Next up? Cleaning the bathroom floor.
Fortunately, I don’t have to hunt too hard to locate the cleaning supplies. They’re stored in a laundry-room cupboard.
By the time I’m finished with the floor, it’s already after ten a.m., and I haven’t even begun packing away Charlotte’s house.
Never mind my original estimate of it taking a week or two to pack up everything. At the rate I’m going, it will take me a couple of months to finish.
Things won’t be so bad once I’ve hired someone to look after the horses, I remind myself. Then I’ll have more time.
With a damp paper towel, I do my best to clean the mud off my phone. It takes several minutes for me to properly see the screen again. I push the button to bring up the home screen; it remains black.
Oh, no. That’s not good at all.
I killed my phone.
Maybe there’s a shop in town that can resuscitate it. I have to drive into town anyway to check out the local spa. I can hunt down a phone repair store at the same time.
God, between cleaning the stable, the mud, and the dead phone, the apple strudel has become a matter of life and death.
It’s my #1 way of dealing with whatever life hurls at you. Nothing soothes the soul better than apple strudel.
At least that’s what Olga always tells me.
I spend the next few minutes searching online with my iPad for a recipe. “What do you think?” I show Charlie the image on the device. “Doesn’t it look yummy? And it doesn’t look that difficult to make.”
All right, I have no idea if that’s true or not. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman who doesn’t know how to cook.
But in my defense, it’s not like I’ve ever needed to, thanks to my parents’ cook. Who wants to cook when you have Olga?
I scour through the kitchen for the ingredients. The only things Charlotte doesn’t have are the apples. Luckily, I’d bought some yesterday before leaving Billings because of my apple obsession. So I’m good to go.
“All right, Charlie. Let’s do this!”
I slip on one of Charlotte’s aprons with frills on it, study the recipe, then do the same to the three apples sitting on the counter. “How exactly does one peel an apple?” Not a problem. I search for a video to show me how to do it.
Except the video makes it look easy when in reality, the opposite is true. It takes me several attempts to pierce the skin and remove even a small amount. And forget about the impressively long piece the woman unfurled in one go. Mine comes off in tiny chunks.
Forty minutes later, the apples are peeled and unevenly sliced. I mix them with the flour, almonds, and raisins, and then I put them aside.
Next up is the puff pastry. But if I thought peeling the apples was tough, that’s nothing compared to making the dough.
“Why does it keep sticking to the counter?” I ask Charlie. “It looked so easy when Olga made it.” Maybe I should have actuallywatchedher make her infamous strudel.
The extent of my watching her amounted to me telling her that she was the best, kissing her cheek, and skipping out the door.
None of that is helping me here.
I reach for a knife from the counter and accidentally bump into the bag of flour. Before I can yelp out my warning, it lands on the floor next to my poor, unsuspecting dog.
The bag explodes on contact, and flour covers Charlie—from head to tail.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I crouch next to him and brush the flour off him. Unsuccessfully. “Looks like I’ll have to give you a bath.”
But at least it’s not mud. How hard can it be to clean flour from dog fur?
With the apple strudel temporarily abandoned, I carry Charlie upstairs to the master bathroom. I place him on the tile floor next to the bathtub. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting to give you a bath while we’re here. I don’t have your grooming supplies.” Other than his brush.
I fold a towel, set it on the floor, and fill the bathtub with a few inches of water. Then I lower Charlie into it. He barks his happy sound, and I attempt to wash the flour from his long fur.
