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After practice, we went to Thistle & Cup, three blocks from the rink. Hazel had picked it on our first week in Boston because the storefront looked like something out of a fairy tale and the pastry case was stacked with things no six-year-old could walk past. We'd been coming every Saturday after practice since.

Hazel pushed through the door ahead of me and went straight to the counter.

"Hi, Jody! How's Muffin? How's Biscuit?"

Jody leaned over the register. "Muffin knocked a plant off the windowsill this morning. Biscuit watched and did nothing."

"Biscuit is the smart one."

"Biscuit is absolutely the smart one." Jody pulled a napkin from the dispenser and wiped a spot on the counter. "How was practice? Did you nail those crossovers yet?"

Hazel's face fell half a degree. "Almost."

"Almost is one step from nailed. You know what you want today?"

Hazel pressed her face against the pastry case. She went left first, to the empire biscuits. She considered them every single week. Then she drifted back to the millionaire's shortbread, the same square she'd been pressing her nose to the glass for since we found this place.

"The empire biscuit." She looked again. "No. The shortbread."

Jody looked at me. I nodded.

"Coming right up." She slid it onto a plate and pushed it across the counter, then started on my coffee without asking.

We took our usual booth with the cracked leather seat by the window. The Saturday regulars were in their spots. The older woman with the gray braid and her crossword, same table, same pen. The couple in the corner sharing a newspaper they never finished. The man by the door with his laptop open, always typing, never drinking. I didn't know any of their names. They didn't know mine. But we'd been showing up at the same time every Saturday long enough that the older woman waved at Hazel when we walked in, and Hazel waved back.

Hazel was halfway through her shortbread when she put it down, which meant something big was coming.

"Mama, I found a book at the library. It has experiments."

"What kind of experiments?"

"You build a mountain and put stuff in it and it explodes. Like a real volcano." She held up her hands to show the scale. "And there's one where you put a fuzzy stick in a jar of water and jewels grow on it. Real jewels, Mama."

"I don't think they're real jewels, bug."

"They look real." She wiped shortbread from her fingers. "And there's one where you mix things in a bottle and foam goes everywhere. Like everywhere. The whole kitchen."

I thought about Erin spending months fundraising for a STEAM lab so experiments like these could happen at school instead of in people's kitchens. The lab was still being built, supplies still being ordered. Which meant the foam going everywhere was going to be going everywhere in my apartment.

"Do you remember what the book was called?"

She shook her head.

"How about we stop by the bookstore on the way home and see if we can find it?"

Hazel looked up at me with a grin I could count missing teeth in. "Okay! Thank you, Mama!"

We found it in the kids' science section, wedged between a book about space and one about weather. Hazel spotted the cover before I did and pulled it off the shelf with both hands. She flipped straight to the volcano page and held it up to show me, like I might not believe her without proof.

The supply list on the back of each experiment was longer than I'd hoped. Baking soda, vinegar, dish soap, food coloring, modeling clay, hydrogen peroxide, yeast, pipe cleaners, borax.

Most of what we needed was split between a craft store and a grocery store. We hit the craft store first for pipe cleaners, modeling clay, and food coloring. Then the grocery store for baking soda, vinegar, dish soap, and yeast. Hazel carried the book through every aisle, open to the supply list, checking things off with her finger.

We had everything except borax and hydrogen peroxide.

Hazel looked up at me from the book. "We need borax for the crystals."

"We'll find it somewhere, bug. I don't think this store carries it."