Just Like Mom Made

Paige

The kitchen, like every other room in Tommaso’s house, looked nothing like anything I’d seen before. High, light-wood ceilings with exposed beams loomed over a terracotta floor and butcherblock countertops of the same wood as the ceiling. Glass French doors showed a terracotta porch. I sucked in a deep breath and got a lungful of rich, buttery caramel and chocolate.

Memories washed over me, but for the first time in a long time, they were happy ones. Saturday mornings, making my favorite caramel-chocolate chip cookies with my mom to the tune of Dad’s old Rat Pack records. She would croon along with Sinatra over the whirring of the hand mixer, and I would try to hit the lowest notes I could hear until both of us collapsed in giggles. Dad would always take advantage of our distraction to steal a spoonful of dough or a cookie from the cooling rack, so hot he puffed little dragon-breaths to keep from burning himself while Mom and I only laughed harder.

I sagged against the wall, tea