Ethan's POV
He had ruined the first cake by six-fifteen.
He stood in his kitchen in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looking at something that had collapsed in the middle the way a building collapsed — slowly, then all at once — and considered, briefly, calling the whole thing off. He had not told anyone he was doing this. Mrs. Crane had left a recipe card on the counter that morning with a note that said good luck and an amount of confidence in his abilities that he was rapidly proving unwarranted.
He started again.
The second attempt was better. Not good. Better. It rose unevenly, one side noticeably higher than the other, and when he tried to level it with a knife he made it worse, and by the time he iced it — badly, the icing too thin in places and pooling in others — it looked
