A couple of weeks ago I posted the beginnings of a short story about Daffodil and her brother Mortimer, who were in the midst of week two of quarantine.  Kay added a bit more to the story in the comments and then I added a bit more last week.

I’ve grown rather fond of Daffodil and Mortimer, so when I took a look at Friday’s story prompt and random words, I thought I’d continue their story a little more.  You can read (or re-read) the beginning of the story, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, in this post and part two, A Stranger Comes to Town in this post.

Anyway, without further ado, here is another bit of story featuring bread making and including (most of) the words pretend, monochrome, glow, copper, uprising, chemical, blood, victory, scheme, headstrong, fatality, hollow, debris, vision, burning, and pragmatic

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A Recipe for a Disaster

Daffodil Masters McWhorter blew an errant curl of auburn hair out of her eyes for the millionth time and eyed the charred lump on the countertop that was supposed to be olive walnut bread.

Frankly, it looked more like an over-sized hockey puck, and the debris-filled kitchen looked more like the scene of a recent disaster.

Which, of course, it was.

Daffodil had many skills, but baking wasn’t one of them.  Neither was cooking, for that matter.

There was spilled milk mixed with broken eggs, a mountain of dirty bowls covering the countertop, and an odd chemical smell emanating from the direction of the stove, where something still seemed to be burning.   To top it off, everything—including Daffodil and the copper pots hanging in their regimented row across the wall—was covered with a fine dusting of flour.

On the plus side, there had been no fatalities or bloodshed.

Well, at least not here in the kitchen.  Daffodil didn’t want to make any assumptions about what Mortimer might be doing in the living room.

What had their dad been thinking, coming back from the dead like that; pretending that it was perfectly normal for a person to devise a crazy scheme to fake their own death, disappear for a year, and then waltz back home.

Insurance fraud.  Money really was the root of all evil.

Once she got over the initial shock of seeing her father living and breathing on the front doorstep, Daffodil had been so furious she hadn’t been able to form a complete sentence.  She’d wished she hadn’t left the blowgun in the library, though that was probably for the best.

She’d taken herself off to the kitchen before she did something she’d regret, or at least something she probably should regret, and left Mortimer to deal with their father and his unexpected reappearance.

While Daffodil was headstrong and likely to act first and think later, Mortimer had always been the pragmatic one, taking everything smoothly in stride without any fuss or bother.  It was always a beautiful day in Mortimer’s neighborhood, a vision of delight, filled with opportunities not obstacles, though judging from the amount of shouting she’d heard emanating from the living room a while ago, this situation might be beyond even Mortimer’s abilities.

Daffodil looked around the wreckage of the kitchen and wondered if she should just get the garden hose and spray the whole place down.

Tempting, but probably not.

She opened the dishwasher and started loading the dirty bowls and utensils.  She’d worked out some of her frustrations while kneading the bread dough, so at least that was a small victory for the day, hollow though it might be.   Now, she was starving and ordering takeout during the quarantine had lost its charm weeks ago.

What to do?

When the dishwasher was full, Daffodil squirted in some dish-washing liquid, closed the door, and set it to run.  There hadn’t been any shouting from the living room in quite a while, so she figured it was probably safe to venture out and assess the damages.

Then she had a thought.  Their dad had always been a great cook.  If he was still in one piece, they could put him to work making dinner.

After all, if he was going to return from the dead, he might as well make himself useful

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Happy Wednesday.  Hope you’re having a better day than Daffodil, or at least one that’s not quite as messy.