When she finally asked for solutions, we made a list of what she had already purchased. There were enough ingredients for a weekend pastry class, enough space if we rearranged the front tables, and customers who regularly asked whether she ever taught. Maya began calculating prices on the back of an envelope, her voice changing as the idea became something she could actually do. By the next afternoon, the class had sold out, and she called me loudly enough that I had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“I am a business genius,” she announced. I reminded her she had been crying beside a lemon tree twelve hours earlier, and she informed me geniuses contained multitudes. That weekend, I helped set up tables, moved chairs, and spent the class in the back washing bowls while listening to her make a roomful of strangers laugh. Afterward, she found me dusted with flour and hugged me so hard I nearly dropped the mixing bowl I was holding.
