The Bake-Off Read online

  “Ye-es,” Amy said. She should have escaped back down the hall while the escaping was good. “Why?”

  Grammy nodded, then shifted back into nurturing, maternal mode. “Have a bite of pie, darling, and sign here, here, and here. I’ll send this back to the contest officials.” Grammy produced a pen and waited until Amy signed and dated the finalist forms. “Now, have I already told you about Ty and Tai?”

  “Who?”

  “Ty and Tai Tottenham. The husband-and-wife team from Ohio who’ve been the second-place winners in the bake-off for the last two years. I don’t know what it is about Ohio, but that state turns out more than its fair share of finalists. Maybe it’s something in the water. Anyway, as for Ty and Tai . . .” Grammy lowered her voice as if preparing to impart juicy gossip. “They’re infamous.”

  Amy couldn’t contain a laugh. “Infamous on the bake-off circuit? For what? Using margarine instead of butter? Scandal!”

  Grammy pursed her lips. “It’s no joke, young lady. Those two want the grand prize, and they’ll stop at nothing to win. Rumor has it that last year they got the goods on one of the judges and blackmailed their way to the finals.”

  Amy shoveled in another bite of pie, which tasted as delicious as it smelled. “Are you serious? That’s pathetic. I mean, it’s just brownies and cupcakes and whatever.”

  “Just brownies and cupcakes, she says.” Grammy Syl shook her head. “You’re in for a rude awakening if you think this is a friendly little cookie swap. The Delicious Duet attracts the most talented amateur bakers from all over the country. You need to bring your A game.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’ll have you to be my mentor. When we get to New York, just point out Ty and Tai, and I’ll be sure to steer clear.”

  “Mmm.” Grammy fiddled with her pearls again. “About New York. I won’t be going.”

  Amy froze midchew. “Why not?”

  “As it happens, I have a scheduling conflict. I’m going on an Alaskan cruise. I booked the tickets with Harriet Webber ages ago, and it must have slipped my mind.”

  “But you just made me promise that I wouldn’t drop out for anything less than a medical emergency!” Amy exclaimed.

  “I am sorry, my lamb, but the deposit’s nonrefundable and Harriet’s counting on me. Her husband died just last year; she needs companionship. Besides . . .” Grammy wrung her hands and let her eyes grow pensive. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be around. I’d better travel while I still can.”

  Amy put one hand on her hip. “Are you kidding me with this?”

  “We’re all going to die someday, and I’d like to see the glaciers before I go.”

  “Then why did you make me sign all those forms?” Amy made a grab for the contest paperwork, but Grammy was too quick for her. “I can’t do this all by myself! Aside from the fact that I can barely boil water, the thing is called the Delicious Duet Dessert Championship. Won’t I be disqualified without my partner?”

  Grammy beamed. “I’ve already worked all that out. You’ll have a very capable partner.”

  “Who?” Amy put down her china dessert plate with a clatter. “Your name is already on the entry forms.”

  Grammy took Amy’s elbow again and nudged her toward the kitchen. “My name, yes, but I may have taken some liberties with the rest of my personal information.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you know, we do have a backup Vasylina Bialek.”

  Amy gasped and dug her heels into the carpet. “Oh no. No, no, no. And did I mention hell no?”

  “Don’t be so negative. I know you and Linnie haven’t had the easiest time of it, but—”

  “I see what this is—this is a trap!” Amy flung her purse to the floor. “You never had any intention of going to New York with me. You railroaded me into signing a legal document under false pretenses.”

  “My goodness.” Grammy rewarded this outraged performance with a smattering of applause. “You certainly can emote, darling.”

  “I know you mean well, Grammy, but there’s no way. Linnie and I are like oil and water. Fire and gasoline.” Amy glowered as she came up with a more fitting analogy. “The cat and the canary.”

  “I’m right here,” came a familiar voice from the kitchen. “I can hear you.”

  Amy found herself face-to-face with her younger sister for the first time in years. Linnie was sitting at the table with an untouched piece of pie and an empty glass of milk.

