My mother believed my brother had gotten me hired at the cheese plant.

My mother believed my brother had gotten me hired at the cheese plant.

At my twenty-ninth birthday dinner, I mentioned a better offer.

Dad told me to stay put and be grateful.

Donnie nodded across the table at me, knowing whose work kept his line running—and whose reputation he’d been borrowing for six years…
Mom asked how work was going while I was trying to rescue the crunchy onions from the bottom of the green bean casserole.

It was my twenty-ninth birthday, she had made fried chicken, and I was comfortable enough to give her an answer longer than “fine.”
“Good.

Hilltop over in Stevens Point offered me a lead mechanic job.

Day shift.

More money.

I’ve been thinking about it.”
Donnie stopped cutting his chicken.
“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “That’s wonderful.”
Aunt Midge wanted to know how much more money.

She had never understood why discussing a salary was considered rude while people felt perfectly free to describe their colonoscopies over dessert.
“About eight dollars an hour.”

“Well,” she said, reaching for the potatoes, “I hope you’re thinking with a pencil.”
I smiled.

Across the table, my brother looked down at his plate again, and Dad slowly wiped his fingers on his napkin.

That was usually how he prepared to explain something to me.

My name is Samantha, although everybody except the dentist’s office calls me Sam.

I was twenty-nine that evening, and I had spent six years maintaining the machinery at Mill Creek Cheese outside Marshfield, Wisconsin.

My brother was four years older.

He operated a packaging line at the same plant.

Those two facts had become one fact in my family: Donnie had a good job, and I had one because he was generous enough to arrange it.

The offer letter from Hilltop was in my glove compartment.

It had been there for two months, folded inside its envelope beside an ice scraper and a registration sleeve I could never find when I needed it.

I liked knowing the letter was there.

Deciding to use it was another matter.

Before Mill Creek, I had worked at an equipment dealer in Abbotsford, fixing tractors.

I started at nineteen, when some customers were willing to believe a noise came from anywhere except the part I told them was failing.

My boss trusted me, though.

He said I had ears like a bat and hands like a raccoon, usually while handing me something nobody else could reach.

I chose to accept that as praise.

Donnie had started at the cheese plant first.

Every Christmas, he talked about overtime, insurance, and what he called real money.

He generally looked toward me when he said it, despite the fact that I was also receiving money for performing work.

Eventually, I applied for a maintenance opening.

I didn’t ask him to recommend me.

I didn’t tell him I was applying, because I wanted an interview rather than a family discussion about whether I could manage the job.

Ernie Plautz, the plant manager, walked me through the building himself.

He had a gray crew cut and reading glasses hanging around his neck that he seemed to consult more often than he wore.

We were passing through packaging when a wrapper began making a sound I didn’t like.

The operator reached for a binder.

I listened for another moment, then asked whether I could look.
“You don’t work here,” Ernie said.
“Not yet.”
He studied me, then stepped aside.

Once the equipment was safely shut down, I found a film roller that had shifted on its shaft.

The correction took a few minutes.

After everything was secured and restarted, the machine ran properly.

Ernie watched it, looked at me, and asked whether I could start in two weeks.

That was my interview.

.

At the birthday table, Mom asked whether Hilltop meant a longer drive.

I told her it did, especially in winter, and Dad gave a small nod that suggested he had already found a reason to dismiss the whole thing.

I had considered the drive.

Forty-five minutes on Wisconsin roads in January was plenty of time to question a decision.

Still, day shift mattered.

I worked from three in the afternoon until nearly midnight.

Most evenings, I came home to my duplex, ate something quiet, and tried not to make the neighbors aware that a person with a saucepan was living on the other side of their bedroom wall.

I wanted a few ordinary evenings.

Grocery shopping before the shelves looked picked over.

Dinner that didn’t happen when everybody else was brushing their teeth.

I wasn’t unhappy at Mill Creek.

That was what made the decision difficult.

Swede Nyberg had taught me most of the plant.

His real name was Harold, and when I asked why everybody called him Swede, he said it was because he was Norwegian.

I waited for the rest of that explanation.

He handed me a wrench instead.

He knew every pump, motor, and line in the building.

He also had a habit of letting a person struggle just long enough to learn something before showing them the easier way.

I taught him how to get the parts supplier in Milwaukee to return a call without leaving a message that sounded personally threatening.

