“Hmm?” Róża purses her lips. Miri gives her arm a squeeze. She thinks of her friend Marek’s old potato jokes. Why did the potato cross the road? Because he saw a fork up ahead. What do you say to an angry potato? Anything, just butter him up.

“It’s true,” Chana insists. “It required me to learn a lot about French cooking. I made every kind of omelet, custard, soufflé, meringue.”

“They were delicious, all three hundred and sixty-five of them,” Miri says.

Róża smiles, wondering what kind of beautiful, well-equipped kitchen Chana and Miri must have had. Her family’s kitchen was fine—and her mother was a masterful baker—but Róża could never have made such delicacies, certainly not a year’s worth of them. She looks from sister to sister, registering for the first time that they’d been wealthy.

“Were these ‘egg dishes’ or just dishes that involved eggs? I mean, could you count a crepe?” Róża asks.

“Yes, why not?”

“What about a simple cake that calls for an egg?”

“No.”

“Spring salad?”

“Yes.”

Róża can’t actually remember the last time she had an egg of any kind. But she remembers when Shira had them. Róża’s mouth pools as she thinks of it and she swallows hard. Her recurring wish: that she’d pocketed some from the coop before she ran from the barn.

Still arm in arm with Miri, Róża feels her boots sink and squelch with every step.

“Mousse?” Miri is now asking.

“Of course!”

“What about challah?”

“I don’t think challah counts.”

“But a challah takes a lot of eggs.”

All three are silent now, remembering. Róża fingers the frosting tip in her pocket.

“Deviled eggs?”

“Kluski?”

For the next several hours, they go on like this. Róża and Miri scour their minds for every egg dish they have heard of, asking if it counted and if Chana made it during her egg year.

They parse new: “Could you make a cheese soufflé one day and a mushroom soufflé the next?”

Another arm squeeze from Miri and Róża looks over to see Chana, a vexed expression on her face. At some point they vow that they will steal eggs the next chance they get so that Chana can work her magic, albeit over an open flame.

Night falls and the weather remains mild, the air sweet. A bright moon shining through branches dapples the forest floor, chandelier-like, with droplets of light. Róża looks from one sister to another.

“Let’s sleep out in the open, just this once as a special pleasure. Our hands need a break from digging.”