Sure.” Sam stands, stretches, hauls me out of my chair. “Show me the real you.”
7.
Baking is a science, as rigorous as chemistry or physics. There are rules that must be followed. Too much of one thing and not enough of another can lead to ruin. I find comfort in this. Outside, the world is an unruly place where men prowl with sharpened knives. In baking, there is only order.
That’s whyQuincy’s Sweetsexists. When I graduated college with a marketing degree and moved to New York, I still thought of myself as a victim. So did everyone else. Baking seemed the only way to change that. I wanted to pour my runny, sloshing existence into a human-shaped mold and crank up the heat, emerging soft, springy, and new.
So far, it’s working.
In the kitchen, I spread twin lines of bowls across the counter, sized according to what they contain. The biggest ones hold the base—powdery mounds of flour and sugar heaped like snowdrifts. Medium bowls are for the glue. Water. Eggs. Butter. In the smallest bowls are the flavors, the tiniest amounts packing the largest punch. Pumpkin puree and orange zest, cinnamon and cranberry.
Sam stares at the array of ingredients, uncertain. “What are you going to bake?”
“Weare going to bake orange pumpkin loaf.”
I want Sam to witness firsthand the formula behind baking and to experience its safety; I want her to see how it’s helped me become more than just a girl screaming through the woods away from Pine Cottage.