I take a bite.
The scone is still warm. The dill stays bright. The salmon flakes on my tongue like a secret. Subtle. Integrated. The paprika adds this whisper of smoke at the back, and the lemon zest cuts through everything without making itself obvious about it. It’s balanced. It’s right. This is what I didn’t know I was looking for.
It’s... actually really good. Good enough to stop chewing for a second and think about your life and also your oven choices. Good enough to wonder if maybe the thing that ruins your plan is the thing you needed all along. Good the way redemption tastes: butter, dill, flour that knows what it’s doing.
I stand there holding a warm scone and not eating it, just feeling it, and I think about how long it's been since I madesomething and felt proud of it instead of defensive about it. Not proud in the competitive way—not better than anyone else's baking. Just proud that my hands made something whole. That I took garbage ingredients and abandonment and an oven with a personality disorder and turned it into something that matters.
The door chimes.
Jace. Of course it's Jace. This is the moment where he walks in and witnesses my chaos because the universe operates according to a script I didn't write.
He's wearing a henley—the kind that's maybe one size too big if you're being polite and two sizes too big if you're being honest. His hair is slightly damp. There's sawdust in his beard. He looks like he just came from his workshop, which is probably a fifteen-minute walk from here, which means he didn't have to come by but chose to.
Don't read into that.
He stops at the threshold. Eyes moving from me to the racks to the half-eaten scone to the devastation scattered across the counter.
"Rough morning?" he says.
"Lucifer was running hot," I say, which is technically accurate and also sounds insane. "So, I—" I gesture at the scones, at the salmon, at the general crime scene of my attempt to salvage the day. "—improvised."
He walks over to the cooling rack. He doesn't ask. He reaches out and takes a scone—the most intact one, one I was proud of—breaks it in half and brings it to his mouth.
I’m suddenly aware of my hair coming undone at the back, probably floury.
He chews once. Twice. He swallows.
"You improvised salmon scones?" he asks. "Those are interesting."
I stare at him. Then I stare at the half-scone in his hand. Then back at him.
"That's not— you can't just—" I'm talking too fast. This is me talking too fast. This is my nervous voice, the one that comes out when I'm being complimented by someone who isn't backhanding the compliment or adding a "but" or suggesting that I could do better if I tried harder. "The temperature regulation on that oven is erratic. It's not a standard commercial model. The brick interior means it's actually radiating heat at inconsistent intervals, which explains the uneven baking on the croissants, but the lower temperature seems to favor moisture retention in the dough structure, which is ideal for scone-type applications because they need that tender crumb, and I didn't add sugar because it's a savory application, though I could try them slightly sweet if you wanted to market them as more of a hybrid?—"
I stop. I'm still talking.
Jace takes another bite of the scone.
"The salmon is good," he says. "Keep doing that."
He sets the rest of it on the cooling rack. His hand is right there, sawdust on his knuckles, the kind that works into the creases when you spend a morning sanding. His palm is wide. The calluses are rough—I can see them in the light from the front window, running along the edge of his hand, the base of his fingers. Woodworker hands. Hands that know how to hold something the right way and not let it slip.
I look away. I look at the oven. I look at the scones. I look literally anywhere that isn't at his hands.
"The oven," I say, very brightly, "seems to respond to lower temperatures. I'm wondering if it's the brick type rather than a standard commercial convection, which would explain the thermal differential and the hot spots on the right side where the heat source is probably closer to the?—"
"Edna has notes somewhere," he says. "Probably in a drawer."
He's already walking toward the desk, which is unfair because now I'm watching his ass, which is worse than his hands. It's not worse. I'm making it worse. This is fine. Everything is fine.
He opens the top drawer of the built-in desk—the one I've been avoiding because it felt too personal, like I'd be snooping through Edna's life. He pulls out a notebook, leather-bound, worn at the edges.
"This might be it," he says.
I take it like it might bite me. The cover is embossed with E in gold leaf. Inside, the handwriting is quick and familiar—the same handwriting I've seen on the flour canisters in the back, on the labels of the preserves in the pantry.
I flip through. There are recipes, sure, but there are also notes. Random thoughts. Doodles of the oven from different angles. One page is just: Lucifer has moods. Feed him respect. He'll feed you butter.
There are sketches of Hank—I recognize him from photos around the bakery. One drawing shows him laughing, head thrown back. Another is just his hands, holding something small. The notes next to his sketches are sparse but devastating: