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And if I so much as touch it, I prove her right about me.

She said I was just like all of them.

That’s the one thing I refuse to be.

45

DELILAH

After Kane leaves, I stand at the counter for a long time.

The sugar is still there. So is the wet spot where my tear landed. I wipe both away with a rag, rinse it in the sink, and hang it over the faucet.

Then I go into the kitchen and start working.

There’s nothing that needs doing. It’s Palm Sunday. We’re closed. But there’s a bin of croissant dough in the walk-in that I laminated on Friday, and if I don’t shape it before tomorrow, it’s going to be garbage, so I pull it out and set it on the steel table and start rolling.

The work is good. I can do it without thinking.

I get through half the bin before I realize my face is wet again. I wipe it on my shoulder and keep going.

I think about calling Priya, but it’s Sunday and Zara’s home and the poor woman has one day a week when nobody needs anything from her. I’m not going to be the person who takes it.

The fact that Skye is the next person I consider phoning is kind of sad. What kind of pathetic person picks their divorce attorney as their second-best friend? For that reason—and because she would probably bill me for the conversation—I don’t call her, either.

I just work my feelings away.

A few hours later, I’ve got four trays of shaped croissants, but I still can’t stop thinking. I take the trash out to the alley. Josef is still standing there in the cold, rigid in his peacoat.

“You can go home,” I tell him.

“I’m on until eleven, Ms. Dorsey.”

“I fired your boss.”

He just shakes his head. “I’m on until eleven, Ms. Dorsey.”

I’m too tired to deal with this shit. I go back inside.

I hear the front door around seven.

The bell rings, and for about a second and a half, I’m stupid enough to hope.

He came back.

Which tells me everything I need to know about the state of my judgment, because just a few hours ago, I explicitly told him not to.

I set down the bench scraper, wipe my hands on my apron, and walk out to the front, already rehearsing what I’m going to say.

I said leave me alone. I meant it. Get out.

But it isn’t Kane.

There’s an old man standing in the middle of my shop with his hat in his hands.

He’s gray from head to toe. Gray overcoat, gray scarf, gray hair combed back off a wide forehead. Reading glasses hang on a frayed cord against his thin, sunken chest. He looks like somebody’s grandfather waiting for a prescription.

The door is locked. I know for a fact that it’s locked, because I locked it behind Kane. But this old man couldn’t possibly have broken in.