  Amy took one look at the beautiful blond bombshell sporting the milk mustache and insisted, “I’m not working with her.” She turned toward the window, fuming.

  “Hello to you, too,” Linnie said dryly.

  “You promised,” Grammy whispered to Amy.

  “No. I promised to do this with you. Not her.”

  “It’s okay.” Linnie sounded confident and kind of amused, which only fueled Amy’s anger. “I don’t want to work with her, either.”

  Grammy grabbed a slotted metal spoon and brandished it like a cutlass. She muttered darkly in Polish for a moment, then switched to English. “Pavla and I never fought like this. You two are sisters; even if you don’t like each other, you have to figure out a way to live with each other.”

  “No, we don’t,” Amy said.

  Grammy Syl spun Amy around and yanked out a chair from the table. “Sit!”

  Amy sat.

  Grammy pointed the spoon at Amy. “You said you’re desperate for a little time away.” She turned to Linnie. “You said you’re desperate for money. It’s time to grow up and get along. Life is too short for all this dysfunctional nonsense. When’s the last time you saw each other?”

  Amy glanced at Linnie, but her sister had gone into screensaver mode: head bowed, gaze vacant, body motionless.

  “Well, let’s see.” Amy cast her gaze upward, considering. “There was my wedding, of course, and then there was, um . . .”

  “When’s the last time you spoke on the phone?”

  “Ooh, I know this one!” Amy smacked the table as if hitting a game show buzzer. “Christmas.”

  “Which year?” Grammy challenged.

  “I think it was right after I got pregnant. I remember because I had morning sickness, so I had to go throw up about thirty seconds into the conversation.”

  Grammy nodded. “You two need to reconnect and try again.”

  Linnie suddenly looked up. “Why?”

  Grammy made a horizontal slashing motion with her spoon to indicate that this point was not up for debate.

  But Amy persisted. “Yeah, why are you suddenly all worked up about this? It’s not like it’s anything new.”

  “You should know by now that my kitchen is not a democracy,” Grammy said. “I’m not asking you girls to get along; I am telling you. And after all I’ve done for you over all these years, you can do this one thing for me.”

  Amy opened her mouth to say no, but discovered she was physically incapable of refusing while Grammy stared her down like this.

  “Well?” Grammy prompted.

  “I guess,” Amy mumbled.

  “Good. Now make me proud and win this thing.” And with that, Grammy Syl slapped down a yellowing index card bearing their great-grandmother’s recipe in fading blue ink and swept out of the kitchen, leaving Amy and Linnie seated at opposite ends of the table.

  Several minutes passed, the kitchen so quiet that Amy could hear the wall clock ticking off the seconds.

  Linnie tapped her plate with her fork. “Just so you know, I’m not jealous of you.”

  Amy shoved back her chair and fixed her sister with a death glare. “Don’t start. I’m in no mood.”

  Linnie circled the rim of her drinking glass with one fingertip. “Why so hostile?”

  “You know why.”

  They reverted to the silent staring contest.

  Finally, Amy heaved a big sigh. “Why are you desperate for money?”

  Linnie sidestepped the question and said, with the air of
a teenager in detention, “Look. You don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. But Grammy’s right; we don’t have to like each other. We just have to figure out how to make”—she picked up the card and squinted at the lopsided text—“szarlotka, whatever that is.”

  “It’s a Polish apple pie,” Amy said. “You have a piece of it in front of you right now. Grammy Syl and Auntie Pavla used to make it all the time, remember?”

  “Nope.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of free time to sit around enjoying Grammy’s baked goods.” Linnie’s self-satisfied little smirk vanished. “But I take it you know how to make it?”

  “No clue.”

  Linnie considered this, then shrugged. “Well, how hard can it be? We have step-by-step instructions right here. It’s not rocket science. Housewives all over the world do this every day.”

  “God, you’re insufferable.”

  Linnie blinked at her. “What?”

  “ ‘Housewives all over the world,’ ” Amy repeated. “Like you’re so much better than all of us mere mortals.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive. My point is, Polish peasants used to whip this up with no electricity and no running water. If they can figure it out, so can I.”

