Page 58 of A Hero Comes Home

“Aw, geez!”

“That’s not fair.”

“How long do we hafta sit here? What if I hafta pee?”

He gave them a look, one he’d perfected over the last week or so, and they immediately zipped up.

He found Sally in the kitchen where she was talking to her assistant baker, José, who gave Jake a wave. She wasn’t wearing an apron (Darn it!), just an OBX T-shirt and yoga pants. He’d developed a particular affection for yoga pants in the highly amped testosterone quicksand he waded through these days. (Yeah, aprons and tight jeans and bikinis are flags in that quicksand, too. Aaarrgh!)

“What’s up, Sally?”

“I need your advice about something. Come with me.” She led him out the back door and into the gift store next door, which seemed to specialize in scented candles based on the myriad aromas that assaulted them. “Hey, Alma,” Sally said, “this is my husband, Jacob.” To Jake, she said, “Meet Alma Vemeer, the owner of this shop.”

Jake shook hands with her and they exchanged a few words, mostly the usual “Thank you for your service,” and him remarking on how nice the shop looked and how he remembered when it had been a Bell Cove fixture that specialized in nothing but kites.

Finally, Sally asked Alma, “Do you mind if I show my husband around?”

There wasn’t much to see. It was pretty much the same size as Sally’s adjacent bakery, including the front shop and kitchen, except in this case, it was all one space.

Jake was confused. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“The square footage. If that wall were knocked out, imagine what a great space would be created. I’ve been thinking about expanding into more breakfast and lunch fare, light things that utilize what I already make, carryout types of things for people headed to the beach or to take back to an office. Like fried eggs on bacon croissants in the morning. Gourmet egg salad on toasted sourdough bread. And at lunchtime, oh, so many possibilities! Ham and imported Swiss cheese with stone-ground mustard on pumpernickel swirl rolls. Individual baguettes filled with chicken salad, heavy on the crunchy grapes and walnuts.”

“You make me hungry just describing those.”

She smiled.

He loved when she smiled at him like that. He wished he could make her do it more. But he was about to rain on her parade. “It wouldn’t just be a case of taking down a wall, though, would it? You’re talking a bigger kitchen and additional appliances. More display cases and counters. Seating. Painting. Flooring. Windows. Doors. Lighting.”

She nodded. “And that’s just the start.”

“Sally, you’re already working a huge number of hours. Can you really take on more?” What he didn’t say, but she had to realize, was that more time would be taken away from the boys. And him.

“I would need more staff, of course, but I could move José up to head baker with me, and add two other assistant bakers. Mary Lou Tonelli, who’s been a full-time clerk, is perfectly capable of becoming manager, and then I’d hire additional staff, more in the summer than the rest of the year.”

“You’ve really been thinking about this, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“Any idea how much all this would cost?”

She shook her head. “Alma wants to sell me her store for a hundred thousand dollars, which is probably a bargain. She’s given me until the end of September to decide before she puts it on the market. Then there’s all those additional expenses I mentioned.”

He blinked. “Do you have that kind of money?”

She blushed. “We don’t have that kind of money. But we do have fifty thousand for a down payment. We would have to finance the rest.”

Okay, he got the message with that “we” emphasis. This was something she expected, or wanted, him to engage in with her. A joint venture.

He also got another message. She was asking if he was going to be around long enough to see something like this through.

But holy shit! A business loan of upward of a hundred thousand dollars? “And that big of a loan doesn’t scare you off?”

“No. Well, a little bit, but if the figures play out the way I think they might, it doesn’t seem like too big of a risk.”

Was this the same woman who’d lived with a malfunctioning fridge for a year because she didn’t want to finance a new one? Debt had scared her.

“Sally, I know nothing about bakeries. I can’t see myself kneading dough and selling baked goods.”