We worked well together.

By my second year, Ernie made me lead mechanic on second shift.

By my fifth, he told me the maintenance supervisor would be retiring and he wanted me to consider the position.

It wasn’t in writing yet.

But it was a future I could picture in a building I knew.

Amy, Donnie’s wife, reached for the tea pitcher.

.

“Would you be supervising people at Hilltop?” she asked.
“Eventually, maybe.

Bruno wants someone who can grow into running maintenance.”
Amy nodded thoughtfully.

She was a school secretary, kind, organized, and in possession of a label maker that had itself been labeled.

I liked her.

I had never fully understood her choice of husband, but everybody was entitled to one thing the rest of us couldn’t explain.

Donnie said nothing.

He knew what his shifts looked like when I was there.

He also knew how much of my time went to line four, which was his responsibility.

Line four was the same model as line three.

You wouldn’t have known it from our repair calls.

Line three ran.

Line four developed urgent difficulties at regular intervals, usually after Donnie ignored a warning, skipped a procedure, or decided something designed to protect people was slowing him down.

Then he called maintenance.

I fixed what could be fixed, documented the work, and explained what had happened.

He said, “Yep,” in the tone of a man being told where somebody else had gone wrong.

Some nights, I went over three times.

Swede said the line ought to get a frequent-visitor card.

At home, Donnie described himself as the person keeping an eye on me.

He knew the plant.

He was helping his little sister find her feet.

By then, I had been finding my feet there for years, usually underneath something he had jammed.

Dad called me the girl with the wrench.

I didn’t mind being associated with a wrench.

It was a useful tool, and I was good with one.

What bothered me was that the description always followed a speech about everything Donnie supposedly ran.

Mom once suggested I ask him to put in a word for me when raises came around.
“I make more than Donnie,” I told her.

She patted my arm.
“Well, that’s nice.

You still might ask him.”
I stood beside her sink trying to decide whether showing her my pay statement would help or merely make me the daughter who brought payroll records to a family meal.

I let it go.

I let too much go, although I always had a sensible explanation ready.

People at work knew what I did.

Ernie knew.

Swede knew.

Surely I didn’t need to keep correcting a story told between people who weren’t interested in the correction.

Then Donnie did something I couldn’t leave alone.

About a year before that birthday, a cleaning between production runs hadn’t been completed properly.

Pepper from one product ended up where it didn’t belong, and two thousand pounds of cheese had to be discarded.

Donnie blamed a mechanical problem.

Swede got written up.

I found him sitting on a bucket in the maintenance shop the next afternoon, quiet enough that I knew something was wrong before he said a word.

“Guess I’m getting old.”

He had worked there more than thirty years.

I went through the maintenance log.

The equipment had been running properly, and the cleaning records didn’t match what the camera showed.

I took the information to Ernie.

He called the shift supervisor and had Swede’s write-up removed.

Then he asked whether I understood whose initials were on the cleaning sheet.
“I do.”
“You want me to do something about it?”
“I want Swede’s record fixed.

The rest is your plant.”
Ernie opened a drawer containing Donnie’s disciplinary records.

Most people had a folder, he told me.

My brother had managed to require more space.

That night, Donnie came into the shop and said family should handle things inside the family.

I asked him where Swede had fitted into that arrangement when he blamed him.

For about a month, Donnie called me a rat.

At home, he said I had thrown him under the bus to impress the boss.

Dad told me that wasn’t how we did things.

At the birthday table, he had finished cleaning his hands.

I watched him fold the napkin while Mom offered me another piece of chicken.
“Let her finish,” Midge said.

I hadn’t realized I had stopped talking.
“Bruno made a good offer,” I said. “I haven’t decided.”
I had met Bruno Casper at a parts show in Wausau.

He ran maintenance at Hilltop and bought me a hot dog while asking questions about my work.

Later, he took me to lunch and brought the letter.

He knew what I could do.

He didn’t know Donnie.

I found that more pleasant than it should have been.

My family’s version of my hiring had started six years earlier, when Donnie collected a referral bonus.

Five hundred dollars.

He bought a big black barrel smoker and presented it at Thanksgiving as evidence of what he had done for me.
“This one’s on Sam,” he said, serving turkey. “Plant paid me for getting my little sister hired.”
I told them Ernie had offered me the job during my interview.

Donnie hadn’t been involved.