  “Ha. That’s what you say now.” Amy tossed her head. “Hey, here’s an idea: How about I have all the ideas and do all the work, and then, at the last possible second, you sweep in and screw me over and steal all the credit for yourself?”

  Linnie blanched, her face going as white as the milk smudging her upper lip.

  Amy smote her forehead, her voice still drenched in sarcasm. “Oh, wait, we already did that, didn’t we? And look how that turned out.”

  Chapter 4

  Linnie had to remind herself to breathe as she wiped her shoes on the welcome mat outside Grammy’s front door. The pages of annotated recipes in her hands were damp and curling at the edges from the sweat drenching her palms. The merino wool scarf knotted artfully around her neck started to itch.

  After the initial confrontation with Amy two weeks ago, both sisters had agreed to return to Grammy Syl’s for a weekend of “baking boot camp,” and Linnie hadn’t thought much beyond learning to properly crack eggs and roll out paper-thin dough. But returning to the little town of Staunton, Connecticut, reuniting with the people who knew her best, made her feel like more of an outsider than months of being overlooked as just another anonymous pretty face in a Vegas casino.

  The scent of fresh coffee wafted out from the apartment, and Linnie could hear muffled laughter and the faint clattering of china teacups against saucers. Amy must already be in the kitchen with Grammy, the two of them chatting and sharing confidences the way they always did.

  Linnie had been lying two weeks ago when she’d insisted she wasn’t jealous of her older sister. Please. Of course she was jealous. Amy had grown up mobbed with friends and besieged by phone calls from boys, and she had frittered away her teenage summers selecting lipstick at the mall and lifeguarding by the lake in a bikini. Amy was cute, not gorgeous. Amy was bright, not brilliant. Amy had been allowed the luxury of flipping through the cable channels on Sunday evenings and saying, “I’m so bored, you guys.”

  Linnie, on the other hand, had never experienced a single minute of boredom in her adolescence. She’d been too busy preparing for the next hurdle on the road to greatness, greatness that she’d been assured she was entitled to achieve because she was, on some fundamental level, better than everyone else.

  “You’re gifted,” she heard over and over from her parents and her teachers. She did not have to earn her superiority. Rather, her intellect, like her beauty, had been bestowed by divine favor. She had been chosen. Amy had not.

  And to this day, Linnie still burned with envy.

  She was jolted out of her reverie as heavy-metal guitar riffs and drumbeats started blasting out of Grammy’s apartment and the door flew open.

  “Linnie!” Grammy looked disconcerted to find her granddaughter loitering on her doorstep with a furrowed brow and an incipient case of neck hives, but she quickly recovered and commenced hugging and kissing. “Come in, darling. Goodness, I didn’t even hear you knock; I was just going to check for the newspaper. I’m so glad you managed to get a few days off work. How was your flight?”

  “Fine,” Linnie mumbled, staring down at the intricate pattern on the living room rug. “Thanks for sending me the ticket. I promise I’ll pay you back.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought. Here, put your suitcase right over here. I’m sorry you had to take a shuttle from the airport, but I finally had to give up driving on the freeway this year. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and your sister . . . well, you know she has her job and the children to look after. She’s always so busy.”

  “The shuttle van was fine,” Linnie said. “I didn’t expect Amy to pick me up, believe me. What on earth are you listening to in here? Is that . . . ?”

  “Def Leppard!” Grammy Syl clapped her hands together. “ ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’ I believe the song is called. Amy put together a whole baking playlist on her iPod. Isn’t that festive?”

  Linnie unbuttoned her coat and grimaced as the vocalist started howling about taking a bottle and shaking it up. “That’s one word for it.”

  “You’re just in time. We’re getting ready to start the first batch.” Grammy led the way down the hall past five decades’ worth of Bialek family photos. As they rounded the corner into the kitchen, she squeezed Linnie’s hand. “And for heaven’s sake, be nice to your sister.”

  Linnie scratched the ferocious itch at the back of her neck. “I’ll be nice to her if she’ll be nice to me.”

