CHAPTER 1
EVIE
Morning in Halo for me is saltwater, fryer grease, engine coolant, and cinnamon rolls, which is either proof the universe has a sense of humor or proof Vedder City will let anything beautiful grow out of a cracked sidewalk if nobody bothers to poison it first. The fog rolls in from the industrial harbor before sunrise, thick enough to turn the streetlights into smeared yellow halos, and the blue neon tooth above my bakery sign flickers like it has been personally offended by the concept of steady electrical current. Somewhere down the block, a delivery skiff coughs through a bad ignition cycle. Somewhere above, one of the few hover lanes allowed this far from downtown hums with early freight traffic, low and tired and heavy in the sky.
I shove my shoulder against the side door of Sweet Tooth Bakery because the frame swells whenever the coastal damp gets into the wood. The lock gives with a sticky clack, and warm ghosts of yesterday’s sugar breathe out at me from the dark interior. Flour dust lingers in the air. Vanilla clings to the walls. Beneath it all, the old ovens carry that faint metallic tang of machinery that has survived three generations of my family and a whole lot of cussing.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I mutter, flipping on the first bank of lights. “Let’s pretend we’re not falling apart today.”
The bakery answers with a low electric buzz, then a pop from the front display case that makes me wince.
“Rude,” I tell it.
The front room glows to life in pieces. First the counter. Then the pastry case. Then the old mural on the far wall, the one my grandmother painted back when Halo still had tree-lined sidewalks, clean rain gutters, and enough optimism to put flowers in public planters without somebody stealing the pots. The mural shows a bright ring of houses and shops circling the old industrial district like a bracelet. That is how Halo got its name, though nobody with functioning eyes would look around now and call this place heavenly.
The floor tiles are scuffed from decades of boots, work shoes, children’s sneakers, and the occasional drunken idiot who thinks “open until nine” means “please come in at eight fifty-eight and vomit in the restroom.” The tables do not match because half of them came from estate sales and the other half came from neighbors who could not pay their tabs but still insisted on contributing something. There is a dent in the wall beside the condiment station from the time Mr. Preece’s service mechanical had a navigation glitch and tried to deliver a crate of turnip greens straight through the plaster.
It is not fancy. It is not profitable enough. It is mine.
I tie my apron around my waist, pull my hair up into a messy knot that will fail me before lunch, and start the ovens. Heat blooms through the kitchen in stages, dry and steady against my skin. I wash my hands until my fingers smell like citrus soap instead of cold metal from the door handle, then I open the cold storage and take inventory with the kind of optimism only a complete fool or a bakery owner can maintain.
“Eggs, mostly fine. Butter, offensively expensive. Cream, still pretending it won’t bankrupt me. Berries, ugly but salvageable.” I lift one carton and frown at the bruised fruit inside. “You and me both, sweetheart.”
The first dough has been resting overnight, and when I punch it down, it sighs beneath my knuckles, soft and yeasty and alive. That small resistance always steadies me. Bread does not care about crime rates, power fluctuations, protection rackets, tax notices, or ex-boyfriends who steal your grandmother’s jewelry and vanish off-world like the morally incontinent cowards they are. Bread only cares whether you gave it time, warmth, and enough faith to rise.
I sprinkle flour across the counter and roll out the cinnamon dough until my shoulders loosen. Outside, Halo wakes up rough. A siren wails three streets over, sharp enough to slice through the walls before it fades toward the harbor. A bottle breaks somewhere in the alley. The old transit rail shrieks against its guide track, and the sound rattles the measuring spoons hanging above my prep station.
Inside, butter melts under my knife. Brown sugar falls in soft, sandy clumps. Cinnamon blooms warm and dark, and for a few minutes the whole world narrows to the spiral of dough beneath my hands.
The rear bell jingles at five thirty-six, which means Darlene is late by exactly six minutes and will walk in acting like time itself owes her an apology.
She does.
She enters through the back door in a gray coat older than me, a black scarf wrapped around her white hair, and a cigarette already hanging from the corner of her mouth despite the large printed sign beside the employee hooks that reads NO SMOKING INSIDE, DARLENE. The sign used to say NOSMOKING INSIDE. She made the mistake of ignoring it so spectacularly that I had to personalize the message.
“You’re late,” I say.
“You’re short,” she replies, taking the cigarette from her mouth and not putting it out.
“I am five foot six, which is statistically normal for a human woman.”
“Statistics were invented by men who wanted to feel better about mediocrity.”
“That’s almost inspirational.”
“That’s because you’re too young to know despair when it buys you dinner.” Darlene hangs her coat with the weary dignity of a queen abdicating a very disappointing throne. “Oven three still making that screaming noise?”
“Only when it’s on.”
“So it’s haunted.”
“It’s an appliance.”
“At my age, there’s no difference.” She leans one hip against the prep table and squints at the dough. “You’re making too many rolls.”
“I’m making the regular amount.”
“You’re making the amount you make when you plan on feeding people who won’t pay you.”
