Felix mumbled to himself as he walked away. I was sure there was a nice peppering of French expletives in there, but I kept my eyes on the work of prepping the mousse. While the gelatin softened in a bath of champagne vinegar, I whisked egg whites and sugar to high, stiff peaks. Irresponsible? Sloppy? A teaspoon or so of egg white sprayed onto the backsplash, and I was nearly manic in my attack of the mess.

I'd folded the egg whites into the strawberry puree, incorporated the whipped cream, and was carefully spreading the mixture into twelve waiting pecan crusts when Felix reemerged from whatever vermin's hole he'd been inhabiting. I didn't look up from my work, just trained my eyes on the soft pink mounds of mousse, thinking words like uniformity and precision and true revenge would equal prison time.

I sure wasn't going to turn around and look, but it sounded as though Felix was getting started on some prep work, perhaps portioning the gold leaf or garnishing the first few rhubarb tarts. He was quiet, anyway, and when I'd filled the final crust, I straightened, feeling my spine resettle into an upright position. I picked up the baking sheet, nice and easy so as not to upset the perfectly formed crusts and quivering mousse, and I turned slowly to go to the fridge, but the tip of the tray b.u.mped into Felix's girth. He had appeared out of nowhere.

He looked down his nose and over his gla.s.ses at the desserts.

I lifted my chin, daring him to say anything about the beauties before him.

To my horror, he stuck one fat finger right into the center of one crust. The finger emerged, cloaked in strawberry mousse, and then made its way to Felix's mouth. He rolled the filling around his mouth and then pursed his lips before spitting it out onto the floor.

"Needs more sugar," he said in a disconcertingly serene voice. Only his eyes betrayed his spite. "Do them all again." He wiped his finger on a clean towel and nodded to the puddle of his spit on the floor. "And clean that up."

Little stars floated at the edge of my vision, and I made a concerted effort to keep breathing. Felix was watching me with a bemused expression, and I saw Alain approach from the periphery, his countenance serious. I let my chin drop to look at the beautiful, photograph-worthy tarts I held before me. I looked up again, my eyes searching Alain's face, waiting for him to come to my defense, shred Felix for his behavior, say anything.

He set his mouth into a thin, straight line.

And he said nothing.

One by one, I released all ten of my fingers and watched a ribbon of pale mousse and silver metal go clattering to the floor. A wide arc of pink sprayed upward, but one tart remained pristine. From some part of my brain, I could hear Felix shouting about the mess on his shoes, but I told that part of my brain to just pipe down for a minute. I had one more thing to do. I crouched to the floor, cradled the only remaining, perfect tart, unfolded myself to my full height, and smiled at Felix.

"I quit," I said, pushing the tart into Felix's face, giving one extra turn of my wrist into his nose before the empty tart pan clattered to the floor.

Carlo and Danny were whooping it up around the corner while I shivered into my still-damp coat. I walked on unsteady legs to the back of the kitchen and stepped around Alain.

"Charlie," he said.

I shook my head once, hard. "Too late," I said and kept walking, pausing only to push open the door and venture back into the rain.

Halfway down the block, I noticed a smear of mousse sheltered on the inside of my thumb. I licked it off and shook my head.

Delicious.

And it most certainly did not need more sugar.

I slept the better part of two days after the Tart Incident. I have never loved Egyptian cotton like I loved it for those forty-eight hours. A few times, I stumbled to the kitchen and forced myself to eat a dollop of Greek yogurt or a slice of whole wheat toast, but my heart wasn't in it, so I just trudged back to my little slice of five-hundred-count heaven and went back to sleep. After two days of this, I lay in bed, willing my eyes to stay shut but feeling them pop open anyway. The Chihuahua said it was just after noon.

Sitting up on the side of my bed, I felt light-headed and ridiculously well rested. Was this how normal people began a day? Without the pounding headache and the feeling like one was swimming through mola.s.ses on the way to the coffee pot? I picked up my phone from the nightstand and turned it on for the first time since I'd given Felix's face a mousse mask.

I shoved a tart in Felix's face. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, what had I done? I swallowed hard and felt my pulse quicken. What had I been thinking? The weight of my five seconds of glorious retribution weighed heavily on me, and I let myself fall back again onto the bed.

I was unemployed. My rent was due in five days. I had made an enemy of a world-renowned pastry chef who held the keys to any recommendation for my next job.

