Flash fiction, Kendra Cardin

A Change In The Recipe

Maddie stands barefoot in a kitchen cluttered with crumpled newspaper and piles of halfway unpacked cardboard boxes, arranging a ring of devil’s food cake donuts onto her mom’s antique glass cake stand.

From a fresh dozen she selects the plain glazed next, placing them one after another atop the devil’s food. Layer upon layer, she stacks, alternating flavors before crowning her pyramid with her favorite, a sprinkled vanilla.

When she was little, Maddie always helped her mom make the cake for Maddie’s birthday. Nose and cheeks powdered white with flour. Lips smeared with cocoa—the evidence of a stealthily snatched spatula licked clean.

She loved cracking the eggs best. The pop that sounded when she knocked them against the edge of the bowl. The satisfying crinkle when she pulled the halves apart. Clean breaks didn’t come easy, though. No matter how careful Maddie was, a few jagged pieces of shell always slid into the mix. But her mom was right beside her, to make sure the sharp bits didn’t stick.

Every year, they followed the same recipe. A classic yellow two-layer round cake, frosted with store-bought chocolate fudge icing. Bedazzled by Maddie with a heaping sprinkling of rainbow nonpareils. And every year, after the kitchen was scrubbed clean and the plates were set for serving, Maddie made the same wish.

Eyes squeezed tight, she’d sit at the dining room table, holding her breath, anxiously waiting for her parents to finish singing Happy Birthday. Mom smiling soft and reassuring. Dad wearing his fair-weather grin.

Maddie’s birthday was one of the few predictably sunny days of the year, along with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Free from the eggshells she and her mom were so used to walking on around the house. As the smoke from the burning candles curlicued above her cake, Maddie would hope that this year, yes, this year, her wish would come true.

Maddie steps back, admiring the tower of fried dough. The memories of those days melt away when her mom walks into the kitchen, the last moving box tucked under her arm. An easy, bright smile thriving on her face.

August’s warm breeze sneaks in through the cracked open doorway of their townhouse. Maddie pokes thirteen candles into her sweet creation, strikes a match. She cups her hand around the flame to keep it burning steady, and takes a deep breath, looking forward to the wish that comes next.