A/N: 'cupcakes' from the february prompt list!
Elizabeth stood in the center of the kitchen, her cup of coffee cradled in her hands as the steam rose slowly and trailed along her jaw with a faint tingling warmth. Outside, the sky had barely started to lighten against the foreground of barren winter trees whose silhouettes were just beginning to emerge, and she vaguely wished she was still upstairs in bed with Henry, whom she had left curled up under the blankets looking warm and cozy. She cast a quick glance up the darkened staircase and even half-wished that the baby would start crying and give her something else to deal with.
It would certainly be less daunting than what faced her in the kitchen.
On the countertop, there was a spread of ingredients- a bag of flour and a matching one of sugar, a box of cocoa powder, a carton of eggs. Then there was the baking powder and baking soda- the difference between which Elizabeth was never entirely sure of- and the powdered sugar and the butter and food coloring and a dizzying array of rainbow colored sprinkles.
Elizabeth had been staring at them for a good five minutes, alone in the kitchen, which was silent save for the faint, distant ticking of the second hand on the wall clock where it hung above the dining table. The subtle tick-tock was starting to feel vaguely ominous as the minutes slipped away.
Finally, she set her coffee cup down on the countertop with a resounding clink and picked up the recipe book instead, already open to page seventy-three.
Chocolate Cupcakes, it said across the top of the page in bold black letters. And underneath, in a smaller font, Makes 12.
How hard could it be, really? People followed recipes with great success all the time. If she was careful to stick to the instructions, surely she could manage to amass something at least sort of decent, in spite of her prior failings in the cooking and baking arenas.
After all, today was her baby's first birthday. Already, there were balloons hovering and drifting on their strings in the corner and a birthday banner that Henry had hung up before bed the night before. Surely, as Stevie's mom, she could at least manage the cupcakes. It had to be easier than what she had been doing this time last year.
She reached for the mixing bowl, steeling her resolve, and thought back. Though the memory was filtered by the golden haze of time passed, she could bring to mind the bittersweet sight of her own mother in their farmhouse kitchen, the same ingredients spread out across the counters. It was always so lively, a birthday tradition marked by Elizabeth and Will dipping in and out of the kitchen in the hopes of getting an early taste or a sneak peek. Thinking of it now brought a faint tightness to Elizabeth's chest, followed by a matching rush of warm nostalgia.
Grief was complicated that way, a two-sided and brutal tormentor.
It was also, she supposed, what had driven her to this early-morning cupcake baking in the solitude of an otherwise empty kitchen, with her husband and baby daughter sleeping elsewhere in the house. It was an echo of what her own childhood tradition had been like, because try as she might, Elizabeth would never be her mother, and truth be told the cupcake baking should probably have been left to Henry.
But- grief was complicated that way. Even more complicated than cupcakes.
Elizabeth worked her way through the steps very slowly. She double-checked the measurements and made sure not to rush. She pre-heated the oven even though she never could understand what the point was. She greased the muffin tin she had pulled out of the cabinet after taking a good five minutes to locate it and at least another two or three to wonder if she was a bad wife or mother for not knowing where they kept the muffin tin. She mixed cocoa powder with flour and sugar, and thought of her own parents, and all the birthdays they had already missed, of the granddaughter that they never got to meet, and her heart ached. She melted butter and whisked eggs- unsure if there was a particular way to whisk- and thought of her sleeping baby daughter, who had come into the world with a fiery sweetness and just grew into it more and more each day. She tentatively poured the batter into the muffin tin, and wondered how people knew it was ready when the taste gave nothing away, and she half-wished Henry was awake to tell her whether she had already completely screwed the whole thing up, or to make light of it all and make her feel a little more secure about it. At the very least, she thought, perhaps Henry could have prayed that the cupcakes would turn out like some semblance of a dessert. She slid the pan into the hot oven and carefully set the kitchen timer, then flicked on the internal oven light, and reached for her coffee cup. The bit of coffee inside had gone stone cold in her absence, so she dumped it down the kitchen drain and quickly replenished it with hot, fresh coffee from the pot she had made earlier.
