The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig Read Free Book Online

where Miss Phillips couldn’t see her. The new book could wait. From her torn dress pocket, she took out her battered copy of
The Princess and the Goblin
that her father found by the towpath of the old canal. He was always finding things. He found Mama’s ring by the canal, too.
    The pages had browned with age and the type was small, but Edie didn’t care. As she started to read, the library faded away and she was once again in the wild mountains, with a little girl her own age—eight-year-old Princess Irene—and goblins who lived underground. Were goblins scarier than Jimmy McCray? wondered Edie.
    Edie loved the parts where the princess followed an invisible thread to find her beautiful great-great-grandmother in the tallest tower of the castle, the lady with blue eyes that seemed to have melted stars in them. Edie could just imagine how the lady looked with her black velvet dress and the long white hair that reached past her silvery lace collar.
    But she was not to that part yet. She was still at the place where the princess first gets lost. Ohhhhh, shivered Edie, thinking of the goblins and then, suddenly, of Jimmy McCray. What if Edie got lost and Jimmy McCray was chasing her?
    She snapped the book shut and quickly ran to find Olive.

3

    When I got back to the bakery from the Schumachers’ wedding cake tasting, Maggie was in the middle of packing little boxes, each with a different kind of small cake: January’s mocha truffle plus our everyday cream cheese–frosted carrot cake, red velvet, almond-flavored blue suede, and, of course, rainbow cake.
    “I just couldn’t decide,” explained the customer, breathily.
    “Well, then you shouldn’t have to,” I told her, tucking a cellophane-wrapped snowflake sugar cookie into a bag as a little gift. “My treat.” Such a little thing—a sugar cookie—can be an unexpected kindness, if the expression on her face was any indication.
    As soon as she had gone and the bakery was quiet again, Maggie looked at me expectantly.
    “Well? How did it go?”
    I beamed.
    “I knew you could do it! I knew it!”
    “This calls for a celebration latte,” I said, and revved up the ol’ Marzocco. When I guided the froth with a long spoon, I tried to make a wedding cake shape, but it turned into a mountain.
    “Yep, that’s about right,” I muttered.
    “What’s right?” Maggie asked as she clinked her cup with mine. “Cheers!”
    “We’ve still got an uphill battle,” I said, pointing at my artwork.
    “That’s not all we’ve got,” Maggie said in a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re gonna be slammed for Valentine’s Day. I’ve charted our foot traffic and our orders for the past two weeks, and they’ve more than doubled each week. We’re still not where we want to be, but we’re getting there. The upshot is that you better get some more help, unless you think Vampira back there is up to waiting on customers.” She gave me her skeptical look.
    Well, now, that’s a thought.
    I found Jett in the workroom, a scowl on her face and a chain from her nose ring to some nether region beneath her black T-shirt. She was fashioning delicate sugar-paste roses and leaves. Her hands looked clean, though it was hard to tell with her fingernails painted black.
    “How’s it going?” I asked.
    “Things are pretty fucked.”
    My eyes widened, but I collected myself. I saw beautifully rendered rosebuds, fully opened roses, and rose leaves in the pale colors of our next black-tie event, a charity ball for the Rose Family Foundation.
    My puzzled look prompted, “It’s not the work,” from Jett.
    “Well, that’s something.”
    I couldn’t even tell what her natural hair color was. Jett told me she dyed it “Deadly Nightshade.” On rainy days when she walked down the Benson Street hill from Millcreek Valley High on the crest of the hilltop—and she never seemed to have an umbrella—her hair dripped purplish black. I kept some old towels on hand now.
    I was convinced that