I was piping the last tiny yellow rose onto a birthday cake when my mother-in-law brought my daughter home from the park.
I heard the front door before I saw them. Giselle’s heels on the hardwood. Mina’s little sneakers thumping behind her. Mina chattering about ducks.
“Mama! There were seven ducks! And one was mean!”
“Was he?” I called from the kitchen. I didn’t look up. My piping bag was halfway through a petal, and if I stopped now, the rose would come out lopsided.
Giselle came into the kitchen. She leaned over my shoulder and looked down at the cake.
It was a two-tier vanilla sponge, iced in pale buttercream, with a cascade of yellow roses down one side. Twenty-three of them, each one about the size of a nickel. It had taken me forty minutes. It was for my regular customer, Dana. Her daughter was turning seven.
Giselle studied it for a moment.
“Still playing with frosting, honey?” she said. “It’s such a silly little hobby.”
I finished the petal. I set down the piping bag.
“A silly little hobby that pays,” I said, with a tight smile.
“Hmm,” Giselle said.
She pulled her purse strap higher on her shoulder. She looked around my kitchen, the way she always did. Like she was inspecting it. The stack of cake boxes on top of the refrigerator. The flour bin. The mixing bowls drying in the rack.
“By the way,” she said, “I need a cake for my friend Patrice’s book club on Sunday.”
I took a breath.
“I can’t make another free cake this week, Giselle,” I said.
She turned and looked at me with her eyebrows raised.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “You wouldn’t charge family, would you?”
Behind her, my three-year-old was struggling out of her coat in the doorway. She had one arm out of her sleeve and the other one stuck. She was spinning in a slow circle, trying to shake it off.
“I have three paid orders to finish this week,” I said. “And the ingredients for Patrice’s cake would come out of my own pocket. Butter alone is—”
“Patrice is a dear friend of mine,” Giselle said. “It’s just a simple lemon cake. Nothing fancy. I’d make it myself, of course, but between watching Mina and all my own commitments, I simply won’t have time.”
Mina held up her coat. “Mama! Stuck!”
I stepped around Giselle and knelt down and freed Mina’s arm from her sleeve. I hung the little pink coat on its hook by the back door. The one at Mina’s height, with the duck sticker on it.
My name is Tessa. I’m thirty-two.
I used to work in medical billing at St. Luke’s Hospital. Eight years in a gray cubicle, arguing with insurance companies on the phone. I was good at it. I was very, very bored.
When Mina was born, I left.
It wasn’t exactly a choice. Daycare for an infant in our city costs more than I was making after taxes. Zion and I sat at the kitchen table with a calculator one night and did the math four times, and it came out the same every time. It made more sense for me to stay home.
So I stayed home.
I started baking when Mina was about six months old.
It was something to do with my hands during nap time. My grandmother, Nana Rose, had been a baker. Not a professional. Just the kind of grandmother whose kitchen always smelled like cinnamon and whose freezer was always full of pie crusts. She taught me everything when I was a kid. How to cream butter and sugar until it turned pale. How to fold egg whites without knocking out the air. How to pipe a rose.
Patience is the main ingredient, Tessie. Everything else is just flour.
She died when I was nineteen. I hadn’t baked much since.
But with a baby on my hip and nowhere to go, I started again. Banana bread. Muffins. Cookies for the neighbors.
Then I made a cake for Mina’s first birthday. A little chocolate cake shaped like a duck, because ducks were her favorite thing in the world. I posted a picture of it online.
A woman I didn’t know saw it. Her name was Dana. She sent me a message.
Do you take orders? My son’s turning four. He’d lose his mind over a cake like that.
I said yes. I didn’t know what to charge. I said forty dollars. She paid me sixty.
After that, people started recommending me. Dana told her friends. Her friends told their friends. Somebody shared my page in a local moms’ group.
Within a year, I was making four or five cakes a week. Birthday cakes. Baby shower cakes. Anniversary cakes. A wedding cake, once, for a small backyard ceremony, three tiers with fresh flowers.
I still have the very first thank-you card a customer ever sent me. It’s from Dana. A little card with a duck on the front.
Brayden said it was the best day of his whole life. You have a gift. Don’t ever stop.
It’s tucked behind my recipe books on the kitchen shelf. I look at it on hard days.
Three mornings a week, Giselle took Mina out so I could work.
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. From nine to noon. She’d pick Mina up, take her to the park, or the library, or the children’s museum, and bring her back for lunch.
Without those mornings, I couldn’t run my business. I couldn’t pipe roses with a three-year-old pulling on my leg. I couldn’t take a cake out of a hot oven with a toddler underfoot. I’d have had to bake everything after bedtime, from eight at night until two in the morning.
I knew that. Giselle knew that.
And she never let me forget it.
I turned back to the counter.
Giselle was still standing there. Waiting for my answer.
