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“What am I supposed to do with all this flour, eggs, and sugar? Where’s Daisy?”

“She’s not working today.”

He sniffed and tugged at the waistband of his green pants. “Yeah, well, I want to talk to her. I don’t believe she sent me the email.”

Was she invisible? Did he not understand? “She’s not here.”

“What about Margaret?”

“Just me.”

“Great. The creative one.”

She straightened, shoving aside feelings of blame, as if this was somehow her fault. “I’m sorry, Jeb. We can’t take the order.”

“‘Sorry’ don’t cut it with me today. This is my last delivery, and I’m tired.”

If she’d had the money to pay for the order, she’d have taken it just to end this. But she didn’t have the money. Daisy had made it clear we were cutting expenses to the bone during the renovation.

She stood silent, hugging the shoes like a child. Jeb stared at her. “Well?”

“I’m sorry, Jeb, for the miscommunication. But I can’t take the delivery.” Shit. Had she just apologized to him?

He muttered an oath under his breath. “This account has turned into a real pain in my ass. If I had half a mind, I’d drop you.”

They needed Holder Brothers, and she’d lost too much in the last year to lose a steady supplier. “That’s not necessary. And it’s just one order.”

“And before this, it was like pulling teeth to get a payment. You’ve been trouble for a year.”

Unwanted tears welled, and her lip quivered. “I’ll have Daisy talk to you.”

He glared at her tears before opening his door. “I don’t need this shit. I don’t need it.”

She watched him back out of the alley. Anger and resentment bombarded her. Why hadn’t she told him to back off? Why hadn’t she fired him on the spot? He couldn’t be the sole supplier in the region. The guy worked for her, and she’d let him walk all over her.

She’d apologized. She’d cried! Damn it!

God, how would she make it if Daisy quit the business?

Running a bakery was a tough way to make a living without kids, and damn near impossible with a baby.

At least when the girls had been born, she’d had Mike.

Daisy didn’t have anyone. When would her sister wise up and figure this job plus an infant equaled insanity?

As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, panic and fear crowded out the anger.

She dumped her keys and purse on the table by the door and moved into her bedroom.

The closet waited for her, wide, gaping, and empty.

She should have taken time to close the closet before she’d left.

Carefully, she set the single pair of sneakers in the center of Mike’s closet and shut the doors.

Overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness, she thought about the wine bottle in the kitchen. If she drank it all, she’d be drunk and numb and would fall into a heavy dreamless sleep like last night, when the house had been far too quiet.

She moved to the refrigerator, opened the freezer, and filled a glass with ice.

She picked up the half-full wine bottle from the counter and filled her glass.

She raised the glass to her lips and hesitated.

The wine would get her through tonight, but what about tomorrow and the next day and the next?

Rachel poured the wine down the sink and climbed the stairs to Daisy’s door. She pounded on it. “Daisy!”

After a delay, footsteps sounded in the apartment, and the door opened to a bleary-eyed Daisy. “What?”

Guilt deflated some of her steam. “You sleeping? It’s eight fifteen.”

“Resting my eyes.” She sniffed. “Was that the Holder Brothers truck I heard? Jeb can’t shift gears without grinding them.”

“Yeah. Jeb wanted to make a delivery.”

“I sent an email.”

“He said you didn’t.”

Irritation widened her tired eyes. “I’ll deal with him.”

And Rachel knew she would. The problem was she should be able to deal with Jeb. Instead of digging into what she couldn’t do, she shifted to what she thought was safe. “I slept a lot when I was pregnant.”

Daisy winced. “Don’t say the p word. I’m not there yet.”

“Doesn’t matter what you want. It’s all about the ...” She hesitated and found a smile. “It’s all about the b now.”

Daisy rubbed her eyes. “Why are you here?”

“I want to look at the recipe box.”

Daisy yawned and rubbed her eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“I’d like to read through it. Maybe bake.” She dealt with nervous energy by baking.

Daisy yawned again. “You have ten days off and you want to bake?”

“It’s an addiction. What can I say?” She snapped her fingers. “The box.” Daisy raised a brow, surprised by Rachel’s crisp tone.

Daisy vanished and reappeared seconds later. She handed the box to Rachel.

Rachel thumbed through the yellowed cards. “We should try and find Jenna. Dad’s old bakery records are in his attic.”

Daisy shook her head and rolled her head around as if working kinks from her neck. “My window of nonnausea doesn’t open until later this evening.”

She smiled. “I didn’t have much nausea.”

“Lucky you.”

“Want to bake with me?”