  She squared her shoulders, set her chin at a haughty angle, and swept into the kitchen to find Amy lining up ingredients on the countertop and rocking out to the music blasting out of tiny speakers rigged up next to the stove. Amy’s thick, wavy auburn hair was slowly escaping its ponytail, and her hazel eyes sparkled as she paused to play a little air guitar. She wore a well-cut green shirt, fitted dark jeans, and a long, stylish gold statement necklace. She looked comfortable and confident in her own skin, the prom queen grown up into the president of the PTA, but without any trace of cliquey cattiness.

  Amy had never been a gossip; all these years and she’d never breathed a word about what had really caused the rift between her and Linnie. Her silence protected Linnie, but it also left Linnie alone with the hard, humiliating truth.

  For a few moments, neither sister acknowledged the other. Finally, Grammy stepped in between them and exclaimed, “Look, Amy, Linnie’s here! All us Bialek girls together again. Isn’t this marvelous?”

  “I downloaded some songs to inspire us while we work,” Amy announced, not making eye contact. “ ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’; perfect, right? Then ‘I Want Candy,’ ‘Cherry Pie,’ ‘Appetite for Destruction,’ ‘She’s Crafty . . .’ ”

  Linnie smoothed back her hair and pursed her lips. “Could you please turn it down?”

  “What?” Amy yelled.

  “Could you please turn it down? I can barely hear myself think.”

  “Okay, there, Grandma.” Amy grinned across the kitchen as she lowered the volume by a few decibels. “No offense, Grammy.”

  “None taken, dear.” Grammy Syl produced a pair of gingham aprons from a drawer next to the oven and handed one to each sister. “Now suit up, darlings. It’s time you learned the lost art of making szarlotka. We’re going to need plenty of patience, precision, and, most important, teamwork.”

  “Oh no.” Amy groaned. “Here we go.”

  Grammy Syl ignored this and started rummaging through the pantry. “First, we’ll go through our ingredients and set out everything we need so it’ll be right here when we need it. Flour, sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs . . . Making perfect piecrust is an art, you know, and timing is everything. The number one mistake new cooks make is overworking the dough.”

 
“I know,” Linnie said. “I did some reading on the science of baking on the flight over.”

  “Suck-up,” Amy muttered under her breath.

  Linnie “accidentally” whapped her sister with an errant apron string.

  Grammy was still peering into the depths of her pantry. “And let’s see—we’ll need salt.”

  “Kosher salt is best, right?” Linnie asked.

  Grammy looked impressed. “That’s right. Very good, Linnie! Now for the apples. Most szarlotka recipes call for Granny Smith, but I like to sneak a Fuji in there, too. It adds a tangy little kick. Plus, let me see, nutmeg, allspice, and—Oh dear.” Grammy clapped a hand to her cheek. “I’m almost out of cinnamon.”

  “I’ll run out and buy some more,” Linnie volunteered.

  “No, no, you stay right here. I’ll go.” Grammy shook her head with excessive surprise. “How careless of me!”

  Amy rolled her eyes and leaned against the counter. “Oh, Grammy. You’re so transparent.”

  “What? It’s all gone.” Grammy shook the tiny metal canister. “See for yourself.”

  “Uh-huh. This is like a scene out of The Parent Trap. You think that if you lock us up together with enough sugar and spice, we’ll magically bond and become BFFs.”

  Grammy paused for a moment, then smiled. “A grandmother can hope.”

  “Well, you should spare yourself the trouble, because I can tell you right now that Linnie and I—”

  “Are quite capable of being civil to each other for a few hours,” Linnie finished, reaching over to turn off the stereo. “We do not have to be BFFs to make a pie. We both have plenty of self-control. We have dignity.”

  Amy fluttered her eyelashes. “And don’t forget the kosher salt. We’ve got that, too.”

  Linnie finally snapped. “Oh my God, Amy, why don’t you take this whole canister of kosher salt and shove it—”

  “Girls!” Grammy Syl pounded on the counter with the solid maple rolling pin. “That is enough! I am going to the grocery store, and when I get back, I expect to see pies baking and childhood traumas healing. Now, get to it.” She stalked out of the apartment, slamming the front door behind her.