The Magic Cake Shop (6 page)

However, there was one area of cooking that Emma did not have to worry over. Two afternoons after she arrived, Uncle Simon gave her a list that read:

“Are you having company tonight?” Emma asked.

Uncle Simon glowered down at her. “Absolutely not, you ignorant twit. This is my dessert list for the week. I normally get them delivered from Mr. Crackle’s, but I never miss an opportunity to save a buck or two. Why pay extra for a pie when you have someone to make it for free?”

Emma’s eyes glimmered. At last! A chance to bake dessert! She grabbed a dessert cookbook she had snuck into her suitcase and set to work.

Unfortunately, dessert baking proved harder than she thought. The egg whites didn’t froth. The pastry dough turned stiff and dry. “Glaze” was much easier to say than to make.

That evening, when Emma brought out dessert, Uncle Simon took one bite and gagged.

“Pah! This tastes like burned coals!”

“I knew I should have turned down the oven.” Emma looked grimly at the assorted blackened desserts on the dinner table.

Uncle Simon scowled. “I suppose I’ll have to go back to Mr. Crackle. But don’t think I’m going to spend any money for dessert on
you
.” He stood up in disgust and stormed out.

The next afternoon, he handed Emma a wooden box he had designed to keep his desserts from getting squashed. Inside the box were walls that could slide every which way and then lock, forming compartments that would exactly fit each of the desserts. “Now listen up, you little pipsqueak,” Uncle Simon barked. “You’re going to get my desserts for me. You’re obviously useless at baking, but at least you’ll save me some cash on delivery charges.”

Every few days, Emma would walk to Mr. Crackle’s Cake Shop with the dessert box lashed to her back. Once she had filled it with Uncle Simon’s order, she would stagger home, laden with treats she could not eat.

Upon her arrival, Uncle Simon would call out in his ugly, booming voice, “Well, Emma, I certainly hope you weren’t thinking of stealing some of my dessert tonight. Because if you did, I would know. And you would not be able to sit for a week.”

He would inspect every dessert, running his cruel,
piggish eyes over each scrape of frosting and each crust to make sure that Emma had not snitched a grain of sugar. Then he would sit, fingers deep in the cakes, pies, cookies, tarts, and truffles, snatching and snatching and gulping and gulping until every last bite had disappeared.

Afterward he would let loose a smelly belch, tell Emma to clean up, and waddle off to watch television. His favorite show was a reality contest called
Supreme-Extreme Master of the Kitchen
, in which chefs competed with one another for fame and fortune. Emma often wished she could watch the show—she felt as if she could have picked up some useful cooking tips. But Uncle Simon liked to heckle the cooks with blisteringly foul language, and after learning twenty-eight horrible words in one evening as she watched
Supreme-Extreme
with him, Emma decided she much preferred cleaning the kitchen when the hour-long program came on.

T
hough Uncle Simon made life absolutely miserable, Emma soon discovered that Nummington held a world of lovely people to balance out her uncle’s awfulness.

The first day she went to town with Uncle Simon’s enormous dessert box on her shoulders, she felt curious glances on her as she trudged down the main street. When she passed by Pete’s Fine Sausages and Ham, she bumped into Mrs. Dimple, who was just coming out of the store. In one hand she held a waxed paper package, in the other, her orange parasol. Mrs. Dimple looked at Emma and arched one eyebrow. “That’s quite a box you’ve got there, dearie,” she said.

Emma nodded. “It’s for my uncle’s desserts,” she explained, shifting the box uncomfortably. She reached into her pocket and showed Mrs. Dimple her uncle’s dessert list.

Mrs. Dimple’s eyebrow inched higher. Her parasol twirled. “Are you sure you can carry all of this?”

Emma reached the end of the cake shop line and heaved the box to the ground. She shook her head. “It’s a pretty heavy box, even empty. It’ll take me a couple of trips to bring all of Uncle Simon’s desserts back.”

Mrs. Dimple stopped twirling her parasol and laid it gently against her knee. She bent down and gave the box a delicate yank. “Oomph! Pretty heavy is right! How far does your uncle live from town?”

“About a mile.”

Mrs. Dimple frowned. “Tell you what. My pickup truck is parked down the street. When you’ve finished getting all those desserts, we’ll load them up and I’ll drive you home.”

Emma blinked. “Are you sure, Mrs. Dimple?”

Mrs. Dimple smiled. “Absolutely.”

Just then, Albie trotted up with a red-faced man in tow. “Emma! How’s it going?” Albie turned to the beety man. “Now, stay in line. If you cut again, you won’t get any cake.”

“But … but I am very important!” the man sputtered. “I am the famous movie director of
Whale Bubbles
and
Popsicle Juice
! I have enough money to buy this whole town. I do
not
need to wait!” He glared at Albie.

Albie glared back.

The man sighed. “Fine,” he grumbled. Crossing his arms and huffing, he stomped to the back of the line.

Satisfied, Albie turned his attention to Emma. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the box at her feet.

Emma gave the box a little kick. “It’s my uncle’s dessert box. I have to load it up.”

