Page 17 of Love By the Slice

“How awful it must have been for the people who weren’t there. Like, if you drive back to Hartwell after dropping me off, only Hartwell isn’t there any longer.”

Greg said, “You divide your life between three places, right?”

“Mostly two. I don’t go back home much.” Yeah, Ezra didn’t seem to, either. “But even so.” She frowned. “Now I really want to help Rowan.”

How did it always come back to Rowan? Greg said, “Anything else going on with him?”

“The school is actually doing a little fund-raiser. I think that’s neat.” She looked up. “It’s not for him-for him.” (Contrastive focus reduplication, again.) “More like, they have a school-wide discretionary fund through the PTA where they can choose students who need help. I don’t know how much they’ll get, but it’ll probably pay the electric bill, at least until they get Rowan signed up with some help. They’re doing a bake sale.”

Greg said, “We can make cookies.”

Shelly laughed. “How?”

He said, “How, what? They’re cookies. You bake them, put them in bags, and deliver them. They sell them. They give the money to Rowan’s grandfather.”

She said, “But cookies?”

He hesitated. “Haven’t you ever made cookies?”

A shadow crossed her eyes. She said, a little hesitant, “No?”

His nose wrinkled. “How can you not know how to make cookies?”

She frowned. “And how can you not understand that no, we never did that?”

Oh. They hadn’t had a working kitchen. The oven was busted for years, and their mother didn’t really bring home groceries. If Shelly ever asked to make cookies, or bake brownies, or make a cake, had her mother complained that it would be impossible, not saying it would be impossiblefor thembut not impossible for everyone else?

Shelly said, “If you’re so brilliant, how about this? You come to my house, and we’ll bake.”

Greg said, “Sounds good, but let’s do it at my place since we’ll have the whole kitchen to ourselves. I’ll grab my grandmother’s recipes.” He leaned forward. “What’s your favorite kind?”

“Chocolate cookies with chocolate chips in them.” She giggled. “Guess I didn’t have to think hard about that.”

“You’ve got it.” He smiled, and finally she’d begun cheering up. “When’s the bake sale?”

“Next Wednesday, January 29th. During a basketball game at the school.”

He flashed her a thumbs up. “So, Tuesday?”

Shelly pulled out her phone. “It’s going to snow Tuesday. We should do it Monday.”

“Tuesday will be fine,” he said. “You don’t want the cookies to get stale.”

She paused. “Do they get stale that quickly?”

“Well, no.” He shrugged. “Still, it’ll be fine.”

She tilted her head. “Maybe you should channel your ‘it’ll be fine’ energy into keeping the cookies fresh, and I’ll drive to Hartwell when it’s not snowing.”

He shook his head. “You need to trust me. Come to my house Tuesday. We’ll have butter, flour, sugar, and magic.”

She grinned. “Butter, flour, sugar, magic—and helping Rowan.” She extended her hand across the table and shook his. “You’ve got a deal.”

CHAPTER TEN

SHE SHOULD HAVE gone to Greg on Monday.

“Relax” and “It’ll be fine” only got you so far when the weather forecast changed from an inch of snow to six inches, plus freezing rain.

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