"She needed to learn," I repeat.
"Sure," Tessa says. "And it has nothing to do with the wood chips on your boots. Or the way you just watched her walk away like you were memorizing the exact shade of her eyes."
I don't argue. Arguing would be a lie, and I'm not interested in lying to Tessa about this.
"She's scared," I say instead.
"Of what?" Tessa asks.
"Failing before she gets a chance to leave on her own terms."
Gage stands up. "We should get these dogs home before Toby eats something he shouldn't." He looks at me once — a look that says he's clocked everything and isn't going to say a word about it — and heads down the trail.
Tessa follows. At the tree line she glances back.
"Nice to meet your friend," she says.
They're gone.
Jasper comes back an hour later. He smells like the forest and probably like Gabby. I don't say anything about it.
He drops into the grass at the edge of the clearing. I pick up the axe and start splitting the rest of the logs.
Chapter 7
Gabby
The oven's name is Lucifer. Edna named him years ago, and standing here at 5:17 AM, I understand exactly why.
"Come on, you temperamental hellmouth," I mutter, sliding another sheet of croissants into the beast's gaping maw. "Don't burn these. I'm begging you. Professional courtesy."
Jace installed a new temperature gauge last Tuesday—or was it Wednesday? Time is a construct that has ceased to have meaning since I’ve come to Alaska—and I've discovered that talking to the oven helps. Not because Lucifer responds with actual words, though I wouldn't put it past him, but because narrating my terror keeps me from catastrophizing about why I agreed to this.
This: waking before the sun. Mixing butter and flour. Trying not to think about Austin or Marco or the fact that I talk to my oven now.
The croissants are a risk. Three nights ago, I stood in this kitchen holding the recipe card I'd written for the salmon scone—the one Jace said was right, the one Dotty blessed with a single nod—and I looked at my cold laminated dough and thought: what if I folded the filling in? Not scones. Croissants. The flaky architecture of Paris with the flesh of an Alaska river runningthrough the middle of it. I'd laughed at myself out loud. Then I'd done it anyway.
The first batch was a disaster—the salmon wept butter through the layers, the bottom burned, the top refused to brown. The second batch was better. The third batch, the one I pulled out at 2 AM in my bathrobe, was the thing I've been chasing my entire career without knowing it. A pastry that tastes like two places at once. A pastry that says: I came from somewhere and I'm here now and both things are true. I ate one standing over the counter and cried a little, which I'm not going to think about.
The truth is, I'm adapting. Slowly. Painfully. But I'm here before the sun, preparing pastry dough and talking to an oven named after a demon, which suggests that somewhere in the last few weeks, I've made peace with this particular version of my life. Not because I wanted to—not because anything about this situation is what I would have chosen for myself—but because the alternative is spending sixty days feeling sorry for myself in Edna's kitchen, and I'm too stubborn for that.
I check the proofing dough in the cooler. The butter lamination is coming together. The yeast is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Everything is following the rules, and I'm the kind of person who finds that comforting. Rules I understand. Rules I can follow. Rules that don't ask me to explain myself or my choices.
Dotty arrives at 6 AM sharp, as she has every morning for the past week and a half, bearing coffee and unsolicited life commentary. She sets the cup on the counter next to my clipboard of notes—my precious mental ledger, but tangible—and glances at Lucifer's current contents with a maternal scrutiny that makes me want to both hug her and hide from her.
"You and Lucifer finding your rhythm?" She sounds delighted.
"We have an understanding," I say. "Mostly."
"Edna used to say the same thing." She sips her coffee, a knowing smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "For about the first year."
"That's not encouraging," I say. I'm also slowly becoming feral, but that's fine. The feral part is efficient. The feral part doesn't second-guess whether coming to Alaska was the worst decision of my life every three minutes.
"Does this understanding include making more salmon scones?"
My head snaps up. "People are requesting them?"
"Marnie called me last night." Dotty's expression shifts into something that looks like she's been waiting for exactly the right moment to detonate this information. "Apparently Old Al stopped into the store yesterday and mentioned he'd tried one of the scones you sent over last week. He told Marnie they were the best thing he'd eaten since his wife's funeral spread, which is apparently a compliment, and now Marnie wants six for the Wednesday potluck. And Birdie Kowalski heard about it from Marnie, and Birdie told Tessa, and now Tessa wants a dozen for the weekend."