A Day in the Loaf (Midwest Mavens #2)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Marcy

“Hey, I want to show you something.”

Hudson, my BFF and roommate, said it so casually I assumed she meant to show me something on her phone. “Sure, what’s up?”

I’d been in my zone, kneading bread dough while my honey biscuits finished in the oven. The bread dough was right where I wanted it, where it sprung back at my touch. I put the dough into a bowl with a clean kitchen towel over it.

Comforting, sweet smells wafted around us as I opened the oven and removed the baking sheet dotted with golden-tinged biscuits.

“Ooh, biscuits! I’ll get the butter.” Hudson knew the drill. Anything else could wait when biscuits fresh from the oven entered the chat. This was why Hudson and I got along. She didn’t question my biscuits.

I watched her eat first. This was my favorite part.

Hudson moaned as the buttery, flaky goodness hit her tongue.

“Too much honey? Not enough?”

“Just right.”

Yes! A Saturday morning well spent. “So, what did you want to show me? ”

Hudson had her eyes closed, wrapped up in her own gluten-filled bliss. She finished chewing. “Grab your keys.”

“We’re leaving the house?”

“I have the best thing to show you. Trust me.”

I grabbed a biscuit and followed her. I took my car keys from the hook. “Do I need money?”

“Most people do.” She slid her feet into a pair of flats waiting beside the door.

“Cute. Real cute.”

I grabbed my purse and out the door we went. There were very few people in my life I’d get into a car with without knowing details. Neither of my brothers. My Italian grandmother, my nonna, yes. My parents? Depended. Beyond that, Hudson made the short list.

I drove while Hudson played navigator. Out of our apartment complex and past the surrounding neighborhoods in our suburban metropolitan Detroit city.

“Okay, turn here,” she said.

I turned off the busy main road with big box stores and fast food restaurants to a forgettable side street I’d probably driven down at one time or another.

Who knew what Hudson had in store today? It could be anything with her. A new organic day spa or an outdoor gear store, which weirdly she’d become fond of after spending time at a summer camp and joining up with (and now officially dating) my cousin Lucas who ran the camp.

Hudson tapped the passenger side window. “Slow down. Ah! Here it is.”

I parked at a strip mall that time and suburban sprawl had left behind. An office sat on one end with a simple sign reading “Insurance.” A jewelry store advertising their desire to buy gold took up the other end. The middle space appeared vacant .

Hudson sprung out of the car. She stopped in front of the empty storefront and gestured toward the large window. “This. Here. For your bakery.”

I stared at her. Only Hudson could say such a thing and make it sound simple. “This?”

“Yes.”

“For my bakery .”

“Uh-huh.” She grinned. “Let’s check it out.” She beckoned me closer to peer through the window. The dingy, dirt-streaked window. Inside, a lone table remained at an angle with a chair tipped over. A door along the wall behind it led to darkness. “It obviously needs some work, but just imagine it all cute-ified with a fresh coat of paint and a new sign: Marcy’s Dough on the Rise. No, that’s terrible. You’ll think of something better.”

Her body vibrated with energy—I could practically see the waves competing against the summer heat. Before I could speak, she went on. “I know what you’re thinking. You just shared this with me and the girls that your dream is to open a bakery. Being super practical, you’re probably worried about start-up funds. But how do most people start businesses? Loans, right? You’re great with money. You literally count money for a living. Who wouldn’t loan you money?”

Okay, she had a point. If I really wished to open a bakery, which I very much did, options existed. Of course there were options. Businesses didn’t open themselves without help and resources. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know any of that.

But that wasn’t the point.

My chest ached with the possibility. Dreams were one thing. Vacant storefronts in shabby strip malls were quite another.

She cast me a sympathetic smile. “It’s definitely not easy starting a business from scratch. I know that better than anybody. But you said— ”

“I am aware of what I said.” My arms folded themselves, as if my body could decide right here and now I was against the idea.

It was still new, this whole concept of me sharing my dream. Out loud. To anybody.

Hudson and our other two friends from our college days—Noah and Jillian—had reunited this summer and vowed to meet more regularly. Add to that, we were supposed to make career plans and life goals and hold each other accountable. Easy, right?

It should have been easy for someone like me who had her career path laid out so long ago. A career path I’d followed and achieved, mostly. So what did I need a career planning posse for?

Well, because I was stuck. I’d held off pursuing education as a certified public accountant. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of more school for a field that didn’t excite me. I’d always been good with numbers, so I’d gone into accounting. Just like my family suggested. Just like they’d steered me toward with internships in high school and connections they’d made in the community.

Hudson’s voice softened. “This is a big step. But I wouldn’t be a good friend if I let you leave your dream as an inspiration board on Pinterest.”

I knew that Pinterest board would rear its ugly digital head. It had been Hudson’s idea for us all to visualize our dream life. It took me no time at all to cobble together images of vintage bakeries and fluffy bread loaves, buttery croissants, and a few pastries thrown in. Don’t get me started on the industrial mixers.

Those made it on the Pinterest board too. I hated that board.

No, I hated thinking about that board because that was all it was—a digital fantasy. Someone else’s ambition to make true.

My throat tightened. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Hudson rushed toward me, eager with new hope. “I’ll help you find the people who can help you. Oh, and I already know this space is approved or zoned—or whatever the terminology is—for making food because it used to be a restaurant. ”

I looked through the scummy window. “What happened to the restaurant? I mean, clearly, it’s closed now.”

Hudson bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

Just then, a guy with sunglasses flipped on top of his pink-skinned, balding head exited the jewelry shop. He paused on the curb. “You two looking for Sheila’s Deli? Sad to say, it closed a couple months ago.”

“Sorry to hear,” I said.

“No surprise, really. Restaurants go in and out of this place all the time. Before Sheila’s it was Indian food. Before that, some kind of fro-yo thing. Oh, and then there was the burger place with bad fries. You can’t last around here with bad fries.”

All those people’s dreams—kaput.

“Okay, so maybe this isn’t the ideal space,” Hudson admitted after the guy got into his car.

My dream involved big risks. The odds were stacked against a start-up small business bakery when chain stores and grocery retailers offered in-store baked goods at discounted prices. Another key point: I wasn’t a trained baker or a pastry chef.

“I’m just a girl who likes to bake bread.” I hoped my words would cast off the hopeful sparks burrowing beneath my skin. The visions of what could be in the right space in a better location. My Pinterest board come to life.

Hudson snorted. “Hardly. You’re amazing at baking. Your grandparents ran a bakery for decades. You learned from them.”

True, I had. My best memories came from my grandparents’ old bakery. It had been our after-school hang out, our place to gather with family and friends.

I couldn’t stop the digital fantasy images from swirling in my thoughts. Gleaming glass bakery cases exactly like Nonna and Pop-pop had. The vintage blue clock over the doorway to the kitchen. The clock I now hung in my apartment kitchen would go in the bakery. My bakery. Ideally, in a revitalized downtown beside other artisan shops in one of our nearby suburbs.

Unstable. Risky. Long hours . The negatives billowed like steam, clouding my vision of a bakery-to-be. “I just…I can’t.”

We fell silent with only the sounds of cars passing on the street.

“Hudson tilted her head. “What’s really stopping you? Besides the obvious hardships of launching a business.”

Now that was simple. The same reason anything stopped me. Or started me in an opposite direction from what I wanted.

My family.