Jillie straightens proudly. “I knew it.”
Sadie points at me again. “Do not encourage her.”
I should probably stop. I don’t.
The morning rush begins at seven, and by seven-fifteen, Sweet Seasons turns into controlled chaos.
People pour in from every direction. Locals bundled in scarves and boots. Tourists carrying phones. Moms picking up pastries for school drop-off. Retired men in Blizzards hats who pretend they only came for coffee but keep glancing at me like I might offer commentary on our power play.
Sadie moves through it all like she was born in motion. Boxing pastries. Pouring coffee. Calling people by name.
She remembers who likes extra glaze, who needs gluten-free muffins, who is picking up cupcakes for a birthday party. And she never stops. Not once. And not in the glamorous, effortless way people pretend in commercials.
She works. Hard.
By eight o’clock, her cheeks are flushed, her sleeves are pushed up, and she’s carrying herself with the slightly braced posture of a woman used to doing everything alone.
That bothers me more than it should.
I stay out of the way at first, but then Mrs. Bellamy asks if I can reach a stack of holiday tins on the top shelf. Then Mr. Callahan needs help carrying two crates of day-old bread to his truck. And then Sadie’s teenage helper calls in sick, and suddenly I’m refilling napkins, wiping tables, and learning that customers become emotionally unstable if the maple pecan bars run out.
“Don’t worry,” an older woman tells me while patting my arm. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
“I play professional hockey.”
She nods kindly. “I’m sure that helps.”
Jillie nearly falls off her stool laughing.
Sadie watches from behind the counter, trying not to smile.
The bakery door keeps jingling. Phones keep appearing. Whispers follow me from table to table. But none of it feels like the arena.
In Frostholm, attention always comes with hunger. People wanting quotes. Pictures. Access. Pieces of me I stopped knowing how to give.
Here, it’s different. Still strange. Still invasive at times. But softened by cinnamon and small-town nosiness.
A woman named Peggy asks me if I’m eating enough. A teenage boy wants advice on wrist shots. A man in a plaid jacket tells me I need to “stop dangling at the blue line and shoot the puck like my grandmother paid for the ticket.”
I sign a napkin for his grandson. He squints at it and says, “Your handwriting is terrible.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“You do that.”
By nine, I know six customer names.
By nine-thirty, Mrs. Bellamy has told me which townspeople are secretly feuding over the snowman contest judging.
By ten, Jillie has assigned me the official title of Assistant Sprinkle Manager.
By ten-fifteen, the industrial mixer dies.
Not sputters.
Not slows.
Dies.
