The Single Undead Moms(54)

I had no clue how to feel about this, so I took what I was sure was an emotionally healthy route: I didn’t think about it at all. I had other things to worry about, including maintaining the appearance of a responsible, engaged parent and trying to be an actual responsible, engaged parent. I just pushed it to the back of my mind. That would work, surely. Because Finn was supposed to keep his distance, and if he kept his distance, I could ignore the whole thing.

When I was human, I processed my stress through baking. It came in handy whenever the school had a fund-raiser. And with running my home business, raising an active child with last-minute art projects, managing my bloodlust, and meeting with the Council’s (cordial but still scary) appointed custody lawyers, I had plenty of stress to work through. I woke up just before sunset, equivalent to a predawn wake-up call, to whip up a special batch of my famous triple chocolate chip from-scratch cookies, which had been the biggest seller at the Back-to-School Night bake sale the year before. I could blame those cookies for my sudden “indispensability” when the PTA needed someone to run the cakewalk at the Christmas Carnival.

Back-to-School Night was held about halfway through the first quarter of the school year, which gave the teachers a chance to get to know the kids enough to determine whether they were in for a year of “Your child is a joy to have in class, but . . .” notes home. It was also the setting for the PTA’s first volley in the yearlong attempt to raise enough funds to provide all of the little things the school needed but couldn’t fund through the district’s provided budget—field trips, playground equipment, matching T-shirts for the robotics team, that sort of thing.

So there I stood, cooking for the first time in our duplex’s kitchen, trying to prove my worth to people who didn’t really like me all that much. And it didn’t feel right to make Kerrianne do my penance just because she happened to be human, especially since Kerrianne’s mother was keeping the kids so we could both meet with our kids’ teachers. Frankly, she was doing me a favor, because if Danny were present during baking, he would be sneaking raw dough from the bowl when my back was turned. We did not have the time to visit the ER for his inevitable salmonella.

Yawning as twilight seeped into my kitchen, I dropped softened butter into my KitchenAid, watching as the paddle beat it together with the sugar until it was a fluffy yellow dream. Just watching it go round and round in the bowl made my mouth water. Damn, I missed cookies. And cake. And doughnuts. Basically, all of the baked things.

Hmm, maybe it was better that I was turned. Even if I hadn’t gotten sick, my terrible sweet tooth would surely have led to health complications later in life. I sniffed at the mixture. It didn’t smell quite right—rancid, maybe? I checked the date on the butter carton. I still had weeks before the expiration date. Maybe my vampire senses were a little oversensitive?

Cracking the shells with one deft hand, I dropped eggs, one at a time, into the creamed butter and sugar, and each one was like a stink bomb exploding in the mixing bowl.

“Augh!” I could taste the awfulness in my mouth, like I’d inhaled garbage. “Oh, my God, no!”

Vanilla. The sweet scent of vanilla would make this better. I opened the bottle and poured it into the batter without even measuring. It turned the bowl into a dark brown, mushy mess, spinning at top speed into baking oblivion.

“Worse, this is worse.” I wheezed, shaking my head as I dumped the over-vanilla’d cookie vomit into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal. And that’s when I realized I didn’t have a garbage disposal.

I slid along the cabinet until I collapsed to the floor and promptly burst into tears. That’s how Jane found me. She came into the kitchen and saw me weeping and wiping at my bloodied cheeks with a dishtowel. She slid down next to me on the floor, handing me a paper towel to mop up my tears. “Whatcha doin’?”

“I can’t bake!” I whimpered.

“Well, you know most vampire powers are more, you know, ‘super’ in nature. You’re not going to suddenly be able to bake just because you’re undead.”

“I could bake before!” I exclaimed.

“Oh,” Jane said, frowning. “Well, then, this situation is officially beyond my frame of reference . . . Is it OK to ask why you’re so upset over not being able to bake?”

“Because this is the most basic thing a mother can do for her son, and suddenly I can’t do it anymore!”

“First of all, baking is not simple. I’ve watched Tess do it, and it’s complex and terrifying. Second, you do a lot of things for your son. Birthday parties, volunteering for his school, and I don’t know, changing your entire physical form so you can raise him. If you go to the grocery store and buy a couple dozen cookies, I don’t think he’ll notice.”