“Madison.” Grace turned to her with the easy attention she gave everyone. “Your uncle says you like math.”
The eyebrows came up, braced for an adult being weird about a teenage girl liking math.
“I do,” Madison said, cautious. “And science. Chemistry.”
“Perfect! I’ve got a scaling problem that’s been stumping me for a year, and nobody in this town will help me with it because not a one of them is any good at math or science.”
Madison looked interested.
Grace leaned in. “I have a cookie recipe of my great-grandmother’s, and it only works in single batches. The minute I double it or scale it up to commercial size, it goes flat and tough. I’ve adjusted everything I know how to adjust. Leavening, fat, mixing time. Nothing works. I think it’s a chemistry problem dressed up as a baking problem, and I think it would take somebody who likes math and knows some science to crack it.”
Madison forgot, visibly, to be guarded. “Does it use it baking soda or baking powder?”
“Both.”
“Then it’s probably not linear,” Madison said, sitting up. “Acids and bases don’t double when you double everything else. The reaction does its own thing—” and she was off and running with explaining the science.
Grace nodded and asked real questions, and they ended up scribbling on one of the paper napkins. Hank caught Reno’s eye down the length of the table with an expression Reno had not seen on his brother’s face in years, which was undefended hope.
“Mr. Reno makes pancakes that stick to the ceiling,” Lily told Madison, during a lull.
“No way!” Madison said.
“He DID. And he scraped it down with a knife and the paint came off.”
Madison turned her eyebrows on Reno, delighted. “You ruined a ceiling with a pancake?”
“In my defense,” Reno said, “it was a very bad pancake.”
“He’s a famous lawyer,” Lily continued, on a roll now, “and he wears a crown at dinner, and he fixed our dock, and he calls Mommy babe, and —”
“Lily,” Grace said, in the serene voice of a woman whose face had gone the color of a ripe tomato.
“—and Loretta likes him, and Loretta doesn’t like anybody.”
“Who’s Loretta?” Madison asked.
“My donkey,” Tessa said.
“She has a job,” Lily declared.
“What’s her job?” Madison asked, looking genuinely entertained.
“Standing around looking like a donkey,” Lily, Tessa, and Dillon replied in unison.
The table came apart laughing, and under the cover of it Grace looked across at Reno with her cheeks still pink and her eyes bright, and mouthed babe? at him with her brows raised, and he mouthed back worth it, and she had to look down at her plate.
The pies came out after the table was cleared, and there were four of them.
“Apple,” Grace said, setting them down one at a time. “Peach. Cherry.”
Hank immediately cut himself roughly a quarter of the apple pie.
“And one more,” Grace said.
She opened the flat box she hadn’t let Reno carry, and slid out a pecan pie, and set it on table in front of him.
Reno looked at it.
