Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“We’ll get it back,’ I repeat, clutching his hands. Hands that have baked literally thousands of pies. Pies that have healed and brought hope and comfort. Honest pies, beautiful pies. Pies that used to change the world. “And then we’ll get that blue ribbon back, and everything will be fine.”
“Yes. It’ll be fine.” He says it with such determination that for a second, my heart leaps with hope. But it tumbles straight down to my feet with his next words. “It’ll all be okay because you’ll go to New York. You’ll go to him, and you’ll bring him back.”
Excuse me, what?
“What?” That might be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. “You know that since the explosion, Luca hasn’t… he… he’s a recluse now. He told the guy who came to write an article about him that it was karma that cursed him. A curse for a curse.”
That just lights a fire under my dad’s ass, and here I am, trying to put it out.
“We need to break those curses. Both of them.”
“Dad!” That’s it. The sweater has to go. I know it’s just a thin layer of cotton, and it’s not any warmer in here than it normally is, but I’m sweating through my clothes. That breath I’d like to take? I doubt I’ll ever be able to do that again. “It’s not some magical force that decides life. It’s our own decisions!”
What Luca did was wrong. He hurt my dad, and in turn, my dad’s been despondent for years. Luca went to New York without a backward glance, and just a few years later, he opened up his own fancy high-end restaurant, and then another and another. He basically became famous and was at the top of the world when there was a fire in the kitchen where he was working, followed by an explosion. That’s all anyone really knows. That, and he retreated from the world to take care of himself and never came back.
“He said he was cursed,” Dad insists. He’s having that stubborn streak that he inherited from my grandfather on full display right now.
“We don’t know he said that. That writer could have twisted his words to give them a more dramatic flourish. He got that story by camping out for days and days, pestering Luca and his family until Luca caved and finally spoke to him. He also said that. Is that a man you can really trust to be honest?”
“How he got the story isn’t important. Luca said he was cursed. He believes it, like I do. It’s time to break it for both of us.”
I don’t mean to sigh, but it spirals out of me anyway as the pies bake on. We’d just put them in when my dad said he needed to talk. My dad’s a great man. He’s good and kind, and he is an amazing father, but talking? That’s something he really doesn’t do. Ever. I mean, he talks, but not talks. The pies aren’t burning. They’re going to come out perfectly golden brown, gorgeous, and still… lacking something.
“Why would you want him to come back here?” Wait. What the fuck, rubber duck? I’m not seriously considering going to New York.
A terrible hope glows in my dad’s dark eyes. Mine are almost the exact same shade as his.
“It’s just time,” he answers.
“If he hasn’t told you he’s sorry in all this time, it’s because he’s not!” My hands ball up into fists. “He’s a selfish butthole of a turd bag who thinks of no one but himself. He threw away friendship for money and fame. He’s not the good guy in this. He’s the villain.”
“Villains are heroes who just got twisted around.”
Seriously?
My dad’s never talked badly about Luca. Most of what I know about what happened is from what my mom has told me over the years. And defending him right now is taking it too far.
“You need to go save him.” Dad taps his head. “Me. This place.”
That has me unclenching my fists and my jaw so fast. My hands literally get thrown up in the air. “Why me? I don’t even know the guy. I’ve never even met him!” Luca was gone before I was even born.
“Because he wouldn’t see me, and your mother would never go. I love her and she loves me, and that’s the point. She thinks I need to be protected.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just head there and be kind about him sort of wrecking our lives and now our business? Start spouting stuff about breaking curses?” Tell him that he basically shaved off twenty years of my father’s life, and for that, he deserves to rot in a dungeon filled with bugs? “That’s just kind of…” Deluded. Insane. Ridiculous. A pie I don’t want to have my fingers in. “A lot.”