Read The Cake House for Free Online

cry forever she’s dying. I will name my daughter Rosaura after her.
    The energy of her handwriting filled me with unease. She drew many vines around her sentences, constantly entangled.
    The stars stole into my bed again. He makes love like an overgrown puppy.
    She cries in Spanish she says his name over and over in a whisper so I can’t hear.
    Toward the end of the notebook, I found a picture of an older man and woman standing beside my father. They resembled him: the man was balding, with something familiar in his ink-spot eyes, in the way his mouth slashedacross his face like an unhealed wound. The woman had a prim smile, and she clutched her purse tight to her side. My grandparents. They had names in the caption: Henry and Judith Douglas. My father had rarely spoken of them.
    On the last page of the notebook was one picture of my mother. A candid shot of her sitting on the bottom step of a small rise of stairs, a window above streaming light over her head and shoulders. The picture was black-and-white, grainy, slightly out of focus. Her hair looked darker than it did now, before she started dyeing it the color of warm honey. It fell over one side of her face. She sat with a notebook—her notebook, the same one I held in my lap—and raised her hand with an uncapped pen between her fingers as if she’d been caught in mid-gesture. Beside her she had a box with other pens. Underneath, the caption read,
Artist Dahlia Reyes sits in the upper atrium stairway, creating another masterpiece.
    I propped the flashlight so that all the light fell on her tiny black-and-white face. I went back to the picture of my father leaping over hurdles, stared at his grim determination, the shine of sweat on his forehead. I flipped back and forth between the two pictures, first my mother, and then my father, until I could place myself there, until I could walk between the bleachers, under old sunshine, and hear my father’s pounding feet along the track. Until I sat with my mother, close enough to understand her secrets.
    I thought that the notebook might tell if my parents had been happy. But it couldn’t do that. There wasn’t even a picture of them together. The bushes rustled; the trees shook overhead. My skin prickled. Just the wind, I said to myself, blowing hard enough to make the trees bend and sway, butI could feel my father’s ghostly presence breathing nearby. Did he want to look at the notebook too? Did he want to remember?
    Something brushed across my face.
    “Is that you?” I asked out loud. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
    Someone called my name. I looked through the branches, but it wasn’t my father. Instead, I saw Alex’s blond head. Relieved, I let out the breath I was holding.
    He crawled all the way in beside me. My heart pounded; my hands were cold.
    “Were you talking to someone?” he asked. “I thought I heard you.”
    “Just to myself,” I said, my voice weak and confused. “What are you doing here?”
    “Looking for you.”
    My heart soared. How long had he been looking for me? He followed my shaking hands as I tried to put the notebook back in order. Some of the pages had crumpled, and a few more had torn off.
    “Let me,” he said, and started gathering the sheets back in place. He handled them as if they didn’t hold incalculable treasures and then wrapped the notebook up in its plastic bag before handing it back to me. “Come inside.”
    But that was the last thing I wanted. When I made no motion to leave, he sighed and sat beside me. I lay down and he did the same, our shoulders touching. I turned onto my side and, wondering if he’d stop me, put my hand over his chest. We lay together and I counted his heartbeats. At first he didn’t move, but then he put his hand over mine, fingers pressing against the inside of my wrist. Maybe he couldfeel my rapid pulse, and he was counting my heartbeats too. Puffs of warm breath from his nose tickled my skin. I traced his eyebrows with my