“When you texted me S.O.S., I wasn’t expecting your location to be at Mel’s of all places,” Miranda says, crouching down to sit next to me at the edge of the pool. The water ripples out as she dips her feet in, and the wetness of my cuffed jeans creeps closer to my knees.

“‘Mel’s Aquatics: where the sun is hot and the water is cool,’” she adds in Mel Hallaway’s deep salesman voice. That commercial used to run all summer long when we were kids. I never understood why Mel wasted his money on so many advertisements back then. Mel’s was the only public pool within a 50 mile radius. When the sun was hot, there weren’t many other options.

“Yeah, more like where families fight and body insecurities begin,” I grumble, shifting my feet back and forth in the water and watching my reflection muddle and break.

“I’m pretty sure Mel wouldn’t want to advertise that particular feature of his business,” Miranda says. Her nutmeg hair cascades down her back as she looks up at the night sky. The moon is so bright that the stars are getting lost in its luminescent path. My mom used to say that the stars were the only good thing about Balsa Grove. It feels like she’s swallowed them all up tonight, planning to keep them all to herself for the rest of eternity.

I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Thanks for coming to keep me company,” I say quietly. I had planned to spend the night in self-care mode. Bubble bath, face mask, comfy pajamas, one trashy dating show that has been calling my name for months now, and a whole bottle of sparkling wine all for myself. It was a perfect Friday night plan. But then I got home from the bakery and a small, tightly packaged box was sitting at my door. I made the mistake of opening it. Now I’m brooding by the pool.

“You’re very welcome, but I think I’m going to join you in crisis because I’m either not thirteen anymore or the bend in the fence has gotten much smaller.” Miranda takes a swig of the memoriessparkling wine I couldn’t help but grab on my way out the door. “I could barely fit through it,” she whines, like this is the first time she’s realized she’s older than thirteen.

I give her a small laugh in response because, to be honest, I could hardly fit through the fence myself. All out of breath, my hair a mess, I had almost decided to quit and go home before the fence gave way, and I tumbled onto the pool deck. When we were younger, Miranda and I discovered that the piece of fence behind the shed stuffed full of pool noodles wasn’t completely up to standard. And Miranda had the brilliant idea to sneak in after hours and have the pool to ourselves. I was too scared at the time. I didn’t want to get into any trouble. But the summer I turned thirteen, the same summer my dad died, I decided that if I was old enough to lose a parent, I was old enough to make my own decisions.

Mel’s became a nightly routine back then. We always made it back in time before anyone could discover we were missing. Although, I’m not sure my mom would have cared either way.

“I’m sorry. I know you probably just want to sit here in silence, but I need to know why there is a sack of sand sitting next to you,” Miranda says, her eyebrows raised in genuine concern. She gestures to the bag of what, admittedly, does look like sand, and I feel a cackle festering in my throat before I’m able to contain it with a bite down on my lip.

I lay my back against the pool’s tarmac, my feet still dangling in the water, and I sigh.

Obviously, I need to talk about this. I need to work through what the hell I’m going to do. That’s why I sent the emergency text to Miranda in the first place, but for some reason, the words don’t want to come out. It’s like if I don’t say them, it proves them untrue, and I can go back to my normal Balsa Grove life. But, alas, this is my reality.

And that is definitely not a bag of sand.

“It’s my mom,” I say with all the courage I can muster, which means none at all, and it ends up coming out flat and breathy. Miranda swings her head from the sky at my words, her eyes bulging wide.

“Callie, you’re not serious.”

“It came in the mail today. A big orange Cremated Remains sticker slapped across the box.” I scoff, shaking my head at how ridiculous it all sounds. I didn’t even know USPS sent ashes in packages. Is that even legal? What if it got lost in transit?

Maybe it would have been better if it did.

“This is giving me the heebie-jeebies,” Miranda says, scooting a few inches over. “That’s all of her? Why is the bag so small?”

I shake my head with a laugh. When I first opened her up, I had the same fleeting thought. I thought maybe they only sent me half of her. But my mom was a small woman. Five foot two. Petite shoulders. Strong slender legs. She used to tell me that I took after my father in looks. Every season there was a new diet she wanted me to try. She even kept smaller sizes of clothes in my closet for “inspiration.” The reality is, my sack of ashes would be twice the size. She’s probably laughing at me from wherever the hell she is right now.

