Finding Emma

seven

"How does a bakery run out of flour?" Eva grumbled as we entered Costco together. I quickly grabbed a cart as Eva flashed our family's membership card to the bored-looking man at the entrance.

I rushed over to Eva, attempting to meet her abnormally fast pace. "That's what happens when someone messes up the order..." I teased.

Eva rolled her eyes, visibly exasperated. "Okay, I swear I checked the numbers! I really thought I put 100," she whined.

I laughed. "Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first five times... But it's fine, we just need to pick up a couple bags to get us through the weekend." I turned the cart towards the dry section.

Eva had been a bit more cranky the past week, and a lot more foggy-brained. Usually, she took care of our biweekly orders for supplies the bakery needs, because she was very detail-oriented. But she, somehow, messed up the numbers with both the flour and sugar orders, so our mom enlisted the two of us to brave Costco early Saturday morning. We had strict orders to pick up only what we needed to fill the gap. Eva would always get distracted by the baked goods, specifically the muffins, so I made sure to steer her as far away from them as possible.

We passed samples of chocolate and caramel covered pretzels, and Eva's eyes lit up. "Oooh! Those look good," she remarked, practically skipping over to grab two samples for us. I just shook my head at her, entertained.

"Alright, focus, woman," I joked as she returned to the cart. I took the sample she offered to me, practically melting inside at the ooey goodness. "Oh damn, those are good," I mumbled.

"We need a bag," she stated matter-of-factly, making to walk over and grab who knows how many bags of sweet pretzels a pregnant teen could crave. I grabbed her arm and tugged her away, down the aisle to where I remembered the baking ingredients were.

"Eva, we own a bakery," I reasoned with her. "We have plenty of sweets already."

"Yeah, but we don't have chocolate and caramel pretzels," she complained.

"I thought you were trying to gain as little weight as possible throughout this," I reminded her.

Eva groaned, throwing her head back overdramatically. She rubbed her stomach in circles. "I know I said that, but I'm just so hungry," she whined.

I chuckled and gave her a little shove. "Fair enough, but Mom will not be happy if she sees us bring home bags of those pretzels... Come on, let's get what we need and I'll take you through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru before we go home." I figured giving her a bribe would get us in and out of here quicker. Besides, I wanted nuggets.

Eva's face brightened again, her demeanor doing a complete 180. "Perfect!" she cheered.

I just shook my head at her again, laughing under my breath. What a character.

Finding the flour bags, I set the cart aside, checking Mom's text on my phone. "Okay, she says she needs 4 bags of the flour and 10 sugar bags." I tried to grab a bag of flour, but struggled to lift it. It was quite possibly bigger than I was. Sure, I was pretty fit, but I was a flyer, and very rarely found myself needing to lift more than 25 pounds at a time. Dad always did the heavy lifting at the bakery most of the time, anyways. I noticed the label on the bag that read: 50-lb enriched wheat flour.

"Here, let me help," Eva walked over.

"Um, no!" I stopped her. "You can't lift 50 pounds, crazy. I'll go get a worker to help," I said. Eva just rolled her eyes.

"I'm barely pregnant," she complained, "Not an invalid."

I wagged my finger at her. "Uh-uh. Not happening. Pregnant is pregnant. And you're probably farther along than you think; we'll see at the doctor's Monday. I'm gonna go grab someone--"