I say I’m fine.
I say it’s just glass.
I say we’ll be open tomorrow.
I say Kauss does not need to know yet because there is no sense making things worse.
Nobody believes me, but most pretend to because that is kindness too.
By the time the front window is partially boarded and the worst of the glass is cleared, my face hurts from smiling. Darlene tells everyone to go home before they become furniture, and somehow they listen. The door closes behind the last neighbor, leaving the bakery quiet, gutted, and dim.
I stand in the middle of Sweet Tooth with a broom in my hands.
The smell finally reaches me fully now that the adrenaline is draining away. Broken citrus from ruined tarts. Coffee gone bitter on the floor. Electrical scorch from the dead display case. Wet wood from rain leaking past the damaged doorframe. Beneath it all, the ghost of cinnamon still clings to the air, stubborn and sweet and heartbreaking.
Darlene touches my shoulder. “Honey.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I have to be.”
“No, you don’t.”
I look at the mural. The muddy boot print cuts across the painted ring of Halo, right over the street where my grandmother painted Sweet Tooth as a tiny pink storefront. Something inside me folds.
“I told him no,” I whisper.
“Damn right you did.”
“They broke her case.”
“Your grandmother would’ve told them to shove that case up their asses sideways.”
I laugh once, but it breaks apart before it becomes sound. The broom slips from my hands and clatters to the floor. I press both palms over my mouth, but the sob still comes, ugly and small and humiliating. Then another follows, and another, and I cannot stop them.
Darlene pulls me into her arms.
She smells like smoke, coffee, and old wool. She is shorter than me and somehow stronger than the whole ruined building. I bend around her and cry the way I did not cry when Ron smiled, or when the glass shattered, or when Mr. Eddison looked ashamed of surviving by leaving.
“I’m so tired,” I choke out.
“I know.”
“I hate them.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know, baby.”
That word undoes me because Darlene almost never uses it. I cry harder, muffled against her shoulder, while rain taps the broken window and the bakery lights flicker above us. I do not cry long. Maybe I do not have enough left in me for that. Eventually, the sobs fade into shuddering breaths, and I pull back, wiping my face with the towel around my cut hand.
Darlene studies me. “Kauss’s going to find out.”
“I know.”
