I need help, I text Amanda.
What kind of help?
I hesitate, weighing different considerations. How much I want my sister’s help—against how much I don’t want to raise her suspicions.
The need for help wins out.
I want to celebrate Mari’s victory.
What she did today was the Wilder family equivalent of one of those obstacle course races where survival, not victory, is the point. It’s tough enough to run the meet-the-Wilder gauntlet—but she also made a business proposal and got Gabe—fucking Gabe!—to use the word “brilliant.”
I mean, that has to be some kind of Wilder family first. Even Lucy never got a brilliant.
Probably not even when she gave birth to his daughter.
I make an internal note: Tell Mari she’s brilliant after she pushes the baby out.
But meanwhile, I want to do something to celebrate her victory, and I know what it has to be.
Boston fucking cream pie.
I think it must be some kind of primitive male mammal thing. Like, if I can bring my woman the woolly mammoth she needs, or in this case, the Boston cream pie she craves, she will know that I am a good provider and allow me to care for her and her offspring.
Absurd, obviously.
But here I am, texting my sister, the person most likely to see through my barely veiled secret, to ask for help with my mission.
I need to make a Boston cream pie.
Why?
I start to type, None of your business, then realize that if I want my sister’s help, I probably shouldn’t piss her off. Which is reinforced when her next text says, If you want my help, you need to tell me.
It’s for Mari. She told me she’s having a pregnancy craving for it.
Long silence, during which I imagine that she is texting all of our other siblings as well as her closest friends and every gossip in Rush Creek: Kane wants to make a Boston cream pie for Mari!
My phone buzzes I know, Amanda texts back. Nan told me.
Then why did you ask???????
To piss you off. Is it working?
Oh my God. Siblings.
Yes, it’s working. Now, can you help me?
Of course I can help you. But you have to admit you like her.
Okay. I like her, I say, because it’s true. Because it’s easier than arguing. And because my need to give Mari this Boston cream pie is savage.
I’m in the Around the Table kitchen, she texts. Get your ass over here.
“What the hell?” Amanda says, looking at the flat disk we’ve just pulled from the oven. She picks up the recipe. “You must have forgotten the baking powder.”
“Oh, shit,” I say.
“How can you forget the baking powder?”
My arm is tired from whisking custard and beating the frosting—which is apparently called ganache. I haven’t baked anything this complicated since I was about twelve years old, and I know exactly how I forgot the baking powder. Fantasizing about the way Mari would moan around her fork when she put the first bite of my Boston cream pie in her mouth.
Amanda must intuit this—or something like it—because she sighs and says, “My brothers are such idiots when it comes to women. All right. Start over, dude. I’m sorry. But it’ll give the custard more time to cool.”
I scrape the ruined cake into the trash and queue up the ingredients for a second attempt.
“She couldn’t have wanted pickles and ice cream like everyone else,” I mutter, as I beat the cake batter for the second time.
“She definitely seems like she paddles her own canoe,” Amanda says.
I squint at her.
“I just mean, living on the road, designing RVs for a living. The way she dresses. She’s her own person. I like that about her.”
I give up trying to figure out if Amanda’s trolling me. “I like that about her, too,” I say. Then, “What?” because of the way Amanda is looking at me.
“Kane,” she says.
“What?” I repeat.
“To reiterate. Living on the road. Designing RVs for a living. She’s not a settle-down-and-fall-in-love girl.”
I cross my arms. “I know that.”
Amanda’s expression softens. “I know you know that,” she says. “My big question is, does your heart know that?” She gestures with her fancy caterer’s spoon in the direction of my second attempt. “This is a lot of work to get laid. Even for a Wilder.” She scrunches up one corner of her mouth. “And you’re not a one-and-done guy. You fall. You fall hard.”
I can’t say anything back to her, because she’s just laid out my problem in a nutshell.
“I’ll be okay,” I insist.
She gives me another long look, then shakes her head.
“Pay attention to that cake,” she says. “You don’t want to have to bake a third one.”