Page 20

Chapter 6

LUCY

The envelope was waiting on the floor of Lucy’s bakery when she let herself in at five a.m.

It had been slid under the door sometime in the night, her name typed across the front with the impersonal neatness of a form letter. There was no return address and no postmark. It had been hand-delivered, which meant someone had walked to her bakery in the dark and left this for her to find.

She set it on the prep table, unopened, until the proofing racks were filled, the ovens were ticking up to temperature, and the sourdough had been folded for the third time. Only then did she tear it open with flour-dusted fingers and read it standing in the middle of the kitchen.

A rent increase. Effective ninety days from the date of the letter, the new rate represented a forty-three percent jump. The building’s management company had changed hands. The new owners were “adjusting to market conditions,” which, in Park Slope, meant they were testing what the market would bear before listing the building for sale. Lucy had seen this play out twice on her block already. Someone with more money than history had bought the block and intended to squeeze until the margins collapsed.

She read it twice, folded it, and placed it in the drawer beneath the register where she kept her insurance documents, her lease, and a photograph of her parents she didn’t need to see every day but couldn’t bring herself to move.

Five weeks since the engagement party. Five weeks since she’d kissed him and told herself it didn’t count. She’d planned to spend her whole career behind this counter, in this building, on her own terms.

Marco arrived at five thirty. He took one look at her and set down his bag. “What happened?”

“Rent increase. Forty-three percent.”

Marco leaned against the prep counter and crossed his arms. He didn’t swear, didn’t panic, didn’t offer platitudes. He was quiet for ten full seconds, which was, by Marco’s standards, an eternity.

“Can we absorb it?”

“If I cut my salary to zero and we stop buying butter.” She pulled the sourdough from the proofer and scored it with three decisive slashes. “So no.”

“Options?”

“Renegotiate. Find a new space. Win the lottery.” She loaded the loaves into the oven. “I’ve renegotiated before. I know how this goes. They counter with thirty percent and call it a favor.”

“Have you told Devney?” he asked.

“I’m not telling anyone. This is my problem.”

“Lucy.”

“Marco, I built this place with a business plan on the back of a menu and a woman who believed in me enough to charge below market. I’m not going to Devney with my hand out.”

He held up both palms in surrender. “Fine. But if you start stress-baking at two in the morning again, I’m calling her myself.”

Lucy turned to the ovens and let the heat press against her face, fierce and dry, the only warmth she trusted to stay consistent.

They worked the prep hour in silence. Marco shaped croissants without watching his hands, a man who’d been laminating dough since culinary school and could do it half-asleep. She appreciated that about him; he knew when to talk and when to let the kitchen sounds fill the space. The mixer churning, the timer’s tick, the low cycling of the walk-in cooler. These were the sounds of a bakery that was still standing, and she held onto them.

At six thirty, she pulled out the first batch of croissants and arranged them in the display case, golden and flaky, the layers visible at the cross-section. She’d taught herself lamination from a YouTube video and a French textbook she’d found at a used bookstore on Atlantic Avenue, and the first fifty batches had been disasters, but the fifty-first had been right, and every batch since had been better. That was how she’d built everything. Badly, then better, then well enough that no one remembered the bad.

The morning rush came and went. Mr. Petrov at seven, the crossing guard from the school on Eighth Avenue at eight fifteen, and the mothers’ group at nine, four women with strollers who ordered decaf and let their toddlers demolish a muffin each while debating preschool applications with the intensity of a Senate confirmation hearing. Lucy served them all with the steady rhythm that had carried her through years of early mornings and slim margins, and she didn’t think about the number in the drawer.

At eleven, her phone rang.

“Ms. Wang? This is Patricia Liao from the New York Small Business Development Office. I’m calling about your application to the Emerging Enterprise Grant Program.”

Lucy leaned against the counter. “I didn’t apply for a grant.”

A pause. “Your bakery, Flour & Honey, was nominated by a foundation partner. The nomination includes a full application on your behalf, submitted with your business financials from public filings. You’ve been approved for the second round of review.”

“Nominated by whom?”

“The nominating organization is listed as the Knightly Foundation. They partner with us to identify small businesses that meet the criteria for⁠—”