When I returned to the Plum home on Thursday, it was with a very good understanding of how to separate eggs. I'd looked up my question on a search engine the night before, and the general opinion was that there was not a major difference how to separate different types of eggs. Once Mrs. Plum saw that I'd mastered this skill, we could move on to the next stage of the recipe.

I'd also gone shopping earlier that week, and with the help of a customer who had been buying a lot of cake mixes, I'd been able to figure out what I needed to buy in order to make the cake. She'd helped me pick out various measuring cups as well as measuring spoons. She'd told me about the different types of pans I'd need, so I'd bought some of those as well. I even purchased cooking oil in the liquid form as well as the spray on form, but when I looked back on that, it might have been a mistake because I couldn't remember Mrs. Plum actually using cooking oil when she'd made the cake. Maybe she sprayed it on all of her pans beforehand? I would have to ask her about that.

I even bought different types of eggs to practice separating and, sure enough, I had no problems separating the assortments of eggs. Well, all right, the brown eggs took me a few attempts, but in the end I was able to do it without any shell falling in. Besides, I was pretty sure that the recipe for pineapple upside down cake didn't call for brown eggs.

I returned to the house after my shopping trip, hoping to spend some time with Steph. Unfortunately, I found a hastily scribbled note from her.

Hey Joe,

Lula and I are off tracking down Boonz, my FTA. I won't be back until late, so we're going to stop at Cluck in a Bucket for dinner. Call or text me if you want me to pick up anything for you.

See you tonight.

Love,

Stephanie

As I read the note, I wondered if Stephanie paid Lula a percentage of what she earned per skip, or Lula assisted for free because she hated filing. Sad as it was to think, Vinnie should just promote Lula to Assistant Bounty Hunter and hire someone else to do the filing. At this point, it sounded like Connie was stuck with the job, and from the way Steph described it, she was none too happy about it. Still, I wasn't going to stick my nose in her job unless it was absolutely necessary, and internal problems regarding distribution of work hardly qualified.

At exactly seven, I rang the doorbell. Five seconds later, Grandma Mazur opened the door and, one armed, pulled me inside. She was holding out long wooden spoon in the other.

"Get in," she hissed at me. "Helen just finished getting ready. Did you do the homework?"

Feeling as though I was taking part in an illegal operation, I nodded bemusedly.

Still holding me by the arm, Grandma Mazur nodded and dragged me into the kitchen.

"Okay, Helen, I got him," she reported. "He didn't have a chance to run."

I forced a laugh. "I wasn't going to run."

"Oh no?" Grandma grinned widely. "Wait until you hear what Helen's got planned for you tonight."

I turned my attention to a smiling Mrs. Plum, who'd just finished putting away the last of the dinner dishes. "What's that?"

"You're going to be performing the first three steps of the recipe, Joseph," she replied. "I've decided that we need to start you off working with small pieces at a time, and you're going to do them over and over until you can do them in your sleep. Once I think you've mastered that, we'll move on."

"It's kind of like playing the piano," Grandma Mazur supplied. "You start out with a few notes, and you keep repeating them until you can do it with your eyes closed. Then, you get a few more notes, which you add onto the ones you can now play in your sleep. Before you know it, you've gotten a song memorized."

Mrs. Plum smiled stiffly. "Except this is much harder."

I took a deep breath and then exhaled. "I have to make it sometime, right?"

"Yes."

I scanned the recipe and Mrs. Plum showed me what part she wanted me to get up to. Tonight, I had to get all of the eggs separated, mix in the pineapples (she'd sliced them prior to my arrival), put in the vanilla at the right point, mash up the butter and mix it in at various intervals, and finally, mix in the flour and the sugar. Once I'd mastered these steps completely, I would know how to perform one third of the recipe.

My first try was a disaster. I ended up getting more ingredients on me and on the floor than in the bowl. What did get in the bowl ended up looking like a lumpy, soggy mess. Now, having never baked before, this might be what cake batter should look like before it went into the oven, but it looked thoroughly unappetizing to me. Also, it smelled a little like Bob after I'd taken him for a walk and it started pouring down rain halfway through.

Grandma Mazur offered to clean up the mess from the floor so I could make a second attempt. This went better, but the batter still smelled like a wet dog. The color had changed from grayish tan to off white, which I took to be an improvement. I didn't think that I'd gotten as much of the ingredients on me, but it was difficult to tell.