Albie gave a whistle. “You’ll be stocked for weeks!”

“Nope, this will only last a few days.” Emma grabbed the straps of the box and dragged it along as the line moved forward.

Mrs. Dimple gave the box a stern look. “Well, I hope he’s having a large dinner party tonight!”

Emma shook her head. “It’s just for him. He has a large appetite.” She dragged the box another few feet.

Albie frowned. “Mr. Crackle won’t like this—all those sweets for some guy who doesn’t share. Here, let me talk to him for you and see what I can do.” He disappeared behind the back of the cake shop.

A few minutes later, a tall, gray-haired man came out. He was wearing a blue apron spattered with cocoa. He had kind, twinkly eyes surrounded by laugh wrinkles, and he smelled of vanilla and cinnamon.

He dusted off a floury hand and offered it to Emma. “Hello, Emma. I’m Mr. Crackle. Albie tells me you’ve got an uncle problem.”

Emma took Mr. Crackle’s large, weathered hand in her own. Years of baking had made his palm rough and calloused. “Sort of. Uncle Simon feeds me enough, but he never lets me have dessert.”

Mr. Crackle frowned. “I am familiar with your uncle’s astronomical orders, but I did not know he ate everything himself. Do you mean to say that your uncle eats pounds and pounds of dessert a day and refuses to give you even a crumb?”

“Yup.”

Mr. Crackle said thoughtfully, “What your uncle needs is a good kick in the pants.”

Emma giggled.

Mr. Crackle grinned.

Albie crowed, “He sure does!”

“Now, let’s see what your uncle ordered for today,” Mr. Crackle said.

T
he wrinkled dessert list was brought forth, and desserts speedily filled Uncle Simon’s box. Then the box was lifted into Mrs. Dimple’s pickup, trucked to Uncle Simon’s, and hustled into the kitchen. As they unpacked the desserts, Emma thanked Mrs. Dimple and Albie, who had come along to help.

“This summer is going to be much better than I thought,” Emma said as she arranged truffles on a plate. “At first, all I knew was that I would have to spend all my hours with Uncle Simon. Now I’m going to try and go to town as much as I can.”

“Speaking of your uncle, where is he?” Mrs. Dimple asked, sliding the chocolate buttercream cakes into the fridge.

“He’s in the living room. I think he’s watching a rerun of
Supreme-Extreme Master of the Kitchen
.” Emma finished with the truffles and began to stack the brownies.

Albie perked up. “I love
Supreme-Extreme
! It always
has the neatest people. You know, Mr. Crackle won it, right before he set up shop in Nummington.”

Mrs. Dimple nodded. “Folks say the show changes you—that winning guarantees that anything you make for the rest of your life will be an instant success.”

Emma popped a truffle into her mouth that Mr. Crackle had given to her as a gift. As the sweet, rich chocolate melted on her tongue, she had to agree.

T
he days rolled by, and Emma grew to love Nummington. When she was not crushed by Uncle Simon’s demands, she would escape to town, where she would often go over to Mrs. Dimple’s house for tea and cookies. Mrs. Dimple introduced her to many of the warm, quirky townspeople, who welcomed her with jokes and stories and usually a snack or two.

If Emma was waiting in line at the cake shop, Albie would find her when he wasn’t busy bringing cutters to the back of the line, and they’d chat about the best flavor of bubble gum or the right way to hold a baseball bat.

One day Emma put on her cactus-prickled, pickle-stemmed hat for her trip to Mr. Crackle’s shop. When Albie saw her, he burst out laughing. He taped a bonbon to his hat, and they spent a marvelous afternoon pretending to be fancy supermodels.

Emma loved going to the cake shop every day. She loved the smells and the sights and the cheerful pink-and-green awning that hung over the shop window. She loved
the gleaming and glistening pies and tarts and pastries that were lined up so neatly in the enormous glass display case.

But most of all, she loved the kindness of the cake shop’s owner. Mr. Crackle made sure that anytime Emma wanted a pastry, she could help herself. And every once in a while, if Emma came in with an especially frustrated face because Uncle Simon was being particularly horrid, Mr. Crackle would doctor a dessert with something that caused uncontrollable itching or knuckle cramps.

And so Emma might have spent the entire summer avoiding her uncle and having a lovely time in Nummington but for a knock at the door two months after her fluff-headed parents plopped her down on her uncle’s front porch.

O
ne evening when Emma was scrubbing the toilet with a toothbrush (Uncle Simon spent lavishly on food, not cleaning supplies), she heard a rapping at the door.

Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap
.

“Uncle Simon, someone’s at the door!” Emma called.

“Answer it, brat, and if it’s not my steak delivery, throw them out!” yelled Uncle Simon from the upstairs bedroom.

Emma sighed, wiped her hands, and went to the door.

Before she could turn the knob, it twisted on its own and the door swung open. A man stepped into the room.

He was dressed in a white suit that was impeccably ironed. He had white gloves, a white hat, and a white cane. He was bony and tall, and his eyes had a glint to them that made Emma shudder.