Page 11 of Hot Dad Summer

“All valid answers. Well, not the Hank one, he’s on thin ice with the vet regarding his eating habits as it is.” I poked the sunken middle. “Here’s a special secret I'm going to let you all in on. Even when you do it right, sometimes a bake just fails. I once made a wedding cake so beautiful that I cried when I finished it. Five tiers. Sugar magnolias. A masterpiece.”

Poppy’s eyes went round. “What happened to it?”

“The delivery van hit a pothole and the whole top tier dove headfirst into a box of napkins. I rebuilt it in a parking lot in July, in Atlanta, sweating through my dress while the mother of the bride watched me like a hawk who wanted to bite my head off.”

“Did the bride cry?”

“The bride never knew. That’s the other secret. You fix what you can, you frost over the rest, and you hope nobody notices the mess you created.” I handed each of them a spoon. “Now. Fallen cake is a delicacy in some kitchens. Mine, specifically. Dig in while the next one bakes.”

They attacked the warm wreckage like a pack of wolves and I started a fresh batter, letting their sugar induced laughter wash over me while I worked. It was the same noise that had filled the last week of these late June afternoons and I’d stopped pretending I wasn’t attached to it.

“Aunt Daisy?” Poppy scraped her spoon along the pan. “I’m glad you’re here. Baking with you is the best.”

“The best,” Charlie agreed around a mouthful. “Uncle Tyler never taught us stuff. He just looked at his phone and told us to go play. You’re way better than stupid Uncle Tyler.”

“Charlie,” Hazel hissed.

“What? He is stupid. Dad said so. He said it with worse words.”

The praise hit me like a hug and a paper cut in the same second. This was what I’d wanted my whole life, a loud kitchen and flour handprints and kids fighting over my attention. I’d just always assumed Tyler came attached to it.

Poppy licked her spoon clean and looked up at me with a question that almost made me trip. “Why aren’t you and Uncle Tyler together anymore?”

Hazel went still at the island, waiting to see how I'd answer. Sugar Honey Iced Tea. I needed a response that was age-appropriate, emotionally mature, and did not contain the phrase giant lying cocksucker. The bar was on the floor and I was somehow still going to have to limbo under it.

“You know how we followed the recipe today? We measured right, we used good ingredients, and it still fell.” I tapped the ruined cake. “Love is like that sometimes. Tyler and I did a lot of it right. But we didn’t rise. It’s nobody’s fault. We just weren’t the right ingredients for each other.”

It was mostly true. It was true enough for small ears. The fuller truth was that Tyler had asked to move in with me six months ago and my stomach had twisted itself into a pretzel before my mouth even opened. I’d said no without knowing why, just a gut-deep no that refused to explain itself, and I’d spent every day since wondering if I’d broken us. Standing in his brother’s kitchen, covered in his nieces’ flour, I was starting to think my gut had known the recipe was bad long before I did.

“Oh.” Poppy nodded like I’d confirmed a suspicion. “It’s too bad cause you would have made the best auntie.”

The moment might’ve gotten heavy if Hank had allowed it. He did not. He surfaced from under the kitchen island and had somehow gotten an entire stick of butter in his mouth and moved toward the back door at the fastest speed a basset hound could legally achieve.

“Hank! That’s a whole stick of butter!”

He did not stop. He had committed to his crime the way he committed to all his crimes, and his ears were flying behind him like streamers.

“Get him!” Charlie launched off his stool. “Before he poops inside again!”

“Take him outside!” I hollered after the stampede. “He’s going to need it after that! And count his poops, the vet needs me to keep count now!”

The screen door slammed behind three kids and one buttery criminal, and the kitchen went quiet leaving me with the feeling of being alone. I braced my hands on the island and let out a long breath, then reached for my phone where it sat propped against the flour canister.

“You handled that well,” I sighed to myself but I was trembling inside. I had wanted to be her auntie more than anything too.

I jumped hard enough to knock the phone flat. Wes stood at the foot of the back stairs in his marina shirt, arms crossed, and judging by his face he’d been there longer than a second. Long enough to hear me and the kids talking about Tyler.

“OMG, wear a damn bell.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “How does a man your size move like that?”

“Practice. Especially if you’re trying to catch three kids up to no good.” He came closer and stopped at the other end of the island, in his usual breakfast spot, and studied the half-eaten sunken cake like it was a boat engine he might be able to fix. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. About my brother. That you had to explain him to the kids,” he sighed. “Anyway, the ingredients answer was good. Better than he deserved. If it were me I would’ve told them the truth.”

“Which is?”

He locked his eyes with mine.

“That my brother had the best woman on this lake and he wandered off to Europe like a toddler at a fair.”

My throat closed. I looked down before he could see what his words did to my face, which was a mistake, because looking down meant looking at my phone. The screen had lit up with my personal Instagram account when I knocked it over and it was still glowing, open to exactly where I’d left it at two in the morning. Brooke’s profile. Brooke on a balcony in Positano. Brooke’s caption about ‘finally choosing happiness’.