Two clerks stood behind the counter, clad in white aprons. A Latina with golden skin and a ponytail, her hair dyed a deep blue-green at the ends, and a younger Asian guy with a messy man bun. They were each helping someone at the moment, but she’d be next in line.
Lifting her feet to walk toward them felt like dragging lead weights.
As she neared the counter, the heavenly smell of the shop almost dizzied her. The place was a pastry lover’s fever dream, its glass-front display cases crowded with buns and Danishes and doughnuts and scones, most of them glistening with various glazes and drizzles. The door behind the clerks and to the left was cracked open an inch or two, and the roar of a powerful engine—a mixer?—drifted into the public area, competing with the soft jazz playing over the bakery’s speakers.
Should she go ahead and ask the question without preamble? Or would it be more polite to order something first? Her stomach churned with nausea, and she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, but...
“May I help you?” The ponytailed woman—Bez, according to her name tag—sounded patient but a tad concerned, as if she’d already asked that question more than once.
“Sorry,” Molly said, just as the clamor from the back ceased. Oh, crap, she hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. “Um... I’d like one of the lemon-glazed blueberry cake doughnuts, please. And... uh... a butterscotch latte with whipped cream?”
Sugar and caffeine. The breakfast of champions, assuming the sport in question was competitive feelings-consumption.
Bez grabbed a sheet of waxed paper. “For here or to go?”
“Here.” Because how could she claim she’d paid her respects ifshe breezed in and out of Karl’s workplace for the past two decades in less than five minutes?
“Sure.” Bez relayed the coffee order to Mr. Man Bun. Using a sheet of waxed paper, she transferred the doughnut onto a small white plate and set it on the counter. “Anything else?”
A quick glance behind her confirmed that no one else was waiting to be served. “Yeah. I... I just wanted to say...” Molly’s inhalation shook, but she forced herself to keep speaking. “I’m so sorry to hear the news. About, uh... Karl. Do—do you have any idea when the funeral might be?”
There. She’d made his loss real by speaking it aloud.
Even rapid blinking was no longer doing the job. Shit.
To her shock, the tired-looking clerk with the man bun started laughing. Bez smacked him on the arm, but he was still grinning as he began working on the latte.
The door to the back room opened wider then, but Molly barely noticed through her haze of fury. She no longer had to fight tears. Instead, she had to fight the urge to vault over the countertop separating her from that bunned bastard and beat him bloody with a mug.
“I can’t believe you’relaughing.” Shaking with rage, she narrowed her eyes at the asshole and marched toward his station. Leaning over the countertop and jabbing her finger an inch from his chest, she hissed, “Howdareyou?”
The clerk—Johnathan, his name tag informed her—raised his hands, palms out. “Sorry. Sorry, ma’am. I just—we’ve been hearing the same thing all morning, and it’s all so ridiculous.”
Ridiculous? A good man’s murder wasridiculous?
At first, Molly couldn’t hear Bez through the blood pounding in her ears.
“—not dead,” the other clerk was saying emphatically, waving an arm to draw Molly’s attention away from her coworker. “Karl’snot dead. I promise. It was a misunderstanding. The reporter, Sylvia, didn’t realize we were joking, and... yeah. Things got weird. But he’s in the back right now, working on our daily sandwich specials. Please don’t.... I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
Molly’s knees had gone floppy, and she slapped her hands onto the cool marble countertop to brace herself. “He’s not... he’s alive?”
“Yes. Very alive. He had the flu, but now he’s simply”—Bez raised her voice significantly—“a cranky grouch unwilling to come out front and deal with someone mourning him, even though he’s perfectly fine. Instead, he’s leaving it to his clerks, who aren’t paid nearly enough to serve as grief counselors.”
There was no response from the back, although the light pouring through the cracked door leading to the work area seemed to darken.
Was that—
“I don’t recognize you.” Bez’s ponytail swayed as she tipped her head to the side. “Are you local? How do you know Karl?”
Still woozy with relief, Molly scrubbed her hands over her face and bought herself a moment to recover. Braced herself against the possibility of seeing her former friend for the first time in two decades, blessedly alive and awkwardlyright here.
If she’d known that was even a faint, miraculous possibility, she’d probably have combed her hair before coming to the bakery.
“I don’t live in Harlot’s Bay now, but I did. Back in high school.” When she finally lowered her hands and answered Bez, Molly’s voice sounded calm, and she was freaking proud of that. “Karl and I used to be—”
“Friends,” said a rough, familiar voice, and the door to the back room opened entirely, revealing... Karl. Broad and big-bellied. Not especially tall, but still a towering presence. Wearing a tee, jeans, and a flour-flecked apron, his brown eyes devouring her from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. “Good friends. Till I fucked it all up.”
She wanted to weep at the sight of him, hale and whole. She wanted to laugh, since he was wearing some sort of stretchy white net over his thick, coppery beard, and it was kind of hilarious looking. She wanted to scream, because all that sorrow and regret had been fornothing, and what kind of jerk would let her think he was dead foran entire dayif he wasn’t, even if they weren’t in touch anymore and hadn’t been for two decades?
