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

person of the family.
    Standing in the yard, I hold it up, wondering how the heck he’ll know it’s cheese. Maybe dogs smell things like this, I think, and wave it around, making figure eights in the mild night air. “Come on, puppy, where are you?”
    A racket breaks out in the back of the garden, and a squirrel bolts out of a honeysuckle bush, chattering in terror. He streaks across the yard and scrambles over the five-foot fence, Merlin following at full speed. The dog is sleek and lethal and doesn’t even pause for a breath as he runs for the fence and clears it.
    “Crap!” I race for the gate, the clumsy clogs slapping against my heels. By the time I make it through the gate to the gravel alley, Merlin and the squirrel are gone. Looking left, and looking right, I see exactly the same thing: empty darkness.
    “Merlin!” I cry, as if he would pay any more attention to me now than he did three minutes ago.
    My heart is pounding in my ears. I have to make a choice: I run to the left, out to the adjoining street. No dog either direction, and I can see a fair distance, so I turn around and run to the other end of the alley, past sleeping Victorians, a small parking lot for a clothing boutique, trash cans, garages. The smell of lilacs hangs thick and deep in the air.
    At the end of the alley, all I can see are empty sidewalks. Streetlights cast an amber glow through the tree branches. “Merlin!” I call quietly. “Where are you, you stupid dog?”
    All I can think of is Katie’s face. She trusted me. I’ll just go around the block. Surely he’ll be somewhere.
    But he isn’t. I walk up and down the side streets, calling for him, until the edges of the eastern horizon begin to lighten. Defeated, I trudge back home, my arches hurting from the sprints, my body sweaty. Lights are starting to come on here and there. A man with jangling tools on his belt heads for his truck, giving me a nod.
    How will I tell Katie her dog is gone?
    Another man is sitting on his front porch with a cup of coffee. “Good morning,” he says as I pass. His voice sounds oddly familiar, skates along my nerves in a way that makes me take a second look at him. His face, too, seems strangely familiar.
    “You haven’t seen a dog, have you?”
    “I haven’t been up very long.” His voice is lovely, resonant and calming, like a bow pulling across the strings of a cello. “What kind of dog?”
    “He’s a mongrel, a tramp. Gold and white, completely charming and wretched.”
    “I’ll keep my eyes open. Where would I return him?”
    “Are you familiar with Mother Bridget’s Boulangerie? The bakery about five blocks down?”
    “I haven’t been here very long,” he says apologetically. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
    “Thanks.” I wave and head back to face the music. Overhead, pink light kindles on the contrails curving over the sky, and, as if to mirror them, the bare pink granite of the mountaintops blazes. As I approach the bakery that was my grandmother’s house, the scent of bread curls out into the morning. I think of Katie, asleep upstairs.
    Bring him home , I think. Please .
    I stand on the sidewalk, my hand on the gate, looking back and forth down the street, praying to saints I haven’t spoken toin decades—St. Joseph, because he looks after children, and St. Francis, who is in charge of animals, and Mary, who looks out for mothers.
    Soon I will have to help the girls get all the loaves into the cases, start the coffee, write the specials of the day on my neon and black board.
    I am still standing there when Katie slams outside. “Where’s Merlin?” she demands, her voice already certain that he is gone. “Where is he?”
    Taking a breath, I turn to her. “He jumped the fence, running after a squirrel.”
    Her fists clench. “Is he dead?”
    “No! I chased him as long as I could, but he’s running the neighborhood. When the Humane Society opens, we’ll call and they’ll pick him up if they see him.”
    “How