Chapter 10: The Cake

Cal Merrick had walked into a lot of bad situations, and he knew how to read one.

This one had eleven reporters, two phone cameras and an older woman in pearls standing in the middle of a gravel lot with a bakery box.

He stepped half a pace in front of Tegan without being asked.

She moved him back with two fingers on his sleeve.

"I'll do it," she said.

Rosalyn Stegman came across the gravel with tears already on her cheeks.

"Tegan. Sweetheart. I know I haven't been the mother you needed."

"No," Tegan said.

The reporters leaned in.

Rosalyn lifted the box.

"I made your favorite, a lemon cake. I stayed up all night to get it right. Please. Just come home for a day."

"What's my favorite?"

Rosalyn's mouth opened.

"Lemon," she said. "You love lemon."

"I'm allergic to lemon."

A reporter let out a short, startled breath.

Cal watched Rosalyn's eyes.

They did not go to Tegan's face.

They dropped to her phone, which she held against the box in her left hand, and then they came back up.

"You are my daughter," Rosalyn said, and her voice cracked at the right place. "Whatever I did, I am so sorry for it."

"Then I'll accept an apology," Tegan said. "When it says what you're sorry for."

"I'm sorry for all of it."

"Name one thing. Say out loud what the family emailed to every agency in Los Angeles about me."

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