“Unprecedented croissants!" Jax shouts. "Salmon pastry phenomenon! Market saturation!"
I’m standing in the corner near the baker’s bench I built. The one with the thick maple top and the tool drawer that closes without sticking. It replaced the old one—Edna’s, thirty years of use, warped at the corners, a split running down the front leg. Not worn charming. Worn unsafe. I’d been meaning to replace it before Gabby even arrived. Now it’s kindling behind the workshop. I was supposed to be helping customers, but instead I’m watching her work.
She moves like she’s had this job for years. Pulls a tray from the case. Sets it on the counter without hesitation. Slides the croissant onto a paper sleeve. Each motion is confident. She knows where everything is. She knows how her hands work in this space. The kitchen has stopped rejecting her.
Three weeks ago, she was terrified to use the oven.
Now she’s running it like she built it.
Ryder comes in with Piper, and he immediately heads for the salmon croissants like a man with a purpose. He buys four. Four. He tastes one, closes his eyes, and turns to Piper with the expression of someone who has just experienced something that changes his mind about food in general.
“Holy shit,” he says.
Piper laughs. She reaches over, breaks off a piece of his, and tastes it. She closes her eyes too. Everyone does. The salmon croissants do something to people’s faces. They make them honest.
By ten-fifteen, the salmon croissants are gone. Completely sold out.
She works the register without flinching when money changes hands. She doesn’t look surprised that people want to buy what she made. She’s stepped into something.
Marnie comes in wearing a hat that’s trying to hold down hair that’s trying to escape. She’s been in the garden all morning—I can see the dirt under her fingernails from here. She takes one look at the remaining pastries and asks for two of whatever has the most butter in it. When Gabby hands her a croissant that’s not salmon, Marnie bites into it and says, “God, girl, you’re going to ruin me for all other bakers.”
She’s not joking. She means it.
By ten-thirty, she’s sold out of everything that has fish in it.
A woman I don’t recognize comes in asking for a salmon croissant and Gabby tells her, “I’m sorry—they sold out about ten minutes ago.” The woman’s face falls. It’s genuine disappointment. Like she came here specifically for this one thing and now it’s not available and the world has become slightly smaller.
Gabby says, “But if you want to try something else—” and she’s pulling out a pastry that I think is the fireweed honey éclair she was stress-baking last week.
The woman takes it. Tastes it slowly. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, she’s looking at Gabby like she’s discovered something valuable.
She buys two.
Marnie comes in around ten forty-five and orders the last cinnamon roll. She eats it right there at the counter, standingnext to the glass case, and says, “This is better than my own baking, and I hate you a little for that.”
It’s a compliment. In Ashwood Falls, that’s definitely a compliment.
By eleven, she’s sold out, period. The cases are empty. The line outside is disappointed but not angry. Disappointment that says we’ll be back. She’s made revenue that seems significant—I don’t really understand money in this way. I understand wood and labor. I understand things that hold their weight.
But I understand that people came here for something she made, and they’re leaving satisfied, and that’s a kind of weight too.
The baker’s bench I built is being used. She’s rested her hands on it between rushes. She leans against it when she’s tired. She touches the edge of the drawer sometimes, absentmindedly, like she’s checking whether it still works. It does. I built it to last longer than she’s planning to stay, which is a decision I made and haven’t regretted yet.
She locks the door to count the register. And I see it.
The leather journal is sitting on the counter, still open to pages from days ago, and she’s not updating it. She’s not writing in it at all. No more tallies. No more running count of financial survival. The ledger was her fear made visible—all those little marks tracking whether she could make it. And she’s stopped marking.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if she stopped marking because she’s decided she’s staying. I don’t know what the silence in that ledger is saying.
But I know it matters.
I move the bench. Test. See if she’s mapped the space as hers. If she reaches for it again and finds it in a new spot, it means she’s already thinking of it as hers. It means she’s mapped the space like it belongs to her.
She reaches for it. She stops. She looks at the new position and adjusts. She doesn’t ask why I moved it. She moves with the space like she’s mapped this space already.
I also notice she hasn’t mentioned the kiss.
It was days ago. She kissed me in a kitchen full of flour dust, pulled back like she was checking whether what she’d done was real, and we’ve been existing in the space since then like nothing happened except everything happened and we’re both pretending to be fine with the pretending.