Chapter 26
He went back through the letters and counted.
In the past year he mentioned Sara no less than 38 times in roughly 15 letters. He would have denied it if Selina had told him he had said it more than once.
Grissom rubbed his forehead in frustration and confusion. Barefoot he padded to the kitchen, picked up the bottles of gin and tonic water and carried them back to the sofa. His eyes ached from unleashed tears, his head was going to damn well ache with alcohol soon.
XXX
Before she entered the house the scent of warm cookies enveloped Sara, wafting out of the window and telling her lies about the life inside. She knocked and entered the screen door before an answer was made. "Hey Mom, it's me." Sara raised her voice to be heard over the clanging of pans in the kitchen.
When she was small her mother had been shapely, now, in her mid fifties she was round, her face nothing like the one Sara remembered from before. It was a year after her mother was released from the mental hospital before they were allowed to live together again. Painfully thin with hollow haunted eyes, Sara was afraid to look directly at the woman. They never spoke about her father, or what happened. Neither of them brought up the hospital or how fearful Sara was on the days that she went to visit. She never asked if maybe her father had made her crazy too.
The night before Valentine's Day on that first year back together, Sara's mom asked her if the class was planning a party the next day. They were, but Sara wanted no paper cards to pass out. Her mother tried to convince her but Sara stood her ground, knowing that if her mother forced her she would only throw them away in the trash bin outside the playground. As a compromise they settled on baking cupcakes for the class and frosting them in red and pink. The act of cooking, following a recipe, knowing exactly how much of what belonged where and what to do with it to get the result desired appealed to both women.
It wasn't long before they became accomplished dessert chefs. In the kitchen they would talk and laugh and Sara could bring smiles to the faces of people that she normally would have no interaction with by sharing the sweetness they could create with sugar, flour, eggs and milk.
Sara's mother ate much of what she baked, rarely going out of the house and having only her own sister and young daughter to share the in fruits of her labor. She enveloped herself in cookies, cupcakes, pies and turnovers. Layer upon layer of sugary confection served to hide the dark void left behind from the unspeakable trauma.
In the years since Sara left for college her Aunt Alice convinced her mother to turn her hobby into a business. Her mother did all of the baking and Alice sold the snacks to local schools, businesses and church groups. Now there was almost never a time that Sara came home to visit her mother that the kitchen wasn't filled with the aroma of fresh baked goods.
"Try this." Her mother forked a bite from a loaf on the sideboard into Sara's mouth before she could object. "Wow, that's new, I like it. What is it, pumpkin and…and…what?"
"Zucchini. Alice said I was crazy but it gives a nutty flavor doesn't it?"
Sara cut another piece and took the glass of milk her mother was offering. "Seriously? Zucchini? This is amazing."
"I'll wrap a loaf for you to take home to your fella."
"There is no fella mom, I've told you a dozen times." She rolled her eyes.
"I heard about that bus accident. Terrible. You should settle down and get married, I worry about your safety." It boggled Sara that her mother was so far removed from their past that she could consider getting married a safe place.
"Yeah, worked out great for you." Sara stunned herself by saying the words. In all these years they had never referenced her father in even the most abstract way. She held her breath, waiting for her mother's reaction.
Silence. Her mother stood frozen until the oven timer buzzed and she bustled back to her activity as though woken from a coma. She slid cookies from their sheet to a cooling rack as Sara watched, and waited for a response.
"These aren't anything new, same old Oatmeal I've been making for a hundred years, but you can help yourself. I think they're better when they're warm but it's impossible to sell them that way."
"Mom." Sara took the spatula from her mother's hand and held her wrist. "I want to talk about dad."