“What took you so long?” My aunt rested a hand on her hip and stared out at me.
“Do you have to do it through the screen door? Let me in,” I said. “It’s hot as fire out here.”
“What do you expect when you sleep till noon in the South?”
“Air-conditioning,” I said, and pushed past Aunt Odie.
I headed toward the room Aunt Odie had built into a specialty kitchen, walking the long way through a large living room and then the enormous dining room. Everything was cool in here. Cool and clean and ready for us to get to working. My face was a blur in the stainless double-door fridge.
Ingredients were spread out on the counter. A bag of flour. A half-dozen pale-pink eggs. Cream. Milk. Butter. Spices like curry and cinnamon and cardamom.
“Sit, please, Evie.”
I flapped my T-shirt against my body some, letting the cool air of the house dry me off a little.
That’s how hot it is in Florida in August. Go on a hike just eight houses down the street and you had to shower again. My hair was still straight on accounta Aunt Carol’s Gift. Plus, I still had on a glimmer of eye shadow. But neither of those things helped with the heat.
“Yes, ma’am.” I sat on the stool and swiveled this way and that while Aunt Odie lowered herself onto her own stool.
“How’re you feeling since the girdle incident?” I asked.
“Bumpy still.” Aunt Odie hiked at her dress a little. “Wanna see? I even got bruises. . . .”
I shook my head. “I believe you. No need in proving it.”
Aunt Odie let her dress drop, then took my hands in both of hers. “The living,” she said, “ain’t far from the dead.”
I glanced around the room. I couldn’t see anyone . . . lingering.
“The veil between our world and theirs is thin. Keep that in mind. Always.”
“Okay.”
“It’s easy to slip up with the dead,” Aunt Odie. Her face was so serious I couldn’t look away even though I wanted to. “You wanna end up like my auntie?”
I shook my head.
“Good. Now, first things first,” she said. “Anything happen last night?”
My cheeks turned warm. “I . . .” Should I tell her about the kiss—though it was barely a kiss—before I told my very own momma what had happened? I couldn’t see Momma liking what I had done at all.
“Well . . .”
“Any visions? Burning bushes? Voices?”
I let out air I didn’t know I had been holding.
That. Oh.
“No, Aunt Odie,” I said. “Nothing.”
She nodded. Tapped her finger against her lips. There was a flour handprint on her apron. I hoped it was her own. “But,” she said, almost to herself, like she was thinking so hard she had forgotten I was in the room, “but it was a full-moon night. I know she’s the right one. It couldn’t be the baby. I dreamed Evie.”
Who was she talking to?
“Aunt Odie?”
She looked at me and I saw her see me. “Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“No, ma’am.”
Except for my first kiss.
I smiled politely.
My stomach folded over.
Aunt Odie leaned close to me so that she tipped on two legs of her stool. “Something’s different about you.” She let all four stool legs, plus her own two feet, rest on the floor.
I glanced at the ingredients. Back at her.
“Should I . . .” I said. Then stopped. Could Aunt Odie see, if she walked all the way around viewing my whole body, that I had let Buddy kiss me? Could she see I had wanted him to do it again? And again?
Now Aunt Odie stood and went to the counter. She plucked up a recipe card. I could see the ink from here. It looked like the kind that came from a calligraphy pen. I imagined that ghosty hand, writing.
“So what are we working on today?” I asked. My voice sounded wimpy. Scared. Even I heard that. “You said something about getting a new recipe you wanted to try?”
“No,” Aunt Odie said. “What’s going on with you?” She was back again. Walking around me as best she could, considering I was slid up close to the table, looking me over from top to bottom, sliding my stool out so she could circle me—and give me a thorough once-over.
Did the Gift leave a mark? I sure hoped not.
Did kisses?
She put her face close to mine.
“Something is going on,” she said. Her voice was church-toned.
I pretended to look her in the eye but stared at the bridge of her nose instead.
And I kept my lips tight, no matter how she questioned. Then we set to working on a new Bundt cake recipe that tasted so good, once it was mixed and baked (with love), I wanted to cry.