Page 38 of A Taste of Vanilla

Inside my bakery, my employees are probably still baking as customers filter in and out. There are labeled bins, prep lists. Things I need to accomplish tomorrow, and proof that at least part of my life makes sense.

Upstairs is an apartment I have never used for more than storage and the occasional nap when there’s a rush or when I’m helping Oliver late at night. The apartment with one working outlet. The apartment Grant had called “a cute backup plan” when I mentioned maybe renovating it with Oliver.

Cute.

I hate the word almost as much as I hate adorable.

“You okay?” Marley asks.

I nod, but she can see right through it. “I am. But I feel like if I go inside, it’s real.”

Oliver starts walking toward the door leading up to the apartment. “It’s already real.”

“You’re not being helpful,” Marley hisses.

I swallow and look at my bakery.

Something that’s mine.

Not Grant’s or his father’s, even though Barrett Whitaker’s review did help launch it. Not some charming little project attached to the future Mrs. Whitaker.

But mine. Something I started building before Grant, and something that will stand far after him.

It may not be graceful at all times.

Maybe it’s while crying in my walk-in.

Maybe it’s being angry enough that naming lattes things like Men are Decorative at Best feels cathartic.

But it’s mine.

The keys shake in my hand as I unlock the door.

I want to go into the bakery. I want to feel at home. But there are people there, and I don’t want to answer a million questions from my employees.

“Come on, Hal,” Oliver says softly. “Today it’s food, shower, and sleep.”

“What if I want to make a list?” I say suddenly. There are a million things to do. Things I need to accomplish. Desserts I need to bake.

“You hate lists.”

“I may be a new woman.”

He rolls his eyes. “No one becomes a new woman the day they run out of gas near a Wawa.”

Marley heads up the stairs, the grocery bag swinging from her hand. “Do you have clean sheets up here?”

“If I do, they’re in the bin,” I say, trying to think. “I think the blue one.” There are probably twelve bins.

The stairs are narrow and steep. I climb slowly, one handtrailing along the wall. The paint is chipped near the top, and the ceiling light flickers.

“Charming,” Oliver grumbles.

The apartment over Saints & Sinners is small and strange, with slanted ceilings, old hardwood floors, and windows that look over the back. Oliver and I rented the whole building after the previous owner sold it. I had said it would be cool to turn the upstairs apartment into some kind of cozy retreat. It didn’t have to be much. Maybe a writing nook or some kind of guest space. Maybe a bigger office that we could both use.

Instead, it became a place where we stored seasonal decor, extra cake stands, bins of ribbons, and a mattress I had ordered during a holiday rush when sleeping upstairs between bake cycles seemed like the easiest solution.

The air smells like paint, cardboard, dust, and old wood.