Miracle Pie (23 page)

After the arrangements were set he found
Katie in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, the water running, door
open. Even that everyday action seemed intimate. It made him want
to call the mother of the boy with a brain tumor and see if he
could come an hour later.

But that would be ridiculous. Besides, the
mother had told him she had to be at work at 10 AM, so he needed to
hustle.

“I have another interview.”

She spit out the toothpaste and rinsed her
mouth.

“I wanted to take you places today,” he
continued. “A walk on the pier. The art museum, the planetarium,
the science museum...”

“All of that today?” She grabbed a washcloth
and patted her mouth.

He laughed. “It would have to be a long
day.”

“Then there’s no rush. Go do your interview
and don’t worry about me. I can drive to the lakefront and walk
along it.”

“You’re sure?”

She rolled her eyes. He laughed and kissed
her hard, tasting her peppermint-flavored toothpaste. She smiled at
him, and when he was ready to leave, she was still smiling. He gave
her his extra key and kissed her harder than usual. He had the
crazy thought that he was imprinting his kiss on her.

Still smiling, she waved him off. When he
got in his car that was cold from being left out all night, he had
to fight a notion that he should go back to her. That she was like
a bird, ready to fly away.

But that was his nerves talking. She just
got here yesterday and wasn’t going to fly anywhere soon.

Chapter Forty-three

“You should call your mother,” Sam said.

Holding her cell phone to her ear and
looking at Gabe’s computer for directions to the lakefront, Katie
made a face. “She hasn’t seen me since she dropped me off at the
farm.”

“She was an addict.”

“Not anymore. She’s had two kids since then
and still hasn’t shown any interest in seeing me.”

“She keeps in touch.”

“She calls once a year on my birthday. I
dread those calls.”

“Yet you still answer.”

“Gram raised me not to be rude.”

“Don’t you want to know your
half-sisters?”

She closed her eyes and bit down on her
lower lip. Sam knew her too well.

“I’ll call her.”

“I’ll give you her number.”

“I’ll get a pen.” As she found one, she
thought it was odd that she didn’t know her mother’s number. Not
that it mattered. She’d only agreed to call her now because of
Sam’s prodding.

“Love you, honey,” he said.

“Love you, too.”

Feeling sick, she clicked the phone off. She
hadn’t even thought of her mother as she drove to Chicago. Another
oddity. And it was odd that she only remembered snatches of her
childhood—and the clearest were about Gabe. He’d been her bright,
shining angel. Other girls might have wished on stars or clapped
for Tinkerbell. She had her own golden-haired angel.

And she still had him. Boy, did she have
him.

Her mood lighter, she called her mother’s
number. As it rang, she walked to the front window. The apartment
was on the third floor out of five. She looked out at a street with
cars, SUVs and vans parked on both sides. Across the street were
more apartment buildings that looked as if they’d been built in the
1950s, too. Not a picturesque view. On the corner was an Indian
grocery store.

The phone rang again and then a third time.
Katie’s tense muscles relaxed. With the next ring it would go to
voice mail and she wouldn’t have to talk to her mother.

Instead a woman answered on the fourth ring.
A stranger. Katie guessed it was Raelyn, but the voice never stuck
in her mind. As if her mind rejected it the way her mother had
rejected her.

“It’s Katie,” she said.

There was a pause on the other end, and
Katie wondered if her mother knew other Katies and was trying to
match the voice with the face.

“Your daughter.”

“I knew that. I wondered why... Is something
wrong? Sam? Is he all right?”

“I’m visiting a friend in Chicago. Dad
suggested I call you.”

“Did he?” Her tone wasn’t pleased.

“I never met my half-sisters. How old are
they now?” It dawned on Katie that she didn’t know their birthdays.
Why hadn’t she asked before?

Probably because she never thought to ask.
Her mother never liked talking about her half-sisters. Katie had
found out because her grandmother had heard about them from an
elderly relative of her mother’s who lived in Tomahawk.

“Darling,” Raelyn’s tone turned coaxing, “I
don’t think it’s a good idea for you to meet them.”

