Page 282 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

FIFTEEN

“Pass me the bowl of flour, and I’ll show you what to do if it seems like the dough gets a little too sticky,” Siena said.

Greta pushed the bowl across to Siena, while Giulia hoisted herself up on the edge of the counter. The two girls watched silently as Siena added just a tablespoon of flour at a time to the bread dough before she rolled it and kneaded it again and again.

“You have to make sure it mixes all the way through—you don’t want one part of the bread to have too much flour while the other parts don’t have enough. Always make sure you knead it really well after you add any extra in.”

“What would happen if the dough was too wet when it cooked?” Giulia asked.

“Depends, really. It might be too dense—it might not rise high enough. It could still be doughy in spots, and it’ll have that dough-ish taste.”

“You can’t just … cook it for longer?” Greta asked. “Make up for the difference, or something?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. Bread has to be made just so—even the dough has to be the right consistency every time to make it perfect. If you add something, or take something away, you have to account for it somewhere else. If your kitchen is hotter than normal, you need to account for that, too.”

“Ugh,” Greta groaned.

Giulia echoed her sister’s sentiment. “This seems like a lot of work for just bread.”

“Sure, but if you master bread, then the rest is kind of easy at the end of the day. And we Italians do love us some bread.”

“Truth,” Greta said.

“It’s really that particular, though?” Giulia asked. “I feel like I should have been taking notes from the start, or something.”

Siena laughed a little, and gave her half-sister a smile. “The only thing more fickle than a man on this earth, is bread.”

Greta and Giulia passed a grin between one another. Their girlish laughter filled up Siena’s apartment. She took the moment to slow her kneading of the dough, and soak in their happiness. So much had been taken from these two young girls, and she wondered how much they would have to sacrifice before they could finally get their own happily ever after.

She was the one left caring for them a lot of the time. Sure, their useless aunt gave them a home to live in, and beds to sleep in. The woman fed them, and kept them clothed—mostly. That was the extent of their aunt’s involvement in their lives.

She didn’t care for them on a deeper level. They had no woman to go to when they needed a private chat. They had no voice to be their reason, or to give them direction when they needed that, too. They were, essentially, alone.

“Ma tried to teach me how to make bread once,” Greta said.

Siena passed the older of the two girls a look. “How did that turn out?”

“I wasn’t paying attention the way she wanted me to. She got mad. I got mad. We yelled a lot, and she kicked me out of the kitchen. I guess …”

“What?”

Giulia picked at her nails, avoiding everyone’s gaze and looking all kinds of awkward for the moment. It wasn’t very often the girls talked about their mother. They buried all their feelings, and memories of their mother somewhere deep, and kept them locked up tight where no one could reach. Siena didn’t think that was very healthy to do, honestly. Someday, they were going to have to deal with the murder of their mother, and the things that preceded it.

Right now, though, they couldn’t do any of that. It wasn’t a topic that Kev or Darren had wanted them to chat about, really. It might upset Coraline, after all.

Not that Siena’s mother made very much of an effort to be around the girls. Because she absolutely didn’t if she could help it.

“I guess,” Greta continued after a long stretch of silence, “I wish I had listened now. Been better that day—on a lot of other days, too.”

Without even thinking about it, Siena pulled her hands away from the bread, and reached out to her half-sister. She touched the girl’s cheek with a dough- and flour-covered hand to give Greta a gentle pat. It left fingerprints of flour behind, but Greta didn’t seem to mind.

“Your ma loved you, Greta. Regardless if you were terrible, or wonderful. She’s your ma, so you know what that means, right?”

“What?”

“That she loved you just as much on your best days as she did on your worst days. That’s what good mothers do. And I know you have a whole bunch of good memories to think about, but sometimes the bad ones slip through, too, right?”

Greta shrugged. “It makes me feel guilty sometimes.”