Outside, the day has slid into that steel color that belongs to towns with one main street and too many winter months. Snow begins again, fine and determined. It collects along the edge of my coat and the brim of a cap worn by a man across the street who pretends to care about a fishing display. I note the angle of his shoulders and the way his boots do not match his jacket. I file the plate of a silver sedan idling too long by the pharmacy. I make the pass down to the square and back. I keep moving because standing still right now would let something big break through my ribs.
By the time I turn the corner, my jaw hurts. I work it once and let it settle. Two boys throw snow at a stop sign and miss. A woman drags a wheeled bag filled with groceries and nods hello. I nod back and realize my hands have gone cold.
I look at the bakery window from across the street. I can see a figure move behind the glass and know it is Maria by the way she leans to adjust a display. I look up. A small face appears at the upstairs pane and presses against the glass. He looks down at the street with a soldier’s seriousness. He sees me and does not wave. I touch my fingers to my coat pocket and make a line across my heart without meaning to. I look away before he thinks I am a man who stares.
Snow thickens. Footprints fill and fade. I walk, slow and exact, toward the end of the block where my car waits under a crust of salt. Every step is deliberate. I count them. It does not help. Every step holds the weight of the years I called caution, thenights I mistook silence for safety. I thought I could live clean by staying clear. I couldn’t.Lila,Why didn’t you tell me?
13
LILA
The day after
I keep to the back room and work around the sounds, feels, and sights, pale, soft, and obedient. The mixer hums. Butter softens in the bowl. I sift powdered sugar into a drift and wishsnow could solve everything. I tell myself it’s frosting, not nerves. Out front, the bell rings in a steady rhythm that usually calls me to action. Today, I let my mother handle all that, and it only counts the minutes I’m hiding.
“Lila, I need more boxes,” my mother calls, cheerful enough to pass for fine.
“In the rack by the door,” I answer, a little too fast. My hands do the old work. Cream, scrape, fold. Roll the dough into even lengths and cut neat coins for shortbread. It’s instinctand habit. Nothing wrong can come out of it. It also keeps me from walking to the window and checking the street every thirty seconds.
Marco sings to himself upstairs, the sound drifting down the stairwell. A made-up song about a truck that wants to be a dragon. His voice lifts and dips. It tugs at me like a string. Ishould go up and kiss his head, sit on the floor and listen. I stay with the dough because I’m afraid of how hard that’ll be.
I can feel him out there, even when I cannot see him. Matteo draws a line through a street just by standing on it. He has the look of a man who refuses to bend. Wrenleigh notices those men. They notice anything that arrives with city polish and a gaze that sweeps a room in one take. Mrs. Doyle will tell the whole town over tea that he’s either a bodyguard or a lost prince. Her friends will lap up both.
“Your friend in that nice worsted coat wanted his coffee black,” my mother says, stacking the waxed sheets. “Tipped well, I’ll give him that. But he’s one of those who likes to face the door. I don’t think he ever just relaxes.”
“He isn’t my friend,” I mutter, chopping walnuts as if they offended me.
“No?” Her eyebrow asks the rest.
“No.” I drop the nuts into the bowl. “He’s a storm system.”
“Storms pass,” she counters, then changes the topic. “Bring me two trays when you’re ready.”
I hear the front in piecemeal. The soft scrape of chairs. The low laugh that means Coach Ramirez told one of his stories. The small gasps that mean the kids saw the sugar stars. The guided tour tone my mother uses when someone new asks how long we’ve been here. Always that answer, forever and also yesterday.
“Is she hiding?” Mrs. Doyle asks, voice just the right amount of loud.
“She’s baking,” my mother replies, patient as stone. “She’s also here for Christmas, not for autographs.”
“I never ask for autographs,” Mrs. Doyle sniffs. “I ask for receipts.”
I snort before I can stop myself. The laugh jumps out, then dies fast. I scrape the bowl clean and slide two trays onto the rack to chill. The refrigerator door seals with a soft kiss. I lean my forearms on the prep table and try to breathe like a normal person. It feels like the room’s too small and the ceiling’s low enough to touch. My hand moves to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear before I can whisperstop.
He left no name. No number. No English last name I could search at two in the morning when I was sick and scared and twelve weeks along. No stupid message that said call me, nothing but a hotel notepad and a line that tried to be kind and failed.Some things are too precious for my world. Every time I found it at the back of a drawer, I wanted to set it on fire, and I wanted to sleep with it under my pillow. Both truths lived in me and refused to move out.
So I chose. I came home. I turned my hands back to flour and sugar and the old way of counting days. I learned how to lift a baby while pulling a tray. I learned the trick of pinning my hair with one hand while Marco used the other as a pillow. I learned that international stops matter less when your son claps for a cookie he iced himself. Magazine covers look flat next to a four-year-old who grins at you like the sun decided to live in your kitchen.
He asked about a dad with the seriousness he saves for important things. Why does Liam get picked up by his father? Why do some men carry kids on their shoulders? Do dads like gingerbread? I told stories that held for a while. Every time I made up something, it hurt. Yet I made the truth into something gentle, a running game we could play without bruises. Then abox landed on my doormat and someone else decided to play with us. It bruised and left a scar.
Benedetti. The name has sat under hushed conversations in certain cities since my first casting. Stylists whisper it with a shrug. Photographers avoid it by looking at the ceiling. A brand pays a bill late, and the room goes cool. That family likes to remind people the world's small. In Milan the reminder came with a man who watched me dance with a stranger. He neither smiled nor looked away.
I should tell Matteo. I should stand in front of him and admit what’s true. He’s smart enough to have guessed. He gathered facts while I was trying to forget who taught me to like whiskey on ice. He looked at my boy, and he saw himself. It’s in the set of their mouths. It’s in the stubborn line their chins make when they decide how something should be. I could say it now and stop this sidestep that hurts more than a straight line.
The door chime rings again. My mother handles it. I stay with the trays. I pipe lemon glaze across the shortbread in a thin lattice and watch the lines cross. The urge to throw the piping bag at the wall comes and goes like a summer storm. I keep working.
Mr. Farrell leans on the counter to complain about the plow. He prefers the old driver. The new one leaves a ridge that trips him when he carries wood to the shed. My mother half listens. She guesses something's off. She’s not afraid to ask. She’s just waiting for me to open the right door.
The twins from the mill ask if Marco can come make snow forts later. Mrs. Brewster wants to know if I’ll donate a cake for the pageant raffle. She asks as if I might say no but expects a yes. Shegets a yes. When the timer dings, I pull a tray and set it to cool. My hands shake just enough to annoy me.
