The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate

was going to take care of the baby, and that’s when she said she wished she were dead too, then added, “I wish I were with him. I just want to be with him. ”
    I let it go at that and hurried upstairs to the baby, who I hoped had been tended to by family and friends that had come over after the funeral. The baby was wet and hungry, so I changed him and warmed a bottle and put him back down, but when he started crying again and Annette slammed her hands over her ears, I said to her, “Honey, I’m going to take the baby home with me and give you some time. You come get him when you’re ready.” She nodded and burst into tears, so I helped her upstairs to her room, where she lay down on her bed and sobbed.
    I knew all about that.
    I put the food away in the refrigerator, went through the nursery, and packed a bag for the baby, wrote a note to remind Annette that I was taking the baby home with me to care for until she was ready to come get him, and then left.
    Luciana was thrilled to have a baby in the house and helped me diaper him, even after he sprayed right on her neck. Three days later, Annette came for her baby. Something was completely gone from her eyes, that spark of jealousy and competitiveness.
    “ Thank you for helping me,” Annette said, taking the baby from the bassinet I’d bought at a secondhand shop.
    “ Whenever you need some time to yourself, you just bring him here,” I told her.
    I let her know I’d cancel class out of respect, but Annette shook her head and said it would be a help to be among her friends. The following week the four of them were back. Annette was still as standoffish as ever with me, as though I hadn’t done her a kindness it seemed her friends hadn’t. And when it came time for her to make a wish into the gnocchi, she wished she’d find another husband who was as good a provider as Bob had been.
    Lenora smiled at Annette; it was clear Lenora had told Annette it was time to take control of her life. I would have thought Annette had a tiny heart, but when the recipe called for a happy memory, she told of her husband reading her terminally ill father the sports scores during the Super Bowl, and how she knew that despite how he seemed on the outside, he could sometimes be a caring man. It turned out that Bob, as went the American expression, was a bit of a shit.
    And so that was that for Annette’s grieving period. She now wished for a new husband who would not mind a colicky baby. Lenora spent her wishes on not miscarrying, which had happened the previous year. Nancy wished her in-laws would decide to move in with her husband’s sister in New Hampshire instead of them, and Jacqueline wished that her husband was not carrying on an affair with his secretary, which would account for the previous year’s dry spell.
    They came back week after week, becoming decent cooks of Italian-American food. And through it all, I can’t say I was ever really included in their little group, despite being privy to their most personal hopes, dreams and fears.
    Holly closed the diary and wrapped her arms around herself, unsettled by all she’d read. The women who’d taken her grandmother’s class sounded so selfish and cold, despite tragedy, infidelity, unhappiness. Or, perhaps, because of those things. Holly shivered as the wind swirled through her sweater. She thought of Juliet, grieving someone or something, alone here in Maine, where she had no family but at least one friend.
    She collected her mug and the composition book, headed inside, and picked up the phone to call Juliet, then realized she only had the number where no one called back, in Chicago. Juliet was grieving a loss. Her husband? She sounded exactly like her grandmother had described Annette—before the perky interest in finding a new husband, anyway. Why hadn’t Hollypressed Juliet on where she was staying? Now she wouldn’t be able to find her and could only hope she’d show up next Monday for the class.
    Watch over