I really started to get the hang of things on my third try, and by the time I'd gone through my fourth attempt, I thought I might be able to memorize the whole thing before Steph turned 40. Two tries later, and I was pretty sure I'd gotten everything right, in the right order. Mrs. Plum inspected my work and declared that it was passable for a first night's practice.

"You have to work on your timing, Joseph, but once you have everything memorized, I think you'll do fine. I want you to practice this again at home, at least four more times. You must be able to perform these steps in your sleep before we can continue." She paused and took a minute to stare at me. I probably looked like a human cake monster. "I must admit that you're a fast learner."

"Thanks," I replied, trying not to reveal just how tired I was. I'd have to get up at least an hour earlier the next day because I'd left work early tonight, and I felt as though I'd spent the past two—no, three—hours running a marathon.

Grandma Mazur took a moment to observe my status. "You look like you fell into a giant tub of cake mix and then rolled around in flour. Gives a new meaning to the phrase tarred and feathered. In your case, battered and floured."

Mrs. Plum gave an appreciative chuckle at that. "I'll have to remember that one, Mom."

I gave them polite smiles and attempted not to roll my eyes. "Mind if I use your bathroom to clean up?" Then, I remembered that I'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes. "Oh shit. Never mind—I don't have any spare clothes with me."

Mrs. Plum's smile disappeared as she made a tutting sound, probably because of my swearing.

"You can borrow something from Frank. You'll have to tell Steph that you were attempting to fix the oil in his car and got sprayed." She gave me a quick body scan. "Unfortunately, I think they may be too wide on you, and a good few inches too short, but you can't go home looking like that."

That was the understatement of the year.

"Um, should I leave mine here?" I asked her.

Mrs. Plum nodded briefly before turning back to her sink. Grandma Mazur, looking as though her birthday had come early, turned to me.

"I can take them to the laundry room if you want to take them things off here."

I glanced at Mrs. Plum, who was trying hard not to smile. "That's not necessary. I'll bring them down after I shower."

"Well, if you think it's best," Grandma Mazur relented, sighing. "I just don't want you to mess up the floors."

Right.

"You can wear those as a spare pair when you are finished on Sunday," Mrs. Plum called to me as I left the kitchen.

She didn't add, "In case you forget to bring your own again", but I thought it was implied.

Anyway, I'd have to remember to return Frank's clothes. I felt more than a little weird about wearing Steph's father's clothes, if only for an hour or so, but what was the alternative? It wasn't like I could return home wearing only my underwear. At least I wouldn't need to borrow that from Frank. That gave me the willies.

Fifteen minutes later, I was struggling into a pair of loose but short pants and a loose but too short shirt. At least the shirt was a t-shirt. Pretty much all of my arms came out of the thing, but it was very loose around the stomach. The pants needed a belt (also borrowed from Frank) to stay up. I bid the Plums goodbye, carrying a bag of chocolate cake, and headed towards my car. I was very glad that it was late, because the sight of me walking to my car in broad daylight looking as I did was sure to start the Burg rumor mill. People would still see me and talk, but it would take a day to get around, as opposed to an hour. By then, Steph would have seen me and been amused, but not as surprised as some of her Burg neighbors.

I glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard of my car. It was past 9:30. Not late by usual standards, but I'd have to get up by 4:30 at the latest tomorrow, and I was already exhausted from a long day at work combined with the baking lessons. I had no doubt that it would be worth it in the end, but it sure wouldn't be a lot of fun in the meantime.

Steph was watching TV on the couch with Bob when I arrived. She turned her attention away from the show to give me a hug, and then just gaped at me.

"What the hell happened?" she demanded.

She wasn't angry—I could see a smile playing at her lips—but she was certainly surprised to see me in her dad's clothes.

"Oil spill from your dad's car," I told her. "Your dad lent me these. I showered first," I added.

Steph rolled her eyes. "Everyone's going to be talking about this tomorrow."

I gave her a kiss on the forehead and held her close. "At least the gossip won't be about you. Now's your chance to do something really crazy, Cupcake."

She laughed and kept her arms locked around my shoulders. "I have some other ideas for tonight. But before you change…" She grabbed her cell phone and snapped a picture. "Just in case."