“She literally set this up. I called her lawyer in a panic after I opened it, and he said that she specifically requested that her ashes be sent to me after her death,” I relay quickly. There’s so much I want to talk about, but my mind is working faster than my mouth is able to move, and it’s easier to just shut up. I’m good at shutting up. I’ve been doing it for twenty-seven years.

“No way,” Miranda says incredulously but also in a manner that makes me believe this is the most exciting news she’s heard in a while. I can’t blame her. If it wasn’t me directly involved in all the drama, I would be bubbling over with anticipation.

“And now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with her.” I pull my legs out of the water and squish my knees against my body. “I can’t have her in my house. I can literally feel her energy radiating from the bag.”

“Yeah, I can feel it too.” Miranda shudders, teeth rattling through her words. I burrow my head deeper against my legs and groan in frustration. My mom and I haven’t spoken in almost five years. Why couldn’t she have just left me alone once and for all?

“Can you scooch over my way, so I can comfort you? I’m still a little freaked that your mom is just nonchalantly sitting in that bag,” Miranda says. I can’t help but snort at that as I shift closer to her. She puts her arm around me just as a tear falls down my cheek. Everything is just so messed up. I thought when I got the call about my mom’s death, I’d finally find peace, but I feel like a child again. Small and weak and haunted by what I’ll never be.

“Don’t worry, little orphan. We’ll figure out what to do with the sack of sand over there,” Miranda says. It startles a cackle out of me, a real hearty laugh, and in this moment, it really is just a normal sack of sand.

I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend that’s all it is.

—

I baked my first loaf of bread when I was eleven years old. My mom and I had just gotten back from a morning at the doctor. I had these red splotches all over my arms. They’d been there for months, and my mom thought they were rashes. She tried every ointment. Every cream. Every epsom salt she could get her hands on to make them go away. They wouldn’t go away.

The doctor said he couldn’t find what was wrong with me. Said I might have eczema. I knew he was wrong. I was too scared to tell them that the rashes were my fault.

I had scratched myself raw.

I just got done telling her through tears that I didn’t want to put on the cream she’d gotten online the week before. It smelled, and it burned a little bit, and it wasn’t going to work anyway. She had looked me right in the eyes in that moment with that look only my mom could accomplish, the one with the cold expression and the narrowed eyes.

“Do what you want, Callista. I’m not the one with ugly arms,” she said, turning on her heels and walking out of the kitchen.

My dad ignored the tears rolling down my cheeks and decided it was time he taught me the only thing he knew how to make. We never really discussed dad’s affinity for baking bread. It was just something that he did. Unspoken. Unprompted. Sometimes he would go a few months without baking anything. Other times he would bake a loaf every night for weeks. Mom left the kitchen alone when dad baked. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he loved it so much.

The bread came out flat and chewy that day. Dad told me I kneaded the dough too much. All I know is that I felt my frustration building every time I slammed my fist into the soft texture and imagined it wasn’t just dough beneath my touch.

And here I am, sixteen years later, doing the exact same thing. Still frustrated and still so much like a child. Except I’m no longer stuck in the confines of my childhood kitchen but instead the walls of my own bakery. My knuckles imprinting the focaccia like one of those fossil excavation kits I always wanted as a kid.

I feel like I’m speed running through the five stages of grief, except I’m skipping over some and lingering more on others. I reached acceptance right when I learned of my mom’s death a couple weeks ago. Denial for those ten minutes last night that I sat in shock after opening the package filled with what was left of her. And anger? Anger has consumed me from the moment I realized she’d weasled her way back into my life. Anger at a relationship that never was. Anger at a relationship that will never be. I’m angry at the fact that with all the memories of her flooding through my brain, I can’t seem to think of any that are good. But there has to be something, right?

My fingers are red and sore, and they’ll probably be throbbing for the rest of the day, but I’m too consumed in my thoughts to notice. Mom is dead. Her ashes are in my car baking in the morning sun. Can ashes bake? Would that just create more ashes, or would they burn into nothing? 

