Chapter 3

The next morning, I went to the kitchen before Whit woke. Junie's wedding cake was still weeks away, but I wanted to test the lemon dough while the house was quiet. I carried flour from the pantry and cleared the scarred stretch of counter beside the sink.

The large mixing bowl belonged on the bottom shelf. It had lived there because I could lift it with both hands and set it down without striking the cabinet frame.

I opened the door. Four white bowls sat inside, nested in a perfect stack beneath a paper band.

For a moment, I thought Perry had left them after the party. Then I saw the matching cups behind them and the empty square where my flour tin had been. Someone had rearranged the whole shelf.

"Whit?"

He came in fastening one cuff, his hair still flattened on one side. He smiled when he saw the white bowls.

"She brought those over last night. Nice, aren't they?"

"Where's the big bowl?"

"Up top, I think. Perry made room."

I looked above the refrigerator. The cabinet doors nearly touched the ceiling, and the brass knob shone beyond my fingertips. Whit followed my eyes and reached past me.

"I'll get it."

"No."

His hand stopped beside my shoulder. I pulled a chair across the floor, but one leg caught in a grout line and tipped. Whit steadied the back before it struck the counter.

"Ines, this is exactly what I mean. You don't need to climb for an old bowl when Perry bought you new ones."

"They're too small."

"Then make less."

He said it gently, as though he had solved the trouble before breakfast. I set the chair against the table and opened the lower cabinet again.

The largest new bowl held perhaps half my usual dough. I had mixed birthday cakes in the old one while Junie did homework at this counter. I had covered it with a towel and left yeast rising beside the radiator through winters when the windows iced from inside.

Whit lifted the flour tin from the pantry floor and placed it beside me. He rubbed a thumb across the lid, clearing a pale streak.

"Your hands won't ache as much with these."

"I need the larger one."

"For one test batch?"

I measured flour into the new bowl. The first cup struck the bottom with a dry hiss. By the third, flour crowded the rim, leaving no space for eggs or butter.

Whit watched me remove one cup and return it to the tin. He pulled out a chair and sat, pleased that I had finally accepted help.

"See? Easier."

I divided the flour between two bowls. I worked butter into one, then the other, carrying the same sticky spoon back and forth. Dough clung beneath my nails while the unused half dried at the edges.

When Whit left for the yard, I washed both bowls and dried them immediately. The lemon test sat under a towel in two cramped lumps instead of one smooth round.

I put the bowls back exactly as I had found them. Four new white bowls nested together, and not one had ever held a thing until that morning.

Then I closed the cabinet before Whit came back.