Dad laughed.
“Why would your brother lie?

They paid him.”
After that, the smoker became Sam’s smoker.

Passing a serving dish became something I owed Donnie.

Any success I mentioned came with a reminder of who had supposedly made it possible.

I stopped arguing because I hated what the argument did to me.

I went into meals hoping to enjoy my family and left rehearsing explanations I should have delivered faster.

I still liked plenty about being there.

Mom’s chicken really was excellent.

Amy asked questions and listened to the answers.

Midge could make me laugh while Dad was still deciding whether her last remark had been aimed at him.

And Donnie was my brother.

I remembered enough of our lives before work became a competition to keep hoping we could find something else to be.

That evening, I had given them good news without preparing a defense.

A better offer.

Better hours.

A choice worth thinking about.

Dad placed his napkin beside his plate.
“No,” he said. “You’re not leaving that plant.”
“I’m considering it, Dad.”
“Be grateful.

Your brother’s the only reason the plant hired you.”
I looked at Donnie.

He knew how often I got his line running again.

He knew what had happened to Swede.

He knew there had never been an interview where Ernie hired me as a favor to him.

For once, he could have corrected Dad before I had to defend myself.

Instead, my brother looked straight at me and nodded.

I put down my fork, suddenly unwilling to help him keep doing it.

Continue below

Chapter 2/6
“Then he can cover my shifts starting Monday,” I said.

Dad laughed and asked what that meant.

I took out my phone, because another conversation about who got me hired would only give him something else to dismiss.

I had three weeks of banked vacation.

Ernie rolled it over because I never used it, an arrangement I had mistaken for a sensible way to work.

I wrote to him and Rosie in human resources, giving two weeks’ notice and requesting vacation for the notice period.

After reading the message once, I sent it.

Dad leaned toward the screen when I put it beside the corn.
“You’re not quitting a job your brother got you.”
I stood and pushed in my chair.

Mom asked me to sit down because it was my birthday, as though that was information I had forgotten.
“Thank you for supper.

The chicken was perfect.”
I wrapped two drumsticks in foil and left through the side door.

Nobody followed.

Through the window, I saw Midge lift her tea glass toward me while Donnie stared at my empty chair.

I ate the chicken in a gas station parking lot.

It was still warm, and for the first time all evening, nobody was explaining what I owed.

Ernie called early Sunday.
“You’re going to Hilltop.”
“Bruno’s been asking.”
Ernie said Bruno had stolen his best electrician by buying him a hot dog.
“That’s how he got me, too.”
There was a small sound through Ernie’s nose, his closest approach to a laugh.

Then he offered more money, day shift, and the upcoming supervisor position in writing.

I sat on the bed while I explained that the raise wasn’t the whole problem.

I told him about Thanksgiving, the smoker, and the dinner.

Saying it together made me hear how long I had been waiting for somebody to notice what I never plainly asked them to notice.
“I can’t keep working there with Donnie.”
Ernie was quiet.
“What if he isn’t there?”
For a few seconds, I wanted that to solve everything.

Then I told him I wasn’t bargaining for my brother’s dismissal.

Staffing was his decision.
“Come in Tuesday,” he said. “Clean jeans.”
Monday was my first vacation day in six years.

I mowed the little lawn outside my duplex, then mowed it in the other direction because I hadn’t planned anything beyond leaving.

Tuesday, Rosie was already in Ernie’s office.
“I fired your brother yesterday,” he said.

I sat down.

Donnie’s record justified it, Ernie explained.

The production loss should have ended his employment.

Ernie had delayed partly because he believed firing my brother might make me leave out of loyalty.

He had reviewed the costs over the weekend: downtime, parts, overtime, and discarded product.

My repairs had kept the line moving and made the larger problem easier to tolerate.

Rosie opened her folder.

There was something else.

She placed Donnie’s referral form beside my original offer letter.

The referral had been submitted three days after I was hired.

I looked at the dates.

The clerk processing bonuses back then hadn’t checked.

Donnie had collected five hundred dollars for recommending somebody already employed.

Ernie shook his head.
“Paid him for a mechanic I hired in a hallway.”
By the end of the meeting, I had an agreement making me maintenance supervisor when the outgoing supervisor retired.

Day shift, a raise, and responsibilities I wanted.

Ernie restored my vacation and added a week, instructing me to use it.

