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“Did you use a recipe?”

“I can make pancakes, Ember.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said.

He looked at me, flour dusting his left eyebrow and a smear of batter clung to his neck right below his ear. I wanted to lick it off so badly that my mouth watered, but we’d agreed not to show any type of affection toward one another in front of Sophie.

“Move over,” I said, bumping him with my hip. “Let me see what it is we are working with.”

He didn’t move. Instead, he looked down at me. His look was softer than he usually allowed me to see when Sophie was around.

“I was trying to do something nice for Sophie and for you,” he whispered.

“I see this; it’s sweet. How about if I take over and you can help, but first, we need to throw this batter out because…”

I dipped my finger into the batter and tasted it.

“Did you use salt instead of sugar?”

He moved to the cupboard and looked at two almost identical containers.

“Uh, maybe. The containers look the same,” he said, looking back at me.

“Yes they do, but one clearly says salt and the other sugar.”

“I may or may not have had my glasses on.”

Sophie dissolved into giggles, and I caught the corner of Everett’s mouth turn up.

I pulled out another mixing bowl, removing the bowl full of batter and turned and looked at the two of them.

“Okay, new batch. Sophie, you’re on egg duty. Everett, you’re on…actually, just stand there and look pretty.”

Again Sophie giggled.

“I don’t look pretty.”

“You look pretty, Daddy.” Sophie said, her face serious as she grabbed an egg from the carton on the counter.

Instead of saying anything, Everett grabbed the flour bag, and that was how it started. The three of us, working through the recipe step by step. Sophie cracked the eggs with intense concentration, fishing out the shell fragments with her tiny fingers. Everett measured flour, and I supervised.

“Now we mix,” I said, handing Sophie the whisk.

She went to it. Flour puffed from the bowl and hit Everett square in the chest. He looked down at his shirt, then over at Sophie, and then at me.

“It was an accident.” Sophie said quickly.

“Sure.”

I was already laughing, and then Everett surprised me by doing something I’d never seen him do. He dipped his hand into the bag of flour, came out with a tiny pinch of flour, and blew it gently in Sophie’s direction, hitting the front of her dinosaur shirt.

Immediately, she shrieked. Then it was on.

Sophie grabbed a handful and threw it. I ducked, but caught a face full of flour, anyway. I retaliated; Everett tried to shield himself with an empty mixing bowl, which meant the flour bounced off the metal and came back at us. Sophie was screaming and laughing, sliding around the kitchen in her bare feet, throwing fistfuls of flour like confetti, making the floor even more slippery. Everett and I rushed to grab the flour bag, and both our hands collided at the same time. He pulled me into him, smearing flour down my back while I squirmed and laughed so hard I could barely breathe.

“Daddy, get her! Get her.” Sophie yelled.

His arm tightened around my waist. For a second, long enough for his lips to brush against my ear and his voice to drop low enough that only I could hear. “I already got her.”