EVIE
The next morning arrives with the kind of rain that feels personal.
It comes down in gray sheets against the front windows of Sweet Tooth Bakery, streaking the glass until the street outside looks like an old watercolor someone forgot to protect from a spill. The gutters gargle beneath the curb. The hover lane beyond Mercy gives off a low electrical whine every time a freight platform passes overhead, and the sound vibrates through the cracked windowpanes while I stand behind the counter with a stack of invoices in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The bakery smells like lemon glaze, wet coats, dark roast, and the faint scorched-metal breath of oven three, which has apparently decided that today is the day it begins auditioning for the role of industrial disaster.
The oven shrieks again from the kitchen.
Darlene looks up from slicing onions for the lunch quiches. “That machine is either dying or calling a mate.”
I wince as the noise tapers into a metallic groan. “Please don’t say mate. It makes the repair estimate feel obscene.”
“That repair estimate was already obscene.”
“I prefer suggestive.”
“I prefer affordable, but nobody cares what old women want unless we’re dead and haunting them.”
I glance at the top invoice and take a long drink of coffee, hoping the caffeine will perform a miracle and rewrite the numbers. It does not. The utility bill has jumped again because Vedder City’s municipal grid considers consistency a form of charity, and private backup power costs enough to make my stomach tighten. The flour supplier wants partial payment on last month’s balance before he extends this month’s order. The refrigeration unit is overdue for maintenance. The front display case is still making that soft electrical popping noise, which I have chosen to interpret as enthusiasm instead of a fire risk.
I set the papers on the counter and press both palms flat on either side of them. The wood is warm from the room, worn smooth by decades of hands, elbows, spilled coffee, and desperate arithmetic.
“Maybe if I stare hard enough, the decimal points will move.”
Darlene carries a bowl of chopped onions past me. “They will. Left.”
“That is unkind.”
“That is accounting.”
I flip through the stack again because misery apparently improves with repetition. “The bakery made decent money yesterday.”
“The bakery fed half of Halo yesterday.”
“The bakery fed paying customers yesterday.”
“The bakery fed paying customers, nonpaying customers, spiritually paying customers, and Mr. Eddison, whose tab has started sending me threatening letters.”
“Mr. Eddison pays when he can.”
“He pays in stories about his knees.”
“His knees have been through a lot.”
“So has my patience.” Darlene leans against the counter, wiping her hands on her apron. Her cigarette sits unlit behind one ear because she is trying to respect my rules or pretending to, which is the closest she gets to tenderness before noon. “Sell it.”
The words hit the counter between us like a dropped pan.
I look up slowly. “No.”
“You didn’t even let me finish.”
“You were done. That sentence only gets worse if you keep adding to it.”
“Sell it,” she repeats, undeterred, because Darlene has survived seventy-one years through a combination of nicotine, spite, and the refusal to let anyone else’s discomfort inconvenience her. “Take the building money, pay off what you owe, move to a safer district, and get a job in one of those shiny downtown bakeries where the customers tip with actual credits instead of homemade excuses.”
I laugh once, but it has no humor in it. “Downtown bakeries put edible gold leaf on pastries and call it authenticity.”
“They also have working locks.”