Outside, I called Bruno before doing anything else.

He sounded disappointed, then pleased for me.
“The door’s still open, Sam.”
I thanked him and put his letter back in the glove box.

I didn’t need to throw it away just because I had chosen to stay.

Chapter 3/6
I expected Donnie to call.

Anger would have made sense, and I had started preparing what I would say if he accused me of getting him fired.

Instead, several days passed without a word.

Midge explained why.

According to my brother, I had walked out in a temper and left him carrying my workload.

Dad was telling people at church that I was between jobs.

Then he sent me a photograph of a hiring sign.

Don’t come crawling to your brother, he wrote.

I typed several answers.

Each one led to an argument I could already hear, so I deleted them and sent, I’m good, Dad.

I knew Donnie had been fired.

Explaining that should have been his responsibility, and I didn’t want the news turned into another accusation that I had reported him to get ahead.

I expected him to tell the truth within a week or two.

By late June, Midge said he was claiming he had been promoted.

Mom had bought him a card.
“What is he supervising?” Midge asked me.
“Nothing at Mill Creek.”
“I figured.

He can’t supervise a Crock-Pot.”
I started my new position and had less time to follow the family’s version of my employment.

Five mechanics reported to me, and problems arrived at my desk because someone now expected me to make the decision.

I liked the work.

I also liked driving home in daylight.

The first few evenings, I kept checking the time, certain I must have forgotten somewhere I was supposed to be.

Line four improved with its new operator, Jo.

She watched the panel, followed procedures, and asked questions before small problems grew into repair calls.

Three weeks passed without a breakdown.

She came to my office to ask whether that was normal.
“It is now.”
Swede retired that summer, though he visited often enough to inspect what I was doing.

One afternoon, while eating Rosie’s candy without asking, he mentioned seeing Donnie at the gas station.

Three in the afternoon.

His old shift’s starting time.

He was wearing his Mill Creek shirt.
“Maybe he’s job hunting,” I said.

Swede considered me over the candy wrapper.
“In his work shirt?”
“Maybe it’s comfortable.”
He didn’t argue.

His expression did the work.

I still didn’t understand the extent of it.

Amy told me later that Donnie used his final pay and vacation payout first.

Then he began taking retirement savings and moving money into their checking account in amounts resembling his wages.

Their health insurance came through her school job, so that hadn’t exposed anything.

Every afternoon, he put on his plant shirt and left.

He spent time at the library and gas station, returning near midnight with a complaint about a long shift.

Eventually, he found evening work unloading furniture trucks.

In August, Midge told me he would miss the family’s Labor Day plans because supervisors had to work the plant open house.

I would be working it.

At least that part was true for somebody.

Then Mom decided to surprise his crew with Scotcheroos.

Three pans.

Midge warned her it was a bad idea.

Mom accused her of jealousy.

I read the message in my driveway and sat there longer than necessary.

I could have called.

Several times that week, I looked at Mom’s name on my phone.

But I kept remembering the hiring sign Dad sent and the way Mom suggested I ask Donnie for help.

Neither had asked what happened after my birthday.

I put the phone away.

Saturday morning, I worked the welcome tent with Rosie, handing out tour schedules and hairnets.

Ernie moved through the crowd making people stand a little straighter.

Shortly after eleven, Dad’s Buick parked near the water tower.

Mom got out with one foil-covered pan, then reached into the back seat for another.

Dad carried the third.

I straightened the schedules and stayed beside Rosie.

Chapter 4/6
Mom arrived at the table smiling.
“We’re here to surprise our son.

Donnie.

He’s one of your supervisors.”
Rosie looked at her clipboard, then at me.

Mom followed her glance.
“Sam?”
Dad turned.

His eyes went from my face to the name tag on my Mill Creek polo.

Sam.

Maintenance supervisor.
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
“You quit.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
Before Dad could finish telling me what Donnie had said, Ernie walked up carrying cheese curds.

Rosie explained that my parents had brought treats for Donnie’s crew.

Ernie looked at the pans.
“Donnie hasn’t worked here since June.”
Mom leaned forward as though the words had been spoken too softly.
“I fired him,” Ernie said.

Nearby, a child ran past in a foam cheese hat, shouting something about being a mouse.

I noticed because everybody at the table had gone so still.

Dad insisted that Donnie went to work every day.

