Searching for Yesterday by Valerie Sherrard Page A

you?”
    â€œWhat about her?”
    â€œThis is her daughter, Annie, and Annie’s friend, Shelby Belgarden.” Kayla turned to us. “And this is Brandon Fulton — my twin brother.”
    No wonder he’d looked familiar. They weren’t identical, of course, but there was a strong resemblance.
    â€œHey girls. Nice to meet you.” Brandon offered a hand, which we each shook, and then turned back to Kayla. “I’d better get going. Jayzelle told me not to be late for dinner tonight. I think she said we were having company or some such thing. Come to think of it, there was something I was supposed to pick up. Wish I remembered what.”
    â€œCall her!” Kayla said, but Brandon had disappeared into the back to pick up the box of deliveries.
    â€œI’ll probably think of it on the way,” he said.
    â€œYou
won’t
think of it,” Kayla called out as he tugged the door open with his foot. “And if it’s something she needs for dinner, Jayzelle is
not
going to be happy.”
    Kayla was still shaking her head in exasperation when she turned back to Annie and I. “He won’t remember,”she said with a sigh. “He never does. Too much on his mind, really, what with teaching school all day and then doing my deliveries afterward and working on his Master’s degree in his spare time. Not that he has a lot of spare time, with two kids.”
    â€œWhere does he teach school?” Annie asked. “At Ballanstone,” Kayla said.
    â€œGrade Two. Wouldn’t be for me, that’s for sure. Anyway, sorry about the constant interruptions! It gets a lot worse than that around here some days, believe me.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” Annie said. “It was fun watching you do the flowers up and stuff. I’d love to be able to do something like that.”
    â€œOh yeah? Would you be interested in a part-time job?”
    â€œAre you
serious
?”
    â€œYeah, sure. My mother has been coming in, mostly on Saturdays, but some evenings too, when it’s really busy and we have to stay late. She missed working after she closed the craft store, but now she’s getting tired of it and she just told me a few days ago to go ahead and hire someone to take her place.”
    â€œThat would be awesome!” Annie said. “But what if I’m no good at it?”
    â€œYou’ll learn,” Kayla said. She waved her hand as if she was shooing away Annie’s objection. “All it takes is practice. Come in this Saturday and we’ll get you started.”

    Annie thanked her and then seemed about to leave. I actually had to remind her about why we were there.
    â€œOh!” she said, blushing. “I got so excited about the job that I forgot everything else. What I was wondering was, did my mom stop working here because you two weren’t getting along?”
    â€œYou mean because of Lenny?” Kayla paused to think. “No, that wasn’t actually the reason, though I have to admit I was glad not to have him coming around to pick her up after work.”
    â€œWas there another reason then?” I asked.
    â€œYeah, actually. Gina used to talk about becoming a pastry chef. It was something she’d always been interested in — making fancy desserts or whatever it is a pastry chef does.
    â€œApparently, you need some background first before you can get into a course. Her mom — your grandmother — used to make amazing desserts, but she was having problems — she couldn’t remember things, and she got confused a lot, so Gina couldn’t learn the basics from her. Anyway, when the job came up at the bakery, she decided to apply. She figured it would give her a taste of what it would be like, so she could decide whether or not to go to pastry chef school or wherever it is you learn that kind of thing.”
    â€œThe last time we were here you mentioned that my mom was talking about