Happy Friday everyone. Wow this was one busy week. A lot of it was because I took a lot of time off last week due to the oral surgery but a chunk of it is just the time of year. I know I will end up missing about a week once Thanksgiving hits. With the prep work needed for the big meal plus the traveling time, time is soon to be a very rare commodity. Admittedly the house will smell fabulous. This year I get to make my favorite carrot cake for the the feast. I adore carrot cake but rarely make it, mostly because we don’t need to have an entire cake in the house unless there is company. But I do love baking in general and with the heat finally breaking I can use my oven again. Fabulous! And once I start baking it will smell like the holidays. But for now, catching up before the holidays take over is a very good thing. And why this week was a busy one. I know, not what you came here for, so without further ado, let’s set the timers for fifteen minutes and get into our morning writing prompt.
I need to figure out who Brian is to her and what the betrayal is. For some reason my brain says this isn’t a personal cheating spouse thing but more of a business situation. Maybe a family member who embezzled or stole some proprietary information. I expect I will be thinking about it for the rest of the day.
Friday, November 6th: She rolled out the dough.
She rolled out the dough. Alice tried to keep it in as rectangular a shape as she could knowing it would be easier if she did. The edges wanted to spring back a little so the edges were rounded. Once rolled, she knew it needed to rest just a little bit longer.
Like her, it needed time to relax.
She covered it with a cloth and left it to sit while she tidied up around the dough and got ready for the next phase. Alice found as she worked she had calmed down a bit. She knew several of her friends relaxed eating baked goods or ice cream or chocolate or even something salty like chips. Somehow the eating was never what calmed her, it was the making.
Alice could be tense enough to snap like a twig when she was tying on her apron over her clothes but as soon as she started measuring and mixing, the tension always seeped out of her. It didn’t work with ordinary meals. She cooked well enough but that generally involved adding a dash of something or a pinch of something else. It was necessary as one couldn’t live off pastry alone. But with general cooking she felt productive and industrious. It was only the baking that calmed her.
Oddly, she didn’t enjoy eating a lot of the baked goods. She knew when these cinnamon rolls were finally baked, cooled and iced, she would have one with coffee and then pass the rest on to others to devour. She liked the first one. It tasted nice but she ate it more because she wanted to make certain it came out as she expected not because she was craving the treat.
She washed the bowls and the paddle for the stand mixer. She dried her hands and made certain the sweet and spicy filling was ready to go. Deciding the dough had enough time to rest, she went back to it, pulling the towel off the top like a magician revealing the next trick. The dough relaxed to the point she wanted and puffed up a little.
She didn’t mind about the puffing as it would deflate a bit while she rolled. Alice sprinkled the mix on the top of the dough rectangle and then used a pizza cutter to cut the dough into long strips. She rolled each strip up into a circular shape and put it in the buttered pan. She continued until all of the long strips were rolled, the filling slightly oozing out around the edges. With everything prepared, she put them in the preheated oven and set the timer.
With the baking in progress, Alice continued to tidy up the kitchen until the only trace of her efforts awa the warm sweet cinnamon scent wafting from the oven as the rolls baked. The tenseness she felt earlier faded, but she still knew she needed some answers.
Alice hated secrets. She hated keeping them and she hated knowing others. She hadn’t meant to find out anyone else’s secrets. She hadn’t pried into Brian’s information. He simply became careless, complacent. She didn’t look, so he stopped bothering to hide.
She hadn’t known what to do about his secrets. At least not where he was concerned. For her part, she knew that protecting herself was the best response. There would be no point confronting him until she was prepared.
The lies hurt the most. But Alice knew from experience wailing over the pain didn’t make it go away. So she held the pain. She watched, she waited and she prepared. She knew that Brian was getting ready to make his move. He believed she knew nothing. That she found almost worse than the initial betrayal. That he would want her unprepared when he shattered her life.
‘As though he couldn’t be happy unless I was miserable.’ She took a deep breath feeling a rough, raw spot inside. Pretending it wasn’t coming, that she didn’t know Brian planned to take to her when he got home wouldn’t help avoid anything. ‘Looking like it is a surprise might help me learn more,’ she thought. The thought swam up from the cold, practical part of her mind. The part of her mind that insisted she prepare before confronting Brian.
She decided it was good advice.
