“Oh, honey,” Tessa said. Viv looked so miserable, Tessa got up and sat next to her and hugged her. “It’s okay for things not to work out. What’s not okay is that you thought you had to hide it.”
“You did so much for me. All of you did. I hope you can forgive me.”
“We do things for one another,” Juliet said. “That’s what families do.”
“That’s right,” Gram said. “Whatever made either of you feel you had to be perfect?”
“No one is perfect,” her mom said. “That’s how we learn in life. Through making mistakes.”
“Somewhere along the line, I stopped sharing my own problems,” Tessa admitted. “And if that’s made me look like I somehow don’t have any, I’m sorry.” She wiped her puffy eyes again.
“It’s reassuring to see you’ve got problems, too, Tessa,” Vivienne said. “But yours actually might be solvable.”
“Not in the way I expected. But I’m going to take my chance to go to pastry school even without Leo in my life. And maybe one day I’ll have my own little pastry shop.”
“That’s a wonderful plan,” her mother said. “I’m going to put a call out for someone to take your place in the bakery. That will free you up, Vivienne.”
“I can’t thank you enough for helping out, Viv.” Tessa hugged her sister again.
“I was happy to be able to finally give something back to you.” Viv wrung her hands. “It ate me up inside, being in Paris without you. You must have hated all those photos I sent.”
“I will make it to Paris one day,” she told her sister. “And that photo of the little café with the pink chandelier—that’s what I want one day in my own shop. A pink chandelier.”
“Mom,” Juliet said, “I thought you didn’t want anyone who wasn’t family to work in our bakery.”
“It’s time for that to change, too,” her mom said. “I don’t want any of you to feel chained to our family business. I’m sorry if I let that happen.”
“I’m grateful to have you all, and I love all of you,” Tessa said. “Very much.”
There was a lot more hugging and crying. Cosette suddenly appeared at the distant edge of the couch, perched on top of a sofa cushion. She gave a wide yawn and set about licking a paw, still mortally offended at being displaced in the middle of the night and put off by the handful of sobbing women who were interrupting her beauty rest.
Finally, they all sat down to collect themselves. After a little while, Juliet asked Vivienne, “Did you say you can make crepes? All of this crying is making me hungry.”
“I can make us some crepes,” Gram said, standing up.
“Do crepes go with wine?” Juliet asked.
“Wine goes with everything,” Gram said, giving Tessa a squeeze on the way to the little kitchen. “And crepes may not mend broken hearts, but family can.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Leo woke up the next morning, he threw an arm around Tessa. Or rather, where Tessa used to be. His arm dropped, his hand hitting the cold sheet with a thump, bringing him fully awake.
For an instant he thought she’d left for work like usual.
But then a cold, hard knot took up residence in his stomach. A feeling of dread seeped through him as the memory of last night hit him hard.
He was alone. In the kitchen, even the low hum of the refrigerator seemed loud as he took out a can of cat food for Cosette and looked around. What he saw confirmed his worst fears.
Cosette’s cat palace was gone. The kitchen was spotless, not a single cup or plate in sight, and near the door, no flip-flops were strewn. The stacks of romance novels that cluttered up the coffee table were gone, and there were no signs of Tessa’s current puzzle.
The spare bed was tidily made.
And all her stuff was gone.
He had to sit down on the couch for balance. Just like that, their sham marriage had ended as quickly as it had begun. So quickly it took his breath away.
He was free to live out his dream the way he’d intended. Free of any woman tying him down. Free from his dad’s expectations that he marry in order to fulfill his ideas for the business. Finally, he could lead his life on his own terms.
His plan had totally worked in every way.
He was footloose and fancy free again.
Except he wasn’t.
On the kitchen island, his blue bouquet of flowers lay limp and lifeless. He promptly swept them and the printed tickets into the trash.
Tessa was gone. Yet he didn’t feel normal or relieved or even excited to be on his own.
…
Leo usually drank one cup of coffee in the morning before work and he was good for the day. But today he’d had three. Which made him jittery but also feeling just as sludgy as the dregs of coffee left in the pot at the restaurant. It seemed like nothing was capable of snapping him out of his brain fog.
He’d almost ordered five hundred heads of lettuce instead of fifty. The breaking point came when he discovered he’d been adding numbers into an Excel file the entire morning only to find he’d screwed up every. Single. Column.
“What’s the matter with you?” his father finally asked point-blank as Leo sat in the back room, trying to fix all the numbers.
He propped his elbows on the desk and ran his hands through his already-sticking-up hair. “I just ruined everything I’ve been working on because I made a really bad mistake.”
A really bad mistake. Yes, he’d made a lot of those. And not just on this spreadsheet.
His father took a big sniff. “Did you take a shower this morning?”
“Yes!” He raked his hands through his hair again. “No. I don’t remember.”
His dad sat down across from him and closed his laptop.
“Hey! What are you doing, Dad?”
“How much coffee have you had today?”
“Not enough.” Not nearly enough to function. And definitely not enough to forget about Tessa.
“Well, don’t have any more, okay? You’re going to scare your Aunt Loretta.”
Leo sat back and folded his arms. He was tired. He was jittery. And a little sweaty. But feeling his forehead with the back of his hand didn’t reveal a fever.
“Where’s Tessa?” his dad asked.
“I don’t know,” Leo said honestly. “When I woke up, she was gone. And she took all her stuff. Even the cat.”