Page 32 of Whisking It All

Tessa slid into the booth opposite her father as their server, a woman in her mid-sixties with curly dark hair piled high on her head, approached.

“You folks here for dinner or dessert?” the woman asked as she set coffee cups in front of each of them and filled them to the brim from the pot in her hand, the word “decaf” scrawled across a piece of masking tape affixed to the pot.

“Dinner,” Ethan replied. “How’re you doing today, Carla?”

The woman smiled. “Any day above ground is a good day. Who’ve you got with you today?” she asked, tilting her head towards Tessa.

“You remember my daughter—” her father began, but he was promptly cut off by the woman’s delighted squeal.

“Is that little TJ all grown up?” She turned her head over her shoulder, hollering towards the kitchen. “Frankie! Steph Cordeiro’s baby is here!”

Tessa’s stomach dropped and she worked to keep her face neutral, not to betray the way all of her internal organs were recoiling at the unexpected and unwanted attention.

“What?” came the shouted reply from the disembodied voice that was, Tessa assumed, Frankie.

“Tessa Jayne Cordeiro is here!” Carla repeated, her shouting now drawing amused and interested looks from the other tables.

An older woman across the diner pursed her lips and straightened her spine, pointedly not looking in Tessa’s direction as the man across the table from her leaned forward to whisper something, his eyes trained on Tessa.

“What?” This time the shouted reply was even louder.

“Oh, forget it, you old coot.” Carla turned back to their table with a wide grin, completely oblivious to the scene she’d just caused and Tessa’s overwhelming desire to slide under the table and out of sight. “Look at you, sweetheart! You’re all grown up! And the spitting image of your mother,” she clucked.

Ethan cleared his throat and shot Tessa an apologetic look. “Tessa’s opening up the holiday pop-up bakery at Nuthatch this year,” he explained.

“And co-chairing the food and wine festival, I heard,” Carla said. “We’re all glad to have you on board, darling. Especially since Cheryl won’t be able to make her brownies. Oh! Speaking of—I hear Dot Blumenthal is putting together a meal train so Ricky doesn’t accidentally poison Cheryl with his cooking.”

Ethan shook his head. “Can’t poison someone with canned soup and grilled cheese.”

“You can if you try hard enough,” Tessa replied.

Ethan glanced at her, a hint of a conspiratorial smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Almost like they were in on the same joke. Like they knew each other well enough to have inside jokes.

“Alright, what’ll you have?” Carla asked, retrieving a notepad and pen from her apron pocket. “Frankie’s got a burger with caramelized onions and a lemon aioli that is to die for, but we’re all out of avocado so don’t ask for any guac with your nachos.” She looked up at them expectantly.

After they’d ordered, Carla moved on, hollering at Frankie to hurry up already with that order of loaded tater tots for table three.

“She seems nice,” Tessa said.

“Sorry about that,” Ethan said with a wince. “The whole, ‘Steph Cordeiro’s baby’ thing.”

Tessa shrugged, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “Not the first time. Won’t be the last. I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to come back here.”

“It won’t always be like this,” Ethan said. “They’ll get to know you and you’ll stop being anyone other than Tessa who makes the fancy pastries I can’t pronounce.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Tessa said.

“I’m not—” Ethan began.

“Have you ever been someone other than the guy who knocked up mom when you were a teenager? Has anyone in this town ever let you forget that that’s who you are?” She looked up at her father, her own sadness and that lingering shame making her voice tight. If she was going to spend the next several months in Aster Bay, she needed to face the facts, and the fact was that this town would never forget the greatest scandal to rock Aster Bay High.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed at her across the table. “Yes, of course. That was a long time ago, T. I volunteer with the Merchants Association. I run the toy drive for the women’s shelter every year. And I—”

“Right, you do all of those things, but have you ever, even for a day, not also been the kid who caused a scandal when he was sixteen?”

Tessa watched her father’s face. She wanted him to say no, that no one treated him differently anymore; it was all in the past. Maybe if he said those things, she’d believe him. Maybe it would mean she could have a different life in Aster Bay this time around.

“You’ll never not be a teenage father. I’ll never not be the baby who brought shame to the Cordeiro and Hart families.”

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