Free How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal

room.
    Whatever else I say about him now, he was so good with mydaughter. Patient, funny, a good teacher. She could be aloof with people, but she let her guard down wholeheartedly with Dane. We had a great weekend, and I admit there were some sexual sparks. It would be hard not to have them around him—he’s just that kind of man. He knows how to look at you. Knows how to pick the things you’ll need to hear. The last night I let him kiss me, and he was—surprise!—a very good kisser. It had probably been, at that point, about six years since I’d had sex. I fell. And with Dane, it was sex like I’d not really had it before. Falling-off-the-bed sex. He knew what he was doing.
    In the morning I was horrified, and he even knew how to manage that. He said it would be our secret. We’d never do it again. No one would ever know.
    The trouble was, we worked together all the time. He’d bend over my shoulder and his breath would brush my neck, and I’d remember something. I avoided him.
    I told myself that it would be a fling, that we’d have a good time and that would be that. But affairs are hard to keep secret in a restaurant, and when my father found out, he was not pissed off but thrilled . My mother adored him. Sofia loved him. For the first time in about a decade, I had the full approval of my family—maybe even Steph, though she was in the depths of a very tangled love affair herself and never had time to talk.
    Dane and I got married. It seemed like the thing to do.

Katie
      S he awakens to the slow, patient wetness of a tongue moving over her fingers. When she stirs, Merlin jumps up eagerly and Katie says, “It’s the middle of the night! Go back to sleep!” and pulls the covers over her head.
    He nudges his nose under the covers and makes a soft “whuff.” Katie remembers that he doesn’t have any way to go to the bathroom unless she takes him. Abruptly, she sits up. Merlin backs away, leaping lightly and jerking his head toward the door. It makes Katie laugh. She puts on a sweater—Ramona was right: It’s cold in the middle of the night here!—and clips Merlin’s leash to his collar. Barefoot on the wooden steps, Katie follows him down, down, down, through the house kitchen and down the back steps into the backyard.
    She unleashes him there and stands in the darkness with her arms crossed over her chest. The grass is damp beneath her feet, and it smells like flowers, the purple flowers on the bushes all along the yard. She never knew flowers could have so much smell or that they could be so perfect and beautiful. Even in the darkness, when they are pale gray, she thinks she can see an edge of blurry purple in the air.
    Two squares of light fall on the grass from the bakery kitchen, and Katie wanders over curiously. Two women, maybe aboutthe same age as Sofia, are dressed in white chef’s coats, with their hair caught back beneath scarves. One is taking care of a big bowl being mixed up by a machine, while the other is shaping dough into long tubes on the metal counter in the middle of the room. Katie’s stomach growls.
    Ramona comes into view, too, her hair tightly braided away from her face, the same white coat on. Her pants are green and loose, and she’s wearing those stupid plastic shoes. Who wears stuff like that? Katie’s mother would make fun of her.
    But Ramona seems happy, moving around the room, gathering bowls and spoons and stuff, laughing with the other two. Even in the middle of the night.
    For one long, pained minute, Katie thinks of her mother in the middle of the night. Two weeks ago. Three. Her face had gotten real bad lately, with scabs and one open spot that got all pussy and disgusting, until Katie brought her mom into the bathroom and poured hydrogen peroxide on it. It bubbled and bubbled and got a little better the next day. But her mom was so skinny that Katie could see there were two bones in her forearms, and she didn’t even have any breasts anymore. All she wanted,