"Can I see it?"

She gave me another eye roll. "I'm that that naïve, Joe." She hit a few buttons on the phone, probably emailing it to herself.

It was worth a shot. Anyway, it might be worth saving when Steph found out the truth. Maybe even keeping for posterity.

I pulled her into another hug and began to play with a loose strand of her hair. "We better lock the bedroom door before you get any ideas about tonight, Cupcake. Don't want to corrupt Bob."

She giggled, put her cell phone away, and we headed upstairs.

My alarm went off at 4:30, but it took me another five minutes to become awake enough to shut it off. I'd have liked nothing better than pull the covers back over me and Steph and sleep for another three or four hours.

Then, not sleep for another hour or two.

Well, that wasn't going to happen today. I'd be working until 9PM at the earliest. I had mountains of paperwork to get through. Still, I wasn't one to mope. I got out of bed, dressed and showered, and then tucked Stephanie into the covers. She stirred but did not wake up, which was probably best for the time being. I couldn't afford to be late. My boss wasn't happy about my temporarily new hours because they made things more complicated for everyone else. I'd have liked to say a few things about that, but I held my tongue. No need to get put on probation or suspension right before I proposed to Steph.

Over the next couple of weeks, I managed to find time to take baking lessons at the Plums, practice baking at home without Steph finding out, not fall asleep at work, and basically perform all of my regular responsibilities to the degree I'd been doing before I decided to propose with home made pineapple upside down cake.

I didn't think that most people found baking to be all that difficult. Certainly, things were made easier by all of those prepackaged mixes. Mrs. Plum abhorred them the way I did with serial killers and rapists. They were akin to the abridged books to the world of readers.

"They're simplistic," she fumed one night after I'd made the mistake of asking about them.

In my defense, I hadn't been suggesting replacing her cake with a cake mix. I'd only mentioned the mixes because I'd been explaining how I'd gotten help with figuring out what measuring instruments were what from a woman who'd planned to purchase several boxes of those mixes.

"If you want a real brownie, you have to cut up a half pound of pure chocolate into tiny slices. You have to use real butter. You have to use the right eggs. You can't just take that chocolate stuff and put in water and bake it for thirty minutes. It isn't done!"

"What she means is, it's not done here," Grandma Mazur clarified. "It's one of the seven deadly sins."

I turned my attention from the floor to Grandma Mazur. "Which one?"

"All of them!" snapped Mrs. Plum.

Grandma Mazur snorted. "You're being dramatic. The one I meant was pride. But I guess you could argue that it leads to gluttony, seeing as how it doesn't taste as good as a homemade dish, and I saw on a TV show that people tend to eat more of something that they don't really like. Then there's anger, on account that you eat so much of something you don't like that you gain weight. Then there's envy, because you know you can't cook as well as someone who makes it from scratch, and more envy since you're gained weight from eating too much of the mixed brownies. You got lust because you're always wanting more brownies."

"The main one is sloth, since you're too lazy to make the brownies from scratch," added Mrs. Plum. "But you get greedy because once you taste the real ones, you won't be able to stop eating them."

Grandma Mazur counted on her fingers. "Guess that's all seven. Heh. Who'd have thought that prepackaged mixes could lead to all seven of the deadly sins?"

"I did!" retorted Mrs. Plum. "The point, Joseph, is that once you start on that road, there's no going back. It's better to learn the right way, from me."

I just nodded and acted as though I understood all of this. I supposed that I did, to an extent. I mean, if you spent years perfecting an already great recipe by figuring out at what point to add certain amounts of each ingredient, I could see how it would make you annoyed if you saw prepackaged versions of a similar item being used by the majority of the population.

"Why don't you open a bakery?" I asked Mrs. Plum. "Or, you could offer to sell some of your dishes at the Tasty Pastry?"

But Mrs. Plum just shook her head. "I cook for my family," she explained simply.

On the final day of my fifth week of cooking lessons, Mrs. Plum declared that my cake was "more than edible" and I was ready to learn how to whip cream. If I thought I'd gotten messy before, it was nothing compared to what happened when I attempted to whip cream. In my defense, Grandma Mazur kept getting in the way. Usually, she just sat at the table, eating a piece of cake leftover from dessert or drinking tea, content to make quips from time to time. That day, she decided that she wanted to take a more direct approach. My cynical side told me it was because my cooking lessons were coming to a close, and although she'd tried three times, she hadn't yet succeeded in pinching my butt. She probably thought that she'd be able to do it if I was too busy concentrating on mixing cream and wouldn't be able to sidestep her so easily.