“Really.” Katie planted her feet apart. “Are
you ashamed of them? Or of me?”

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re quoting the
break-up line.”

“No!” Raelyn’s voice quivered. “It’s really
not you, and it’s really not me, either. It’s my husband. He
doesn’t want anyone to know what I was like before we were married.
The children don’t know they have an older sister.”

Katie rocked back and forth on her heels,
holding back a cry. “Why?” she asked, and her voice trembled. “Why
did you contact me in the first place?”

“Your grandmother called and threatened me.
Martin had just been accepted as principal of his first school. My
aunt Lois in Tomahawk knew your grandmother and told her where I
was. Your grandmother said if I didn’t phone you at least once a
year, she would write the school board and tell them that the man
in charge of their children was married to a woman who abandoned
hers. I
had
to call you.”

“Then you should be happy. You’ll never have
to call me again.” She hung up the phone and fought an urge to
fling it across the room. With the first burst of anger burning
inside her, she sucked in sobs. She would not cry over someone like
her mother. Would. Not. Cry. Raelyn didn’t matter to her. That was
the last time she planned on talking to her.

Katie headed to the kitchen. She needed to
make her Soothe the Soul Pie.

In the cupboards, she couldn’t find
ingredients besides sugar, flour and cinnamon. Not even butter,
just margarine. She shuddered, then dug a pen and notebook out of
her purse and started her list.

Feeling as though she were running on
automatic, her emotions damped down until they were safe enough to
pull out and examine—like hot coals cooling in a freezer—she put on
her jacket, found the key, then left to shop at the Indian store on
the corner.

Another time she would have stayed in the
shop for an hour or more, smelling the spices with her eyes closed,
asking the light brown-complexioned owners what was good with apple
or pecan or even coconut. A thousand questions. But today she
lingered only about twenty minutes. Though she’d seen cinnamon in
the apartment, she didn’t know how old it was, so she bought that
and other ingredients, including a sugar pumpkin.

She hovered in front of the crystallized
ginger. In the end, she bought a small bottle. This wouldn’t be her
soul soothing pie, but she hadn’t been able to resist the pumpkin,
smaller than the ones they grew at home. And like apple and
coconut, pumpkin was a Comfort Pie. Just the smell of any of these
pies baking in the oven always made her feel better.

In the next hour she cut the sugar pumpkin
in half, scooped out the seeds, baked it and then puréed the
pumpkin in a food processer.

She’d made pumpkin pie so often, once she
found the food processer in a high cupboard, she did everything
automatically, not even needing a recipe.

But as she poured the pumpkin mixture into a
pie plate, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was
wrong. Something was missing.

By the time the pie came out of the oven,
she had watched The View, looked at the traffic out of the window
and finished aerobic exercises that included jumping up and down as
fast as she could to become breathless, proof that her heartbeat
was speeding, her metabolism was up and calories were burning.

That meant she could eat two pieces of
pie.

While the pie cooled she baked the pumpkin
seeds then cleaned up and called Trish, who said she would never
look at a pregnant dog from now on without empathy. She felt like
she was carrying a football team inside her and they all wanted to
be the team kicker. She couldn’t wait until they were out of
her.

Before Katie could say anything, Trish took
it back. Of course she’d wait. Of course she’d do whatever was
necessary to have healthy babies.

Katie agreed and wished she were back home
so she could hug Trish.

But Miracle wasn’t Gabe’s home. Chicago
was.

“How’s your hunky blond boyfriend?” Trish
asked, as if she were reading her mind. “I’m amazed you hooked up
with someone from Chicago.”

“I’m happy I can amaze you.”

“So you’re staying in Chicago? Or just a
vacation?”

“I don’t know.”

“You love him?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“Then you do love him.”

Katie closed her eyes. Her heart was still
sore from Happy’s passing. But when she thought of Gabe, her heart
seemed fuller. Her whole body felt brighter.

“Yes.”

“Does he love you?”

“I think so.”

“It’s been fast.”

“Not all of us meet the love of our life
when we’re four.”

