This was it. This was the thing that still made sense.
He did drills until his legs screamed: crossovers, backwards skating, tight turns around the cones he'd set up himself. Then shooting practice, whipping pucks at the empty net with precision that came from ten thousand hours of muscle memory. Top right corner. Five-hole. Bottom left. Repeat.
By 6:30, when his phone buzzed with the alarm he'd set to remind him to leave for the team breakfast, Jake had worked up a sweat and beaten back the worst of the 4 AM demons. He stood at center ice, chest heaving, and looked up at the empty seats.
Fourth round draft pick. Three seasons bouncing between the AHL and NHL, never quite good enough to stick. One shoulder injury that changed everything. Now the leading scorer on an ECHL team in his hometown, making $50,000 a year and living in a studio apartment above The Bread Basket.
A man's gotta be what he is, Shane had said.
Jake just wished he knew what that was supposed to be.
Lucy Chen's alarm went off at 4:45 AM, the same as it did every morning except Monday. She slapped it silent before it could finish its first chirp, already swinging her legs out of bed. Her feet hit the cold floor and she was moving, autopilot engaged, brain not quite online yet.
Bathroom. Splash water on face. Pull hair into a bun, secure with elastic and the pencil that lived on her bathroom counter for exactly this purpose. Brush teeth. Stare at herself in the mirror for exactly ten seconds while the toothpaste foam dripped down her chin.
Twenty-seven. Dark eyes that looked perpetually tired. Flour on her left cheek that she must have missed when she washed her face last night. Hair that never quite stayed in the bun, pieces already falling out around her face. The small tattoo on her inner wrist—a whisk, her grandmother's favorite—that she touched without thinking every single morning.
Okay, she told her reflection.Let's do this.
Downstairs, The Bread Basket's kitchen was exactly as she'd left it: spotless, prepped, ready. Lucy had learned young that preparation was everything. Her grandmother had taught her that, back when Lucy was eight years old and barely tall enough to see over the counter.Mise en place, Grandmother had said in her careful English.Everything in its place before you begin.
Lucy flipped on the lights and the kitchen came alive around her. The massive commercial oven that she'd spent $15,000 to replace three years ago. The industrial mixer that could handle fifty pounds of dough without breaking a sweat. The cooling racks, the prep tables, the walk-in cooler that hummed like a spaceship.
Her grandmother had opened this bakery in 1982, one year after emigrating from Taiwan. Had built it with her own hands, learned English from customers, raised a son (Lucy's uncle) in the apartment upstairs. Had turned The Bread Basket into a Timber Falls institution, the kind of place where everyone knew each other's orders and the smell of fresh bread was the town's unofficial morning alarm clock.
And then she'd left it all to Lucy.
Not on purpose, of course. Grandmother hadn't planned to have a stroke at seventy-two, right before Lucy was supposed to leave for culinary school in New York. Hadn't planned to spend her last six months in a hospital bed, squeezing Lucy's hand and sayingtake care of itover and over until the words lost all meaning.
That was five years ago. Lucy had been twenty-two, fresh out of UVM with a business degree and a plane ticket to a life she'd never gotten to live.
She tried not to think about it.
The first batch was always pork buns—Grandmother's recipe, the one that still sold out by 9 AM every single day. Lucy's hands moved through the motions without conscious thought: mixing the dough, letting it rest, rolling it out, filling each bun with the savory pork mixture she'd prepped yesterday. Fold, pinch, fold, pinch. Place in steamer. Repeat.
By 5:30, the first buns were steaming and the kitchen smelled like home.
Lucy moved on to the morning pastries: croissants, Danish, the cinnamon rolls that the high school kids went crazy for. Everything was rhythm and routine, hands moving while her brain stayed mostly offline. She liked it this way. Thinking led todangerous places, to questions likewhat ifandis this really all there isandwhen did I become my grandmother.
Better to just bake.
Above her, she heard the telltale creak of her upstairs neighbor getting home. Again. This guy—and Lucy was 90% sure it was a guy, based on the heavy footsteps—had the most bizarre schedule. He got home at all hours, moved around like an elephant, and apparently never slept. Last Tuesday, Lucy had been woken up at 2:30 AM by what sounded like furniture being moved. She'd grabbed her broom and banged on the ceiling until the noise stopped.
The noise had started again at 3 AM.
Lucy was a patient person. She was a kind person. But she was also a person who got up at 4:45 AM every day and desperately needed her sleep. If Mystery Neighbor kept this up, she was going to have to do something about it.
Through the wall—the one that separated her apartment from the unit next door—she heard another sound. This neighbor was different. Quieter. More ghostlike. Lucy had lived here for five years and she'd seen this neighbor exactly twice: once in the hallway, a blur of dark hair and a duffel bag, and once in the parking lot, loading a massive sports equipment bag into a truck. She'd waved both times. Both times, Ghost Neighbor had nodded back and disappeared.
Timber Falls. Where your neighbors were simultaneously strangers and people whose entire schedules you knew by heart.
By 6:30, Lucy was pulling the first batch of cinnamon rolls from the oven when her phone buzzed. A text from Rei:coffee? I have news
Lucy typed back:have to open. Come here instead?
10 min
Good. Lucy needed caffeine and she needed it from someone other than herself. She started the commercial coffee maker—a fancy Italian espresso machine that had been Uncle Walter's birthday present to her last year—and tried not to yawn. Six hours of sleep. That was almost luxurious. Last week she'd averaged four.
