He listened to the entire bizarro story in one sitting. Told himself that was enough.
The next day, he listened to it again. Called himself a fucking idiot the entire time.
The day after that, he proceeded to obliterate his monthly budget by buying every goddamn audiobook Molly Cressley had ever narrated.
From what he could tell, they were mostly books about women fucking weird-ass creatures. Like guppy-men. Or shadow-guys. Or... the Loch Ness Monster?
Didn’t matter. He’d take what he could get.
Before the bakery opened in the mornings, he began listening to the stories she narrated as he egg-washed, baked off, and iced the pastries he’d shaped and refrigerated before leaving work theprevious day. As he baked off breads, rolls, scones, and muffins too. As he fed his sourdough starter. As he fried umpteen million doughnuts.
He used earbuds at first, but then he burned all his English muffin bread one morning when he didn’t hear the damn timer. Which was when he got permission from Bez, Charlotte, and everyone else who worked the early shift to play the audiobooks out loud.
And for the next two years, her voice was all he had of her.
Then, twenty years after graduation, Molly returned to Harlot’s Bay.
Unfortunately, she came for his fuckingfuneral.
1
Present day
“Fucking flu,” Karl muttered as he carved up the turkey breast he’d roasted for that day’s sandwiches. “What kind of shitty-ass flu spreads in earlySeptember?”
His doctor had done the test to confirm it. Influenza goddamn A.
Even with the antiviral meds, it’d kicked his butt for an entire week, and he’d been forced to close Grounds and Grains for the first time ever during normal business hours. He’d still paid his staff but brought in zero income, so it was a major hit to his bottom line. And he might be feeling way better now, but he had a crap ton of catching up to do.
This Friday was going to blow.
Bez—who was currently out front, slinging coffees and lattes and patiently telling customers to hold their goddamn horses until lunchtime for food, only with less swearing—had been nagging him to get an assistant baker for years, and she was right. He could afford one, and an assistant baker would’ve filled in for him. Would allow him to take more time off even when he was feeling fine. But that would mean the presence of someone else in the back room with him for hours at a time, so nope.
In general, owning his own business was a hassle. But it did mean he could be a misanthropic asshole in blessed fucking solitude, and that made up for a lot.
The cowbell attached to the entrance door jingled again, and the identity of the new arrival became clear immediately.
“Where is everyone? Why aren’t there pastries?” a high, quavering voice demanded to know. “Why was the shop closed all week?”
Sylvia Plude. Eighty if she was a damn day, her ebony-skinned face wrinkled like crumpled parchment. Still the only reporter for their town’s tiny-ass weekly newspaper, theHarlot’s Herald. Relentless in search of a good story. And now a true crime fan, due to Athena—Matthew’s pain-in-the-ass wife; also Karl’s former employee and current friend—who’d recommended the grisly books to Sylvia. Which meant Sylvia had becomeeven moresuspicious of any oddities she noticed andeven moreof a snoop. Which was saying something.
With a glance, he checked the swinging door to the front. Cracked open two inches at most. No way to see him back there. No risk of her cornering and haranguing him instead of his employee.
Bet Bez was wishing she hadn’t sent Charlotte off on a break only five minutes ago. By the time Charlotte returned from her morning walk, Sylvia would’ve been grilling Bez for almost a half hour. And since the week’s story deadline was closing in, the older woman wouldn’t relent until she hadsomethingto report about for tomorrow’s paper.
A better man would rescue his morning clerk. A real shame for Bez that Karl was her boss instead. Silently whistling, he wrapped up the last sandwich in waxed paper, labeled it with a sell-by date and stored it alongside the others in the refrigerator, put his cutting board in the sink, removed his gloves, and washed his hands as he listened to Sylvia interrogating his employee at top volume—womanneeded a hearing aid, not that she’d ever admit it—over the sounds of soft jazz.
“—sick, but he’s feeling better now,” Bez was explaining. “We’ll be back to normal hours next week. And in just an hour or so, we’ll have some of our usual lunchtime—”
“If he was feeling better, he’d be here,” Sylvia declared. “And if he were here, there would be pastries. And muffins. And some of those little cookies with autumn leaves piped on them, which I’d intended to bring to bingo on Sunday, but I can’t, because he’s not here, which meanshe’s not better.”
“But he is, Sylvia. In fact, right now—”
Karl paused. She’d better fuckingnot.
As if she’d sensed his glare through the wall, Bez cut herself off. Her sigh was audible. “Would you like your usual?”
Every week, right before Sylvia’s deadline, she ordered—
