with beets. Here. Take the cream.” She shoves it toward me along with a giant lemon.
“Guys, it’s good!” I insist.
Charlotte passes me a mixing bowl with eyes that speak to the depths to which she does not trust that root vegetables can be good in dessert.
Laughing, I pour the beets into the blender. “I need apple cider vinegar, please.” When that gets plopped in front of me, I add it to the blender and push purée.
“Why do they smell so bad?” Maggie wails over the sound of the blender.
“You can’t even smell them anymore,” I contend. “And it’s not bad.”
“It’s not good,” Charlotte intones.
I turn to Ginny. “You’re my tie-breaker.”
She gives me an apologetic face. “I’m sorry. It reeks in here. It smells like—”
“Earth,” Deek supplies, making us all jump.
He twitches when we all turn to look at him.
“Hi, Deek,” I greet.
He gives me a cautious smile. “Hey.” He indicates the army of bowls and supplies with a chin tip. “Can I help?”
I give him the warmest of smiles. “Do you like the smell of Earth?”
“I do,” he agrees. He casts a considering look at the other three females in the room. “You’re all nuts.”
“Oooh!” I crow, and clap my hands. “I like you—you are now my favorite helper.”
“He’s about to be your only one,” Charlotte mutters, and I see all three girls are gearing up for mutiny.
I tsk at them. “Give this a chance, you bunch of whiners. Okay, first up: who wants to make the mascarpone?”
We spend a good hour making mascarpone and the sugary beet slurry that we then combine to make ice cream.
“Now what?” Ginny asks.
“Now we put it in the freezer and get to the surprise part of the evening,” I announce, shoving the quart of pink goodness onto the freezer rack. “To the backyard, let’s go!”
“If I were home, that charge would have ended with ‘you mutts!’” Deek shares.
I point to him. “I like that.” I wave at the children. “Let’s go, you mutts!”
Chuckling, they tromp to the backyard where, under the patio table that we never bothered to untarp this year, I managed to hide a box.
“I was going to ask you what this was,” Maggie says. “Deek and I found it today when we were playing hide-and-go-seek.”
I waggle a box cutter. “Let’s find out, shall we?” I hand it to Deek.
Momentary surprise eclipses his thoughtful expression, but he takes the box cutter, slices through the crazy-thick cardboard, and reveals…
“A bunch of poles?” Charlotte asks, bemused. She nudges the box, and it bursts, spilling humongous springs.
“Mom, what was it supposed to be?” Maggie asks, wincing like maybe whatever I ordered arrived horribly broken.
“It’s going to be—” I start.
Ginny claps her hands on her cheeks. “OH! I know what this is!” She turns to me, thrilled. “Can I say?”
I wave to her. “Go ahead.”
She jumps up and down. “IT’S A TRAMPOLINE!”
Charlotte and Maggie both make shocked exclamations—and then they’re tearing the poles out of the box.
“Careful,” I caution, searching for the flimsy sheet of instructions. I try to lift the netting. I tug on it. I really tug on it. “Gosh, for being see-through, this is heavy.” This is why I love our UPS man. He went above and beyond on delivery day, offering to carry it to our backyard like a trooper because there was no way I could heft the box.
I catch the tiny piece of paper that was tucked into the folds of what will soon hopefully be the trampoline’s net. A peek at it tells me it’s a waste of paper. “Oh, great. An incomprehensible line drawing.”
“Here, let me see,” Charlotte says. “Wow.”
Maggie reaches up for it, and we pass her the sheet. “I could draw this,” she declares. “Mom, I could draw this blindfolded.”
“We don’t need the directions,” Ginny announces.
Charlotte looks at her friend, nonplussed. “You know how to put together a trampoline?”
“Not yet.” Ginny jerks her thumb at Deek. “But we’ll figure it out, and we’ve got him.”
Deek almost takes a step back when our attention swivels to him.
“Everyone says werewolves are super strong,” Ginny says speculatively, eyeing Deek’s arms.
His fingers find his sleeve, and he tries to tug it down once before he catches himself and straightens. Glancing around at us nervously, he admits, “Almost all shapeshifters are strong.” He meets my eyes, and adds, “Finn is stronger than most.”
He quickly drops his gaze.
I wave to the box. “Since the product didn’t indicate that a shapeshifter is