I could release them into the ocean. Let the flow of the current take the memory of her away and never return.

No. Too easy of an afterlife.

I could bury them and plant a tree on top. But that would mean she would live on for hundreds of years, a reigning terror over Balsa Grove.

No. I have chills just thinking about that one.

I could arrange to bury her with Dad, which is probably the best thing to do. Selfishly, I don’t want to do it.

It’s too comfortable.

“Geez, Cal. What did the bread do to you this time?” Noah’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I’m back in the present. The kitchen smells waft all around as my sad lump of bread wilts in front of me.

I groan at the sight of a dough that I most certainly cannot serve my customers, so  I pop it straight in the oven for Noah to take home. He absolutely loves it when I mess up my recipes. The more I’m in turmoil, the more Noah gets to eat free scraps.

I didn’t even know he had gotten in. After Miranda and I sat by the pool talking until 2 am last night, she finally admitted she was tired and needed to head

home. So I ended up here, in my bakery five hours before opening. Tired as hell and taking it out on today’s baked goods.

“Have you been here all night?” Noah asks while trying to clean up the mess I’ve left behind in the wake of my nervous breakdown. He pulls me gently to a chair in the corner of the room, trying to settle my limbs that I wasn’t aware were shaking.

“Not all night,” I say, running my fingers through my hair with a tug.

He gives me a look that implies he doesn’t really believe me, and I can understand why. I must look like an absolute nutcase, like I’ve lost all sense of time and space. Noah has always been able to see right through me. I’ve only known him for about five years, but it’s always been like that. He’s one of the few Balsa Grove inhabitants who wasn’t born here—just happened to be passing through looking for a job the same day I opened my shop. He was there when I last saw my mom: she told me I was ruining my life staying in Balsa Grove, opening a bakery, letting my college education go to waste.

“You’ll regret not wanting something more, just like I did,” she had spit out. I was going to respond, gathering my many thoughts about how I’d heard it all before. How she regretted choosing my father and subsequently choosing me, always wishing she’d gone a different path. But Noah interrupted us, seemingly wanting to break the tension. He gushed about how beautiful the bakery was, asking if he could help out in any way. It was so endearing, I hired him on the spot, and by the time I looked back to finish the dreaded argument with my mother, she was long gone. Those were the last words she said to me.

I can’t even remember what mine were to her.

My whole life I wanted to please my mom, trying to be someone she desired to love. The bakery was something I wouldn’t give up on, though. After twenty-two years of diligently

listening to what was wrong with me and desperately chasing a version of me that simply didn’t exist, I finally put my foot down. Enough was enough. This was my life.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Noah asks, shattering my trance again with a raised brow. “Not really.” I take a deep breath, gaining my composure before helping him with this morning’s clean-up, which includes a batch of burned muffins. I go to throw them away, but Noah stops me.

“Save them for the raccoons. They love them,” he says, placing the tray off to the side of the kitchen. I give him a questioning look. How many times has he fed burned muffins to the pests in the dumpster? I imagine a line of them, begging for a bite. Not caring about the burn marks and the char taste and the unpleasant smell.

“Don’t ask,” he responds, reading the confusion written on my face. I don’t. I get back to baking.

—

When my dad died, I never really thought about the meaning of death or where we all go when we pass. All I knew was he was gone. Really gone. And the house didn’t smell like bread anymore.

I’m thinking about it now though. Is my mom really here with me right now? Watching over me? Looking up at me? The thought should scare me into rethinking my actions. But unfortunately for my mom, I don’t really believe in that stuff.

“I’m here. I’m here,” Miranda says breathlessly, cresting to the top of the hill.

I sent her another S.O.S. signal this morning. Two in one week is kind of unfair of me, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Plus, Miranda brought this on herself when she created the S.O.S. promise at our high school graduation. No matter where we are, no matter

what we’re doing, we have to answer an S.O.S. call. Failure to fulfill the call will result in a broken friendship. I’ve always been too scared to test out if that last provision is true.

“You brought me to the hilliest park in BG for a sad looking loaf of bread?” Miranda gestures to the bread in my hands, her own hands on her knees, keeled over like she’s never exercised a day in her life. I’ve had P.E. class with her. I can confirm she hasn’t.