Well, I wasn't a cop for nothing, and by the end of that day, Grandma Mazur still hadn't managed to get at my butt. Somehow, though, I thought that it might have been easier to let her do it, because the amount of cream I got on me took three washings to get out. I still smelled like whipped cream and eggs by the time I got home. Luckily, that night, things had gone especially late, and Steph was asleep on the couch when I got back. Not wanting to wake her, I found a blanket and placed it around her. It wasn't an especially cold evening, but I guessed I was feeling especially affectionate.

We'd been seeing less of each other, literally speaking, since I'd started my baking lessons. My early mornings meant we often missed each other during the day. When I worked late, we'd still have sex, but only once or twice in an evening. I usually fell asleep right afterwards.

Stephanie voiced her concern about this over breakfast the Saturday after I'd learned how to whip cream. It had taken place a week after I'd started learning the process, so I knew that I'd be able to make the cake for her the following day. Of course, Steph didn't know this, and all she saw were my coming home tired after working extra hours at work, or exhausted after helping out at her parents. I was looking forward to this whole thing being finished.

"How's my dad doing?" she asked over coffee and donuts.

I momentarily drew a blank, forgetting that I'd told Steph that he'd pulled his back. Not fully remembering what she was talking about but knowing I had to say something, I hedged.

"Better. Almost back to normal." I took a sip of coffee to give myself a moment to think. Fortunately, the haze vanished and I remembered my excuse for visiting her parents so much.

Steph sighed, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Damn it, she was starting to get suspicious. Or maybe I was being paranoid. No, it was definitely the first. Steph's instincts were too good not to notice something was up. At least I'd only be over at her parents a few more times. Tops.

"How much longer will you be going over there?" she queried.

I took a bite of donut as I did the calculations. I was pretty sure that tomorrow would be the day, since Mrs. Plum and I had done two trial runs the Wednesday before. Both times, my cakes had been "acceptable". My whipped cream was "moderate". From her, this was high praise. Still, anything could happen on the day, and I didn't want to make any promises I'd regret.

"Honestly, Cupcake, I think that tomorrow will be the last day, but I'm not positive. He might need me for another week." I gave her hand a squeeze. "It won't be much longer."

"He's been sitting in his chair more than usual. Did you notice that?" she continued. "How's he going to get better if he doesn't do anything?"

"I think you're supposed to rest a little in order to recover from a shoulder sprain."

Her eyes definitely narrowed this time. "I thought Dad hurt his back."

Damn it!

"He did, but last week he pulled his shoulder when he was trying to find the remote," I improvised. "It fell under the couch and your mom asked him to look for it. It was before I arrived to help with the leaky sink."

She seemed mollified. "At least you're getting plenty of my mom's dessert out of it," she laughed. She studied me. "Not that you look it."

I grinned back at her. I'd actually lost ten pounds over the weeks because of all of the running around. Anyone who wanted to pay to join a gym should just take baking lessons with Mrs. Plum for a few months.

"Morellis have good metabolism," I reminded her. "That, and all of the heavy labored breathing we've been doing at night."

Steph took a swat at me, which I graciously accepted.

Mrs. Plum called immediately after we'd finished eating.

"Since you're going to attempt to make the cake for Stephanie tomorrow, I think you should stay later tonight to do one more test run," she informed me. "I'll tell Steph that her father sprained one of his toes and needs the extra help."

"She won't be happy about that," I told Mrs. Plum.

"Do you or do you not want the cake to turn out perfectly?" she shot back.

I held the phone in stunned silence for a minute. Then, I counted to ten.

"All right, Mrs. Plum. I'll let her know."

"I knew you'd do the right thing," Mrs. Plum replied curtly. "Joseph, there's one last thing that has to go into the cake. I'll show you tonight." Then, she hung up.

Great. As if I wasn't feeling worried enough about the whole thing.

I wondered what this mystery ingredient could be. Maybe Maalox? I'd sure need it before the weekend was over.