Nov1 Flash Fiction Cinnamon

 

November is the month of FlashNano2022. Each day the participants will create a flash fiction piece --  a story under 1000 words to a prompt. Today's prompt was cinnamon.

She would always think of divorce and cinnamon together.

Her parents had always fought. When she was smaller, they never fought in front of her, but once she was a teenager, they never waited until she was in her room behind a closed door. They just let it rip.

She thought most of their fights stupid: A dish left in the sink, the lawn needing cutting triggering a letter from the homeowners association, that kinda thing. Lately their topics seemed to escalate to something more serious such as how many nights her father worked late, the fact her mother had taken on too many shifts at the hospital, and money, more and more often the fights were about money.

She had read that kids often blamed themselves for their parents problems, but she had never come up as a fight topic.

At least they weren’t violent, although once her father had thrown a bowl of tomato soup on the floor because there was too much basil and he said after 17 years of marriage, her mother should know he doesn’t like basil. And coriander.

Even if she weren’t the cause of their fights, maybe she could make it better, back to the old days when there were almost no fights or at least hidden ones. They ate supper together, did things on weekends like apple picking in the fall, or hiking in the forest just outside of town, making snowmen, watching movies with popcorn … things families did.

Sundays, when things had been better, her mother always made cinnamon rolls from scratch for breakfast. Waking to that smell of the baking rolls was always a treat. Papa would have gone for the Sunday papers. She would read the funnies while she waited for the rolls to bake.

Her mother never kept her recipes secret. They were in a card file in a metal box decorated with fruits. Before her parents came home from work, she gathered all the ingredients. When she found the cinnamon bottle, it had just enough for the rolls. She thought if she cut the recipe in half, there would be enough for each of them to have one roll and she could use the extra cinnamon.

By the time her parents did come home, one ten minutes after the other, the house smelled of those wonderful Sunday mornings.

“I baked some cinnamon …” she started to say.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Papa said. “But come into the living room, we need to talk to you.”

“Have I done something wrong?” She had good grades, the principal had smiled at her the other day and she always called if she were going to be late.

“Not at all, Sweetheart,” her mother said.

The family only used the living room when they had parties. There was dust on coffee and end tables.

“You tell her,” her mother said.

“Honey, your mother and I have decided to get a divorce. It has nothing to do with you, but we just want different things.”

“When? Who’ll I live with?”

“Papa has an apartment near here. There is a bedroom for you. You can go back and forth at will.”

The rest of what they were saying faded out. She stood and went into the kitchen. The three rolls were cooling on a rack. She picked up all three and wrapped them in a paper towel.

She went out the back door to the patio. There was a barbecue, garden tables and four chairs. She sat in the one no one ever used. Very carefully, she set the rolls on the paper towel and began to eat them one by one.       610 words.