Daisy’s bloodshot gaze narrowed. “I’ll drink a ginger ale, eat crackers, and talk to you while you do.”

“Deal.”

“She wrote lots of notes in the margins.” Daisy nibbled a saltine and followed Rachel down the flight of stairs to her apartment.

“You’ve scribbled notes on every cookbook you’ve owned.”

While Daisy dug a soda from the back of the refrigerator, Rachel thumbed through the cards in the box.

“There are times when the recipe comes out right and other times when it won’t and doesn’t gel no matter what.

It’s my way of keeping track. And then sometimes I try different flavor combinations. ”

Rachel squinted as she studied one card. “This is a recipe for simple cake.”

“Yum.”

Rachel pulled bowls out of the cabinet and banged them hard on the stainless workspace. She grabbed ingredients, slamming all on the counter.

“What’s eating you?” Daisy asked.

“I’m fine.”

Daisy sipped her ginger ale. “It sounded like you were dragging dead bodies out of your apartment earlier. Thump. Thump. Thump. What was it?”

For a moment Rachel didn’t answer as she unwrapped a pound square of butter. “I cleaned out Mike’s closet.”

Daisy sat silent, as if knowing there wasn’t much she could say.

“I was fine until I saw his shoes.” A half smile quirked the edge of her lips as sadness simmered like a pot of sugar water, as if reaching the hard-ball stage.

“All those crazy tennis shoes?”

Doubt amplified her sadness. “I saved one pair.” She frowned. “I chucked all his belongings into garbage bags.”

Daisy offered no signs of judgment. “I love garbage bags. It’s the suitcase for the girl on the go.”

Her easy words softened the sadness. “I hauled them all downstairs and into the van. Made it as far as the Goodwill and watched the guy load them all on the trailer.”

Daisy winced. “And then . . .”

Worry drew her mouth tight. “I kind of freaked out. I made the guy pull all the bags off the truck.”

Daisy winced. “You didn’t bring all Mike’s stuff back, did you?”

“No. Not that bad. But I dug through three bags.”

“Looking for?”

“The shoes he wore when the girls were born.”

“The ones stained with chocolate?”

She unwrapped the butter and dumped it into the stainless bowl. “Yeah. I wanted to hold on to one memento.”

“Reasonable.”

She pulled a hand mixer from a drawer, popped two beaters into the sockets, plugged it in, and switched it on low.

The mixer strained against the hard butter, chewing at the edges of the brick.

Rachel revved the speed of the beaters, shoving and pushing the butter until it lost its hard angles and dissolved into a creamy mixture.

She shut off the mixer. “Mike never would have wished death so young. And he’d never have left us. I know.”

Daisy glanced toward her can of ginger ale. “But you still feel abandoned.”

Rachel nodded. “Yeah. In the days and weeks after he died, I was so busy running around, trying to keep it all together. I didn’t have a lot of time to feel much. I mean, I read about the stages of grief and kept thinking, Well, I’m at acceptance. I must have skipped the anger stage. ”

Daisy flicked her thumb against the can’s tab. “Anger can be very tricky. It’s good at hiding and lurking. But it always rears its head. In fact, I’ve seen it enough times that I think I can draw a picture of it.”

Rachel smiled as she shoved a measuring cup into a white canister filled with sugar and scooped out four cups, which she dumped onto the creamed butter. “It was a stranger to me until the last couple of months.”

“About time it arrived. Shows you’re alive.”

Rachel shrugged a shoulder. “When you came in the spring, I thought the cavalry had arrived. For the first time since Mike died, the panic in my chest eased, and I could breathe.”

“Panic has its pluses. No time for much else when you’re a little panicked. It keeps you in the moment.”

She frowned. “I thought I’d feel better without fear always chasing me, but the extra time gives me a chance to really miss Mike. And then in the last couple of weeks I’ve somehow stumbled from sadness to anger. I’ve been so pissed lately.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I never could understand why you were always so angry. I thought, Yeah, her birth mother left, but she has Mom and Dad, and we all love her. She should be fine. Now I realize all the love in the world doesn’t soften a terrible loss.”

Daisy swallowed. “It’s also easy to be angry, Rachel.

It’s easy to shake your fist and search for the next person to blame.

But since I arrived here, I realized I’d gotten a little tired of being angry.

It’s kind of like carrying a big heavy rock.

You’re so focused on the rock you miss the scenery. ”

Rachel nodded. “It’s all about the rock for me now.”

“Sooner rather than later you need to put it down.”

“And you have?”

“Most days. And then I send an email to Terry, and she doesn’t respond right away, and I find myself picking it up again. But at least now I know when I’m carrying it.”