I walk to the mixer. It’s older, heavy, industrial. The kind my dad used to fix in church kitchens when I was a kid becausehe believed buying new was what people did when they lacked imagination.
I crouch and check the cord first.
Then the switch housing.
Then the back panel.
Jillie appears beside me with a solemn expression.
“Are you doing surgery?”
“Possibly.”
“On the mixer?”
“Yes.”
“Will it live?”
“I need space to work.”
She nods gravely, then turns and shouts through the open kitchen door, “EVERYBODY BACK UP. COLBY IS DOING MIXER SURGERY.”
The entire bakery looks over. Sadie’s head snaps up from the register.
“What is happening?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say immediately.
Jillie points at me. “He fibbed.”
Sadie marches into the kitchen.
I stand slowly, holding a screwdriver I found in the junk drawer.
Her gaze drops to it.
“No.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“That is not comforting.”
“My dad fixed restaurant equipment. I helped.”
“You’re a hockey player.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Jillie whispers, “That means more than one thing.”
“I know what it means, baby.”
Sadie looks from me to the dead mixer to the growing stack of unprepared dough.
I can see the war inside her…Pride versus necessity. Independence versus exhaustion.
Finally, she exhales. “If you break it worse, I’m naming a burnt cookie after you.”