I could keep saying no. I could stand my ground.
But on Thursday morning, I’d still be handing her Mina’s little backpack at the front door. I’d still be thanking her for coming. And she’d still be the one taking my daughter to see the ducks.
“All right,” I said. “Lemon. For Sunday.”
Giselle smiled.
“Thank you, honey,” she said. “Patrice will be thrilled. I’ll pick it up Saturday.”
She kissed Mina on the top of the head and left.
That night, I complained to Zion.
He was lying on the couch scrolling through his phone. Some article about baseball trades. Mina was finally asleep upstairs. I’d just finished wrapping Dana’s cake and putting it in the refrigerator.
I sat down on the arm of the couch.
“Your mom asked for another free cake today,” I said. “That’s at least one a week, Zion. Sometimes two. I can’t keep absorbing it.”
He didn’t look up from his phone.
“But she watches Mina three mornings a week,” he said. “Think about what that would cost us. Nine hours a week. At what, twenty dollars an hour?” He scrolled. “You can give her a few cakes back. Be grateful, Tess.”
Be grateful.
I had been grateful.
I was grateful.
I packed Mina’s lunch every morning so Giselle wouldn’t have to buy her anything. I thanked her at every single handover. Every time. Thank you so much, Giselle. We really appreciate it. I sent her home with leftover cupcakes. On her birthday last spring, I made her favorite cake. Coconut, with toasted coconut flakes all over the outside. Four layers. It took me six hours.
She took a bite at her birthday dinner and said, “It’s a little dry, honey. But it’s sweet of you to try.”
None of that seemed to count.
None of it counted when I wanted to say no.
I sat on the arm of the couch and watched my husband scroll.
And I realized something.
If I wanted to be able to say no to Giselle, really say no, then I couldn’t need her for anything.
I’d have to find other childcare for Mina.
The next morning, Dana messaged me.
Hi Tessa! My sister’s 25th anniversary is coming up next Thursday. Could you do a cake? Two tiers, something elegant. Maybe the white roses again? I’ll pay your full rate plus delivery.
My full rate for a two-tier anniversary cake was a hundred and sixty dollars.
I did the math in my head.
That was enough to cover a whole week of morning preschool. At the little Montessori school three blocks from our house. Sunflower Children’s House. I’d walked past it a hundred times. I’d looked up their fees once, late at night, just out of curiosity.
Forty dollars a morning. Three mornings a week.
A hundred and twenty dollars a week.
I checked my calendar. Twice.
I could do Dana’s cake. If I kept the following Thursday clear. If I baked the layers on Wednesday and decorated Thursday morning while Giselle had Mina.
I typed back: I’d love to! Let me just confirm—
Then my phone rang.
Giselle.
“Honey,” she said, before I could even say hello. “I promised Linda a retirement cake. For her party on Thursday. I’ll collect it when I bring Mina home.”
I closed my eyes.
“Giselle,” I said. “I need Thursday morning. I just got a paying order. A big one. Could you ask Linda if she could pick it up Friday instead?”
There was a pause.
“The party’s Thursday,” Giselle said. “Thursday evening. At the country club. Do you think she should postpone her entire retirement for your cake?”
“Of course not!” I said. “I just… I’m sorry, Giselle. But I can’t do it this time.”
There was a longer pause.
I stood by the kitchen counter, holding the phone. I was proud of myself. And a little bit sick to my stomach.
“I’ve already told her,” Giselle said. Her voice had gone cool. “I’ve already told Linda you’d make it. What am I supposed to say now? That my daughter-in-law couldn’t be bothered?”
“That I’m working,” I said.
“While I’m looking after your child.”
I didn’t say anything.
She sighed. A long, heavy, put-upon sigh.
“Maybe Mina should just stay home that day,” she said. “So I can bake Linda’s cake myself. Since you’re too busy.”
I stood there with the phone against my ear.
I knew exactly what she was doing.
If Mina stayed home on Thursday, I couldn’t do Dana’s cake anyway. Not properly. Not two tiers of white roses with a three-year-old climbing the kitchen chairs.
I looked at the calendar on the refrigerator again.
I could take both cakes. Linda’s and Dana’s. I could work all day Wednesday and all Wednesday night. Bake the layers. Make the buttercream. Pipe the roses at two in the morning.
I could tell Dana yes and hope nothing went wrong.
But Mina had been having nightmares lately.
She’d been waking up crying two or three nights a week. Ever since she saw a scary scene in a movie at a friend’s house. A witch. Every night around eleven, she’d call for me from the hallway.
If I was up piping roses at two in the morning and Mina woke up screaming, something would go wrong. Something always went wrong.
And I couldn’t promise a customer something I might not be able to deliver. Not Dana. Not the woman who’d sent me my very first thank-you card.
