She continued filling the muffin tins two-thirds of the way, humming under her breath while she worked.
We finished baking for the day a few hours later, just in time for Sweet Dreams to open. Our days usually started around four, sometimes earlier if we had a few big orders coming up.
Myrtle came in while I was busy filling our display case.
“The usual?” I yelled at her through the glass. It was a question that didn’t require an answer, since she never ordered anything but a chocolate croissant and coffee.
“No need to yell at me,” she snapped back. A glance at her ears confirmed that, for once, she was wearing her hearing aids.
“Take a seat, and I’ll bring it over,” I responded at a normal volume.
She harrumphed and went to the same seat she’d been occupying since I opened my little bakery.
It was still quiet, so I did the right thing and stopped for a chat with Myrtle. She must have been lonely since her daughter moved to Utah.
“How is Maggie?” I asked about her daughter, setting down her plate and cup.
Willa made a strangled noise a few tables over from where she was putting the rest of the tables and chairs on the ground. She nearly dropped the chair she was holding and made a cutting motion across her throat.
Too late. Myrtle was already glowering at me. “Forgetting about her old mom while she’s out carousing with that fella up in Canada.”
“That fella” was Maggie’s husband of nearly twenty years, whom she had three kids with. Guess Myrtle never got over her daughter ignoring her advice to marry someone with money and married someone she loved instead.
They’d moved to Utah a year ago when her husband got a promotion. Myrtle refused to remember where they lived and ignored her daughter’s numerous attempts to get her to move in with them.
“Maybe you should visit her?”
Willa’s cutting motions were getting fiercer, but I ignored her.
“I will do no such thing,” Myrtle snapped before biting into her croissant. “She can come back here when she wants to see me. How could she abandon her hometown? I don’t know where I went wrong with that girl.”
She went on like that for about ten minutes, and I was getting desperate for an escape.
Good deeds aren’t all they were cracked up to be.
When I finally wiggled my way out of the conversation, Willa was waiting for me behind the counter, shaking with laughter. “You should have seen your face when she talked about her neighbor’s dog. Priceless.”
“Shut up. You could have warned me.”
“But I did. You ignored me.”
“Cutting motions could mean any number of things, especially coming from you.”
Customers streaming into the shop blessedly cut Willa’s laughter short.
Our morning was busy, keeping my thoughts focused on baked goods and coffee instead of Grayson. But as soon as there was a lull in the afternoon, I couldn’t resist the urge to check my phone. I had messages, but none were from the one person I wanted to talk to.
Desperate to hear his voice, I went out back and dialed his number. The phone connected on the third ring, and my heart missed a beat.
“Grayson’s phone, Wynona speaking,” an unwelcome voice responded.Sonot who I wanted to talk to.
“Wynona, it’s Rayna. Is Grayson around?”
“He’s busy.”
“Okay, then, can you tell him I called?”
“I don’t have time to play secretary.”
