“How’s Lucinda? Is she mad at me? Why is she mad at me?” he asked. The cook had already left, and the place would have been mine, except that Tag didn’t make a move to leave. “She’ll get over it,” I said. I looked over at the dessert case. There was a half of a chocolate cake left. “Lucinda insists we have you make the normal number of desserts. The leftover chocolate cake will probably go at lunchtime,” he said. I told him I was making pumpkin cheesecakes for the desserts and pumpkin muffins to keep to the orangish theme. “Do you think the town council would go crazy if I called them Monarch Muffins?” “They might be okay with that, but why take a chance? Just call them what they are—pumpkin muffins,” he said. Still, Tag didn’t leave, and eventually he started helping me. It seemed like I was never going to get to bake alone. At least I was sure all the measurements would be exactly accurate, I thought, watching him pouring sugar into a measuring cup.
