My mother’s watching from behind the case, towel in hand, eyes taking in more than I want. Mr. Farrell and Gus at thecorner table stop pretending to read the paper. Mrs. Dorothy ‘Dot’ Kline, wrapped in her stock tweed, a neat blue scarf, and peppermint perfume, pretends harder than anyone.
The bakery feels too warm and too small. I move to the sink, turn the tap, and let the sound of water stand between us.
My mother’s voice comes from somewhere behind me, low and steady. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’ve got this.” She nods toward the back door, the one that opens to the alley and then the small municipal park that leads to the river bend. She’s giving me a place to breathe and watch him in daylight without the town hanging on every word. She’s also keeping her ground behind the counter, where she can see the front door and the stairs at the same time. I nod, too quickly.
He steps back just enough to let me pass. I hang my apron on its hook, wipe my palms on my jeans because my palms won’t stop finding each other, and push through the back.
Outside, the cold meets me like a wall of glass. The sky is a hard blue that dazzles the eye, the kind of blue that comes after stormy weather when the clouds have been stripped away and the world left rinsed and bare. Stark trees line the street, their branches stripped clean, every edge bright and exact as if the world’s been wiped down for inspection. It’s all calm, precise, untroubled. Inside me, nothing’s clean. The heart won't settle. Thought tangles, tightens, and then finds a string it can’t let go of.
The alley opens to a small square of winter grass and a stand of oaks that have held this town together for a hundred years. Breakfast benches sit under them, planks worn smooth by elbows and coffee cups. The river runs slow beyond the rail,black-green and sure, with a rim of ice that looks fragile until you touch it and learn another lesson about upstate.
He follows, footsteps soft on packed snow. The air smells of pine, river ice, and the faint trace of wood smoke from the park. I sit on the end bench, a table between us. He takes the other side without being asked. His coat cuts a fine line against the clear winter blue.
“You shouldn't be here,” I tell him. “I mean in Wrenleigh.”
“I am exactly where I should be,” he says. “I am here to make something small before it turns into a trigger pull.”
“You speak in riddles, and I don’t have time.”
He studies my face. “You have time for the truth,” he says. “Men who do not like to lose are looking for you. They will ask questions. They will press where things look soft. I tell you because you are not.” His eyes drop to his knuckles. When he speaks again, his voice is low and even. “There are costs. I will pay what must be paid.”
“This is a small town,” I say, hating the way it sounds like surrender. “People will talk.”
“They already are,” he says, glancing around without moving his head. “That is not the danger you have.”
“What danger?” I press, though something in me already knows where he’s going.
He picks up a fallen leaf, yellowed, and sets it on the table and makes me wait. “The Benedettis,” he says finally, dropping the name like a pebble in a well. “They are looking at you.”
My pulse skips beats. The word drags up a thin thread of memory. A stylist in Milan leaning in at a makeup table and lowering her voice. A photographer’s assistant telling me not to go to the wrong afterparty. House security talking in Italian outside the freight elevator, the vowels sharp enough to cut. A brand rep using safe words with a smile that wasn’t brand-safe.
“What have I done to have the honors?” The question leaves before I can stop it, and suddenly, I’m staring at an unknown situation.
His eyes flick toward where the upstairs window of the bakery is as if he can see through stucco. He doesn’t answer that question. “Enough,” he says. “Enough to make me drive here and walk into your bakery.”
“You, who called yourself Teo,” I say before I mean to, and he gives me that small, private smile.
“You remember,” he says.
“I remember everything you told me,” I say, and I wish I hadn’t given him that.
“So do I,” he says, and the words hang in the cold like the breath you see when you walk too fast in winter.
“I’m not playing out some movie where a man in a suit comes to town and tells me how my life works,” I add, because if I don’t hit hard, I’ll slide where he wants me.
“Make your own plan,” he says easily. “But do it with me watching your back.”
“Why should I trust you? I don't even know your name.”
“Because I have more practice keeping people alive than you do,” he says simply. “And my name is Matteo.”
He taps the table with his finger. “The men coming for you will not care if you are polite when you say no.”
There's this part of me that'll always be small-town and stubborn, the part that built a life out of my hands, not my knees. I want to tell him to turn around and take his shadow with him. I want to tell him I’ve raised a child and kept the lights on, and I don’t need a man to keep me upright.
I don't let the words land. Instead, I pick up a splinter from the bench and roll it between my fingers until the sting starts.
“You didn't answer the question,” I say. “What does Benedetti have against me?”
