The next day, Mom had the day off. She went grocery shopping early. Sometimes I went with her, but I was still upset about being called a quitter and didn’t go.
I was sitting in the living room, reading, when I heard the garage door rumble open. Dad walked through on his way to help unload.
“Eliza,” he said, “please make space for the groceries.”
I gathered up some old mail and moved it onto the kitchen island, which Dad called the Holding Pen and Mom called the Bermuda Triangle. As I laid the stuff down, I noticed the community-center summer brochure.
Maybe I’ll tear it into a million pieces, I thought. Or maybe I’ll just crumple it or shove it in the trash and then dump old scrambled eggs on top of it.
But instead of doing any of these things, I opened the brochure to the Cakes with Caroline page. I guess I just wanted to torture myself one last time by reading the class description:
Bring those aprons and spatulas and join “Sweet” Caroline McKinny from the hit television show Sweet Caroline Cakes in this basic cake class! We’ll learn how to create scrumptious cakes from scratch and how to decorate them.
I couldn’t go on reading. It made me too sad.
But here’s the thing. My eyes jumped to the dates and times and room number of the class and that’s when I noticed something way at the bottom, in parentheses:
This class will be held again in the fall.
There was another class!
Standing there in the kitchen, I got hit with a lightning-bolt idea.
It was the perfect way to get into the fall cake class with Sweet Caroline and to prove to Mom and Dad I wasn’t a quitter.