Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
In the morning, I’m up at an ungodly hour. Is it actually eight-thirty? I’m not sure when I was last awake and working at this time. But early birds and all. I’ll turn over a new leaf and get a head start on making and then freezing next week’s wedding cookie order.
As I walk to the ghost kitchen, I click on my email to confirm the flavors, only to spot a new one from the bridezilla. She’s upped her order from two hundred cookies to six hundred.
Is she inviting Cookie Monster to her wedding? It’s going to be a real stretch to do these in the ghost kitchen. But I’m determined. Maybe I’ll just be a ghost-kitchen baker for the rest of my life, until I die in a ghost kitchen and every kitchen becomes a ghost kitchen to me.
When I arrive at the space, a woman in a tailored navy-blue suit is click-clacking down the hallway, talking on her Bluetooth. “Yes, we had an all-cash buyer. It’s great.” She stops when she sees me and holds up a wait-a-second finger. “Call you right back.”
After she ends the call, she looks down her straight nose at me. “You must be Mabel. You’re on my call list for today.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. “Why?”
“I’m a real estate attorney. We just sold this space to a baker who wants to capitalize on the keto craze,” she says.
I roll my eyes. Is Jonas an oracle? “You’re kidding me.”
“I assure you. I don’t joke. But we’ll consider letting you use the kitchen for one day a week, if you’re willing to pay for the deep-cleaning afterward so you don’t contaminate the keto products.”
“Is this why no one was here last night?”
“You’re the last person on my call list.”
“Of course I am,” I say.
Could this day get worse than yesterday? And the answer—as I’m cleaning out my supplies while searching for a new kitchen to rent at the last minute—is yes.
My phone rings, and it’s another lawyer, the one who’s been overseeing my grandmother’s estate for the last year. He’s twenty-three going on fifty, and he belongs on a TV show—the small-town whippersnapper attorney who wears suits three sizes too big and everyone underestimates.
As for me, I’m the heroine in a horror movie who enters the house when the whole theater knows she shouldn’t. Because I answer the call.
“You just found a long-lost Van Gogh in my grandmother’s storage unit?”
I mean, why not manifest something good? Grandma loved art. It’s not such a stretch to think she might have accidentally acquired one.
“Betty always said you were the funny one,” he says, his voice squeaky. Maybe he hasn’t hit puberty yet.
“And a Rembrandt too? Excellent. I’ll be right there to pick them up.”
“Perfect. Why don’t you swing by my office later today?”
I freeze, a whisk in one hand on its way to a box. “Wait. You really need me there? Last we spoke, you were nearly done with the estate.” And I’ve managed the whole thing, doling out the antique mirrors, the jewelry, a few artsy photos for me, some books and a boat for Theo, and the proceeds from the sale of her small house to my mother, who in turn used it to pay off her mortgage.
“We were going through the final boxes—your grandma really did keep everything—and we found a wrinkle in Betty’s estate.”
I shake my head. “Of course you did.”
We set a time, and I walk back to my apartment, grab my car, and return to the ghost kitchen—that name feels awfully apropos now—to pack up all my supplies before they lock me out. I load up my car and leave from there, headed to a town I avoid if I can help it. Because that was where my seven-year streak of bad luck began.
My grandmother was a photographer. A photojournalist, then a nature photographer, then she took pics of cute towns. That’s where she made a name for herself, when she photographed one of the first ever “beefcake” calendars. Grandma Betty marched right up to the fire department, pitched them on an idea for a calendar, and snapped twelve months’ worth of small town firefighters and their large hoses.
She was a woman who went after what she wanted, including my grandfather, a teacher she was friends with. She loved to tell me I came from a long line of women who followed their hearts. She’d often share bon mots with me in the postcards she sent me weekly. You’ve got this. Life is short. Eat the cake. That one was not a problem to follow. And If not now…when?
Grandma’s personal mantra must have been, If it can fit in a box, I’ll save it.
It’s made the management of her estate a long, complicated affair after she died twelve months ago, a few years after her husband. When Garth tells me there’s one more box to go through, I can only assume it’s newspaper clippings about Betty’s mother, who was one of the town’s first female firefighters, or old macaroni artwork that Garth really should just feel empowered to throw out.