Charlotte spent the next couple of days holed up at the cabin. She read the book Ruth lent her, and tried to forget how it made her think about her parents. They definitely wouldn’t welcome her home with open arms—not that she would think about going back. She moved the couch to one side of the room so she could do yoga in the middle of the floor but soon grew tired of the silence. Charlotte missed her yoga class with the relaxing music and instructor’s soothing voice. Trapped in this tiny cottage—however charming it was—she was going stir crazy. Perhaps coming here was a terrible idea after all.
Every now and then, she saw Luke’s truck at the main house through the trees and she saw him start down the path to the cottage before turning around and walking away. She didn’t blame him for avoiding her. She had been pretty rude to him that first day. But he was rude to me, too! How could a man like that be Ruth’s son?
Ruth was so warm and open. She was everything Charlotte had dreamed about having in a mother. Then, she thought about how cold and rigid and unyielding Luke was. It just didn’t make sense to her.
After a day or two of wandering around the cabin aimlessly, Charlotte was miserable. How could she not even know how she liked to spend her time? She used to spend her time reading the news and working, with the occasional yoga class thrown in. But, she’d done as much yoga as she could handle. There was no work to do and no newspapers. She didn’t even have internet access. In desperation, Charlotte resolved to do something she’d always wanted to do: she was going to bake. The extent of her baking experience to this point was refrigerated cookie dough. Usually, a quarter of the dough never made it to the oven.
Charlotte went to Ruth’s and borrowed a cookbook and a cake pan. After assuring Ruth that she didn’t need any help, Ruth had given her a bag with measuring cups and spoons, an electric hand mixer, and a look full of skepticism.
Looking at the giant bag of kitchen utensils, Charlotte began to doubt her decision. But she had an entire day ahead of her and nothing else on the horizon, so she flipped through the cookbook. There, on page 253 in the dessert section, she spotted a gorgeous picture of a decadent chocolate cake. She carefully read the ingredients and realized the grocery shopping she had done was clearly not completed with baking in mind. Charlotte carefully transcribed the list of ingredients onto paper for grocery shopping in her neat block handwriting.
What exactly was the difference between baking soda and baking powder? And where do you buy buttermilk? Charlotte ignored the feeling she was in over her head and grabbed her keys, determined to meet the challenge she’d laid out before herself.
There was no full-service grocery store in Minden, and Charlotte was fairly confident they didn’t carry things like buttermilk or baking powder at the QuikStop off the highway. She drove the twenty minutes to Greencastle to shop at the AppleMart. Ignoring the urge to search for talk radio on the dial, she listened to the country music she was getting more and more familiar with.
Usually, her grocery shopping consisted of produce and the freezer section. She tried to strike a balance between fresh fruits and veggies and the frozen pizzas and Lean Cuisine meals she so often resorted to. It took Charlotte five minutes to find the aisle designated for all things baking. Staring at the approximately fifty types of flour, she considered her options. Baking flour sounded promising, but so did cake flour. And then there was all-purpose flour. Then, there was one that said “unbleached” flour. Did flour have bleach in it? Gross.
There was bread flour and almond flour, and something called spelt. As she studied the different varieties of flour, she watched other shoppers. They seemed to know what they were getting and all went straight for the “all-purpose” flour. Okay, let’s just go with that. It says it is ‘all-purpose’, right?
She picked up baking soda and baking powder, even though they were right next to each other and were probably the same thing. But the recipe called out both of them, and Charlotte always followed the rules.
Cocoa powder was in the same aisle too, and she was grateful the recipe had specified ‘unsweetened’ so she didn’t spend another ten minutes looking at all the varieties. Charlotte grabbed sugar, debating shortly between powdered and granulated before decided that ‘normal’ sugar was probably the one with the empty space on the shelf in front of it, where other shoppers had removed bags.
Charlotte added vegetable oil and salt to her growing pile in her cart, followed by vanilla extract. All that was left to find was eggs and buttermilk. She went to the coolers at the back of the store and found eggs. She looked at the coolers with gallons of milk, carefully reading each variety before coming to the conclusion that buttermilk wasn’t here.
With one last-ditch effort, she flagged down a store employee and asked, “Excuse me, do you sell buttermilk?”
The tall, young man smiled cordially. “Oh sure, it’s right here.” He stepped two coolers to the left and pointed to a row of smaller milk containers along with half-and-half, sour cream, and Reddi-whip. The largest container of buttermilk was only thirty-two ounces. Charlotte tried to remember how much she would need for the recipe but couldn’t.
She bought two.
After all double checking her list and the inventory of her cart, she went to the front of the store and loaded the items on the belt. Charlotte’s eyes bugged at the announced total. Her cake was going to cost over thirty dollars! Although she briefly considered taking it all back and buying a chocolate cake from the bakery at the grocery store, she handed over her credit card and focused on how delicious her chocolate cake was going to be.
Twenty-five minutes later, Charlotte was back at the cottage with her groceries unloaded. She grabbed one of the round cakepans Ruth had given her, wondering for a second why there were two before shrugging it off.
Twice, Charlotte read the recipe from start to finish, and then she began. She preheated the oven and began adding ingredients to the mixing bowl. When she turned the mixer back on after adding the flour and cocoa, a dust cloud erupted. A fine mist of flour coated her and the surrounding three feet of countertop, but she had what tasted to her like a very delicious chocolate cake batter.