I look down at the bread. It does look quite sad. I followed my regular recipe. Well, almost my regular recipe. Plus an extra ingredient or two. But I couldn’t get it to rise much more than an inch.

“No, I brought you to the hilliest park in BG to feed this sad looking loaf of bread to those deer over there,” I say, pointing to the group of deer grazing by a small pond. The deer are kind of royalty in Balsa Grove. They roam around everywhere, not scared of anyone. My mother was deeply afraid of them. One time when I was small—couldn’t have been older than four years old—a deer came up to me at this very park, just sniffing me and licking my sticky fingers covered in jello. My mom wouldn’t stop screaming, panicked at the thought of one so close. She even hid behind a nearby tree until it went away. We never went to the park again after that.

Miranda gives me a crazed look like I’ve actually lost my mind. And I think this time she might be right, but she doesn’t even know the half of it. She opens her mouth to say something but quickly closes it again.

“You know what? I don’t know why I put up with your shit sometimes,” she says, trudging towards where the deer are located. I smile and jog to catch up to her.

When we finally reach the deer, Miranda squats down next to one and pets the back of his ears a little bit. He looks so calm and peaceful. I don’t know how anyone could be scared of something so cute. Miranda turns her head to me, an expectant look on her face.

“I may have baked my mother’s ashes into this loaf of bread,” I say, like it isn’t the absolute craziest thing that could possibly leave my mouth. I feel like everything I’ve told Miranda since my mom died has been borderline deranged. But can she blame me? What else am I supposed to do with the ashes of my dead mother whom I haven’t spoken to in half a decade and don’t want the physical remnants of?

Anything else. Literally anything else would have been acceptable.

Her jaw drops open halfway, and for a moment I think she’s forgotten to breathe. I watch as a range of emotions flash across her face. Disbelief. Terror. Confusion. Disgust. Intrigue. A hint of impressed?

“I couldn’t think of a good way to dispose of them,” I say sheepishly, grasping at straws for anything close to a justification.

“So you thought baking them into bread and feeding it to wild animals was a clear go-to?” Miranda’s voice has a shriek to it. And suddenly I realize I’m an awful friend. I don’t know why I brought her into this.

“Yes.” It comes out small and ashamed.

She looks at the bread, then back at me, then back at the bread. I can see her thoughts racing a mile a minute, her words not quite being able to catch up. Eventually she nods, shrugging off the fact that this might be a crime. At least in Balsa Grove.

“Yeah. Okay,” she says finally, gesturing for me to continue.

I rip off a small chunk of the bread and hesitantly reach out to the mouth of the deer Miranda had been petting. His eyes grow wide before snatching it out of the palm of my hand. A tickle runs up my arm, and I laugh at the sensation. He seems to enjoy it because he swallows it down quickly before asking for another bite. I watch as my mother slides down his esophagus and disappears from memory. I could get used to that feeling.

Tearing off another piece, I give it to him. And before I know it, a whole mob of them surrounds me, begging for a treat. Miranda looks a little freaked out, but she must be more curious than frightened because she reaches for a piece of bread herself.

“Remind me to douse my hands in bleach after this,” she says, handing a small nibble to one of the younger deer in the bunch. I give her a maniacal laugh. It’s a mix of sleep deprivation, grief, anticipation, and shock. This is truly one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever done.

It’s also the most freeing.

We work our way down to the last bite of bread, splitting it up into as many pieces as possible for the deer that have gathered. I look down at what’s left in my hand, the last remains of my mother. I can feel the weight of her lifting off my shoulders, all the snide comments and passive aggressive remarks. It melts off me towards my feet as I watch the deer chew down the last of her.

“This was kind of fun,” Miranda relents with a laugh. I nod in agreement, showing my empty hands to the deer who are looking at me with an expectation for more. The anger seems to have dissipated from my core as well, like the bad memories don’t seem so bad when they’re sitting in the stomachs of a few deer.

The weightless feeling doesn’t last long, my smile faltering as one of the deer closest to me raises his head to meet my gaze. I watch as his eyes narrow and darken, a coldness to them that I know all too well. Miranda sees it too because she grabs me in the midst of stumbling backward.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whisper. We take off down the hill.