Page 10

We sat on stools at the steel prep table with the lights low and the ovens ticking as they cooled.

He looked wrong in my kitchen. Too big for the stool, leather and ink against all my stainless steel and flour bins, a knife on his belt, sitting right where the church ladies sat to order their Easter bread. He looked wrong, and I kept looking anyway.

He ate the first roll in about three bites and reached for another.

“Did you eat dinner?” I asked.

“This is dinner.”

“That’s sad.”

“Best meal I’ve had all week.” He tore the second roll in half. “You ever get sick of it? Bread, four in the morning, all of it?”

“Every day around ten. Then somebody tells me it’s the best thing they’ve eaten all week, and I’m stuck.”

He huffed a breath through his nose. I was starting to learn that was how Deacon laughed.

“How’d you end up with this place?”

“Dolores.” I nodded at her photo by the door. “My mom left when I was five, and Dad was always at the office. He still never leaves before six. Dolores let me sit on the flour sacks after school. By the time I was ten I could shape a great loaf.” I laughed at the memory of ten-year-old me being so proud of that.

“And you stayed.”

“I was going to go. There was a culinary program in Santa Fe. They held a place for me for a year.” I turned my mug on the steel. “Then Dolores got sick, and somebody had to open at six. Everyone else I went to school with drove out the week after graduation with their cars packed to the roof. I stayed and made bread.”

“You could still go,” he said.

“And who’d feed Earl?”

That got a smile. A real one, eyes and all.

“Your turn,” I said. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Around.”

“Family?”

“The club.”

“How’d you end up doing the books?”

“I can count.”

“Seriously? Those are your answers?” I shook my head and put my coffee down. “Are you going to tell me what the club’s going to do about whatever my dad’s caught up in?”

“Definitely not.”

“Because I’m a civilian?”

“Because the less you know, the less anybody can get out of you.” He said it lightly. It landed heavy.

“You’ve told me exactly nothing about yourself all night. You know that, right?”

“I told you your coffee’s good.”

“That’s a compliment.”

“It’s a fact.” He finished the last roll and wiped his fingers on his jeans. “I should go.”