“Thank you for everything,” she added, willing her voice to stay strong. Then she walked to the door and opened it. “Goodbye, Miguel.”

He walked through, quietly saying goodbye in return, and she shut the door. The apartment felt empty and far too quiet. She turned on some music and set about cleaning up Charlie’s kitchen and adjusting the recipe, recopying it onto a fresh sheet of paper and crumpling up and throwing away the pages with Miguel’s notes. She was never going to see him again. It was time to forget him and focus on what she’d come here to do for her sister.

16

Charlie

Monday: 5 Days Until Christmas . . .

Starlight Peak

The sky was still an inky black, lit with fading stars, and already Charlie had been up for hours, beginning work on a tier of cupcakes for a holiday-themed wedding the next day. It was Walter’s sister’s wedding, in fact, so he had the morning off from the bakery for a rehearsal brunch. She was grateful for the work, which was helping her not think about the day before: how much she had enjoyed her time with Jake, and what a rude awakening it had been to be interrupted, yet again, by Brett. She was also trying not to think about the harsh words she had flung at Brett, her frustrations finally boiling over. Yet snippets of the conversation kept popping into her head.

She could still picture the surprised hurt on Brett’s face—which, frankly, was what had really set Charlie off the day before: how shocked he had seemed, and how possessive of her sister he was. As if Cass were somehow his property, like one of his prime real estate investments he didn’t want anyone else to have.

Brett’s an adult. He can handle what he obviously had coming to him, Charlie thought, pausing to put on another pot of coffee. Then she set to work on the cupcake batter for the wedding. Once she turned off the stand mixer, she tasted the batter. It was rich and sweet, exactly the way it was supposed to be. At least one thing was going her way. She poured it into the prepared tins, put them in the oven, then moved on to the Starlight Bread dough.

Sadly, the dough was another story. It was not the way it was supposed to be at all. The contents of the proofing bowls looked deflated. When she began to work the dough with her floured hands, it was too sticky. She added more flour and kneaded each boule. She knew adding so much flour at this stage would result in poorly shaped, dry loaves. Still, there was nothing else to do: she could not throw away any more dough. She had to keep moving forward, not backward—with everything, including this batch of bread. If a few of the Starlight loaves were a bit dry this year, so be it. They could add extra fruit to make up for it.