Chapter 2
The thing about running a bakery was that Wednesdays always came around.
This morning's "these are really good" had been the longest conversation they'd ever had.
Lucy told herself it didn't matter. He was a customer. A regular, sure, but still just a customer. The fact that his Wednesday visits had become the most reliable part of her week—more reliable than sunrise, more reliable than the temperamental oven in the back—was completely irrelevant.
"You're doing it again," Mae said from the register.
Lucy looked up from the croissant dough she'd been rolling for the past ten minutes. "Doing what?"
"That thing where you stare into space and get all weird." Mae was twenty years old, majoring in environmental science at UVM, and completely unafraid of her boss. It was one of the reasons Lucy had kept her on staff for two years. "Is it about Hockey Guy?"
"His name is Jake."
"Ooh, you know his name now. Progress."
Lucy rolled her eyes and went back to the croissants.
The dough was perfect—butter properly laminated, layers distinct and even.
Her hands knew what to do without conscious thought.
That was the thing about baking: it was meditative, rhythmic, safe.
As long as she followed the recipe, she'd get the expected result.
Unlike everything else in life.
The bell over the door chimed. Lucy didn't look up—Mae could handle whoever it was. She was working on the final fold when she heard a familiar voice.
"There she is. My favorite niece, working herself to the bone as usual."
Lucy's hands stilled. She turned to find Uncle Walter standing in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a thermos of what was probably terrible coffee (he refused to drink what he called her "fancy bean water") and wearing his usual flannel shirt and corduroys.
"I'm your only niece," Lucy said, but she was smiling. She wiped flour off her hands and hugged him.
Walter Chen was sixty-two, retired from teaching high school English, and the only family Lucy had left in Timber Falls.
He'd been her rock after Grandmother died—showing up at the bakery every morning for the first three months, sitting quietly in the corner with his newspaper, just being present.
These days he still came by most mornings, though more to check on her than to help.
"Slow morning?" he asked, glancing toward the front where Mae was rearranging the display case.
"It's Wednesday. The calm before the lunch rush." Lucy gestured to the small table in the corner of the kitchen—her makeshift office, perpetually covered with invoices and order forms. "Coffee?"
"I have coffee." He held up his thermos.
"That's not coffee. That's battery acid."
"It keeps me regular."
"Uncle Walter, please."
He laughed and sat down, and Lucy poured herself a cup of the Ethiopian roast she'd been working with this month. She joined him at the table, grateful for the excuse to sit down. She'd been on her feet since 4:45 AM.
For a few minutes, they sat in comfortable silence.
This was their routine—Walter reading the Timber Falls Gazette on his phone, Lucy reviewing the day's orders.
The kitchen hummed around them: the oven's steady heat, the mixer in the corner kneading bread dough, the soft classical music Lucy always played while she worked.
"You look tired," Walter said finally.
"I'm always tired."
"You look more tired than usual."
Lucy didn't argue. She was exhausted—bone-deep, soul-deep exhausted.
Last night she'd gotten five hours of sleep, which was actually an improvement.
Most nights she lay awake, her mind spinning through tomorrow's prep lists and next week's supply orders and the constantly nagging question of whether she was doing this right, whether Grandmother would be proud or disappointed or somewhere in between.
"I'm fine," Lucy said, which was what she always said.
Walter set down his phone. "Lucy. Look at me."
She did. Her uncle's face was kind but serious, lined with age and worry.
"Your grandmother didn't leave you this place so you could disappear into it," he said quietly. "She'd want you to have a life, Lulu. Not just a business."
The childhood nickname hit her harder than it should have. Lucy felt her throat tighten. She looked down at her coffee, watching steam rise from the dark surface.
"I have a life."
"Do you? When's the last time you went out with friends? Took a vacation? Went on a date?"
"I went out last month," Lucy said defensively. "Rei and I had drinks."
"Once in four weeks. That's not a social life, that's a parole violation."
Despite herself, Lucy laughed. But it came out watery, close to tears.
Walter reached across the table and covered her hand with his. His palm was warm, weathered, familiar.
"I know you think you're honoring her memory by working yourself to death," he said.