My phone also awoke after a forty-eight-hour slumber, and I jumped when it began vibrating with a string of unread text messages. There were a few from Carlo, with sentiments like "You WHAAAAT?!" and "WHO'S FELIX'S DADDY?" I scrolled through two from my mother that read more like epistles, detailing a debacle with a failed sump pump and wet carpet in the bas.e.m.e.nt. After checking twice to be sure, there was not one message from Alain, the jerk. Five years of my life devoted to his restaurant, and he didn't have the decency to come to my aid, or at least offer a fond farewell. Or a severance package. Or a boot for Felix's ample rear.

Just as I pulled up Manda's number and was about to make the call to begin my pity party in earnest, my door buzzer sounded. I scrambled out of bed and threw a sweatshirt and jeans over my sleep shirt. Raking fingers through my hair as I walked, I reached the door and peered through the peephole. A man I didn't recognize was holding a bulky package. The words on his cap read ABE'S MESSENGER SERVICE.

I unlocked the two deadbolts and undid the chain.

"Can I help you?" I said through the narrow slit that separated us.

"Delivery for a Mr. Charlie Garrett. Does he live here?" The man turned out to be a boy of maybe eighteen with a peppering of blackheads on his nose. He squinted through the opening in the door.

"I do," I said. "I mean, I am. I am Charlie Garrett. It's a Ms., not a Mr."

The kid considered this information and appeared to come to peace with it. "All right. I'll go with that," he said. He produced a phone and tapped in some numbers, then held it up to me through the crack in the door. "You have to talk to this dude first. Says here I can't give you the delivery until you talk to him. I'll put you on speaker."

I took the phone, confusion registering on my face. "h.e.l.lo?" I said into the phone just as Avery Malachowski answered.

"Charlie! Sweet. Okay, tell the delivery guy you are cleared for Package One."

The kid could hear Avery's booming voice through the phone's speaker, so without waiting for a sign from me, he gestured for me to open the door, which I did. Then he handed me a tailored-looking white box tied with an orange and white polka-dot ribbon. I tugged at the ribbon and shimmied the top off the box. A beautiful strawberry mousse tart with a pecan crust was artfully nestled in yards of tissue paper. I couldn't help but laugh.

"How do you know about this?" I shook my head and pulled the tart box inside my apartment, aware that my stomach was rumbling with neglect.

"Oh, Danny the line cook and I go way back."

"You do?" I was incredulous. Danny and Avery?

"Nah, actually we don't. But a hundred bucks can buy a spy and a phone call when a certain pastry chef goes apes.h.i.t and gives her psycho boss a pie in the face."

"It was a tart. And I'm not apes.h.i.t."

"Of course you're not. Though you do have your quirks, as I remember. Package Two, delivery man," Avery said, still on speaker phone.

The kid produced a bigger box, wrapped in white and again tied with the orange polka-dot ribbon. I slipped a finger under the paper and unfolded one side without ripping. I must have been taking too long, because the delivery kid sighed and Avery said, "A little faster, Garrett. Not all of us are out of work."

The contents of Package Two made me giggle like the school girl I'd been when I'd first seen it.

"I can't believe you remembered this," I said, blushing at his thoughtfulness.

"The MegaPro Dynamic Action Label Maker with extra labeling tape. Remember how you used to drag me to office supplies stores and salivate over the organization sections? You are a weirdo, Charlie. But I thought the MegaPro might come in handy. Package Three, please."

The delivery boy was starting to look a little scared of me. Could have been the hair. Could have been the two days' worth of morning breath. Could have been my unfettered joy at opening a label maker (high speed and with a touch screen!).

I had to crack the door wider for the last package. It was tall, narrow, and awkward, and when I pulled down the brown packing paper, I saw a hefty shrink-wrapped bundle of moving boxes.

I stared, worrying my lower lip with my teeth, until the delivery boy spoke.

"SHE'S GONE MUTE, SIR." He spoke inappropriately loudly into the phone. "WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO NOW?"

"Charlie," Avery said, "it's time for a fresh start. Fill those boxes, call a moving company, and send me the bill. Just get out of there."

"Avery, I'm flattered, but-"

"Oh, sorry! What was that? Hesitation? Reluctance? You've got to be kidding me!" I could picture Avery stomping around wherever he was, gesticulating with his hands. "There are no roadblocks here, Charlie. Only fear of the unknown, which, as I remember, used to be something we were excited about ten years ago. Remember?"

The delivery boy watched me. "SHE'S NODDING. SHE REMEMBERS."

"All right," I said, finding my voice underneath a healthy layer of indecision and worry. "I'm coming." I eased the moving boxes through the door. "Give me two weeks to wrap things up around here."

