The Cake House by Latifah Salom Page A

past Claude. Deputy Mike looked down at me but then nodded at Claude before heading down the driveway to his car. I started after him.
    Claude grabbed my arm. “Let him go, Rosie,” he said.
    I started to tug my arm free, but behind us I heard my mother say, “Oh God, oh God.”
    She was at the other end of the house, trying to pull open the sliding glass doors.
    “I can’t breathe,” she said, fumbling with the latch.
    She had been holding it together, but now that the officers were gone, she didn’t need to pretend anymore.
    “I have to get out.”
    Claude pushed me out of the way in an effort to reach her, but she was outside on the patio before he could make it.
    “Come back inside,” he said, calm, measured, his hands held out.
    “No, I can’t breathe in there.” She pushed him away, half crawling, half walking to the edge of the cement. She went down to her knees. “We should never have come here. I didn’t think things could be worse. I thought we might … But this is a nightmare.”
    Claude tried to lift her off the ground, gripping with a hand around each of her biceps, but she slipped through his hold like water. “Dahlia, enough,” he said.
    She shook her head, tried to say more, but every word came out malformed. To muffle her cries, she bit her hand.
    “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, trying again to hold her. “It was an accident; we’ll get through this, please, please.”
    Every ragged strip of emotion she let fall made Claude wince. In the face of her pain, he seemed so unsure. Thiswas something he couldn’t fix, couldn’t throw money at to make better.
    She twisted her hand out of his grip. “I never should have left him. But you kept calling. And you were always there. Why? Why couldn’t you let us go? You said it would be better. But it’s not better. And now … We’re bad luck. There are policemen in your house, again, because of us.”
    Claude ducked his head. I was fascinated by the way he opened and closed his hands. It was startling to realize he had something in common with my father. He thought he’d stolen her from him, but he was learning he couldn’t hold her either.
    “Come inside,” he repeated.
    “You don’t understand,” she cried. “I’ve even lost the notebook. I can’t find it. I can’t find it and I don’t know what to do, and he’s gone, and—”
    She started to walk deeper into the garden, then stopped in the middle of the grass.
    She sat down hard with her back to all of us. Claude went to her, but she shifted so she couldn’t look at him. He tried again, and again she pushed him away until he clamped his arms around her.
    I had to do something. Without looking at Alex, I went to the cherrywood desk and crouched down on my hands and knees. The notebook was still there. I flattened my hand and managed to grab hold of the plastic wrapping, pulling it out from its hiding place.
    Hugging my precious bundle, I turned as Claude and my mother came inside. He had one arm around her shoulders, her face streaked with trails of sooty mascara, her hair wild and loose. But she stopped when she saw me. She said my name, but then her eyes fell on the plasticbag held at my chest. Her expression darkened with recognition.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “I found this and—” I realized I didn’t have a good reason for why I had taken the notebook and was only now willing to give it back. “You were looking for this, but—”
    Her sadness shifted smoothly into anger. She crossed the few steps to pinch my arm with her strong hand. “You had it all this time?”
    “I just wanted to look at it.” I held the notebook close, trying to twist out of her grasp. “I wanted to see what was inside; that’s all. Let me go,” I cried.
    She tried to wrench it from beneath my arm. I wanted to give it back to her, as a gift, but she had to take it back, to tear it away, and that made me hold on as hard as I could.
    “It’s not yours anymore,” I said.