She had just lifted herself up on the counter across from the oven- so as to look inside at will and obsessively watch for the cupcakes to hopefully rise and bake- when there was a soft, familiar sort of scuffling sound on the staircase, a gentle creak of the floorboards, and then Henry appeared, running a hand through his hair. He offered her a smile, though he looked a little bemused, as he descended the stairs and crossed the hallway into the kitchen, looking around at the countertops in confusion as he did.
"Hey," Elizabeth said from her place on top of the counter.
"Hi," Henry answered. "What's all this?"
She nodded toward the oven and Henry's gaze drifted over the smattering of flour on Elizabeth's sweatpants to the closed oven door and the muffin tin inside.
"Cupcakes," she said. Henry raised his eyebrows.
"Really?"
Elizabeth shot him a half-heartedly cutting look, and he raised his hands briefly in surrender before he reached for the coffee pot that she had left half-full. He snagged a mug from the upper cabinet and filled it, then came to stand next to his wife where she was sitting on the counter. He leaned in and kissed her, quick and familiar, then took a sip of the steaming coffee in his cup. Inside the oven, the cupcakes were not yet rising.
"They haven't been in long," Elizabeth said with a glance in Henry's direction, almost as if she could read his mind. "I don't think they're supposed to be rising yet."
She looked over at him.
"Are they?"
Henry laughed lightly.
"It's probably fine," he said. He set his coffee cup down on the countertop and easily lifted himself up next to her, so that they were both on the counter facing the oven, and placed a warm hand on her knee.
"Is there a reason you were up before dawn for clandestine cupcakes?" he asked lightly. Elizabeth looked out the window; the sky had lightened fully now, and against a hazy horizon, thin slants of sunlight were starting to reach across the distance and bounce off of the glass, brightening the room. Henry waited, watching her profile as she seemed to weigh her options on answering.
"My mom used to do it for us," she said eventually, though she didn't turn back to look at him. A faint smile, bittersweet and distant, played over her features as she continued to look out the window as if she might be looking into another time or place altogether. "Every birthday, she'd get in the kitchen and make homemade cupcakes- always chocolate cupcakes, never the whole cake deal. She thought they were more fun."
Henry held his silence, and kept his hand where it was resting on Elizabeth's knee.
"I know it's sort of stupid," she said, "but I guess I got it in my head that I had to be the one to do that for Stevie."
She gave a half-shrug of her slender shoulders, and Henry could read the grief that had written itself into the curve of her jaw and the lines of her face, a permanent and fixed addition to the woman that she was. The woman, he was reminded with a sharp pang of his own, that her parents had not been there to watch her become. His gaze flickered over to the stairs; beyond them, on the second floor, his own little girl was sleeping peacefully. He took a moment- ever so brief- to imagine how Elizabeth's father must have felt about her, and his chest grew instantly tight at the mere thought of not seeing Stevie grow into the person she would eventually become.
"Anyway," Elizabeth said with a sigh as she finally tore her eyes away from the window, "I probably messed them up regardless."
Henry looked over at the oven, which they had both neglected as they talked, and smiled.
"I don't know about that," he said, nudging her side gently with his elbow. She glanced up at his face and he inclined his head toward the oven, urging her to look.
When she did, she saw that the cupcakes were rising beautifully toward the incandescent light of the oven, and unbidden a surge of pride and excitement rushed through her. When she looked at Henry again, she was smiling brightly, and the melancholy traces of sadness that had danced over her features a moment ago were gone.
"They're rising!" she exclaimed, delighted, and Henry laughed, all joy and warm affection.
"That they are," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek; when his lips brushed across her cheekbone, they lingered warm and close.
"As are you," he whispered softly, just for her, his breath brushing over her ear.
For a brief moment, Elizabeth closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the fabric of Henry's shirt at the hem, and thought herself wildly fortunate.
Then, the kitchen timer rang sharply, and Henry leaned in to silence it. When he opened the oven door, he found that the cupcakes were perfectly baked.
Elizabeth smiled from her place on the countertop, looking effortlessly pleased with herself.
"Frosting's all on you, McCord," she said, patting him on the shoulder as she jumped down from the counter and headed toward the stairs, tossing him a bright smile over her shoulder as she went.
Then, she was gone, and Henry just stared after her for a moment, until her footsteps had faded away and he was left with twelve perfect cupcakes and the overwhelming feeling that he had been wildly fortunate.