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I put down the tray I’m holding, my heart thudding dully.

“He wanted to know if I’d sold the place yet. If I’d sold it to you.” She tapes a box shut. “I told him it was none of his business. Politely of course.”

“He came here,” I say. “I sent him away.”

Rosa nods. She fills another box. Then her hands stop.

“I gave him a key,” she says.

Something icy slithers down my back.

“When you were married and living upstairs. The back door key, so he could take the Saturday flour delivery and let you sleep.” For the first time, she looks every one of her years. “I never got it back, Vera. I never asked for it, and I haven’t thought of it until now.”

I don’t remember a key. I remember that year in fragments, and none of the fragments contain keys.

“Okay.” I sound calm even though my hands are shaking. “Okay. I’m calling someone.”

The first locksmith doesn’t answer. The second offers to come at eight. I tell him to change the locks on the front and back doors.

He arrives on time. He’s young and quick and he talks about his daughter’s soccer team with a smile on his face. While he works on the back door, I stand at the old keypad and change the code, four new numbers that have nothing to do with anyone’s birthday.

By eight forty-five, there are two new keys on my ring, two on Rosa’s, and nobody else in the world has one.

Five minutes later, Rosa stops at the door and puts her hand on my cheek, which she hasn’t done since the funeral.

“Thirty down,” she says. “Seven years. Don’t you dare make me wait long.”

The bell rings behind her.

Nikolai comes in at nine. His eyes go to the new brass lock before I’ve finished turning the key, and then to my face, and he doesn’t take off his coat.

I tell him everything. Rosa’s figure for the bakery. Tessa screaming into a pillow. Then Daniel and the key I never knew he had, the locksmith, and the new code.

He listens to every word. “Who has the new keys?” he asks when I’m done.

“Me and Rosa.”

“And the code?”

“Me. Rosa. And now you.” I tell him the four numbers, and he doesn’t write them down.

He reaches for my hand on the counter and holds it, his thumb moving slowly across my palm. “You’re going to buy the bakery,” he says like it’s a done deal.

But I’m still listening for the words he didn’t say.

8

NIKOLAI

“Your man in the vest is Walt Brandt,” Anton says when he calls on Monday. “Sixty-four. Owns the building and the business. Cold storage for half the restaurant suppliers in northwest Indiana. Pays his taxes. Goes to church.”

“Does he know whose freight it is?” I’m standing in my own kitchen, eating eggs because food has become important since meeting Vera.

“I’d bet against it. Brandt doesn’t ask what’s in a pallet as long as the cash is right.” A pause. “This morning, a refrigerated truck with Ohio plates collected them from the same bays. My men lost it at a truck stop outside Toledo.”

“So Brandt is a shelf.”

“The truck is our next stop. Could be the buyer’s. Could be a carrier somebody hired.” Paper moves on his end. “Now, your other problem.”