Raquel breathed out a string of Spanish. Sadie, whose Spanish was almost nonexistent, still caught the words idiota and imbécil and couldn’t help but agree.
“Maybe he just likes the house,” Raquel said, though it ended up sounding like a question. “Listen, I’ll see what I can find out from Gina. I think she’s the one who listed it. Just, you know, chill. Take a breath. Don’t burn anything down.”
“If I ignore him, I’m being childish. But if I let him get too close, I’m screwed. And I need my magic now more than ever.”
“Why?” Raquel asked suspiciously.
“Because the holidays are right around the corner,” Sadie invented wildly, “and I need to be on top of my game if I want to make enough to reroof the house.”
“Dream big,” Raquel said, and Sadie could practically hear her eyes roll. “Listen, Jake McNealy has always been in your life, even when he wasn’t. Just try not to freak out, okay?”
“Right. I’m about to make garlic and fennel knots,” Sadie added, as if that explained everything.
“Because Jake’s turned into a vampire?” Raquel asked in confusion.
“Garlic wards off the bad—the negative—and fennel gives you strength. I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. If Jake is going to waltz back into town, then I plan on showing him just how great I’m doing.”
“Whatever you say, cari?o,” Raquel said, sighing.
“How’s Carrie coming?”
“I conned Jenny into sitting through the auditions with me, so you’re relieved of that duty. As the English teacher, she’s basically required by human decency to help. She asked if she could bring vodka in her thermos since it wasn’t technically school hours.”
“She didn’t!” Sadie laughed, grateful for the distraction. Sadie had met Jenny a handful of times. Jenny was an outsider, having moved to town only a few years ago, and constantly flouted the small-town ways, which made Raquel practically gleeful.
“She did. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’ I told her. Listen, do you want to meet at the Milestone after you’re done with work? Maybe you could help me figure out the lighting thing.”
“I, um, I can’t.” She ached to spill the beans about Gigi, but Sadie never broke her promises. “Gardening,” she added evasively.
Sadie spent the next several hours making the garlic and fennel knots and then covering tiny dried-lavender buds in white chocolate, losing herself in the repetition and routine. With her mind occupied on menial tasks, she didn’t have to think about anything—or anyone—else.
Pulling the cold lemon and lavender pies from the fridge, she scattered the tops with white chocolate–covered lavender until it looked like they were blanketed with a thin layer of sweet snow. By the time that was done, she still wasn’t ready to let her brain think. And so, with well-practiced hands, she drew down the ingredients for croissants.
For ten minutes she kneaded with vigor until the dough was smooth and elastic. After forming it into a ball, she put it in a proofing bag. The process for croissants was long, from hammering out the cold butter and carefully folding it into the dough to turning it every hour, for the next three hours, before leaving it in the fridge overnight. It was just the kind of work she needed to keep her hands occupied. When Gigi came back in the kitchen, Sadie opened her mouth to speak, but Gigi cut her off.
“No, ma’am,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “We’re not discussing this here. And whatever hare-brained scheme you’ve got going in that head of yours, you should just let it go.”
“If you said we’re not going to talk about it, then you can’t tell me what to do,” Sadie countered.
“Shit ass,” Gigi mumbled.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and by the time her work day was over, the notebook in her pocket was filled with pages of ideas to heal Gigi. Some of them were “a crock of crap” as Gigi would say, but others, Sadie thought, had promise. It had taken her three summers to perfect her blackberry and basil tart recipe. Dozens of attempts where something was off. And she hadn’t quit until she knew it would win the tri-county dessert contest. It had. Quitting wasn’t in her vocabulary. And this particular recipe, whatever it wound up being, would save Gigi’s life. When life hangs in the balance, it tends to narrow your scope of focus, bring priorities into sharp relief, with pointy edges that leave nicks in your heart. And Sadie’s whole world was narrowing down to the piece of paper in her pocket.