Chapter 19 Avah
AVAH
The register dings as I hand the older woman her change, and she peers at me over her reading glasses like she’s trying to ID me in a lineup.
“Are you the one upping The Shack’s cinnamon roll game?”
“JP and Winnie are great bakers,” I say as I slide the white bakery box across the counter, my smile feeling less forced than it would have an hour ago. “My cinnamon rolls aren’t special.”
The woman, likely the last customer of the day, leans in close enough that I can smell her vanilla latte breath. “Honey, they’re beyond special.” She kisses her fingertips like an Italian grandmother in a pasta commercial. “You bake magic.”
“Thank you,” I manage around the lump in my throat. Damn. I really suck at taking compliments.
The bell above the door jingles as she leaves, and I exhale into the brief quiet of the empty shop.
Monday morning at The Sugar Shack, and I’ve been running the front counter and register for the past hour while Winnie’s at a doctor’s appointment.
When she asked, I said yes before my brain could catalog all the reasons it was a terrible idea.
Sure, I can pitch a marketing strategy to a boardroom full of C-suite executives without breaking a sweat.
But standing behind this counter, face to face with the people of Skylark who watched me swan around town for years with my unearned superiority complex?
It requires a kind of bravery that’s largely unfamiliar to me.
This town now knows that the me I pretended to be for years was a spectacular act. I was living a life so perfect from the outside, you’d never guess it was slowly smothering me.
Very few know about the physical violence that defined my childhood and after. I prefer to keep that humiliation locked away in a box I don’t open in public, even if it means being painted as the villain in the asshole’s narrative.
No doubt it’s already common knowledge that I’m splitting kitchen shifts with JP.
Small towns, as Winnie would say. But I’m still mostly running before dawn and sticking to my book friends like glue.
So I was braced for cold shoulders and sideways glances during my time in the front of the shop.
Instead, I got compliments and friendly small talk.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Skylark is special. But I’m still recalibrating what I deserve from the world, and kindness from near strangers continues to catch me off guard.
I grab a cloth from behind the counter and start wiping down the espresso machine, replaying the weekend in my head like a movie I’m ready to cue up on repeat.
Jeremy in my bed Friday night, whispering my name like it was the only word that mattered, and then waking up Saturday morning tangled in my new sheets, his breath warm against the back of my neck.
I’d had to fight the urge to slide out from under him and wreck the moment way worse than the sheets.
Kick him out and reestablish those necessary boundaries.
Because real life isn’t a game I can win.
Then I’d rolled over and studied the way sleep softened his normally serious features.
How the hard angles of his face relaxed and the furrow he gets between his brows smoothed to nothing.
And instead of kicking him out, I brought him coffee in bed.
My apartment might not have the latest gadgets, but I know my way around a decent pour-over.
He’d asked if I wanted to spend the day together. Maybe hit the farmers market.
I’d looked at him like he suggested we streak down Main Street. Clearly the guy doesn’t understand how small towns operate.
He seemed amused but undeterred by my panic, which was annoying and also charming in a way I refused to examine. Billionaires aren’t used to being told no.
So I’d countered with the Boulder farmers market, far enough away that nobody would snap a pic for the Skylark Facebook page.
Who knew a guy like Jeremy would have such strong opinions about heirloom tomatoes. It was both laughable and endearing, and the morning had turned into a full day together, so easy that you don’t realize it’s perfect until the sun is setting.
We spent that night in his big bed, and he made pancakes (no protein shake in sight) Sunday morning. When he dropped me off at my apartment after breakfast, I played it cool, telling him I had a busy week and not to count on seeing me any time soon.
Not sure I fooled him. Definitely hadn’t fooled myself, but I was nothing if not committed to the lie. I know a lot about lying.
So when the book club got together for dinner at Sadie’s Sunday night, I kept my mouth shut about all of it.
“You look different,” Sloane had observed from her corner of the oversized sectional, legs tucked under a blanket despite the August heat. She always ran cold, even before cancer, and her blue eyes missed nothing, especially when it came to me.
“I’m exhausted. Three-thirty wake-ups will age a person.”
“It’s not that.” Molly had tilted her head, studying me with the same focus she gives her flower fields. “You look really good, Avs. Have you been taking vitamins or—”
“It’s the baking,” I’d cut in, afraid I might do something truly mental and spill my guts under my best friend’s gentle interrogation. “Physical labor and creative output are very therapeutic. Maybe I’ll write my own self-help book to inspire the masses.”
They’d accepted it, or at least pretended to. Nobody asked about my progress on the bucket list, which was a blessing since I had nothing to report. Joy isn’t a line item you can check off a to-do list.
But I’m pretty sure I’d felt it watching Jeremy flip pancakes and then solving a crossword puzzle together over coffee. It was perfect and wonderful and scared the crap out of me. I know better than to tie my happiness to a man.
The cloth catches on the espresso machine’s drip tray, snapping me back to the present. I rinse it out in the small sink and drape it over the faucet just as a throat clears behind me.
I spin around, customer-service smile already in place, but it disappears the instant I see my father standing on the other side of the counter.
He’s thinner than I remember, his handsome face deeply lined, dark hair threaded with gray that wasn’t there before prison.
But the smile is exactly the same. It makes my gut churn.
That smile enticed elderly people to trust him with their life savings, and made his daughter believe she was a princess.
