From Scratch by Rachel Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

notice they’re all stuffing their faces with . . . raspberry oatmeal bars?
    Then I hear my father’s booming voice say, “Now if I told you that, it wouldn’t be a secret ingredient anymore.”
    I glance at the reception desk, where my father is chatting with a silver-haired woman wearing an afghan for a sweater, her hand deep inside a pastry box. My father is dressed in faded Levi’s and scuffed work boots. At least he threw on a button-down shirt .
    As I make my way over to him, the receptionist slaps my father playfully on the arm and says, “Jack, don’t tease an old woman. Give me a little hint. What else is in the filling?”
    Is she flirting with him? The ladies have always loved my father and his sweet-talking ways, so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked.
    “You signed me up for a baking competition?” I say in a firm voice, interrupting their conversation. My father keeps setting these traps, and like an idiot, I fall right into them. I thought once I entered adulthood I’d have learned my lesson.
    Peering over her glasses, the receptionist scrutinizes me like a judge at a beauty pageant.
    My father winks at me and grins. “Course I did, baby girl,” he says, popping half a raspberry oatmeal bar into his mouth. “I already ironed your mother’s apron. It’s waiting for you in the office.”
    “I don’t bake anymore. Remember? ” I try to sound cordial. I don’t succeed.
    “With my bum knee, you can’t expect me to do it.”
    “Then find someone else.”
    Wiping crumbs off his jeans, he says, “You know I’d never give anyone who knows jack-diddly-squat about the diner a copy of our family’s recipe.”
    Frustration sweeps through me, cresting in my chest. “Maybe you should have thought about that before—”
    The receptionist clears her throat. “Why don’t you have a seat, sweetheart? Mr. Stokes is still finishing up with his three o’clock. I’ll come get you when he’s ready.” She motions to the waiting area with a smile wrapped in barbed wire—a southern specialty right up there with Civil War reenactments and fried green tomatoes.
    I want to argue, but I don’t. When I’m angry, I have a tendency to say things I’ll regret. Instead, I sigh and take the only open seat. Picking up the latest issue of People magazine, I flip through the glossy pages.
    “Baby girl’s competing in the Upper Crust, and she’s going to win with Elizabeth’s peach cobbler,” I hear my father proudly say to the receptionist. “Did you know Lillie used to make it at the diner every week? People would line up around the block for it.”
    His words sink like stones at the bottom of my stomach, dredging up a memory I’ve tried so hard to bury. And just like that I’m sixteen again, back in my father’s Brady Bunch kitchen with Nick on the day I first made my mother’s peach cobbler.
    The scene feels so real it’s as though I can touch it.
    “What’s on the agenda for today?” Nick said, taking the recipe card off the counter and reading it over. “Ernie’s Incredible Edible Carrot Cake. Sounds good.”
    “I hope so. If only I could find the darn grater,” I said as I kneeled on the floor and rifled through the pantry, gathering ingredients for my latest project. “I swear I had it in my hand.”
    A beat later, the grater dangled in front of my nose. I blew wisps of hair away from my face and looked at Nick.
    “It was hiding behind the flour canister,” he said with a crooked smile.
    Standing, I took the grater, set it on the counter, and got busy shredding carrots.
    Nick came to stand beside me and slid the grater toward himself. “Why don’t you let me give this one a try?”
    “Cooking isn’t exactly your forte,” I said as I remembered the one and only time Nick tried to bake a cake—eleven years old and all lanky limbs and a mouthful of braces and wild hair. He had forgotten to let the layers cool before icing them, so the frosting had trickled down the sides in clumps.