I switched off the burner and moved the stockpot to the back of the stove, away from tiny hands. Carolina was six going on precocious, and her latest passion was cooking. Baking, actually. Her mom had introduced her toThe Great British Baking Showduring the holidays, and now she was obsessed.
Damn, my little girl was growing up fast. One second, she’d been playing make-believe with Barbie, and the next we were whipping up meringue in her KitchenAid mixer. Her “Roasters’ red” mixer, of course, because Carolina was nothing if not her daddy’s biggest fan.
I snagged my hoodie off the sectional and headed out the door. Allie’s hatchback eased around the bend the moment I stepped outside.
My lips twitched when Carolina’s tiny fingers pressed against the back-seat window, reaching out for me. Carolinahatedthe car. She always had. Even as a baby, she could never sleep through a drive. It was one of the main reasons Allie had stopped bringing her to my games when she’d been little.
But she was old enough to know better now. Which was why she waited until her mom unbuckled her from her booster seat before leaping out onto the pavement, a glass jar clutched to her chest like she was smuggling something precious.
Her sneakers thudded against the concrete. “Daddy!” she cried out. “It’s bubbling today.”
I caught her up in a half-hug with one arm, careful not to jostle whatever culinary experiment she was so proudly carrying.
“What is?” I asked.
She held the jar up between us. It was full of what looked like gooey, beige paste, with some suspicious fizz at the top.
“My sourdough starter.”
She said it as though that cleared everything up. The only thing missing was a perfunctory eye roll. Hopefully, if I had it my way, we were still a few years away from that.
“Oh, this is the thing you bake bread with.”
“Yes,” she said, practically vibrating in my arms. “We have to name it.”
I squinted at the jar. “It’s bread mix.”
She gasped like I’d said something sacrilegious.
“It’salive, Daddy.”
Allie walked up just then, laughing under her breath. She looked like she always did when she dropped Carolina off—comfortable, casual, like she was fresh from the beach, when in actuality she lived forty minutes across the river in Washington.
She wore an old denim jacket I vaguely remembered from back when we’d still been married, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Half of her box braids had been piled into a bun atop her head, while the rest hung past her shoulders.
She looked older, sure—we both did—but it suited her. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who, at one point in time, would spend hours straightening her hair, worrying about what she wore, buying heels she never walked in. That version of Allie had been beautiful too, but it was the kind of beauty that took effort. This version—natural hair, running shoes, and a faded Roasters hoodie underneath the jacket—was the kind that stuck.
The kind that made me remember how much growing up we both had done over the past decade. And how some of that had happened apart.
“That starter has been in my fridge all week,” she said, nodding her head toward the jar. “It needs feeding every twelve hours.”
“And a name, too, apparently,” I grumbled under my breath.
“I suggested Bread Sheeran, but she wasn’t amused.”
I choked back a laugh. Allie gave me a look that said, “Can you believe the things we do for this tiny human we created?”
“Go hug your mom, cutie.”
Carolina didn’t need telling twice. She wrapped her arms tight around Allie’s waist, pressing her face into her mom’s middle like she was trying to memorize her shape.
I watched them from my spot on the porch, my lips kicking up in a sideways smile. Carolina might have had Allie’s mouth—and the wicked sarcasm that came with it—and her thick, brown-almost-black curls, but those long, gangly limbs and constant need to be in motion were all me. Just last week, she had bounced herself into a near coma on the trampoline in my backyard, and I had the photos to prove it.
Sometimes it startled me, seeing us both so clearly in her.
The way she got quiet when she was frustrated—me. The way she happy-danced when she tasted something delicious—Allie. She was a living, breathing, fully baked (pun intended) amalgamation of our best and worst qualities.
Allie smoothed a hand over the back of Carolina’s head, kissing the top with the same kind of quiet ritual she always used when saying goodbye.
