Grace cleared her throat with a polite smile. “This is really good, Mrs. Wolf.”
Helen beamed. “Call me Helen, honey. Mrs. Wolf sounds like I should be much hairier.”
Matt grinned without looking up.
“Shut it, Matt,” Helen said.
He began to protest. “I didn’t?—”
“You were about to,” Alix and Helen said in stereo.
Alix slid into a chair opposite Grace, who looked a little too pleased with herself.
Helen set a stack of pancakes in front of them, golden and steaming, then wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “All right, troops. Eat up. You’ve got a big day ahead.”
Alix looked up mid-bite. “Big day?”
“The Annual Wolf Gingerbread Invitational,” Helen announced, like it was the Olympics.
Matt groaned. “Can we not? We haven’t done that since I was, like, twelve.”
“Nope,” Helen said cheerfully. “Tradition.”
Alix turned to Grace. “You don’t have to?—”
“If Grace is under my roof,” Helen said, cutting her off, “she competes.”
Grace blinked, startled. “I — okay?”
Alix sighed into her coffee. “Welcome to the family.”
Grace leaned in, stage-whispering, “Do I get a waiver for emotional trauma?”
Twenty minutes later, when Helen finished laying out supplies, the kitchen looked like Santa’s workshop after a natural disaster.
Bags of gumdrops. Piles of graham crackers. Icing in piping bags that looked like surgical instruments.
“Teams,” Helen declared, pointing dramatically. “Grace and Alix versus Matt and me.”
Grace straightened like she’d just been told there was a written exam. “Wait — there’s a prize?”
Alix eyed her warily. “You okay there, Tiger Woods?”
“Loser mucks out the stables for the next three days while our usual stable guy, Jack, is on vacation,” Helen said solemnly.
“You wouldn’t dare make Grace do that,” Alix said. She knew that her mother really meant she alone would be mucking out the stables, but she was ready to pay Matt an extreme amount of money to get out of that chore.
“Better win, then,” Matt teased.
Grace was already sketching something on a napkin. “Structural stability’s key. You want to use royal icing as mortar, not decoration. Otherwise, the gumdrops throw off the weight distribution.”
Matt blinked. “Is she serious?”
“Oh, extremely,” Alix said, leaning on the counter. “She once threatened to write a Yelp review over under-whipped cream.”
Grace didn’t look up. “Justice was served.”
Matt shook his head. “You brought a ringer.”
