The cast-iron griddle covered both front eyes of the kitchen stove, seasoned black by thirty years of lard and wood smoke.
Evelyn Mercer stood before it with a chipped enamel mixing bowl tucked into the crook of her left arm, beating a thick batter of wild stoneground rye and buttermilk with a split birch whisk.
The morning wagon had brought her from the school with a witnessed daytime return sheet. June met her at the kitchen door. Evelyn’s school bed remained assigned; breakfast work was something she had offered, not a second residential admission.
Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, exposing the pale, scarred skin of her forearms. In the center of the bowl, a white pocket of dry flour resisted the whisk.
She stopped, looking down at the batter, her forehead creasing with that familiar, sudden stillness.
June, sitting on the corner of the dry goods chest with her boot heels kicking rhythmically against the pine boards, paused her swinging.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” June asked.
Evelyn didn’t try to hide the bowl. She didn’t pretend she had dropped a spoon. She turned the bowl toward June, tilting it into the morning sun that slanted through the kitchen window.
