Friendship Bread (13 page)

That reminds Hannah, and she reaches for her bag. She hands Julia four Ziplocs of starter.

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep one?” Julia asks her.

Hannah wants to say yes but isn’t confident she’ll be as enthusiastic to bake again next week. “It’ll take me forever to get through the two loaves I made. Plus I’m more of a chocolate person.” She takes a bite of the brownie and is surprised by how moist it is, practically melting in her mouth. “This is heavenly. I should probably try to tackle brownies someday.”

Madeline gives Hannah a sly smile. “Funny you should say that. I made those brownies using one of my bags of Amish Friendship Bread starter.”

“Really?” Hannah takes another bite. It’s delectable. So long as the recipe isn’t complicated, she wants to try it. “If it’s not too hard to make, I’d love the recipe.”

“Me, too,” Julia says.

“Of course,” Madeline says. “And rest assured it’s surprisingly easy. If you made friendship bread, you can make this.”

Hannah gives Julia a sheepish look. “Do you mind if I ask for one bag back? Will your daughter mind?”

“Of course not.” Julia hands a bag back to her. “Gracie will just be thrilled to have any extra bags to take to school.”

“I would love to meet her sometime,” Madeline says. “Promise me you’ll bring her in, Julia. I’m toying with the idea of afternoon tea parties for little girls, or maybe offering my place as a birthday party venue on weekends. She could be my test market.”

“Gracie will be in heaven,” Julia says, beaming. “In fact, she might never leave.”

“Do you have any other children?” Hannah asks, curious. Julia looks like the sort of woman who would have a handful of children. Hannah can picture Julia managing her familial chaos like a traffic cop, a smile on her face as she wrangles her children into a minivan.

But a shadow crosses Julia’s face as she looks down at her teacup. There’s an obvious shift in her mood, and Hannah wishes she could take it back, wishes she hadn’t said anything, not wanting to have disrupted this otherwise perfect moment. Hannah sees Julia’s shoulders tense and for a second Hannah wonders if Julia is going to leave. But she doesn’t.

Instead she looks up at Hannah and says, “Yes, I do. I have a son.”

If you don’t see anyone, you never have to talk about it. It’s been a long time since she’s had to say anything about it, because everyone in Avalon already knows some version of that day.

Julia feels it hanging in the air, lingering. Waiting. Her voice is uneven, shaky, as she begins in a low voice, uncertain of how much she will say, of how much she
can
say. Then suddenly the words swoop down and she’s telling them everything.

The three women are quiet. Julia can’t quite believe that she’s actually recounted the events surrounding Josh’s death aloud. She’s never discussed it, not even with Mark, and if anyone were to ask her what happened, she simply got up and walked away.

Madeline is the first to speak. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Julia.” She takes Julia’s hands in hers, her wrinkled skin soft. A balm.

Hannah looks stunned, her eyes filling with tears. Julia is familiar with this, the shock of hearing about Josh for the first time. That
Hannah is completely speechless and not rushing to fill the silence with words is a relief.

Madeline’s eyes are wet but her gaze is steady on Julia, who pulls her hands back and uses her fingers to rub her eyes. She suddenly feels tired. She wants to sleep.

“I am so sorry,” Hannah finally manages. Madeline hands her a tissue and Hannah blows her nose. “I just … I don’t know what to say …”

Julia opens her eyes to look at the young woman weeping in front of her, trying to stop but unable to. “It’s okay, Hannah.” In the past, it angered Julia when people would break down in front of her, mourning the loss as if it had been their own, as if expecting her to comfort them. Now, however, she feels differently.

Madeline excuses herself to tend to the few remaining customers, promising to be right back. She gives Julia a hug and kisses the top of her head.

The tiredness passes. Julia is suddenly aware she’s sitting at the table with a pretty blue chintz tablecloth, her hand wrapped around a cooling teacup. She notices the vintage salt and pepper shakers, the purple crocus buds tucked into a small glass vase. In the past, the tired feeling would have camped out in her body for days so that the only viable solution was to crawl back into bed. But today, the tired feeling has come and gone. Her chest still feels hollow and as fragile as an eggshell, but she is sitting at this table, drinking her tea, and talking about Josh.

She’s stunned.

Madeline returns to the table, a fresh pot of hot tea in hand. They are the only ones remaining in the tea salon, and Julia notices Madeline has turned the sign on the door to
CLOSED
after bidding farewell to the last customer.

Julia doesn’t argue with her, doesn’t protest. These women don’t know her, they don’t know Josh, and yet she feels like they know her grief.

The three women sit there, in comfortable and uncomfortable silence, giving themselves a little time before eventually talking in low voices about matters of the heart that can never be forgotten.

“Just let it out,” Norma Meehan coaxes. “How did it make you feel?” She leans back in her chair, her eyes glancing surreptitiously at the small clock behind her client’s head. Forty minutes to go.

“Terrible, Dr. Meehan!” Phyllis Watts sniffs, clutching a tissue. “I told him I didn’t want the extended warranty, but he didn’t listen. He told me I needed it and wrote it up anyway. He was such a bully!”

Dr. Meehan makes a clicking sound with her tongue. The sound is supposed to reassure Phyllis that she’s listening and being hugely sympathetic, yet at the same time not passing judgment on what has happened. “So then what?”

“I told him I wasn’t going to pay for the extended warranty, because
Consumer Reports
says that extended warranties aren’t necessary. And then he … he …” Phyllis starts to get agitated again, her breath coming in short, angry puffs.

