I’d done most of the structural work myself. Caleb Foster brought his crew in for the heavy framing—he’d given us a rate that was closer to a favor than a contract, and when Brenna tried to argue, Caleb had shrugged and said, “You’ll pay me back in cinnamon rolls.”
She’d been dropping a box at Foster Construction almost every week since the bakery reopened. The only weeks she’d missed were the week of our wedding and the week Eliana was born—and even then, Bev had brought the box over on Brenna’s behalf, because God forbid Caleb’s crew go a Friday without their cinnamon rolls.
The new kitchen was twice the size of the original. Commercial-grade wiring, new panel, a ventilation system that Brenna had spec’d herself after spending two weeks researching options with the kind of intensity most people reserved for buying a house. The oven was a beast—a double-deck convectionunit that she’d found used from a restaurant supply dealer in Boise and driven six hours to pick up herself because she didn’t trust a shipping company with it.
The front of the shop hadn’t changed much. Same hardwood floors. Same counter she’d built herself—though I’d reinforced it during the rebuild without telling her, because the original supports had been held together with optimism and finish nails. The chalkboard menu was still there, the same handwriting listing daily specials that changed with the season. The display case was new, though. Bigger. Brenna had picked it out and I’d installed it, and on opening day she’d filled every shelf and stood behind the counter with tears running down her face while Bev Holloway cut the ribbon with a pair of kitchen shears.
Bev. She’d been there for everything. Through the rebuild, through the reopening, through the wedding—which had been small and fast, at the town hall, a year and a half after the fire.
Bev had stood next to Brenna and held her bouquet and cried harder than either of us. She was Eliana’s godmother. She was also the reason my daughter’s first solid food had been a piece of buttermilk biscuit, which Bev had slipped her at the diner when she was five months old against Brenna’s explicit instructions. Brenna forgave her. Eventually.
I got up, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and went downstairs.
The bakery kitchen was warm and bright. Brenna was at the center island, piping icing onto a row of cinnamon rolls with the steady hand and serious expression she wore when she was working. Her hair was up in a clip, loose curls escaping around her face and neck. She was wearing cutoff shorts and one of my old department T-shirts over a thin bralette, and her feet were bare on the tile floor.
Eliana was in the high chair next to the island, covered in flour from her eyebrows to her lap. The wooden spoon was inher mouth. She spotted me in the doorway and yanked it out and slammed it against the tray.
“Dada.”
“Morning, bug.”
I crossed the kitchen and kissed the top of her head, getting a palmful of flour on my shirt in the process. Then I stepped behind Brenna and put my hands on her hips and kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear.
She leaned back into me without breaking the piping line. “You’re up early.”
“Smoke detector.”
“I opened the oven too fast again.”
“I know.”
She finished the row and set the piping bag down and turned in my arms. Her hands came up to my chest—flour on her fingers, warmth in her palms—and she looked up at me with the expression I’d spent five years memorizing. The one that was equal parts softness and steel. The one that said I chose this and I’d choose it again.
“Eliana needs a bath,” she said.
“I’ll take her.”
“And then I need you back down here. I’m behind on the Foster order and I have a wedding cake consult at ten.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing bakery related. You’re banned from the icing station after the incident.”
“I was trying to help.”
“You wrote ‘Happy Birthday Bort’ on a cake for a woman named Bridget.”
“The B was smudged on the order form.”
She smiled. The dimple in her left cheek appeared—the one that still made my heart beat a little faster every time I saw it—and she pushed up on her toes and kissed me. Quick and warm, tasting like coffee and buttercream.
“Take Eliana upstairs,” she said. “I need about forty-five minutes to finish this batch. Then I’m all yours until the consult.”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Forty-five minutes.”
I scooped Eliana out of the high chair and carried her upstairs. She babbled the whole way, narrating the journey in her private language, the wooden spoon still clutched in her fist. I bathed her in the kitchen sink—faster than the bathtub, and she liked watching the water run—and dressed her in the overalls Bev had bought her last week and set her in the playpen in the living room with a board book and a stuffed bear that Jesse Harrington had given her at the station when she was three days old.
