Junior Year Box Set

“I make small individual lemon cakes. I normally make up a batch and put several in the freezer,” she said.

Both Roc and his dad looked nervous. Apparently, they had been into her cakes.

“I took them to the youth group meeting last week,” Mr. Pearson said.

“I discovered we were out of cakes this morning,” Mrs. Pearson explained. She ignored him and focused on me. “I asked my husband to go to the store because I didn’t have everything I needed to make more. I made him a list of the items. Since he had taken my last cakes, I told Isaac he could run into town and buy the handful of ingredients I was missing. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have anything for the potluck. He told me he had to go over to the Bauer farm before church.”

“Their tractor had broken down,” Mr. Pearson said.

“I explained to him that he needed to go and come right back. That was so I’d be able to get the cakes done before church,” Mrs. Pearson continued, never looking at him. “Isaac was gone nearly an hour, and I was about ready to call him to see where he’d gone to. I figured he’d gone to the Bauers’ instead of coming right back. But then I heard the truck pull up, and Isaac came in with four grocery bags and dumped them on the kitchen table. I’d sent him for only a handful of items. So I was shocked when he told me he would be right back, turned around, and went back out to the truck.

“I opened the first bag, and there were two restaurant-size bottles of lemon extract. Do you know how long it will take me to go through that much extract at a half teaspoon at a time?” Mrs. Pearson asked.

I couldn’t help it, I cracked a smile. I pictured her making her cakes for the next twenty years.

“In the next sack were three dozen eggs and a pound of butter,” she said.

“They had a special,” he said in his defense.

“I opened the third sack, and inside were two large cans of Crisco. In the next bag after that were two more cans of Crisco. Four cans of Crisco is enough for me to make several hundred cakes. In the last sack, I found my list,” Mrs. Pearson said as she pulled it out with a dramatic flair.

Zoe’s dad cringed.

“David, my husband’s a smart man. He has a college education, and he can fix most anything. He’s able to run the farm and helps with the church. This same man has helped me raise two children. We have been married nineteen years, and he has watched me make my scratch lemon cakes for all of those years. How he would even think I could ever use so much Crisco is beyond me. I want you to look at this list,” she said as she handed it over to me.

I took my time and studied the list, and it took me a moment because it looked like everything was there. Then I saw where Mr. Pearson had made his mistake and broke out laughing. I looked up, and he had dropped his head, while Mrs. Pearson looked to the ceiling and rolled her eyes. She had numbered the list. I looked down and saw items five and six, five pounds of sugar, and five pounds of all-purpose flour.

“Say it isn’t so,” I said.

“Yep, twenty-five pounds of sugar and thirty pounds of flour,” she said as I almost fell out of my chair.

Zoe snatched the list out of my hand, and then she saw why I was almost ready to die from laughing so hard.

“You would have been proud of me. When you’ve been married as long as we have, you have to pick your battles. I just accepted it and put the list in my pocket. Isaac came back, plopped down bags full of sugar and flour, and then headed back to the truck. He announced he had one more trip to get the rest of the groceries. I looked at the list, and the last item was a bottle of Coke. I’d told him I didn’t want one of those big two-liter bottles because I didn’t want the carbonation to go flat. Instead, I asked him to get a six-pack. I knew he was about to bring in forty-two bottles of Coke, so I cleared a space on the kitchen table.”

I couldn’t talk, I was laughing so hard. Heck, I almost couldn’t sit in the chair! I laughed so hard tears came to my eyes.

Finally, I managed to get myself together, but even then, every few seconds, I had to stifle a giggle. God, it felt so good to laugh like that.

Mr. Pearson rubbed his forehead.

“Hey, I figured out I’d messed up, but by then the checkout girl was ringing it up, and a line had started behind me,” Mr. Pearson confessed. “Plus, I had to get to the Bauers’ farm.”

“I think he did it so he’d never have to go to the grocery store again.”

I had to agree.

◊◊◊

After dinner, we played Monopoly, with me chortling occasionally and Mr. Pearson giving me dirty, martyred looks. It had been years since I’d played a board game with my family. I think it was something you stopped doing when you reached a certain age. I’d forgotten how fun and cutthroat the game could be. Zoe was a little shark, and I played the part of a wounded seal she devoured after we were the last two standing. In the end, she sat licking her chops, savoring her victory, and I was checking myself for blood.