A Tangle of Knots

Mrs. Asher arrives in New York City and finds a place to park a few blocks from the convention center. Sally runs off suddenly and leads her to Will. Mrs. Asher hugs her son tight and tells him that he should find his adventures in books from now on. He asks her, “Haven’t you ever had anything you loved doing, Mom? [...] Something that was worth getting in real big trouble for?” (200). Thinking of the toe bone she left inside the car in her haste to look for Will, she acknowledges that she has found something like that. Mrs. Asher decides to take Will to the bakeoff so he can finish his adventure with some cake and adds that she has “an adventure of [her] own to finish” (201) afterward.

The Owner slips into the convention center and makes his way toward Cady.

Marigold and Zane sneak into the convention center. She spots the Owner making his way toward Cady. The idea of him stealing Cady’s Talent horrifies her because the girl is “one of the biggest-hearted people Marigold had ever met” (204). Marigold worries that she won’t make it to Cady in time to stop the Owner, so she hatches a plan to pull the fire alarm. She notices V is already standing beside the alarm. The man who distributed the flour drops his copy of Face Value on Zane’s foot. The book has a photograph of the author, prompting the children to realize that V is Victoria Valence.

The mother in the photograph that V tore from the book is Caroline. V didn’t know that her daughter had a baby. She thinks that if she can pull the fire alarm, she can startle Toby into showing his true face and “foil any chameleon-like schemes he’d been hatching” (206).

Without one specific person to bake for, Cady goes through the motions of making a cake in a daze and produces a disastrous “[a]pple caramel mocha poppy seed” (208) concoction. She worries that she’s disappointed Miss Mallory and Toby, and she feels as though she doesn’t know who she is. Suddenly, Cady notices that she has baked a photograph into her cake. She realizes that she is looking at a picture of herself and her parents. She hears footsteps and feels “a sudden, icy spark at her forehead” (209).

After his wife died in Africa, Toby decided to put his infant daughter, Cora, up for adoption. Dolores Asher took the baby to an orphanage. Toby begs Miss Mallory not to take Cady away from him. She answers, “Even if I wanted to, I…You’re the father she was meant to have. I can tell. [...] And all I want is for Cady to be happy” (211). Toby sees the Owner in the act of stealing Cady’s Talent and cries out, “Dad! Stop!” (212).

V pulls the fire alarm, and the sprinklers pour down on everyone in the convention center. Marigold sees the Owner preparing to absorb Cady’s Talent and cries, “We have to stop him, Zane! Oh, I wish I had the Talent to do something” (213). Zane realizes that his sister does possess such a Talent.

Marigold’s spit knocks the icy cube of Talent out of the Owner’s hand. The Talent melts and dissipates throughout the room like a fog. The man screams and wails, knowing that he has lost the one thing he “spent his whole life searching for” (216).

As Toby races toward Cady, his features shift to match the “crooked nose” and “cowlicked hair” (217) of the man in the photograph. Cady realizes that he is her father. He apologizes and promises to do whatever she wants to make amends. She laughs and says, “I think I just want to go home” (218).

By the time that Will and Mrs. Asher enter the convention center, the bakeoff has dissolved into a sopping, chaotic mess. Will spots “a fifty-layer-high masterpiece of sugary wonder” (219), and the sodden baker lets him have some. The boy feels quite content with the ending of his adventure.

The narrative moves forward to a month after the bakeoff. The Owner vanishes without a trace. Miss Mallory moves into the Lost Luggage Emporium and plants petunias, pansies, and the hybrid flowers outside the building. Together, Toby and Miss Mallory run the emporium, where business is booming thanks to Miss Mallory’s ability to match people with their perfect purchases. The Ashers decide to stay in their apartment above the emporium, and they collaborate with Cady, Toby, and Miss Mallory to fine-tune the Darlington peanut butter recipe. Everyone present at the convention center during the bakeoff received a bit of Cady’s Talent. While V still can’t speak, Cady feels as though she can understand her grandmother’s thoughts and emotions when the woman plays the oboe. Mrs. Asher turned the toe bone over to the Natural Sciences Museum and is working there again. She credits this second chance to Zane, who wrote a letter to the museum on her behalf. Marigold gives Zane her red Talent bracelet, and they play together using her recently acquired Talent for spitting.

As Cady prepares for her Adoption Day party, she sees the man in the gray suit walking away from the emporium. He nudges a jar out of a bush, winks at her, and leaves. Cady retrieves the jar. She wonders if she should absorb the Talent herself because she is nearly Talentless now or give it to Zane. She decides that she has plenty of time to decide and recalls the advice the man in the gray suit gave her, “It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are” (230). The story ends with a recipe for Cady’s Chocolate-Almond-Cherry Cake, “a cake that perfectly braids together three very different flavors” (231).