“When I was four, I thought Gunner was a
pest.” Trish happily talked about Gunner and how he’d been the
class nerd.

“But he was
your
class nerd,” Katie
said.

“True. Actually, Gabe was your angel, and
you met him when you were five. So what do you think about
that?”

The oven timer buzzed, giving Katie a reason
to stop the conversation. She took out the pumpkin seeds and
scraped them into a bowl sitting next to the pie. The pie looked
beautiful, but as she gazed at it, her pie alarm rang. Something
was wrong.

The smell. It wasn’t right.

She backed away, her breaths short, her
heart pounding.

This was nuts. The only thing wrong was her
nerves. She needed to get out of here.

She was putting on her jacket when a key
turned in the lock. One arm on, her jacket flapping against her
thighs, she ran to the door. Gabe stepped in and she threw herself
at him, holding him, hugging him, her head on his shoulder, tucked
against the side of his neck.

Chapter Forty-four

Gabe hugged Katie back, feeling her heart
pound against his chest. “What is it?”

She gulped in air and released it, repeating
the process two more times, still holding onto him. Finally he no
longer felt her heart slam and her breaths slowed to more normal
inhales and exhales. Her grip eased, and she leaned back, looking
into his eyes.

“I’m glad to see you.”

“You sure that’s it?”

“I’m turning into Happy,” she said, stepping
back, her eyes sad blue circles.

He looked at one side of her face, then the
other. “It’s too bad.”

“What?”

“No droopy ears. Just think of the video I
could put up on YouTube.”

She laughed then stopped and blinked, as if
surprised at the sound. “Idiot.”

He smiled. If it stopped whatever the hell
was scaring her, he’d play the idiot any day. “Don’t I get a
kiss?”

“Always,” she said as they came
together.

His lids closed, and an
ahhhh
hummed
through him. It wasn’t just her pies that were magic. Her kisses
were another piece of magic.

When they parted, she smiled at him with her
mouth and her eyes, and it felt to him as if her whole body
smiled.

“A new fashion?” He nodded at her jacket
that was half on, half off.

“I was about to go for that walk along Lake
Michigan.”

“I’ll go with you. Won’t be long.” He headed
to the office to put away his filming equipment. On his way out, he
stopped to sniff the air. “I smell pumpkin pie.”

She frowned. “It doesn’t smell right.”

“Smells great to me.”

Opening the door into the hall, she
grimaced. “Something is wrong. I don’t know what it is.”

“The ingredients? Were they stale? Maybe the
oven is off. I never use it. It could be just the air in the
kitchen.”

“Chicago,” she said quietly, so he strained
to hear her. “I think it’s the smell of Chicago.”

She turned into the hall before he could
reply. As he followed her, a sense of heaviness settled in his
belly.

They took the stairs, no conversation
between them. On the sidewalk, she glanced sideways at him. “I knew
I forgot something.”

He raised his eyebrows in a question.

She grinned. “My Packers sweatshirt.”

Relief eased out the tension in his gut.
“You can’t wear that in Chicago. Packers fans are our mortal
enemies.”

“That means you’re consorting with the
enemy.”

“Is that what you call what we’ve been
doing? Consorting?”

“I like it. We can use it in a crowd of
people and no one will know what we’re talking about.”

They both laughed. He slung his arm around
her shoulders, and now it felt as if everything was all right in
the world, though just a few moments ago everything had felt all
wrong.

“How was the interview?” she asked.

“Good. The girl reminded me of you.”

They got into his SUV and were on their way.
It was early in the afternoon and the traffic should be fairly
light to him, but he suspected it would seem busy to her. He turned
east at the corner.

“How did she remind you of me?” she asked.
“Was she tall and bony?”

“She said I was the angel Gabriel, and I
would heal her.”

There was silence for a moment. “In that
case, I think she will heal.”

He glanced at her. “If I could heal every
kid just by being with them, I’d tour every damn hospital in the
world.”

She reached sideways and put her hand on his
leg. “You don’t know how powerful you are.”