evening. Their whole relationship with Ruth.
Ruth says, “I know this is crazy, but I really want you guys to try these.” Crazy? Now she has their attention. She sets the bag down on the bare wooden floor.
There will be a grease spot! How can Ruth not know? How can Rocco not say anything? Charlotte almost moans. Rocco is watching Ruth. His gaze is approving, or at least not disapproving. In the past Charlotte and Eli noticed he hardly looked at his girlfriends. He didn’t seem to see them. Okay, Charlotte can live with Ruth bullying them into trying her grandma’s sticky buns if Rocco looks at her. If making them eat sweets before dinner is the worst thing she ever does. If Daisy tries a tiny piece and no more.
Ruth repeats, “I know this is crazy.” She’s talking to Charlotte now, the judgmental sister she needs to win over. Maybe she also intuits that Charlotte distrusts women who are overly friendly to Eli, her handsome husband.
“You know how they say that when you pick fresh corn, even if you bring it straight to the table, the sugar starts converting to starch? Well, that’s how it is with my grandma’s baking. They’re best right out of the oven, and then they’re still great but . . . less. Taste them. Every minute that passes, they’re less perfect. Though they’re still pretty good.”
“Fine,” Charlotte says, if only to make Ruth pick the bag up off the floor.
It would never occur to Charlotte to eat a sticky bun standing in the front hall. But Ruth makes it seem as if it would be hostile to refuse or even insist they wait for later. Ruth pries the gooey pastry from a corrugated plastic tray.
“Here. Take a whole one,” says Ruth. “You need to see how my grandma does the icing. It takes her hours and a lifetime of practice to get it right. She says she puts the sun on each one because she wants to bring light and warmth to everyone who eats them. She has this mystical spiritual thing about suns having eight rays. It’s the number of infinity, or balance. I never remember. She knows magical stuff like that.”
The buns are elaborately iced, each with a sugar starburst. It’s the sort of thing that people did before they were working two jobs and raising kids. Charlotte is always touched by home skills passed through generations.
“It’s great your grandma can do this,” she says.
“Taste it,” Ruth urges. “Come on. Just a little.”
Daisy emerges from behind her father, unable to resist the spectacle of her mom and her uncle’s girlfriend facing off about sugar.
“I want some too,” Daisy says.
“That decides it,” says Ruth, giving Daisy a double thumbs-up, as if to say: Let’s stand up to your mom.
Ruth doesn’t know that Daisy isn’t so easily won over. Charlotte feels badly for enjoying the fact that Ruth has made a mistake with Daisy.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Ruth says.
Charlotte thinks: She’s not your sweetheart.
“Please,” says Daisy. “I really want some.” This can only go one way. Daisy rarely throws tantrums anymore, but there’s no point pushing their luck.
Ruth tears off a feathery chunk and gives one to Eli. Then she pries off an even bigger piece and hands it to Daisy.
No, thinks Charlotte. No. Absolutely no!
Daisy tastes the pastry and breaks into an enormous grin. It’s only a sticky bun, Charlotte knows, but she will never forgive Ruth for this.
She hears her voice shake with rage as she asks Rocco if he wants a sticky bun too.
Rocco says, “I ate one on the way over.”
The older sister in Charlotte thinks a warning about ruining his dinner, even as the grown-up hostess eats the buttery pastry.
“Wow,” says Eli. “This is excellent.”
Charlotte savors the burnt sugar, licks icing off her fingers.
“It really is,” she says.
The prickly moment is over. Sugar has beveled down the edges.
Sometimes Charlotte worries that she and Eli care too much about food, another aspect of privilege. Lots of people care about food. Rocco does too, and so, it seems, does Ruth.
“My grandmother is a genius cook.”
“Obviously.” She’s nice, Charlotte thinks. She’s open. She’s just a little . . . jittery.
“Ruth can be bossy,” Rocco says.
Ruth doesn’t miss a beat. “You could call it bossy. Or you could say: Ruth knows when something is good and wants to share it.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Charlotte says, at the same moment Rocco mumbles, “Touché.” It’s hard to tell if he’s being glum or flirtatious. His girlfriends