Chapter 8: Greta's Kitchen

"We don't tell my grandmother," Anders said, "until Saturday."

We were standing in the pantry doorway with our voices pitched low.

"Why not?"

"Her heart is not good," he said.

"If she hears a stranger has written to me in your name for three months, she'll take it out on someone with her cane."

"I'd like to see that."

"So would I. Not before the Ball."

"Agreed," I said. "For now, I make lefse."

"You what?"

"Greta said if I was staying for dinner I was working for it."

The Engdahl kitchen was big and warm, with copper pots hanging over a scarred wooden table and a window over the sink full of lake.

Greta had tied on an apron that said KISS THE COOK in letters that had almost washed out.

She had a heap of boiled potatoes in a bowl, a ricer, a griddle the size of a manhole cover, and a long wooden stick.

"You roll it thin," she said, "until you can read the newspaper through it."

"I can't read a newspaper through anything," Anders said.

"You can't read a newspaper at all, dear, you only read the financial section. Matilda, show him."

I rolled out my first round of dough, thin and slightly lopsided.

I lifted it onto the griddle with the stick the way she'd shown me.

It puffed and spotted brown.

"You're a natural," said Greta.

"I fix engines. It's the same thing. Don't let the heat fool you."

"Anders, your turn."

He took the stick.

I watched him lay out a round of dough that was too thick on one side and too thin on the other.

He lifted it, and half of it stayed on the board.

"You've torn it."

"It's rustic."

"It's a casualty."

The next one scorched.

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