“I’ll do the retirement cake,” I said.
“Wonderful, honey,” Giselle said. All the coolness was gone. Instantly. “Linda likes chocolate. Something festive. I’ll pick it up Thursday.”
She hung up.
Afterward, I sat at the kitchen table and typed an apology to Dana.
Dana, I’m so sorry. I can’t take the anniversary cake after all. Something came up with family this week. I hate to let you down. I hope you understand.
She replied five minutes later.
Oh, no worries at all! Family first. I’ll find someone. Let me know when you have openings again. Hugs!
She was so kind about it.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Later that week, Dana’s payment for the birthday cake came through. The one with the twenty-three yellow roses. A hundred and twenty dollars, plus a twenty-dollar tip.
I sat at the kitchen table and opened my banking app.
I made a new savings account. I hesitated over the name. Then I typed one word.
Mornings.
I moved forty dollars into it.
I’d looked up the preschool’s fees again that week. Properly this time. I’d even called and asked questions.
Sunflower Children’s House required a two-hundred-dollar deposit. Then a hundred and twenty a week for three mornings. Billed monthly. Four hundred and eighty dollars a month.
I wanted enough to start. The deposit and the first month. Six hundred and eighty dollars.
And then a little more. Something left over for disasters. In case an order fell through. In case my mixer broke. In case a customer canceled.
A thousand dollars. That was the number.
A thousand dollars, and I’d never have to ask Giselle for anything again.
After that, part of every paid cake went into that account.
Twenty dollars. Thirty. Forty, when I could.
And Giselle’s free orders kept coming.
A lemon cake for Patrice’s book club. A chocolate cake for Linda’s retirement. A dozen decorated cupcakes for Marjorie’s grandson’s christening. A carrot cake for Helen’s bridge club. A strawberry shortcake for Deborah’s anniversary. Six dozen cookies for the Women’s Auxiliary bake sale at Giselle’s church. A coconut cake, of all things, for her friend Bev’s birthday.
“Bev loves coconut,” Giselle said. “She says yours is the best she’s ever had.”
I’d never met Bev.
Every time, Giselle would send me a text a few days before.
Need a cake for Sunday. Just something simple.
And every time, she’d add, Here’s her number in case you have any allergy questions.
So I had all their numbers. In my phone. Patrice. Linda. Marjorie. Helen. Deborah. Bev. Under Giselle’s friends.
I’d never called any of them.
One night, after a whole morning spent on Helen’s carrot cake, I was still up at eleven, piping borders on a paid order. A baby shower cake. Pale green and white, with tiny buttercream ducks floating on a buttercream pond.
My eyes were burning. My wrist ached. I’d been on my feet since six.
“Mama?”
I turned around.
Mina was standing in the hallway in her pajamas. The ones with the yellow ducks. She was clutching her blanket against her chest. Her face was wet.
“Mama,” she said. “I had a bad dream. The witch came back.”
I put the piping bag down on the counter.
I picked her up and carried her upstairs. I tucked her back into her little bed. I smoothed her hair off her forehead. I checked under the bed for witches. I checked in the closet. I turned on her nightlight. The one shaped like a duck.
“All clear,” I said. “No witches. I promise.”
I kissed her forehead and stood up to leave.
She caught my wrist with her small hand.
“Stay, Mama,” she whispered. “Please. I’m scared.”
So I sat back down.
I sat on the edge of her bed and held her hand while she fell asleep. It took forty-five minutes. Every time I tried to slip my hand away, she’d squeeze it tighter.
When I finally got back downstairs, it was almost midnight.
The buttercream had crusted in the piping nozzle. Dried solid. The little ducks I’d been working on had started to sag at the edges in the warm kitchen.
I stood there looking at it.
Then I scraped out the nozzle with a toothpick. I mixed a fresh batch of buttercream. And I started again.
I finished at two-fifteen in the morning.
On Thursday, Giselle called. Linda’s retirement day.
“I’m swamped, honey,” she said. “Absolutely swamped. Could you run Linda’s cake over to her house? I’d hate for it to be late.”
I almost laughed.
Free cake. And now free delivery too.
But it was a Thursday. Mina was with Giselle until noon. I had an hour before I needed to start on the baby shower cake. So I said yes.
Linda lived across town in a big brick colonial with white columns and a perfect green lawn. I parked in her circular driveway and carried the cake box up the front steps very carefully.
It was a three-layer chocolate cake. Dark chocolate ganache on the outside. Gold leaf on top. HAPPY RETIREMENT, LINDA piped across it in gold buttercream. I’d been up until one in the morning on it.
Linda opened the front door with a big smile. She was a small woman, late sixties, with white hair and pearl earrings.
“Oh!” she said. “You must be Tessa! Giselle’s daughter-in-law!”
“That’s me.”
I lifted the lid of the box to show her.
