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“Have you fulfilled your end of the promise?” Clara asked, peering through a crack in the doorway.
“Why wouldn’t I have?” A voice as clear as a summer night chirped out to her, smiling effortlessly from across the threshold. “Do you wanna hold them before you let me in?”
Clara squinted and held out a hand to accept the bounty: a wicker basket with a purple gingham cloth draped over the opening. “Always a classic presentation,” she said, peeling back the shroud and taking a good long look at the contents. “Exactly as promised! Come in, come in!”
“Clara,” Camilla sighed, shaking her head as she stepped into her home. “You baked, right?”
“Of course!” Clara insisted. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“You didn’t think I held up my end of the bargain,” Camilla giggled.
Clara began pulling glass jars out of the basket. “So, what is all this?”
“The jars are labeled,” Camilla said, running her finger over the hand-written labels on top of the lids. “Raspberry jam. Caramelized onions. Sweet pickles.”
“Delicious!” Clara squealed.
“Keep those onions on ice if you open them up,” she suggested. “They heat back up real nice, but they’ll spoil if you don’t get them cold.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.
“I don’t know how you bake as well as you do,” Camilla sighed. “I do believe I was promised a goreberry pie for my services, correct, Clara?”
“Yes, yes, you were.” She gestured over her shoulder to the wood oven she baked in. “And you’ll get it soon.”
Camilla rolled her eyes. “Always such a tease. Is that how you’re telling me you wanted me to make that soup you love so much?”
A wide smile spread across Clara’s lips and her brows knitted softly. “I mean,” she whispered. “Maybe. I know the ingredients don’t grow where you are.”
“I come and go,” Camilla mused, her voice lilting gently. “Have you got them here?”
“Naturally.”
Another sigh. Camilla began to tie up her long black hair as she walked on over to the stove. “I was hoping I was done cooking for the day.”
Clara clapped her hands together tightly and bowed her head to Camilla. “Sorry! But it’s so good. I just can never make it like you do, no matter how many times you try and teach me the recipe.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Camilla laughed. It was so effortless. “Just light this for me, Clare Bear. It’s not like I have kids who need me or anything.”
“Are you still not wanting a baby?” Clara asked her, snapping her fingers and lighting the stove for Camilla.
She shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve got what it takes.”
“I want kids.”
“I know you do,” Camilla said, digging through her pots and pans for the biggest pot she had. “I think your kids are going to love you a lot.”
“You should come and cook for them,” Clara suggested with a playful grin.
Camilla hummed. “Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see if I stick around much longer.”