“Okay,” he told her. “Come on down.”
She joined him in front of the stove a moment later. Her hair was messy, but she was dressed and she smelled like toothpaste.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“I’m Dalton,” he told her. “What’s your name?”
“Dove,” she said, her eyes back on the bowl of batter now that the niceties were settled. “What do we do?”
“Well, you never want to do this by yourself,” he told her, suddenly realizing how little she was. “The stove gets very hot, so it’s not safe to cook without a grownup.”
“I know that,” she said, like he was silly to even bring it up.
But she didn’t roll her eyes. She was polite for a child her age, or at least he assumed she was. Dalton hadn’t spent a lot of time around kids since he was a kid himself.
He watched as she grabbed a step stool from the corner and dragged it back to the stove before scrambling up and looking to him like she was awaiting marching orders.
“Okay, well, we want to put some batter in the pan and then wait until the whole thing is covered with little bubbles,” he told her. “Then we flip them.”
“It doesn’t have berries,” the little girl observed sadly, pointing to the glass bowl of batter.
“Do you normally put berries in your pancakes?” he asked.
“They’re better with berries,” she said.
“Do you have berries?” he asked her.
“You have to check the fridge,” she told him.
“Okay,” he said, moving to open up the fridge again. Sure enough, there was a small carton of blueberries on the top shelf. “Your grandparents aren’t saving these for anything, are they?”
The little girl shrugged.
If they were, he could always go to the store and buy more. Right now, he was going to try and give Andy’s niece exactly the breakfast she wanted.
He moved to the sink and then realized that cleaning berries was probably a good job for a kid.
“Hey, do you want to rinse these off for me?” he asked her.
“Okay,” she said, hopping off her step stool and industriously pushing it over to the sink.
He watched as she grabbed a strainer from the drainboard and dumped the berries in it. She had clearly done this before.
He let himself feel a moment of victory for correctly guessing about a good task for her.
She did a pretty good job getting the berries ready for the pancakes, and only a small handful were left in the sink when she was done.
“Thank you, Dove,” Dalton told her as he carried the strainer back to the stove.
Dove grabbed her step stool and followed.
“Should we mix the berries into the batter?” Dalton asked. “Or do you want to make faces on the pancakes?”
“Faces?” Dove echoed.
“Yes, we can make round pancakes with blueberry eyes and noses and smiles,” he told her.
“Or frowns,” she said.
