Chapter 1 #3
Light slips across the checkered floor like honey, thick and golden, waking up dust particles and hope in equal measure.
The air already tastes like anticipation—flour ghosting through the sunbeams, the promise of warm bread yet to come, possibility hanging in the atmosphere like a dare or maybe a threat.
The ovens squat at the far wall, ancient and temperamental and scarred from decades of use by bakers who came before me.
Four of them, all different sizes, all with their own personalities and grudges and opinions about temperature control.
Nothing fancy, nothing new or shiny or Instagram-worthy.
But they're stubborn. Marked up, charred, storied.
Just like me, if I'm being honest. Marked up by experience, charred by failure, but still here, still standing, still stubborn enough to try again.
I flick the switch for oven one, then two, then three and four in quick succession.
They hum to life in stages—first a click that sounds almost reluctant, then the slow roar of ignition, that comforting low-grade warmth that starts at my feet and seeps up through my legs and into bones that have been cold for too long.
I pat the side of the biggest one, the way you'd pat a horse before a race or a friend before they do something brave or stupid.
"Don't let me down," I whisper to machinery that doesn't care about my feelings but might respond to bribery and positive reinforcement. "We're in this together now."
I have an hour, maybe less, before people start prowling by outside, pressing their noses to the glass, deciding whether the new bakery is worth their time or just another failed business in a long line of failed businesses.
On Maple Street, the early risers are notorious—they want proof of life from the bakeries, evidence that you're not just playing at this, that you're serious.
The "are they actually open yet" crowd. The "did she burn the scones" gossips. The "will she last a month" pessimists. The usual small-town surveillance that masquerades as community interest.
I set up fast, muscle memory kicking in where confidence has completely abandoned me, years of working in other people's bakeries taking over when my brain wants to panic.
Rolling carts out from beneath the counter with practiced efficiency.
Unloading trays in double-time, lining up the proofed sweet rolls along parchment paper so straight you'd think I had a ruler hidden in my apron pocket.
I don't. It's just years of practice and an unhealthy need for things to be perfect when everything else in my life is decidedly, catastrophically not.
There's comfort in repetition, in the familiar motions that my hands know even when my brain is screaming.
The way soft dough yields under my palms, giving but not breaking.
The sound a sharp knife makes cutting through cinnamon logs, that satisfying resistance and then release.
The heavy, honeyed thud of batter dropped into a tin, settling into its temporary home before transformation.
I flour the work surface liberally—then flour my hands up to the wrists because I've never been good at moderation with anything, including flour.
Clouds of it drift through the air, catching in sunlight like snow that tastes delicious and makes excellent pastries.
It gets everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
In my hair, on my cheeks, up under my sweater sleeves, probably in my ears somehow.
Some people dress to impress on their first day. I dust myself like a donut that got a little too enthusiastic with the powdered sugar and has no regrets about it.
First up: Cinnamon Soul Cookies, because if I'm going down, I'm going down with my signature item front and center.
I scoop the dough with an ice cream scoop that's older than my failed marriage and twice as reliable, roll each ball in spiced sugar with the devotion of someone performing a religious ritual, and line them up on the biggest sheet tray with the kind of precision that suggests I'm either very professional or very anxious.
It's the second one. It's definitely the second one.
The kitchen fills with that sticky, nostalgic scent that makes people want to cry and call their grandmothers—molasses and vanilla and a secret pinch of smoked cinnamon that I stole from a recipe my grandmother never actually gave me but I reverse-engineered through spite, determination, and approximately forty-seven failed attempts.
I know every bakery has their "signature item," the thing they're known for, the reason people drive twenty minutes out of their way.
But these are mine in a way that goes beyond business.
Not because they're perfect—they're absolutely not perfect, they're temperamental and unpredictable and sometimes they spread too much or crack in weird ways.
But because they're stubborn. They refuse to behave exactly how I want them to.
They have their own ideas about what they're going to do.
They spread when they feel like it. They crack on top in patterns that look almost intentional but are really just chaos with good lighting. They're hard to get exactly right, but they're always sweet in the end, always worth the effort.
Kind of like me, on a good day. On a bad day, we're both disasters held together by sugar and stubborn refusal to quit, but at least we're disasters that taste good and smell amazing.
When the cookies hit the oven racks, the air changes in a way that's almost magical.
Heat and sugar combine into something that feels like velvet wrapping around my chest, loosening the vice grip of anxiety I didn't fully realize was there.
For the first time since I woke up at 4 AM in a cold sweat, I can actually breathe.
I cycle through the rest of the prep with increasing confidence, or at least decreasing terror.
Pumpkin scone batter, mixed last night and resting in the fridge, ready and waiting for its moment.
Maple croissant logs, cold from the fridge where they've been laminating for two days, sliced with a sharp knife into perfect spirals and arranged on parchment like edible artwork.
I count the rows twice, touching each croissant like I'm casting a spell for luck or protection or just the basic hope that today won't be a complete disaster and I won't have to shut down within a week.
I glance at the clock on the wall—the one that came with the place and runs three minutes slow, which I keep meaning to fix but haven't.
Twenty minutes until official opening. I'm ahead of schedule, which is both good and dangerous.
Good because being prepared is professional.
Dangerous because it means I have time to think, and thinking is my worst enemy right now.
Thinking leads to spiraling. Spiraling leads to panic attacks.
Panic attacks lead to hiding in the bathroom and calling my sister to tell her I'm moving back to her basement.
I move to the front of the shop, hands cramping slightly from how hard I've been kneading without realizing it, leaving little half-moon indents in my palms from my own fingernails digging in.
The bakery's front room is what sold me on this place when I saw it six months ago, when I was still living in my sister's basement and dreaming of escape.
It's a perfect microcosm of everything I wanted—copper backsplash that catches light like magic, hanging pots that probably haven't been used in a decade but look perfect anyway, sturdy wood countertops that have seen better days but wear their scars like badges of honor.
Shelves stacked with mismatched mugs in every color and handmade pie plates, each one painted with a different terrible pun by some previous owner with a sense of humor: "Whisk Taker," "I Like Big Bundts," "Bake the World a Better Place. "
Everything glows like someone set an Instagram filter to "October Forever" and then cranked it up another three notches for good measure.
Someone—me, I guess, though it feels like it was a different version of me who had more energy and optimism—set up a display table dead-center of the front window.
I fuss with it now, arranging and rearranging until it looks less like "desperate new business trying too hard" and more like "charming local establishment that's been here forever. "
Candles first—a trio of pumpkin-spice votives that I light and relight until the flames actually behave and stop trying to set fire to the decorative corn I thought would be cute but is actually a fire hazard.
A plate of fresh-baked Cinnamon Soul Cookies goes next to a squat glass pumpkin full of business cards that I definitely didn't spend three hours designing last week while having a minor breakdown about fonts.
The whole thing looks like a Pinterest fever dream had a baby with a fall festival and then that baby grew up and opened a bakery. I'm not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed, so I'm settling on both simultaneously.
I step back and examine my work with the critical eye of someone who's never fully satisfied with anything they create.
The bakery cases are actually full, which feels like a minor miracle.
Pumpkin muffins with actual chunks of pumpkin, not that sad canned stuff.
Maple croissants that smell like trees and butter decided to have a passionate love affair.
Those scones people allegedly travel two towns over to buy, though I'll believe that when I see actual evidence and not just the realtor's sales pitch.
Plus an experimental batch of "ghost cookies"—sugar cookies with little chocolate chips for eyes that are either adorable or vaguely terrifying depending on your relationship with anthropomorphized baked goods.