I grip the edge of the counter like I’m Tom Cruise holding onto that cliff face in the second Mission Impossible movie. And there’s nothing to catch me if I fall.
“Baby girl.” He opens his arms like we’re at a family reunion, the last decade and a half of his incarceration a minor blip on life’s radar.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper, trying not to reveal my swirling emotions.
“Can’t a father visit his daughter?” His eyes sweep the bakery, cataloging everything the way I imagine him inventorying a mark’s living room. I hate that I wonder what he sees. “Cute shop.”
“Why aren’t you in Connecticut?”
“Finished my obligations there.” His tone is casual, like he’s talking about wrapping up paperwork. “You’ve been busy. New job. Lots of potential.”
The word potential sounds salacious on his tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.” His smile used to make me feel special. Before I understood it was a weapon. “Jeremy Winslow. Your friend’s brother with all those zeros on the end of his bank account.”
My blood turns to ice. “How do you know about Jeremy?”
He lifts a shoulder, like the information found its way to him through osmosis and not thanks to whatever network of lowlifes he maintained from behind bars. “I keep tabs, Avah. It’s what fathers do.”
“Most fathers do it from the bleachers at soccer games, not federal prison.”
His smile doesn’t waver. My dad absorbs hits like a sponge absorbs water, and through it all, he just keeps smiling and wanting and taking.
“I have a business opportunity that would benefit Jeremy—all of us really.”
“I don’t have any sway with him,” I answer, proud of how sure of that I sound.
He brushes an invisible speck from his sleeve. “A beautiful woman can accomplish amazing things when she puts her mind to it. It’s a lesson I wish your mother had taught you.”
“Leave Mom out of this.”
“How is she? Still in Florida playing Mah Jongg every Tuesday?”
“She’s fine, and not interested in hearing from you either.”
His expression flickers, a coldness surfacing behind his eyes before the salesman mask snaps into place. “I’m heading back east for a meeting, but I’ll be in touch.” He taps the counter twice with his knuckle, like he’s closing a deal. “Think about what I said.”
The door to the shop opens just as he gets there, and he holds it for Winnie with deferential courtesy. She thanks him without a second glance, but he catches my eye over her shoulder and winks. Then he’s gone.
My hands are shaking, so I grab the dish cloth again—like that can mask my reaction—as I attempt to force air into lungs that have forgotten how to work on their own.
“Looks like you’ve got everything under control here.” Winnie sets her purse on the counter, and that’s when I notice her eyes are red and my fingers aren’t the only ones trembling.
I order the terror still buzzing through my veins to back it down for a sec as I focus on my boss. “Is everything okay?”
“It will be.” She waves a dismissive hand even as her chin wobbles. “I’ve been having these tremors in my hands, and my balance has been off. I thought it was just age, but the doctor wants to run more tests. He thinks it might be something neurological.”
I swallow slowly. “What kind of something?”
“He mentioned Parkinson’s.” Her voice is nearly a whisper, like speaking the potential diagnosis too loud might make it real. “Early stages, but it’s not definite. You know how they want you in for as many appointments as possible.” She laughs like it’s all a silly misunderstanding. “More waiting.”
I come from behind the counter to wrap my arms around her small frame.
She stiffens in surprise because I’m not a hugger.
Everyone who knows me knows that. But Winnie gave me this job with no reason to trust that the former mean girl of Skylark could handle an industrial mixer and a four a.m. alarm.
She took a chance on me when I was at rock bottom, so I won’t stand by while she falls apart.
“I can help,” I say into her hair, which smells like the rose-scented shampoo she keeps in the bathroom upstairs. “Whatever you need, and I’ll drive you to all those appointments.”
She pulls back, laughing through her tears. “You’ve been here less than a week, sweetheart. You don’t owe me that.”
“I want to.”
Winnie studies my face, and whatever she sees there makes her pat my cheek with a hand that’s still trembling so slightly, I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it. “Maybe you should buy this place.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think my dough-kneading days might be coming to an end. I want to spend more time with my grandkids and travel while I can.” She straightens, seeming to gather up her emotions like marbles spilled across the floor.
“The bakery brought me joy for a lot of years. Maybe it’s time to let someone else have a turn. ”
“Winnie, you can’t sell The Sugar Shack.”
But even as I say it, I hear how ludicrous the words sound. She can do whatever she wants. It’s her life. I don’t get a vote.
I quickly continue, “And I’m not in a position to buy it. What about JP?”
“He’s a great baker, but I wouldn’t trust him with this place.” She pulls a tissue from her purse and dabs at her nose. “I get it, Avah. This is just a pit stop on the way back to your fancy career.”
I manage a smile. “Right. A pit stop.” It sounds right but feels so wrong.
“I’ll figure it out.” She squeezes my arm like I’m the one who needs a pep talk. “I always do.”
As Winnie heads to the back to check on inventory, I stand behind the counter of a bakery that might not exist in a few months, in a town where my con-artist father just materialized like a ghost I can’t outrun.
I press my palms together, chasing the phantom warmth of a billionaire’s hand like it’s still holding mine.
This is what happens when you let your guard down.
The universe doesn’t send you a single clean hit.
It waits until you’re stupid enough to feel safe, and then delivers a combination that drops you to the mat.
Dad and Winnie, back to back, a one-two punch aimed right at the fragile scaffolding of the life I believed I was cobbling back together. I should have known better.