He was a supervisor.
“No,” Ernie said.

He indicated me. “That’s my supervisor.”
Dad looked at my name tag again.

Ernie let the silence settle, then told him I was the reason he had kept my older brother as long as he had.

Nobody laughed.

Mom put the pans down carefully.

Dad took out his phone and called Donnie, then called again when he got voicemail.

Mom called Amy.

Somehow she put the conversation on speaker while asking where Donnie was.
“At work,” Amy said. “The open house.

Why?”
Ernie introduced himself and explained that Donnie wasn’t there and hadn’t been employed at Mill Creek since June.

The line went quiet.

Amy made a small, startled sound, then ended the call.

I looked away while Mom lowered the phone.

My parents were learning something humiliating.

Amy was learning something that reached into her home and every ordinary evening she thought she understood.

Dad turned to me.
“Did you know?”
“I knew he was fired.

I didn’t understand how far he’d taken it until Midge told me about the Scotcheroos.”
Mom asked why I hadn’t told them.
“You never asked me anything about work, Mom.

You asked Donnie.”
She rested her hands on the foil.

I wished she had asked why I stayed, or what I liked about supervising, or even whether I was angry with her.

Instead, none of us seemed able to move the conversation beyond what my brother had done.

I checked the time.

My tour started in a few minutes.

They were welcome to come.

We had extra hairnets.

Neither accepted.

Before leaving, Mom pushed the pans toward Rosie.
“These are for whoever’s crew.”
I took them to maintenance.

My crew finished one before lunch, and Swede ate four pieces while standing beside the workbench.
“Your mother can bake,” he said.
“She can.”
Then I went back to work.

The afternoon had tours to run and questions to answer.

Having something clear to do helped more than standing around discussing my family would have.

The aftermath reached me gradually.

Amy checked the retirement account and found how much Donnie had withdrawn to manufacture three months of wages.

When he came home that night in his plant shirt, she was waiting with the statement.

Midge said Amy had put a label on it reading Long night.

I didn’t ask how Midge knew.

She usually knew more than anybody had officially told her.

Amy stayed, but the smoker went.

Donnie sold it, and someone collected it from his patio.

I thought about the Thanksgiving when it arrived, although there wasn’t much pleasure in the comparison now.

A week later, someone knocked at my duplex.

I opened the door to find Dad standing on the step with his hands in his pockets.

He asked whether he could come inside.

Chapter 5/6
Dad stood in the kitchen and looked around.

I had lived there for six years, and he had never visited.

The Brewers were losing in the other room.

I lowered the sound and waited for him to tell me why he had come.
“Your brother’s having a hard time.”
“I’ll bet.”
“He’s unloading trucks at night.”
“It’s honest work.”
Dad nodded, but the conversation wasn’t finished.

I knew that from the way he kept his jacket on.

I was supervisor now, he said.

Ernie listened to me.

Perhaps I could ask about getting Donnie back on another line.

For a moment, I felt the old practical impulse to solve it.

I knew whom to ask.

I could arrange a conversation.

I could make the request sound reasonable.

Then I remembered Swede sitting on the bucket, wondering whether he was getting too old to do his job.
“He had me keeping his line running for six years, Dad.

Sometimes several times a night.”
Dad looked toward the television.
“I’m not asking Ernie to hire him back.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I told you.

That Thanksgiving, when he bought the smoker.”
He looked down.
“You laughed.”
Dad nodded once.

He stayed another moment, then let himself out.

There was no apology.

I didn’t follow him to demand one, and I didn’t pretend his visit had repaired anything simply because he looked uncomfortable.

In October, Bruno called.

He had an application for a line operator with my last name and ten years at Mill Creek.

Donnie hadn’t listed me as a reference.

He had listed Swede.

I laughed before I could stop myself.

Bruno had called him.

Swede’s recommendation was to hire the sister instead.

Then Bruno asked whether there was anything he should know.

I thought about Donnie’s shortcuts and the people who had paid for them.

I also pictured him sitting in a parking lot, too ashamed to tell his wife he needed another job.

I felt sorry for him.

But Bruno had asked a straight question.
“Ask him who got who hired.”
Bruno understood enough to continue his own assessment.

Donnie didn’t get the position.

Later, he found work at a feed mill near Spencer.

I heard he was doing all right.

I hoped he was, though I stopped treating every account of his employment as something I needed to verify.

