Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“There’s regular kimchee in there as well,” Hannah reminded her brother. “It’s in the back wrapped in the paper towel.”
“Thank you,” Kola said, grinning at her.
“Remember when you open that, it expands.”
Finn looked at me, and I nearly choked on my water. It was a testament to love that he tried the radish and then drank the glass of milk Hannah offered him, along with a large slice of banana bread.
“There is a ringing in my ears,” he admitted to Jake, who only shrugged.
Moving on.
I am happy to report that Kola had the exact birthday he wanted. First, I cooked and made his favorite, lasagna with homemade garlic knots and a Caesar salad. Hannah made him his special, ridiculous—I don’t even know that it has a name—brownie/cookie concoction. She only makes it once a year, and only for him. Sadly, he’s never been much of a cake eater. When he was little, if a giant cookie was off the table, he preferred cupcakes. One year, for whatever reason, Hannah whipped him up something special, and from that time to now, he wants it every year. She had a break when he was in California going to school, but I think, even though she says no, that she missed baking the abomination for him.
Basically she has to make the dough for six different cookies, snickerdoodle, chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip—because in my house no one has ever eaten a raisin—shortbread, peanut butter, and sugar. Then she cuts a wedge from each one and layers it in a pan so with each piece you get a taste of six different cookies, and on the bottom and top goes a layer of extra fudgy moist brownie. No nuts. Kola is not a fan. I’m telling you now, if the words “I love you” were never uttered from her to her brother, he’d still know, from the amount of time this took, that she loved him. She starts in the morning, and the dough preparation is bad enough, but then there’s the brownie portion. All of this is made from scratch. The baking is a whole other thing. She has to watch two separate timers, one for the cookie part and one for the brownie part, and can’t let any part be either over or undercooked. And…she serves it with homemade, hand-cranked, vanilla bean ice cream. It’s incredible. Finn was utterly flabbergasted.
“What do you do for her birthday?” he asked Kola.
“On whatever day she picks to celebrate, I drive all over town and get all her favorites,” he replied.
“That’s it?”
Jake laughed and coughed at the same time. I patted his back to make sure he wasn’t choking on something.
Harper pointed at Hannah. “Have you seen her eat?”
“Well, of course but––”
“No,” Sam assured him, chuckling, “you haven’t.”
“He picks her up for breakfast, and they’re gone all day,” I informed Finn.
“All day?”
“I went once,” Harper told him. “But I just… I can’t eat that much food.”
Finn turned to Hannah, who batted her eyelashes at him.
“No.”
Kola chuckled. “Last year we went to the Honeybear Café, and she had this French toast that had everything you can think of on it, like chocolate and caramel sauce, bananas, blueberries, powdered sugar, Nutella and––what?” He glanced at Jake.
“Nuts, right? Candied something?”
“Yes,” Kola agreed. “That’s it. Pecans that she loves and I hate. But anyway, the thing is just mammoth.”
Jake was nodding.
“And then we went to Highland Park for a bagel and lox––”
“How long after?” Finn inquired.
Kola looked at Harper.
“I have no idea. I didn’t go last year. I went the year before.”
His focus turned to Jake then.
“I’d say an hour later.”
Finn’s green eyes flicked back to Hannah. “You’re not a big person. Where do you put it?”
“I have a speedy metabolism,” she explained.
He shook his head.
“What? I do.”
“Then for lunch we had Mediterranean food, and then it was out to Lincoln Park for cupcakes, and then we got veggie tamales from Tamales Lo Mejor De Guerrero down on Clark, and normally it goes on and on like that.”
“I enjoy taking pictures of him not eating,” Hannah told Finn and cackled.
“It’s a whole thing,” Kola stated as he ate a slice of his brownie decadence. “And I would do it even if I didn’t get this.”
“But that helps,” Harper chimed in, knowing Kola as he did.
“Yes, it does,” he agreed.
Finn looked at Hannah, who waggled her eyebrows for him.
“You people are weird.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Sam assured him.
In the third week of October, Finn was drafted into doing the beeswax pouring for the Samhain candles with Kola. When he came in from the deck—Hannah remaining outside to speak over the wax, Kola stringing fairy lights on the deck—he saw all the gourds in lines on the table, each with an index card underneath.
“This is quite the production,” he told me.