Chapter 2
Aspen
It was dawn when I rolled into Dairyville.
I’d made it through the long dark highway by mainlining black coffee and heartbreak, counting down the mile markers like the beads of a rosary.
The sky above the High Plains was a pale, lidless blue, empty of clouds and mercy.
I expected Texas to hit me with wildness and gunfire, but Dairyville had the kind of calm you only found in places that had forgotten the world outside.
The town square was best described as charming.
It consisted of a couple of streets with pretty little storefronts painted in various colors.
There were street lamps and park benches that dotted the square that begged you to sit down and take a load off.
The buildings were all stitched together by their old awnings and different lettering and logos on their windows: JONES HARDWARE, SHEAR ECSTASY SALON, and, squeezed between them like an afterthought, BUTTERCREAM it shivered like jelly, refusing to move.
Next up, the sinks. I turned the faucet on full blast and heard nothing but the gurgle of a thousand dead pipes. No water, not even a cough. The steel basin was filled with a brown scum I didn’t want to inspect further.
The oven. My last hope. I flipped the preheat switch and waited, counting the seconds the way Mama had taught me. Ten, twenty, thirty. No click, no glow, nothing but the familiar scent of defeat. I sat down on a flour sack, stuck my head between my knees, and tried not to scream.
Instead, I laughed. It came out broken and high, and sounded exactly like Mama on her worst days. The woman could cuss out a car that wouldn’t start with the creative force of a preacher at a tent revival. But right now, I didn’t even have the energy for profanity.
I dragged myself into the dining area, slumped into one of the mismatched chairs, and stared at the dark street outside.
Morning sunlight cut sharp lines across the bakery’s filmy windows.
I wondered what the people in this town would see, looking in: a pale, chubby girl in a hand-me-down coat, face blotched from crying, elbows sunk into a dirty bakery table.
I tried to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. I was past crying, past anger, somewhere in the numb void where you either quit or doubled down.
The chair wobbled under me as I fished my phone from my coat pocket. The battery was almost dead, but I still had just enough juice to open the text Mama sent while the phone was still in the box. The last words she ever sent to me.
Check your bank account, honey. You’ll need it. I believe in you.
She’d sent it two days before she died, while I was out buying groceries she’d never eat. I clicked into the banking app, expecting to see the usual: double digits, maybe three if I was lucky.
Instead, the number nearly blinded me. $25,313.16.
For a second, I thought it was a glitch.
Or maybe Mama had stolen someone’s identity to give me a head start in life.
But there it was, staring back, real as sunlight.
This must be what was left of the proceeds from selling her herb store after purchasing this bakery.
The little herb store she ran in Verdant Hollow was actually quite successful.
I loved the days we spent there and the customers we served.
I thought I’d inherit it someday. I guess I did, just not how I’d expected to.
My hands shook. I set the phone down, afraid I’d drop it.
The tears came, and I let them. There wasn’t anything pretty about the crying this time—no delicate sniffles, no pretty weeping.
I just let it out, ugly and animal, until my throat felt raw and my cheeks burned.
The whole bakery echoed with the sound, but no one heard except me and the ghosts.
When I finally got hold of myself, I wiped my face on the hem of my shirt and forced a laugh. “Okay, Mama,” I said to the empty chairs. “I get the point.”
If she’d gone through all this trouble, the least I could do was get the place up and running.
I had money, or at least more than I’d ever seen in my life.
I could call the plumbers, fix the cooler, order flour and sugar and eggs by the ton.
I could buy every self-help book in the world and line the windows with them, if I wanted.
But first, I needed water. And a working oven. And maybe a new chair that didn’t threaten to collapse under my ass.
I made a list on the back of an old invoice; the pen shaking in my fingers:
- Call utilities (water/gas/electric)
- Find plumber
- Fix oven
- Clean EVERYTHING
- Inventory supplies
- Sleep (ha)
- Open for business
I stared at the list for a long time, waiting for the panic to come back. But it didn’t. The fear had burned itself out, replaced with a hollow, reckless hope.
I pressed my palms flat to the table, felt the stickiness of spilled syrup, and swore an oath right then and there:
No matter what, I would make this bakery work. For Mama. For me. For the dumb little town that was now home.
The apartment above the bakery was tiny, but it had a couple of windows to let in some natural light, and the heat worked when I twisted the dial on the thermostat.
That alone made it better than sleeping in my car.
The bedroom had a full-size bed complete with an old, lumpy mattress, but it wasn’t the floor.
The kitchen was a galley with a tiny sink, a fridge that moaned like it was trying to simply live another day, and a stove so ancient the brand name had worn away.
I opened a few cabinets and found exactly what I expected: mismatched cups, plates, a coffee pot with a cracked handle.
Mama had to buy the place sight unseen, and I know she trusted the universe to give me just enough. This was certainly exactly just enough.