One Wrong Step Read Free

is I figured out where I went wrong,” she told Feenie. “The bad news is I don’t have any more baking soda, and I want to give this recipe another whirl. Is there something I can substitute?”
    Feenie snorted. “You’re asking me for cooking tips?”
    “Well, you mentioned the tamales, so I thought—”
    “It was a nightmare. I was up to my elbows in corn husks all day, and the final product tasted like soggy Fritos. Next time Marco wants homemade Mexican food, he can hit up his mom.”
    “Oh.” Celie felt deflated. In the morning her boss expected her to put on an Easter party for twenty-two kids, some of whom had never even received a birthday present. She wanted to do something special and memorable, but the prospects were growing dimmer by the minute. And the thought of picking up a package of generic, grocery-store cupcakes depressed her. Celie’s mother never would have resorted to such a thing.
    “Get over it,” Feenie said, reading her mind. “The kids’ll be fine. Bring ’em some chocolate bunnies, and they’ll think you hung the moon.
    “So what are you doing home, anyway?” Feenie asked. “I thought you had a hot date with that grad student.”
    And there it was—the real reason for the call.
    “I’d say ‘hot’ is an exaggeration,” Celie said. “Think Will Ferrell without the jokes.”
    “Well, didn’t he ask you out for coffee tonight? What happened?”
    Celie plopped down on the couch. “I told him we’d take a rain check. With this party tomorrow, I didn’t have time.”
    Actually, she’d gotten cold feet. Celie hadn’t been on a date since before Google was invented, and she felt woefully out of touch with modern standards. What if this guy wanted more than coffee? What if, say, he wanted to come back to her apartment afterward and jump into bed together? Celie didn’t do recreational sex. Even when she’d been married, the recreation part had been pretty lacking.
    “Celie.”
    “Hmm?”
    “That’s chickenshit, and you know it. Who doesn’t have time for coffee?”
    Celie heard cooing on the other end of the phone and decided to change the subject. “Olivia’s awake?”
    “Yeah.” Feenie’s tone mellowed. “We’re having one last feeding before bedtime. At least I hope it’s bedtime. Last night we were up every hour between midnight and six.”
    No wonder Feenie sounded crabby. “You must be exhausted.”
    “I’m okay. Liv’s just colicky, bless her little heart.”
    Feenie could hit the kill zone of a paper silhouette from forty yards away with her .38, but motherhood had turned her into a complete softy. Celie had spent a few days down in South Texas after Olivia’s birth, and had actually caught Feenie getting misty-eyed over reruns of Seventh Heaven .
    Celie felt a pang of envy, and then hated herself for it. Feenie deserved to be happy. She’d been to hell and back over the past few years.
    Feenie must have sensed what the silence meant. “So, this cake thing. Here’s my advice: toss the Martha Stewart mag in the trash and stop by the grocery store on your way to work.”
    The buzzer sounded, and Celie got up to grab her checkbook off the kitchen counter. “My dinner’s here. Lemme let you go.”
    “I mean it, Celie. Pick up some Easter candy and quit torturing yourself. Those kids adore you, with or without cake.”
    Celie punched the intercom button. “Yes?”
    “Ms. Wells, we have a delivery down here—”
    “Send him right up!” And then to Feenie, “All right, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
    Celie got off the phone and wrote a check to Shanghai Garden. On her way to the door, she glanced in the bathroom mirror to make sure she looked halfway decent. She didn’t. Her dark blonde hair was dusted with flame retardant, and globs of batter decorated her pajama top. Plus, she wasn’t wearing a bra. She grabbed a denim jacket off the hook in the foyer and shrugged into it just as a knock sounded at the door. Out of habit, she patted her