“I did good, don’t you think?” Elaine asked when she’d dried the last dish.
“Yes, you did, Lainey,” Willa said.
It wasn’t so bad, really, being in charge. She began to imagine it as a permanent situation—just the three of them forever, coping on their own. Why, she and her father between them could keep things going just fine! They both liked systems, and methods. If her mother ever came back, she’d say, “Oh.” She’d look around her and say, “Oh. I see you’re doing better than I ever did.”
“Know what?” Willa asked Elaine. “I vote we make a dessert.”
“Dessert!” Elaine said. She started smiling hugely, showing the gap in her teeth. She smoothed her apron down her front. “What kind of dessert?”
“A cake, maybe, or a pudding. Chocolate pudding.”
“Yes! Do you know how to do that?”
“I’m sure we can find a recipe,” Willa said. She was warming to the idea now. As a rule they didn’t have dessert. She had always envied Sonya, whose mother served dessert every night of the week. And chocolate pudding was their father’s favorite—that and chocolate silk pie, but Willa thought a piecrust might be complicated.
“We’ll keep it a secret from Pop till after supper,” she told Elaine, “and then we’ll bring it out. He’s going to be amazed.” She was moving the step stool as she spoke, climbing up on it to look through the books on their mother’s cookbook shelf. “The Bride’s Kitchen,” she read. “That would have the easiest recipe, I bet.” She brought it down with her and opened it on the counter. Elaine came to stand at her elbow, her eyes on Willa’s finger as it traveled down a column. “Chocolate cake, chocolate milk…” Willa read out. “Chocolate pudding. Two sixty-one.” She flipped to page 261. “Sugar, cocoa powder, salt. Half-and-half, vanilla…uh-oh. Cornstarch.” She didn’t even know what cornstarch looked like, but she went over to check the cupboard where their mother kept the flour and such, and there it was. She set the box on the counter and Elaine said, “Can I stir, Willa? Can I?”
“Sure,” Willa told her.
Elaine wasn’t allowed to do anything on the stove yet, so Willa put a saucepan on the kitchen table and had her mix everything there. Of course Elaine made a mess of it, splashing enthusiastically over the rim of the pan, and the cornstarch and cocoa powder sat there in lumps instead of blending in, but Willa said, “Good job, Lainey,” and then she moved the pan to the stove and stirred it herself, more gently, while it was heating.
But she had no better luck than Elaine had. The lumps remained, even after the mixture began bubbling around the edges. It looked like plain milk with brown-and-white gravel in it. “What’s happening? Is it turning to pudding?” Elaine asked, because she wasn’t tall enough to see for herself. Willa didn’t answer. She raised the heat even higher, and the pan would have boiled over if she hadn’t snatched it up and moved it to a cool burner, but still the gravel remained. “I don’t understand,” she told Elaine. She snapped off the right-hand burner, which was glowing a deep, dark red, and then she stared down into the saucepan.
“What? What?” Elaine asked.
“I don’t—”
Out in the living room, their father called, “Hello?”
Willa and Elaine looked at each other.
“Anyone home?”
“Hide it!” Elaine whispered. “Put it in the fridge.”
“I can’t! It’s not pudding yet!”
“What is it?”
“Whatcha up to, ladies?” their father asked from the kitchen doorway.
Willa turned to face him, trying to block his view of the saucepan, but he came closer and looked over her shoulder. He was still in his wool jacket and he smelled of winter air. “Cocoa?” he asked her.
“It’s chocolate pudding,” Willa told her shoes.
“It’s what?”
“It’s chocolate pudding, Papa!” Elaine shouted happily. “We made it for your dessert! It was going to be a surprise!”
“Well, gosh. I am surprised,” he said. “I didn’t know you two could cook. Why, this is really something!”
“We ruined it,” Willa said.
“Say what?”
“It’s all lumpy!” she burst out. “It won’t mix in, and we’ve been stirring and stirring.”
“Oh, now. Let’s have a look,” he said.
She moved aside, unwillingly, and he stepped up next to the stove and took hold of the spoon that slanted inside the saucepan. In a testing sort of way, he gave the mixture a stir. “Hmm,” he said. “I see.”
“It’s a mess!” she told him.
“Well, not a mess, exactly; it’s just a little…Where’s your recipe?”
She poked her chin toward the cookbook lying open on the counter, and he went over to check it. “So,” he said, “you mixed the sugar and the cocoa and the salt. Then you stirred in all but a quarter-cup of the half-and-half over very low heat.”
“Well…”
“Then in a separate bowl you made a paste of the cornstarch and the remaining quarter-cup of half-and-half—”
“What? No. We just stirred everything together all at once.”
“Ah,” he said.
“Is that why it’s doing this way?”
“Why, yes, I believe so, honey.”
“But I didn’t know!”
“When you’re trying out a recipe, you’ll find it pays to read all the instructions before you set to work.”
She went back to staring at her shoes, because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes.
“First you check the list of ingredients, to make sure you have everything—”
“I did that.”
“Well, good, honey. Then you assemble them on the counter—”
“I did! I was being so careful!”
“Then you read through the whole process, you see. It’s kind of like what I tell my students when they’re working on a carpentry project. You figure out what to do right away and what to do later, which step ought to come first and which step—”
She couldn’t stand the way he drilled at her, pushing on so persistently no matter what she said back. She said, “I get it! Good grief. I’m not some dummy.”