Page 52
“This enough for all the pastries?” I ask, lifting one of the boxes easily. She struggles with hers and I tilt my chin up. “Put it on top of this one.”
“You can’t carry both,” she argues.
I just stare at her and she shrugs, placing the box on top of the other.
I carry them easily inside, placing them on the counter in the kitchen.
Margo follows after a few minutes, looking at me curiously.
“You’re strong.”
“Was always strong,” I say, almost proudly. “Even when I was little.”
Had to be. Was always fighting back against my foster fathers or sometimes my foster siblings.
She smiles. “You’ll be a big help, then.”
I eye the two boxes. “Doesn’t feel heavy enough to be enough for the festival.”
She snorts. “No way. The festival stock is what you guys hauled into the pantry the other day. This is extra butter and milk for the trial run.”
I blink at her. “You’re going to make a town’s worth of pastries as a trial?”
“Not all of them. Just the dessert pavilion.”
“Still, that’s what, five hundred pastries?”
She shrugs. “I’ll donate them to Wayward Hills.”
My heart flips around in my chest. I donate to the local group home myself. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. Haven’t brought myself to visit, but… I donate.
“You’re a good person, Margo.”
“I’m not,” she says firmly, tilting up her chin. “I need to practice, and they’d just go to waste otherwise.”
“Still. Most people wouldn’t go to the trouble.”
“I’m not most people.”
“You’re certainly not,” I murmur.
She looks up at me for a moment longer and then looks away.
“Alright. I’m going to grab some flour and sugar from the pantry. You can help me measure everything out.”
I give her a sloppy salute and she chuckles.
She disappears into the pantry and I wait for about two minutes before I follow.
Margo’s grunting and dragging what appears to be a fifty-pound bag of sugar out of the pantry.
“Stop that before you pull something,” I mutter. I heave one over my shoulder and take it into the kitchen, dropping it on the counter.
When I return to the pantry, she’s trying to drag out a bag of flour.
“Margo,” I bark. “Stop it. Sit down.”
She blinks at me, pouting just slightly.