“What did he do, Phyllis?”

“HE LAUGHED! I ended up walking out of the store, thinking
that I would show him, but the thing is, I
really
like that new Hoover and nobody else in town is selling it. Now I have to go back there if I want to get it, and he’s just going to laugh at me again!”

Dr. Meehan suppresses a yawn. Early afternoon is a hard time for her, right after lunch. She’s always a bit sleepy.

Phyllis is thunderous now. “I mean, he shouldn’t be allowed to treat a customer like that! I AM A PERSON! He made me feel so little, like I didn’t know anything. But I did my research, Dr. Meehan. That Hoover got the highest rating and was a Best Value pick! I’m so angry I just want to punch something!”

Upon hearing this, Dr. Meehan straightens up. “You want to punch something?”

“Yes! A pillow or maybe that foam bat you have …”

Dr. Meehan stands up and hurries to the little kitchenette that’s attached to her office. She returns a few seconds later, handing Phyllis a baggie of the Amish Friendship Bread starter. “There you go. Give it a good squeeze! Let out your frustrations! Be careful not to pop it, though. It’ll be an awful mess.”

Phyllis looks at the bag in her hands, not comprehending. “You want me to squeeze the bag?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m writing you a prescription.” Dr. Meehan scribbles something on the back of a piece of paper.

“I don’t really want to go on any medication, Dr. Meehan.” Phyllis looks worried.

“This is a different kind of prescription,” Dr. Meehan assures her, handing Phyllis the instructions for Amish Friendship Bread with a few extra pointers on the back. “Squeeze it, pound it, or wring it, once a day for ten days. Oh, you’ll have to add some things on Day Six, but it will only take you a minute.”

Phyllis looks confused. “That’s it?”

“That’s it! Oh, and on the tenth day, if you want, you can bake two loaves of the bread. It’s quite delicious.”

“But how is this going to help me, Dr. Meehan?”

Dr. Meehan doesn’t know, but at least she has one less bag of starter. One of her clients had given her several slices of the bread and
she’d made the mistake of saying how good it was. An hour later, a bag of starter bread and the instructions were sitting in her mailbox. There was a hint of burned rubber in the air, evidence of her client’s quick getaway.

Dr. Meehan doesn’t know why she didn’t think of this earlier. It’s the perfect way to manage these extra bags of starter while still leaving some for her. Genius.

“I can’t explain my process,” she tells Phyllis briskly. She has two more appointments today, and this time she’ll have the starters sitting on the couch, waiting for them. “Let’s just go with it, shall we?”

There’s a small gift on his desk, a pale blue box tied with a generous white ribbon. Mark slips off his jacket and hangs it on the hook on the back of his office door, wondering who it’s from even though he has a pretty good idea.

The office is quiet. Everyone is busy on projects and Victor is at an AIA conference in Istanbul. The annual meeting is in Miami in a couple of months, but Mark didn’t think Victor would make it to June. Victor has given up vacations and even sick days to cover for Mark, to make sure it’s business as usual for Gunther & Evarts. It’s been like this for the past five years and now, by some miracle, Mark finally feels he’s ready to come back. So he sent Victor and his wife to Europe for two weeks, and in the meantime, Mark is the one in charge again.

He didn’t see Vivian this morning at the gym, not that he was looking for her. It’s just that it’s become something of a routine, this informal meeting up in the mornings. They’ll see each other and chat briefly before moving on to their respective workouts. He’s aware of
her, of wherever she may be in the gym, but tries not to look her way. They’ll run into each other again on the way out, and then bump into each other twenty minutes later at the coffee shop outside the office. It’s not unusual for them to walk through the doors of Gunther & Evarts Architects at the same time, already caught up on whatever it is they need to discuss, laughing and at ease with one another.

He knows it’s a fine line between friendship and something else, but he appreciates her energy and vivaciousness. She has a brilliant mind, and she’s driven to succeed. He knows at some point they’ll lose her to someone else or she might even go out on her own, but until then he’s grateful to have her talent in the firm.

Mark feels a funny twinge inside and instantly turns his thoughts to Julia, his wife. Not that he needed any reminding. Why should he? He’s lived and breathed her for almost twenty-two years. He loves Julia, has loved her ever since they met at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the dining hall at Student Center West. He fell for her instantly—her laugh, her wild, untamable hair, her love for organizing and reorganizing things.

“Ta-da!” she’d proclaimed one day. He’d come back to his dorm room after class and found his entire closet rearranged. There were clothes he hadn’t seen in months, cleaned and pressed, hanging side by side. Julia had replaced his ratty wire hangers with white plastic ones. There was some kind of order to the clothing—casual shirts to pants to jackets. A scented girly sachet dangled from the closet bar.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” Mark protested, secretly pleased.

Julia raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I did,” she confessed. “It’s been driving me crazy ever since we met. This place is a pigsty.”

Oh. “It’s not that bad,” he had said defensively.

“You think?” Julia seemed to be waiting for that moment, because she pointed to something on his desk. Upon closer inspection, Mark saw that it was a half-eaten fast-food burrito, still crumpled in its wrapper, sprouting mold like a Chia Pet. “I found that in the pocket of your barn jacket. But I’m happy to put it back. This stuff, too.” She nodded at his cheap garbage can, which was filled with all sorts of disgusting trash.