Checking the recipe again, she paused at reading “greased cake pan.” She didn’t have any cooking spray and wasn’t sure what to do. Deciding to improvise, Charlotte added some of the vegetable oil to the pan and rubbed it around with a paper towel.
Satisfied with her handiwork, she dumped the cake batter into the pan, pleased when it all fit perfectly and filled the pan nearly to the top. After carefully setting the cake in the oven, she set the timer for thirty minutes as directed. Charlotte grabbed a glass of water to wash down the spoonful of batter salvaged from the edges of the bowl. Then, she went out on the porch to wait.
Twenty minutes later, something acrid and smoky assaulted her nose. Worried her cake had somehow cooked super quickly and was beginning to burn, she ran inside. In the cabin, it was worse. The smoke even thicker and more noticeable.
Turning on the light in the oven, her stomach dropped. Her beautiful round cake pan with delicious chocolate batter was bubbling and overflowing into a gloopy brown mess on the bottom of the oven, slowly turning to char where it touched the heating elements.
Defeated, Charlotte sat on the floor, leaning against the oven and tried to choke back the thick, hot feeling in her throat. She pressed the backs of her wrists to her eye-socket pushing back the stinging tears behind her eyes. Another failure in a long line of recent disasters. First, the string of candidate placements with bad results and then, the leaked development document.
Suddenly overwhelmed by the reality that, despite years of evidence to the contrary, Charlotte was the screw-up she’d always feared becoming. It was a hereditary trait after all. Crying while the smell of burnt chocolate surrounded her, at least it couldn’t get any worse.
That thought seemed a cruel joke when the door to the cabin slammed into the wall behind it, left open by Charlotte in her haste to rescue her cake. Luke rushed in with wide eyes scanning the room. Charlotte could only bury her head in her hands further. A laugh bubbled up and escaped, unable to be restrained. The first wave weakened the floodgates, and then, Charlotte completely lost control in the absurdity of it.
* * *
Luke assessed the cabin quickly and zeroed in on the mess of measuring spoons and open flour and sugar containers. His eyes shifted to the crazy woman sitting in front of a stove emitting smoke and the awful choking scent of something burning. Instead of turning off the oven, she was laughing. And not just lightly. Charlotte was laughing hysterically. Loud, full belly laughs with tears streaming down her face. He wasn’t an expert, but Luke was pretty sure she was having a nervous breakdown.
Cautiously, as though approaching a wounded animal, he walked toward her and turned off the oven and turned on the vent hood. He sank to the floor and briefly looked in the glass door where the light still illuminated the boiling mud pie that was currently escaping the confines of a cake pan that was far too small.
He decided that while it was an absolute mess, the more pressing issue was sitting on the floor beside him, still laughing with great big gasps. Charlotte composed herself, looked at him, and then burst into laughter again.
“Oh my, oh geez.” Charlotte struggled to breathe through tears and chuckles that still overtook her every couple of seconds.
“Umm, are you okay?” Still unsure if he could leave her alone, Luke tried to get her talking.
At that, she snorted and laughed again. Luke physically felt his defenses weaken upon hearing her laugh and the most adorable snuffle. “I think so… I just… You. Here. Now. Of course.”
“Okay?” Luke didn’t know what that meant, but she was slowly becoming more composed. He glanced behind her, “You’re going to have to clean that up.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t worry. I will.” Charlotte wiped her face, tracing under her eyes with a careful finger like women always did to avoid smearing mascara. She blinked at him, as though waiting for something.
Luke didn’t move, just studied her red-rimmed eyes and smattering of freckles on her impossibly smooth skin. “You can leave now.” She looked pointedly toward the door. Now that the heating elements were turned off, the smoke was clearing and the smell was getting better.
Luke nodded and stood up. He held his hand down to her and helped her up out of reflex more than anything else. As soon as she was vertical, he released her hand. Part of him wanted to pull her close and reassure her that her failure was no big deal. The other wanted to run away.
Far, far away.
Afraid of his conflicted emotions, he sought his escape. Luke looked around, surveying the mess and said with a sardonic tone, “Try not to burn the place down again.” With that snide comment hanging in the air and her stunned face etched in his memory, he walked out, mentally smacking himself for essentially kicking a wounded puppy.
Later, Luke laughed out loud at the memory of Charlotte, with her pressed jeans and fancy shirt sitting on the floor in the kitchen of the cabin, covered in flour and laughing maniacally. It was a side of Charlotte he’d never expected to see. She was always so calm, almost cold in her regard of him. He’d started to think that perhaps she never smiled. Wow, she had been beautiful when she laughed, and he really wanted to make her laugh again.
Of course, the parting shot he’d left when departing the cabin probably didn’t win him any points. Luke always struggled with sarcasm and snarkiness—a relic of his days before God or Rachel. Charlotte seemed to be bringing out the worst in him.
Part of him knew he was being unreasonable. Having Charlotte live in the cabin wasn’t the end of the world. Part of him didn’t care if he was being cruel or inconsiderate. Yet, after seeing her laugh…. Luke attempted to shake off the memory. Before it drifted away entirely, he laughed again at the thought of wrinkle-free Charlotte scrubbing burnt cake batter out of the bottom of the stove.