LITMIR.BIZ

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down his throat.” Kari’s mom’s eyes rounded again. “You don’t think Charlie Kirkman did it, do you?”

      “No, I don’t think that.” Kari couldn’t look at her mother for another second. More for something to do than anything else, Kari stood and poured herself a cup of coffee. She’d give anything to have one of her bear claws or Danish rolls to go with this—

      No point in thinking about that.

      “I’m sure Jake will be just as horrified as I am,” Kari’s mother said. “Oh, Kari, grab that box of croissants there. We’ll have some breakfast.”

      Kari followed her mother’s pointing finger to the top of the fridge, where a clear plastic grocery store bakery container held a few croissants. With a sigh, she yanked the things down and plopped them on the Formica tabletop. “You couldn’t have bought some from me, Mom?”

      “Well, actually, these were leftover from the office brunch—I told them we should have had you cater it, but the girls at the office said that there wasn’t enough in petty cash. Besides, they’re not that bad.”

      Kari bit into one. The pastry was tough and greasy, not at all flaky like the croissants she strove to make. She scanned the printed ingredients list: hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour, soy flour.

      She dropped the half-eaten pastry on her napkin. It was disappointing to the taste buds, a little stale, nothing like a fresh croissant. A good one was light and flaky and loaded with real butter. So what if they took hours to make? Better to have one really good croissant than a whole bin of these.

      “See?” her mother said. “Not bad at all.”

      What could she expect from her mom? Kari asked herself. Her mom always tried her best, but the results never turned out well.

      True, such meals had been made lovingly and had been more than enough to keep Kari fed for the fourteen years she’d lived with her mom...and when she’d been in juvie, even her mom’s cooking had seemed way better than the glop they served.

      Her mother reached up and caressed Kari’s cheek. “Oh, sweetie. This is horrible for you. But—I know! You can cook here! Why, this kitchen would do, wouldn’t it? It would be much better than trying to cook in that oversized kitchenette in your apartment. And that way you could bake all your cakes and keep your orders up—you’ve got the Gottman wedding to do, right? You can bake it right here.”

      Kari couldn’t help but smile. “I might have to take you up on that. It will probably be a while before I’m back on my feet again.”

      Her mom brightened and waved a hand around to encompass the kitchen. “Why, you’ve got everything you need, right here—and barely used at that. Isn’t it a good thing I was such a bad cook?”

      Kari squeezed her mother’s fingers. “You’re not a bad cook.”

      “Nope, next to you...you make those lovely little cupcakes that everybody always raves about. Oh, honey, where did you get your cooking mojo?”

      Not for the first time did Kari utter some words of thanksgiving to Alice Heaton, the cook at the youth detention center where Kari had been incarcerated. If it hadn’t been for KP duty and a birthday cake, Kari might never have found a way to survive her years behind bars...or a way to make a living.

      Well, strike that. She’d had a way to make a living, but now? Not so much.

      Kari flicked the croissant with a fingernail. This was not breakfast. This wasn’t even really food.

      “I think I’ll take you up on that offer to cook. I can make something better than this,” Kari said. She sprang from her chair and busied herself with rummaging through her mother’s cabinets.

      “Oh, sweetie, you don’t have to cook—” her mother protested. “You’ve been through so much.”

      Kari shrugged. “It helps me, Mom, the cooking. Cheap therapy, you know?” she tried to joke.

      “Except for my hips,” her mother said. “If you really want to, I have some blueberries in the freezer. They’ve been there since the first of the summer, though.”

      “Perfect. I’ll make us some blueberry muffins.”

      What Kari really wanted was to tackle a brioche or a croissant or even a Danish, something that would require thought and energy and concentration. She’d welcome anything that would distract her from her worries.

      But her stomach was rumbling in protest from the Franken-croissant, and muffins would be quick at least. Kari began dumping the ingredients into a bowl.

      “Where’s Jake, Mom?” she asked again.

      Her mother set her coffee mug down with a thud. “Out. Out with friends.”

      Kari tried to suppress the predictable irritation that flared up within her. Jake acted as though he were still seventeen, not almost thirty. He was three years older than her...but she felt eons older than twenty-six.

      “I tried his cell phone, but he didn’t answer,” Kari said.

      “Oh, well, you know Jake...maybe he ran out of minutes.”

      Kari stirred the batter a little more energetically than she normally would have. It sloshed onto the counter, and Kari made sure to wipe up the spill. “He’ll never grow up, Mom, if you don’t let him.”

      “Let him! Kari, my goodness, of course he’s grown up. He’s older than you—what, twenty-seven?”

      Kari leveled a gaze at her mom. “Try twenty-nine, Mom. And he still hasn’t figured out what he’s going to do with his life.”

      “Oh, now, that’s not true. He’s registered for classes at the college.”

      Despite Kari’s best attempts to level it, hope rose within her. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Jake had nothing to do with this fire. Between that and the magic of baking, some of her pent-up tension began to melt away.

      “Of course... I don’t like that boy he’s hanging out with these days,” her mother added in a murmur, completely destroying the peace that had begun to settle over Kari.

      “Mom—” Kari bit her tongue and forestalled any additional reminders that Jake was way past requiring—or even wanting—assistance on the playdate front.

      “Don’t say it, Kari. You’ve made it perfectly clear that I need to be tougher on Jake. But I don’t want to break his spirit...you know how sensitive he is.”

      “He’s a guy, not a horse,” Kari protested. She began to pour the batter into one of her mother’s muffin tins.

      As she slid the muffin tin into the oven, the back door swung open. She straightened to see Jake framed in the morning light of the open door.

      He stood there, stock-still, all muscular legs and bare arms in his cargo shorts and rumpled T-shirt. He looked as though he’d just rolled off somebody’s couch.

      Even so, with his hair all ruffled and his clothes a wrinkled mess, he had that angelic-choirboy look that made girls his age flock to him and old ladies beam at him with trusting adoration.

      Jake was beautiful, her beautiful, gorgeous brother. If he’d wanted and had lived in a larger city, he was so arrestingly attractive that he could have landed a male modeling gig.

      Next to him, Kari had always felt a little...dull. Not so shiny. Not so pretty. And yet, just like everybody else, when she’d been fourteen, she’d wanted to be in his orbit, soaking up the glamour-by-association cachet having such a good-looking brother had afforded her.

      “Hey, Kare, what are you doing here? I figured you’d be downtown.” He did a double take, his eyes rounding. “Oh, wait, man, you don’t know? It was a fire—wicked bad. One of my buddies told me—we went down there. Sick, man.”

      Relief flooded through

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