Avery whooped. "I'll give you one," he said, and I could imagine the victory in his grin. "One week, Charlie. We need our pastries out here, and you are the girl to do it."

"SHE IS SMILING," the boy shouted into the speaker. "MISSION TOTALLY ACCOMPLISHED. BUT SHE DIDN'T TIP ME," he called, seeing me turn away from the door.

I held a twenty through the door and saw his face light up.

"Thanks, miss. And bon voyage, or whatever."

Exactly, I thought as I let the door shut behind me. It was the whatever that might prove to be interesting.

5.

AS I descended the escalator into baggage claim at Seattle-Tacoma International, I saw Manda's...o...b..of auburn curls before I could see her face. Her wild hair, her nemesis and the subject of many a late-night cry-it-out in junior high, had developed into a stunning and bountiful crop of shine and body in adulthood. The curls bounced and quivered along with baby Polly on her hip, and then she caught my eye.

"Woo hoo!" she squealed, much too loudly for my taste, as everyone within the vicinity began to seek out the woman at the end of Zara's pointing finger. When I reached the bottom step, Manda pulled me to her, both of us tripping over each other and the stroller lodged between us.

"You look fantastic!" Manda said, checking me out from north to south. Typically this kind of behavior would have made me painfully self-conscious, but Manda had been the person who stuck her nose into my armpit in seventh grade to verify that, yes, there was finally a hair growing in there. She was also the one to rea.s.sure me that I was absolutely, positively going to get my period before I graduated high school. She was correct on both counts, so the appraisal felt completely natural and safe.

"Thanks. You, too," I said, noting that underneath the graphic tee and jeans, Manda had reclaimed the pretty curves three pregnancies had distorted. I leaned over to kiss a babbling Polly and was struck by two things: how soft her little cheek felt on my skin and how big she'd grown since the last time I'd visited. I stepped back quickly and ducked my head under the stroller umbrella to deposit a kiss on a sleeping Dane's forehead. His mouth was agape and long eyelashes feathered out above his smooth toddler cheeks, but he still gripped what was left of a s...o...b..red-up granola bar in his pudgy hand.

"You're here, Auntie Charlie!" Five-year-old Zara buried her face into my hip until I crouched down and hugged her full on. Her hair smelled like lavender and vanilla, and I inhaled deeply.

"I'm here. Is that okay?" I pulled away to look into her face. "Can you share Seattle with me?"

"Certainly," she answered in a voice that reminded me of her attorney dad, Jack. "And you can sleep in my bed. It has Barbie sheets."

I raised an eyebrow at Manda, the former president of Edenton High School's Feminists for Change. "I love Barbie," I said to Zara and meant it.

Manda frowned as she herded our little group toward the baggage carrousel. "Jack's mother," she said in a low voice as we walked. "She sent not one but three Barbies for Christmas, and the pink house, and the d.a.m.n convertible. I was completely ambushed." She looked around as though making sure no one was eavesdropping. "And then Zara started begging for the matching bedsheets for her birthday. I had to order them online. No self-respecting store in Seattle sells Barbie sheets, for the love of Pete. And I surely didn't want to have to go to Walmart. Might as well join the NRA."

I decided there was no emergent need to mention I'd looked into cla.s.ses at the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range after the night Danny got slashed by Felix's favorite knife. Or that all the kids' presents I'd tucked into my luggage had come with free shipping from the thrifty folks at walmart.com. Instead, I hugged her around her waist as I walked, leaning down a bit in my heels. "I'm so happy to see you, and I won't judge you just because your daughter loves Barbie."

"I'm happy to see you, too." She grinned at me. "And before you know it," she pointed to my feet, "you'll forget all about crazy ideas like heels and black tailored jackets, and you'll feel comfortable in your own skin again."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm totally comfortable. These shoes have been begging to be worn since the day I purchased them four years ago." I reached down to smooth away a streak of dust that I'd missed and, in the process, nearly fell to my death.

Manda steadied me with one hand while maintaining a secure grip on Polly and stopping Dane's stroller with one foot. "You seem very controlled. And chic. And like you might break your ankle at any second."

"I love your pretty shoes, Auntie Char," Zara said, her nose near my new pedicure. "My Barbie has pretty shoes just like these."

"Have mercy," Manda muttered.

I spotted my red suitcase b.u.mping down the conveyor belt and tottered forward to retrieve it, stumbling a bit to get past the wheels on Manda's double stroller. I hefted the bag up and off the carrousel and tugged it back to Manda and her entourage, concentrating fully on walking, not shuffling.

