1
Buns ’N’ Roses smelled like rosemary that morning, which Grace had not been expecting.
She’d come in at four-thirty to put up the bread. The starter was happy. The butter was tempered. The four loaves of cardamom brioche she was twisting for the McAllister wedding rehearsal were braided and rising in their pans by the time the rest of the world was waking up. It should have been the only thing she smelled. Cardamom and proofing yeast and the faint cinnamon-sugar smell of the breakfast scones she’d put in at five.
But there was also rosemary. Not even faint. A bright clean herbal smell coming from somewhere nearby, the way rosemary smelled when someone had just bruised it between their fingers.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen with her hands flour-white to the elbows and tried to remember the last time she’d had rosemary on the premises. She made a savory boule with rosemary and roasted garlic in the fall. It was April. There hadn’t been rosemary in the kitchen in five months.
She washed her hands and went to work making buttermilk biscuits. The dough timer dinged at five-twenty-six. She took the loaves out, set them on the cooling rack, started the next thing.
She kept thinking about the rosemary. And she kept smelling it.
Finally, she got down on the floor, achy knees and all from twelve years of standing on tile, but she got down and looked under the prep counter.
Three sprigs of fresh rosemary were tucked neatly behind one of its legs as if someone had intentionally put them there.
“Huh,” Grace said to herself.
She grabbed them and stood up. Looked at them in her hand.
She walked over to the door of the kitchen and opened it and looked into the front of the shop, which was dark and quiet and smelled the way it should at five-fifteen on a Tuesday morning, which was to say like bread.
She came back to the kitchen.
Looked at the rosemary.
She set it on the counter.
Okay, that was weird. Where on earth had neatly trimmed, fresh rosemary come from?
The only thing she could think of was a rodent carried it in. Except her building was solid brick and she had it carefully inspected every quarter for cracks, holes, and any sign of rodent activity. She kept out little live-trap boxes in her storeroom and under all the prep tables, and she checked them faithfully. She’d never once had a mouse in her establishment.
Confused, she took the first batch of scones out of the oven, because they were done, and she forgot trying to solve the rosemary mystery as she went on with her morning baking.
By seven the shop was open. By seven-fifteen, her friend, Charlotte, was at the counter with a coffee and a cardamom scone and a list of complaints about brides who thought the whole world revolved around them that she was eager to share with Grace. Given that Charlotte designed and sewed custom wedding gowns, she would know.
By seven-thirty Tucker had come in for the standing order of donuts he took to the fire station every Tuesday, paid in cash, tipped extravagantly, and left without a word, the way he had been doing for the past several months. By seven forty-five there was a small line.
Grace ran the front. Mary, her assistant, had called in sick this morning, which meant Grace was in her flour-dusted apron and the pale lavender blouse she’d pulled on at four that morning, taking orders herself.
She didn’t mind working the counter. She got to see and chat a bit with her friends and neighbors. It was one of the parts of the job nobody had told her about when she’d opened the doors four summers ago and been certain she was going to lose the place inside a year.
The line moved. The pastry case emptied. Mrs. Hennessey ordered the wrong kind of muffin, registered the error, declined to correct it, and left clutching the wrong muffin like she’d won the lottery. Grace gave the right kind to her grandson at the door. The grandson winked.
Grace went back to the counter and took care of the last customer in line. There would be another rush around 8:30 as the folks who went to work at nine came in for coffee and a quick bite to eat.
She ate a scone in between serving customers and pulled out two blueberry muffins now, keeping one for herself and plating the other one for Charlotte, who’d been sitting at one of the tiny bistro tables doing some paperwork before her craft store down the street opened.
“You’re quiet today,” Charlotte said from her chair across the room.
“Am I?” Grace asked. “Guess I’ve been busy working.”
“You’re working and you’re quiet,” Charlotte declared.
Grace wiped down the espresso machine, refilling the hopping with beans in preparation for round two of the morning crowd. “I found some rosemary in the kitchen this morning.”
“Isn’t that where it should be found?” Charlotte asked, frowning faintly.
