Tears Over a Stove

The kitchen classroom smelled of butter and sugar and something faintly sour—the ghost of a hundred failed experiments that clung to the old ovens no matter how hard the girls scrubbed them. It was Thursday, the day for sponge cakes, and Signora Petrova moved between the long wooden tables with the certainty of a general inspecting her troops.

Elena stood at her station with her hands damp and her mind elsewhere. She had measured the flour twice and still was not certain she had done it right. The numbers kept slipping away from her, replaced by other images: the way the light had fallen through the leaves of the old chestnut tree by the gate, the soft gravel sound of Jonas's voice as he spoke about paintings that hung in galleries she had never seen, the tilt of his head when he laughed.

*Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy*, the chalkboard instructed. Elena picked up the wooden spoon and began to stir, but her wrist was too tight, her movements too quick. The sugar sat in stubborn grains.