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“I don’t—”
“This isn’t a very well set-up kitchen.” The other one was poking through Devra’s cupboards.
Devra kept looking back and forth between them, her head spinning. “I—”
“The spoons and spatulas should go over here.” The woman literally scooped the kitchen tools out of one drawer and plunked them into another one.
“Good call. Then the utensils should move there.” Another scoop, then plunk.
“And mixing bowls should be in this cabinet.”
“Where the heck are your oven mitts?”
“And you wouldn’t happen to have, like, a Bubly or something? I’m parched.”
“Sooo thirsty.”
The two women paused to look at her, and Devra seized the opportunity to cry, “What on earth are you doing?”
The sisters exchanged a glance, then said simultaneously, “We’re making cookies.”
“But…why?” Her confusion was beginning to compete with a bubbling panic. She didn’t want these strangers in her home, let alone around her oven.
“We already told you,” one of them said. Lana? Sara? Their names suddenly popped into her head. “Bradley isn’t home.”
“And we wanted to make cookies.”
“So we’ll make them here instead.”
“And surprise him when he comes home.”
They both returned to their tasks. One sister opened a cookbook. The other set a baking tray onto the counter.
A memory broke free. The acrid smell of burning, the alarming sight of smoke billowing from the oven, the heat as her eyebrows singed right off. She’d never made cookies again after that.
They cracked an egg into a bowl, started pouring sugar into a measuring cup. When they went to preheat the oven, Devra couldn’t take it anymore.
“Stop baking!” she shrieked.
The twins froze like they were on some kind of cooking show and she’d just hit Pause.
They exchanged another look.
“Okaaay.”
They put away the egg carton, dropped the messy bowl into the sink, and closed up the sugar. Then they both clapped their hands together.
“What should we—” Lana began.
“Do instead?” Sara finished.
“What should we…?” Devra shook her head, trying to physically jostle free some sense from this bizarre encounter. “Sara, Lana, I don’t—”
“I’m Lana, she’s Sara.”
“Fine. Lana, Sara, I don’t mean to be rude. But I really don’t understand why you’re here.” She stuck out her hand in a stop motion before they could explain, again, that Bradley wasn’t home. “I mean, why are you here, with me?”
Lana—Devra was pretty sure it was Lana—scooped up a pile of documents from the couch, dropped them onto the floor, and plopped herself onto the cushions. “Because we like you now.”
