Page 2 of Undertow

The sourdough was not cooperating.

Cara mixed the starter at five-fifteen, like she did every Tuesday when Diane had the day off and the bakery was entirely hers. She knew this batch by heart — the hydration ratio, the stretch-and-fold rhythm, the way it would smell when it was ready. She’d made it forty times. She could make it half-asleep.

She was, in fact, making it half-asleep, and the dough knew it.

It sat on the floured board with a kind of mute stubbornness. She pressed her palm into it and counted to ten. January rain lashed the windows above the prep station — the heavy, lateral kind that came off the Pacific and hit the glass sideways, like it had a personal grievance. Haven Cove in January was exactly what it looked like on a map: a small notch in the Oregon coastline where the weather arrived first and stayed longest.

She folded the dough again, turned it, pressed her thumbs in. The rhythm was usually meditative. Today it felt like busywork.

It had been six months since the Blaire Mitchell case had closed, since the team sat in the bakery’s basement command center, eating cold pizza and trying to remember how to breathe normally. Enough time to relax into a routine she’d come to cherish: morning coffee and cinnamon rolls and Gabe’s quiet presence at the counter, the team’s group chat going mostly quiet, and the bakery settling back into its comfortable routines.

Cara wanted to feel relief. What she mostly felt was restless.

She covered the dough and set it near the oven to proof, then started on the morning’s croissants. Outside, the rain doubled down. This deep into winter, the streetlights were still on in the morning. January on the coast meant darkness until nearly eight, a slow reluctant grudging dawn — and through the front windows she could see the empty sidewalk glistening. Haven Cove looked like a postcard of itself. Quaint storefronts. Old brick buildings.

She rolled out the first sheet of croissant dough and started laminating, pressing the cold butter block flat with her rolling pin. The physical work helped, at least. When her hands were occupied, her brain couldn't spiral as easily. It was an imperfect system, but it was hers.

She was on her third fold when the back door rattled.

Cara stopped. The delivery truck wasn’t due until Thursday. She set down the rolling pin and picked up the short length of copper pipe she kept on the shelf beside the back door — a habit from a previous life that Gabe had noticed and tactfully declined to ask about.

The rattle came again. Then a sound she hadn’t expected: small. Plaintive. Slightly indignant.

She set down the pipe and opened the door.

The cat was the most waterlogged creature she had ever seen. Orange tabby, or formerly orange — currently a saturated amber shade, drenched to the skin, hunched on the step with its ears flattened and its tail wrapped tight around its paws.

Cara looked at it. It looked at her.

"No," she said.

It meowed. The sound was surprisingly large for an animal this miserable.

"I have a full life," Cara told it. "I have a bakery. I have a team. I have a perfectly adequate number of responsibilities."

The cat sneezed. A small, defeated sound. Water dripped from its chin.

"There are shelters," she said. "Good ones. They find homes for cats all the time. Wonderful homes. With people who have the bandwidth for a pet."

The cat looked at the closed door. Then back at her. Then at the closed door again, with the expression of something that had considered its options and found them all inadequate.

"Don't," Cara said.

It meowed again. Lower this time. Less demand, more statement of facts.

Cara looked at the rain hammering the window. She looked at the cat. It was, she noted objectively, extremely wet. Its fur had separated into sad little spikes. One ear was turned inside out.

She found an old flour sack and dried the cat off with more briskness than tenderness, because she was not going to keep this cat. The cat submitted to this with enormous dignity.

"This is temporary. You understand that."

Ignoring her as only a feline could, the cat spotted the smoked salmon. It looked at the salmon. It looked at her.

"That's for a quiche," she said.

The cat sat down and waited with the patience of something that had all day and knew it.

She flaked a few tablespoons full onto a plate and set it down. While it ate with a peculiar mix of desperation and grace, she filled a tea cup with water.