“Are you okay getting home?” Linda asked her.
“Yes, it’s just a walk through the side gate.” Rosa smiled. “I’m staying at the small staff flat now.”
“Of course,” Linda said. “Good night, Rosa.”
“I’m glad you are home, Miss Linda,” Rosa told her. “We all need you here.”
Linda felt the sting of tears once again as she nodded and watched Rosa walk to the hotel. As she disappeared through theback door. Linda turned and stepped over the threshold and let the door close softly behind her.
She was home.
LILA
Lila Grant counted out the change for Mrs. Devereaux, slipped the warm cinnamon buns into a small paper bag, and folded the top down with the practiced quickness of someone who had been working a register since she was seventeen years old. Mrs. Devereaux was the last customer of the day. The clock above the doorway read a few minutes past seven, and the long Shell Street began to glow as the street lamps came on, softening into early evening through the bakery’s front windows.
“You give Tom my best when he gets back from the hospital, Lila,” Mrs. Devereaux said, tucking the small bag against her chest. “Poor George. Such a good man. We’ll all be praying for him.”
“I’ll tell Tom,” Lila promised warmly. “He’ll be glad to hear from you.”
She walked Mrs. Devereaux to the door, held it open for her, and stood for a moment in the doorway watching the older woman make her unhurried way down Shell Street toward the small parking spot where she always left her car. The light over the street had gone a soft lavender, the kind of light that settledacross the island in early summer when the heat had begun to ease. A few palm fronds shifted gently in the breeze that came in off the bay. Lila stood breathing in the salty air and closed her eyes for a few minutes. She’d found such peace in the small community. Her eyes scanned the street out of habit from having lived in a big city most of her life, where you always found yourself being fully aware of your surroundings.
Lila stepped back inside, flipped the small wooden sign hanging in the window from open to closed, and turned the lock.
The bakery was quiet around her. The front lights had dimmed to the warm wash of the small display lamps over the cake counter. The ovens had cooled. The smell of the day’s last bake, sourdough and butter, and a faint sweet undertone of cinnamon, settled into the corners of the room and stayed there. Lila stood for a moment at the locked front door and let the silence sit on her shoulders like a soft shawl.
Then she went back to finish off her work for the day.
The leather order book lived beside the register in a small wicker basket Tom kept lined with a clean cloth. Lila pulled it out, sat herself on the stool behind the counter, and turned through the pages to the next morning’s entries. She traced her finger down the column of standing orders and ran the small mental check she always ran at the close of the day. The Bay Café’s daily breads were six small sourdoughs and four loaves of soft white. Two trays of cinnamon rolls for the marina office. The standing weekly delivery to the three families on Bay View Drive, the Donnellys with their plain country bread, the Vance family with their blueberry muffins, and the Petersens with the rye Tom had been making for their grandfather since long before Lila had started at the bakery. Two birthday cakes Tom had taken on for the Friday morning, a simple lemon and a chocolate ganache.
Lila tapped her pen against the page and made small, careful notes in her own hand at the side of each entry. The lemon cake would need fresh lemons. The Petersens’ rye had been promised an extra loaf this week.
She closed the book and slid it back into the wicker basket.
The walk-in cold room was at the back of the bakery, behind the swing door that led from the front into the kitchen. Lila pushed through, and the cool air met her with its faint metal edge. She stood for a moment, counting butter blocks on the second shelf, the small white cartons of cream above them, the brown speckled eggs in their wire trays. She did this last check every evening because Tom had once mentioned, in passing, in her first week at the bakery, that the morning could go entirely sideways if a person discovered they were two eggs short at five-fifteen in the morning. Lila had taken the comment to heart. She had not let the morning go sideways since.
She made small marks on the running shopping list pinned to the cold-room door. Eggs were fine. Butter was fine. They were down to the last carton of cream, which would not see them through to Wednesday’s deliveries. Stoneground rye, low. Almonds for the Friday cakes, low. The early summer blackberries Tom liked to fold into the morning scones were almost gone. Lila wrote each one in her neat, looping hand and tucked the pencil back into the small clip at the top of the list.
Out in the kitchen, the trays of pie shells she had blind-baked earlier sat cooling on the long wooden table. Lila washed her hands, then tested one of the pie shells with the side of her thumb to make sure they had set properly. She carried each tray carefully across to the proving cabinet and slid them into the cool middle shelves. Tom liked the shells held overnight when the next day’s pies were going to be heavy on the filling. The slowrest helped the pastry hold its shape. Lila had picked up the trick from him in her first month at the bakery and had been doing it his way ever since.
She closed the proving cabinet, dusted her apron off, and went back out to the front of the shop.
The four small wooden tables Tom had set out for his morning regulars were scattered with the day’s gentle clutter. Lila wiped each one down with the soft cloth she kept tucked into her apron pocket, pushed the chairs in neatly, and stacked the small crockery saucers from the last few coffee customers onto her tray. The two glass coffee pots on the back counter had cooled by now. She rinsed them out at the sink, set them upside down on the rack to drain, and emptied the small pot of leftover tea leaves into the green compost bin Tom kept tucked beside the back door. The tea bag rack she had refilled that morning was already neatly squared away.
Lila tied her apron back on and settled herself at the register. The day’s takings sat in the small drawer in their soft paper sleeves, waiting for her. She pulled the cash book toward her, opened it to the day’s page, and began to count.
She had counted out the first two stacks when the jingle of keys at the front door snapped her head up sharply enough that her hand jerked against the small pile of receipts beside her, sending several fluttering down to the polished floor.
Tom let himself in.
For one quick second, Lila’s heart did a small, foolish thing in her chest that it always did when she saw him. She sat very still on the stool and let the moment pass. Tom had been on her mind all afternoon, the way he had been on her mind in small, carefuldoses since a few days after she’d started working at his bakery. It was a quiet ache she had been refusing to look at squarely. It would not do. Lila Grant was sixty-eight years old, four years a widow, and a sensible woman who had no business letting a man’s silhouette in a doorway flip the small thing in her chest the way it had just flipped. She straightened her back, tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear, and pushed the feeling firmly aside.
“Tom,” Lila said warmly. “You’re back.”
“Sorry to have startled you.” Tom let the bakery door close softly behind him and turned the inside lock. “I’ve just come back to shower, change, and get back to the hospital.” He smiled. “I’m taking the night shift tonight.”
His shoulders sat heavier than they had that morning. Lila could see that the day had taken an emotional toll on Tom. She slid off her stool and gathered the spilled receipts off the floor as she stood.
“How is George?” Lila asked, straightening up with the receipts in her hand.
