Free The Cakes of Wrath by Jacklyn Brady

around here.”
    â€œDestiny, listen—”
    â€œNo,
you
listen.” She squinted to focus on my face and jabbed a finger at me. “I’ve got something on my side for once. Something that’s going to make a few people very sorry. And you’ll be one of ’em.” And then she squared up, found some balance, and ran from the room. I stood there for a second, arguing with myself about whether to follow her and make sure she was all right, or thank my lucky stars that I didn’t have to sit here with her for the next two hours.
    Guilt is a powerful master. I ought to know. I was raised on it. I couldn’t just let Destiny wander off like that. Anything could happen to her.
    But I want it on record that, so far, the day had been shaping up as one of my worst in recent memory. I couldn’t have known then how much worse it would get before it was over.

Seven

    Unfortunately, despite my best intentions to follow her, Destiny had disappeared by the time I made it to the front door, and Edie was no help at all in locating her. Eventually I went back to work in the design area and channeled all my guilt and frustration into the petunias. Bad idea. I overworked the buttercream and ended up with droopy petals on several of the flowers. The more mistakes I made, the worse I felt. Everyone has bad days in our industry. Things don’t always work out perfectly. Fondant cracks, buttercream melts, cakes fall. But it’s always maddening when it happens.
    By noon, I had twenty-four usable petunias, ready for the finishing touches. In a perfect world, that would be enough, but it’s always smart to make extras, just in case. I’d have to do that later, though. It was time to channel what little energy I had left into gathering supplies for the neighborhood cleanup.
    I moved the flowers carefully out of the way where they wouldn’t get bumped, limped into the break room for a Diet Coke, and then carried it back to my office. The muscles in my back and neck were screaming, and the scrapes on my arms and legs had started to burn. I’d have a quick lunch of pain pills and self-pity before shifting gears.
    The past sixteen hours had been rough. People kept reminding me that I looked like death warmed over, and as the day dragged on, I was beginning to feel like it. And it was only half-over. I still had work to do prepping for the alliance cleanup. I didn’t want to take Ox or Dwight off their jobs on the golf course cake, and I’d crossed Edie off the list of people I could put to work doing manual labor weeks ago. If she was even still speaking to me, she’d be coordinating our efforts from the comfort of a chair in the shade. I could only hope that I could enlist help from some of the other alliance members as they dropped by.
    Sitting in my office chair, I looked around for the bags I’d picked up at the drugstore that morning. I thought I’d left them both on my desk, but only one—the one holding the Febreze and ibuprofen—was there now. I found my purse in its usual drawer, but the white prescription bag wasn’t with it.
    The bruises on my face throbbed and the headache I’d been trying to ignore for the past couple of hours took hold. I checked my desk, inside, out, and under. I pulled out my chair, pawed through a stack of files on the corner, and even looked inside the file cabinets, but I couldn’t find the prescription anywhere. Terrific. Had the fall last night affected my memory?
    After all that searching, I was too sore to walk all the way into the next room, so I speed-dialed Edie and said, “You didn’t happen to see where I put the small bag from the drugstore, did you? I could have sworn I left it on my desk, but it’s not here.”
    â€œYou can’t find it?” she asked. “Are you serious?”
    â€œUnfortunately. Did you happen to see what I did with it?”
    Edie disconnected with a click and