The Bake-Off by Beth Kendrick Read Free Book Online

cultivated like a hothouse orchid.
    For the first few years of her life, Linnie had adored Amy, and Amy had relished the role of the magnanimous older sibling. She’d been happy to let Linnie tag along and share her toys.
    But then, suddenly, Linnie wasn’t tagging along anymore. She started reading by the time she turned two, and was correcting Amy’s grade school math homework when she was in preschool. Linnie was an intellectual tour de force, mastering mathematics, science, foreign languages, piano, and even gymnastics. Their parents would meet behind closed doors with educators and counselors about how best to nurture Linnie’s burgeoning brilliance while Amy waited out in the hallway, reading Archie comic books and chewing on lollipops.
    By the time Amy started high school, she had essentially regained her only-child status, except instead of being the center of attention, she felt more like an afterthought.
    â€œDon’t be like that,” her mother would say, looking guilty when Amy complained about spending yet another weekend at Grammy’s house while her parents drove Linnie to an out-of-state science olympiad. “You know we love you. But Linnie needs us more right now.”
    â€œYou’re lucky.” Her father threw one arm around her and squeezed. “You get to hang out with your friends and have fun.”
    So Amy taught herself to fit in wherever she went. Although she loved to paint and secretly considered herself a budding avant-garde artist, she moved freely through most of the cliques in high school. She hung out with cheerleaders and jocks, the band and theater crowds, student council members and the newspaper staff. She could talk to anyone about anything—except for her own sister, who seemed increasingly closed-off and distant.
    On the evening of her sophomore-year homecoming dance, as Amy zipped up her strapless sequined dress and applied her makeup, she tried to chat with Linnie about how she’d been nominated for homecoming court, who else was on the ballot, and which king and queen candidates might win.
    Linnie, who used to hang onto her every word and beg Amy for a spritz of perfume, didn’t even look up from her textbook. “I believe it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, ‘Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.’ ”
    And that had pretty much been the end of their sisterly bonding. Amy went out and had fun; Linnie stayed home and germinated greatness. The long-term plan, everyone agreed, was for Linnie to become a physician and spend her twenties publishing groundbreaking research papers in prestigious medical journals. (Her thirties, presumably, would be devoted to curing cancer and the common cold.)
    Linnie had started college at fifteen, right on schedule, then shocked everyone by dropping out after one semester. Desperate to see some return on their financial and emotional investment, their parents had tried everything—threats and bribes and begging—to convince Linnie to give school another shot. But nothing could sway Linnie once she’d made up her mind. As soon as she turned eighteen, Linnie moved out of their childhood home and into a series of increasingly depressing apartments and dead-end jobs. She’d recently started dealing blackjack in Vegas, which surprised Amy, given her sister’s vocal dislike of drinking, carousing, and the public in general.
    These days, instead of shuttling Linnie from private tutors to piano lessons to chess tournaments, Mom and Dad chauffeured a wiry, bossy Irish terrier named Rhodes from the dog park to the holistic veterinarian to competitive obedience trials. They’d relocated from Connecticut to North Carolina so they could be close to Rhodes’s trainer, Shawna. (Or so they claimed. Amy was convinced that after years of her parents’ bragging about Linnie to all of their friends, the pointed questions about