Manda looked triumphant. "Birkenstocks before the week's end!" she declared, and I sighed. While a pair of cork-bottomed soles did sound pretty glorious right then, I wasn't quite ready to go all earthy just because I was on the west coast. Somebody had to wear heels, and it might as well be me and Barbie.

We made our way to the car and onto the freeway before Manda began her pointed questioning, machine-gun style.

"How did you do this so fast? Are you exhausted? Are you nervous? What is Avery saying? What is your mother saying? Is she thrilled to have you out of G.o.dless Gotham, or is she depressed you just flew over Minnesota without stopping? Hold on." She put a hand out to stop me before I could respond. "Zara Rose Henrick, you keep your hands to yourself. No poking your brother with colored pencils. I do not want Dane waking up yet. You know how cranky he is when he gets up before he should."

"But I'm booooored," Zara said in an impressively anguished voice.

"Only boring people get bored," Manda responded cheerily. "Plus, I don't speak Whinese, so you'll need to choose a different tone of voice."

Zara didn't appear to want to dignify that statement with a reply, so Manda returned to our conversation. "Tell me everything. And maybe quickly because Polly is going to need to breast-feed soon. I'm hoping we can get to your apartment before she wigs out, but there's no insurance policy on that idea."

"Well," I said, with the shrug I had employed often throughout the last week, "Avery took care of everything. He got me out of my lease, he hired a moving company, he even found me the apartment here. I'm still in shock. I'm not used to making decisions so quickly."

Manda snorted. "Oh, really? Perhaps you are forgetting that I am the friend who waited with great patience while you deliberated for forty-seven minutes about whether to buy cherry red or cherry-berry red lip gloss for your first skating party in junior high."

"That was so fun!" I remembered. "We should go shopping again now that we're in the same city."

With one eye on the traffic and one eye on the rearview mirror, she said, "Fun? You thought that was fun?" She shook her head. "I love you. But it's never going to happen. These days, I'm lucky if I can get out of a store with only one or two of us in tears."

Polly began fussing, and Manda raised an eyebrow at me as if to say, "See what I mean?" She groped under her seat and came up with a Mason jar packed with pacifiers. She plucked one from the top of the heap. Contorting her arm into a pose any yogi would admire, she fumbled for Polly's mouth until she heard an appreciative suck. "Tell me about the apartment. Belltown is infinitely hipper and more chichi than I have ever been. I can't wait to see it. How did the photos look?" She signaled to pull off the freeway, and we merged into a pretty neighborhood with mature trees showing off the tender green of new spring leaves.

"He wouldn't send me any photos," I said, craning my neck to find a street number on one of the buildings. "Said he wanted to surprise me."

"Unbelievable." Manda shook her head. "I don't remember Avery Malachowski being such a romantic when you dated him. Or such a big spender, what with all the moving trucks and special deliveries. Jack and I drove by his new restaurant, and it looks sw.a.n.k-o. Very posh." She hit the steering wheel with her fist, appearing to tumble upon a distant memory. "Wait. Wasn't he the one who would divide the gas tab evenly down to the last cent?"

"Oh, wow. He was," I said, remembering ranting to Manda about that very issue right before Avery and I broke up. "I guess he's changed."

"Um, for the better." Manda's voice was awe-filled as we pulled up to the address I'd given her.

The building looked like brand-new construction, though that might have been the gla.s.s talking. Twenty stories, I guessed, and all sides of the building shimmered with reflections of the clouds and blue skies above us. I pushed open the pa.s.senger door and let my gaze travel over my new home. I could glimpse the insides of a few apartments on the lower floors. Modern furnishings, lots of stainless steel, platinum finishes, colorful, abstract art against white walls.

Manda came to stand by me and handed off Zara's tugging hand.

"Can we go in, Aunt Charlie? Please? Can we go into your new mansion?"

My laugh sounded tinny and nervous. "For sure. Avery said the concierge would have my key."

"Oh, to have a concierge!" Manda moaned. "I need one of those so badly. And a cook. And a nanny. And a ma.s.seuse."

"How much do you think this place goes for?" I lowered my voice as we approached the front doors, Zara pulling us ahead. Manda pushed the stroller with a newly awake and irritated Dane and a hollering Polly.

"The real question is, when do you have to start picking up the tab?"

I held the door for Manda and the screamers and took a deep breath of the white tea fragrance that floated out from the foyer. "He said the first six months were on him. Until I feel completely settled."

Manda shook her head. "Love it and live it up, girl. Tomorrow has enough troubles of its own."