Crowning Fables 4: A collection of one short stories

The Recipe That Chose Its Keeper

The first time Ruth Bellamy tried to teach her granddaughter how to make the family's apple butter cake, Sophie was fourteen and far more interested in the boy texting her from across town than in anything happening inside the kitchen.

Ruth remembered it clearly.

The August heat had settled over the old farmhouse like a heavy blanket, and every window in the kitchen stood open. Cicadas screamed from the sycamore trees beyond the porch. A box fan hummed in the corner, pushing warm air from one side of the room to the other without accomplishing very much.

Ruth stood at the kitchen table in her apron, flour dusting the front of her blouse.

In front of her sat three bowls, a sack of apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, flour, eggs, buttermilk, and the small blue ceramic crock that held the starter Ruth had been feeding for nearly forty years.

Sophie sat on a stool at the counter.

Her phone buzzed.

She smiled down at it.

"Sophie."

"Hmm?"

"You listening?"

"Yeah, Grandma."

Ruth held up an apple.

"What kind?"

Sophie glanced at it for less than a second.

"Red?"

Ruth stared at her.

Sophie looked up.

"What?"

"That is not a kind of apple."

"It is absolutely a kind of apple."

"No, sweetheart. That is a color."

Sophie groaned.

"Granny Smith," she guessed.

Ruth held up the dark red fruit.

"This is a Winesap."

"Okay."

"The tartness matters. Too sweet an apple and the butter loses its bite."

"Uh-huh."

"And when you cook them down, you do not peel every bit of the skin away."

"Okay."

"The skin gives it color."

Another buzz.

Sophie's eyes dropped to the screen.

Ruth lowered the apple.

"Sophie."

"I'm listening."

"What did I just say?"

Sophie froze.

"That the... apples matter."

Ruth closed her eyes.

"That's what you gathered?"

"Grandma, I don't even like baking."

That sentence had landed harder than Ruth expected.

She had laughed then, because sometimes laughter was the easiest place to put disappointment.

"You like eating."

"Exactly."

"That cake you ate three pieces of last Christmas did not assemble itself."

"I know."

"Your mother never wanted to learn either."

Sophie shrugged.