At Christmas, Swede brought me his toolbox.

The large red one had drawers that stuck and initials scratched into the side.

I had worked beside it for years.
“I’m done with it,” he said. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I won’t.”
He stood while I examined the drawers, explaining tools I already recognized.

It gave us something to do while I worked out how to thank him without making him regret the whole idea.

The toolbox went into my office.

In spring, I bought a small brick ranch with a two-car garage and enough yard for the garden I kept promising to start.

My raise helped, along with six years of saving money while working hours that left little opportunity to spend it.

Ernie insisted I take vacation.

I went fishing near Minocqua for a week.

He required a picture of a fish to prove I hadn’t stayed home mowing the lawn.

I sent one.

As my thirtieth birthday approached, I decided to celebrate at my house.

I invited my crew and their families, Rosie, Jo, Swede, Midge, and Ernie.

Mom called two weeks beforehand.
“Could your father and I come?”
I stood at the kitchen window looking at the backyard where I planned to set up the food.
“Yes,” I said eventually. “But Dad has to say it out loud.

In front of my people.”
“Say what?”
“He’ll know.”
She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said she would tell him.

Final chapter 6/6
The afternoon of the party, I arranged the lawn chairs badly enough that Midge moved three before sitting down.

She said she wanted to see the grill without having to turn her whole body.

Rosie brought potato salad.

Midge brought a pie and announced that it was store-bought, apparently concerned somebody might accuse her of developing domestic ambitions.

Ernie said he could stay fifteen minutes.

Four hours later, he was still there.

Swede watched me cook for twenty minutes before taking the tongs.

He told me I was ruining his brats, although I had bought them.

I let him work and carried plates outside.

It was strange seeing everybody without radios going off or a machine requiring attention.

Jo was laughing with Rosie.

My mechanics’ children ran across the lawn.

Somebody needed mustard, then somebody needed a chair out of the sun.

I liked having things to fetch.

My parents arrived around five.

Dad parked at the far end of the driveway, and Mom came through the gate carrying one pan of Scotcheroos.

Dad carried an envelope.

He shook Ernie’s hand and nodded to Rosie.

Midge welcomed him with a remark about what the cat had dragged in, then moved her purse off a chair.

Mom put her pan with the food.

For a while, we ate and talked.

I began wondering whether Dad had agreed to something over the phone that he couldn’t manage now that everyone was there.

Then he cleared his throat.

He raised his root beer and asked to make a toast.

I set down my plate.
“To Sam,” he said.

He looked at the grass, then at me.
“My daughter, who got herself hired.”
Nobody interrupted.
“And kept her brother working longer than he deserved.

I didn’t understand what she was doing because I never asked.”
Swede tapped his tongs against Ernie’s can.
“Hear, hear.”
People drank.

Mom wiped beneath one eye, and I stood with my plate in my hand, suddenly unsure where to put it.

Dad came over and gave me the envelope.

Inside were five hundred dollars and a note in the same blocky writing I remembered from school forms.

Referral bonus.

You earned it.

Dad.

I read it twice.

I wasn’t ready to hug him.

One toast hadn’t changed every meal where I tried to tell him something and got laughed away.

But he had said it clearly, where people could hear.

He hadn’t asked me to protect him from being embarrassed.

I held out my hand.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He shook it, squeezing once before letting go.

Then he sat beside Midge, who immediately began explaining several other matters on which he could improve.

He stayed and listened.

Donnie wasn’t there.

I hadn’t invited him.

Amy texted that evening to wish me a happy birthday and say she was proud of me.

I thanked her and sent a small cheese-wedge picture, which seemed about right for the conversation we could manage.

After everybody left, I put Dad’s note in the kitchen drawer.

I stood there a moment before closing it, then went outside to collect the last plates.

The money bought a smoker.

I knew that was predictable.

I enjoyed choosing it anyway.

A big black barrel model stood on my patio a few weeks later, and the first brisket required more attention than I had expected.

I watched the temperature, checked it too often, and finally made myself leave it alone.

It came out well enough that I decided to share it before I could reconsider.

Monday morning, I carried it into the plant break room and put a sign beside it.

From the girl with the wrench.

At lunch, Ernie came back for a second plate.

He tried another piece, looked toward me, and made that small pleased sound through his nose.

I handed him another napkin.

THE END.

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