It Wasn't Supposed to End Like This

Did you think love was like a cake lovingly baked through time and error? Did you think measuring out each cup of flour and dusting your face with it would make him stay? Did you think that last birthday cake would secure his affections in a way nothing else could?

Get a grip, Mom. This isn't one of your baking shows. You can cry into your cookbook at night, but we all knew it. Dad was leaving. Lissa and I started a bet on which day it would be. You were the only one, oblivious to the outcome, so secure in your housewife fantasy. You aren't freaking Martha Stewart.

And the chocolate cake? Sorry, but it was dry.

Harper Loughlin's hands shook as she read through the note her daughter Alina had left on the kitchen counter. All too soon, tears began to fill her eyes, and any other time she might have dabbed her eyes against the Bless the Baker apron her sister Maude had gotten her a few Christmases ago. But the tears felt like surrender—especially as she imagined her mean-spirited daughter who might smirk with satisfaction if she could see Mother Dearest now. It took everything Harper had to set down the note back in its place as if she had never even touched it.

Harper ended up doing the only thing that came easily through the bleakest of moments: she began to bake.

After a mess of bowls and tins and spatulas, Harper lovingly took the lemon squares out of the oven. They were Alina's favorite—a kind of peace offering. Just because Alina sided with her dad on almost everything didn't mean it was time for Harper to cast aside the girl and focus all her efforts on Lissa. It didn't even matter that the girls had sensed the coming tide before Harper herself did. Maybe one too many interludes with the oven and her recipe box had cost her the affection of her husband and her two children.

No matter. Harper could easily win them back through their stomachs. That had been her mother's way—and her grandmother's before her. But when Harper thought of the empty head of the dining room table—the space where her husband always sat like a king—her shoulders hunched and she wanted to throw the plate of lemon squares at the nearest wall.

No. Breathe, breathe, just breathe.

Harper opened her eyes and smiled at her reflection in the kitchen window.

Husbands could come and go, but family? That was forever.

By the time Alina arrived home from her part-time job at Torrid, Harper was waiting, plate in hand, for her daughter. Lissa was away for the week at volleyball training camp for the upcoming fall semester. For now, it would be Alina and Harper in the house—all the better for some mother-daughter bonding time before Alina went away to college upstate.

It was already July. Only a month, and then Harper would have to figure out logistics. Her husband, soon to be ex, would not let her have the house without a fight. And the girls? Alina was eighteen and could do what she wanted, but Lissa was prime custody battle material...

Harper blinked rapidly. No. She could not think of how her life was falling apart. Then her husband—ex-husband, ex-husband, she chanted in her mind—would be winning. And he could not win. Harper Loughlin did not lose in the realm of the household and domestic matters.

"Mom?" Alina was staring with a look mixed between irritation and, dare Harper think it, concern. "Are you all right?"

"Honey," Harper said, her voice bright, "I made your favorite. And I thought you'd like to talk."

The concern bled away to full-blown irritation. "Do we have to? I'm tired—"

"Sit down," Harper said, the cheeriness going just as easily away as Alina's concern had done. She usually tried to play nice with her children, but sometimes things called for a no-nonsense approach.

Alina set her backpack down on the floor and slumped down into one of the kitchen chairs. "Is this about Dad?"

Harper set down the plate of lemon squares, the clattering sound a bit too loud for the small kitchen, but she offered a tight smile to her daughter. "It's about Dad, yes. But it's also about us."

Alina waited, looking down at her chipped purple nail polish. Harper took the momentary distraction to slide into the chair across from her daughter.

"If we're going to get through this—this divorce," Harper said, nearly choking on that word she hated—that she couldn't believe applied to her, not this late in her life, "then we have to find a way to make sure our family stays intact as much as possible."

"That's easy," Alina said, her dark eyes looking challenging in the dimming light of the kitchen. "I'm moving in with Dad. Lissa wants to come too."

Harper felt as if her daughter had reached into the cavity of her chest and squeezed her heart for all its life's blood. "What?"

"Yeah," Alina said, this time her gaze falling back to her fingernails. "The house is going to be sold, right? And Dad asked us if we wanted to live with him. You didn't seem to care."

Harper wanted to scream. "How could I not care?"

Alina's gaze was merciless now as it rose up again in a flash. "Oh, I don't know, when you had the affair with that baking guru and broke Dad's heart, I kinda just thought you had checked out of this whole being a family thing you love to spout about so much."

The smash of ceramic punctured the air after Harper smacked the plate of lemon squares halfway across the kitchen floor. Alina jolted, and for the first time her eyes betrayed a bit of wariness—and fear.

"Aren't I allowed to make mistakes? Aren't I allowed to be human? I've been your mother and your dad's wife for almost twenty years. Don't you ever think it got exhausting?"

Alina's expression hardened. "Then I guess Dad wasn't your only mistake."

The words were like a punch that left Harper's entire form numb. She opened her mouth for a rebuttal—anything, anything to say—but what was there that she could bring to the table? What excuse was there? Especially when she was the one who had broken the picture-perfect family portrait in the first place?

Her elder daughter took that moment to stand and retreat. Harper couldn't even look at her. It was saying something that Alina didn't add one more parting blow. The silence was enough, especially from an opinionated girl like Alina.

When Alina's footsteps had faded, Harper fell to her knees in front of the ruined lemon bars and the beautiful plate she had ordered from a catalogue years ago. The tears ran free now, every regret pouring out of her, but there was no one to witness the change. For once, Harper wasn't on display for the world to judge.

But eventually she got back to her feet. She cleaned up the mess of broken pieces and lemon curd splatter. When she straightened after the floor was clean, she retied her apron more tightly. She smiled just to prove to herself that she could.

It was time to bake something new. That would help her forget. It had to—because that was all she had left.