"But that's not what she would have wanted.
Your grandmother came to this country and built this bakery because she wanted something better.
She wanted freedom. She wanted joy. She wanted life.
And then she gave it all to you—not so you could sacrifice everything, but so you could have choices she never had. "
"I don't feel like I have choices," Lucy said, and the words came out smaller than she meant them to. "I feel like if I stop, if I slow down, if I let anything slip—it all falls apart. The bakery, the recipes, her legacy. Everything she built."
"The bakery is a building, Lulu. The recipes are paper. What your grandmother built was a community, and that doesn't fall apart just because you take a day off. In fact..." He squeezed her hand. "I think the community would be happy to see you living instead of just surviving."
Lucy blinked hard, fighting tears. Mae called something from the front about a customer question, and Lucy was grateful for the interruption. She squeezed Walter's hand back and stood.
"I'm fine," she said again. "Really. I'm just in a weird mood."
Walter stood too. He was shorter than her by an inch—Lucy had inherited her height from her father's side—but he somehow still radiated the same authority he'd had in his classroom for thirty-five years.
"I'm not asking you to sell the place or abandon everything," he said. "I'm just asking you to remember that you're twenty-seven years old. You're allowed to want things for yourself. You're allowed to be selfish sometimes. You're allowed to be happy."
He kissed her forehead and left through the back door, taking his terrible coffee with him.
Lucy stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the smells of yeast and cinnamon and her grandmother's legacy, and wondered when "happy" had stopped being something she knew how to want.
Saturday mornings were Jake's favorite part of the week, which was saying something because Saturday mornings started at 6 AM and involved twenty kids with varying degrees of coordination trying to skate backwards.
The Timber Falls Youth Hockey Program had been running for thirty years, staffed mostly by volunteers—former players, hockey dads, the occasional brave soul who'd never played but wanted to give back to the community.
Jake had been helping out since he came back to town three years ago, initially just for something to do on weekends.
Now he was the unofficial assistant coach for the 8-10 age group, which meant he got to spend Saturday mornings teaching kids who still thought hockey was fun instead of a job.
"Coach Jake! Coach Jake! Watch this!"
Emma Rodriguez, seven years old and sixty pounds soaking wet, was attempting a spin move that would have been impressive for a high school player. She executed it perfectly, stopped in a spray of ice, and beamed up at him with a gap-toothed smile.
"That was great," Jake said, and meant it. "Where'd you learn that?"
"YouTube!"
Of course.
"Okay, but can you do it while also maintaining control of the puck?"
Emma's face scrunched in concentration. "I'll try!"
She skated off, her ponytail bouncing, absolutely fearless.
Jake watched her go and felt something in his chest loosen.
This was why he did this. Not the drills or the fundamentals or even the eventual wins—just the pure, uncomplicated joy of a kid who loved skating for no reason other than that it made her happy.
"She's going to be better than you someday," Tommy Morrison said from beside him.
Jake glanced at his coach—his former coach, technically, though Tommy would probably always be Coach to him.
Tommy was fifty-eight, built like a fire hydrant, and had been coaching hockey in Timber Falls since before Jake was born.
He'd coached Jake through youth hockey, through high school, and then convinced him to come back and play for the Wolves when Jake's NHL dreams had imploded.
"She's already better than me," Jake said. "I could never do that move at seven."
"No, but you could do other things." Tommy blew his whistle, signaling the kids to switch from skating drills to passing practice. "You were the most determined kid I ever coached. Obsessive, really. Your dad used to joke that you'd sleep with your skates on if your mom let you."
Jake's chest tightened at the mention of his father. David Morrison had died six years ago, heart attack at sixty-one, right there in the living room of their family home while watching a Bruins game. Jake had been playing in the AHL at the time, three thousand miles away.
He hadn't made it back in time to say goodbye.
"Dad wanted me to make it," Jake said quietly.
"Your dad wanted you to be happy," Tommy corrected. "There's a difference."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the kids fumble passes and crash into each other and laugh like it was the best thing in the world. The rink was cold, the fluorescent lights harsh, the boards covered in scuff marks and ads for local businesses. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the NHL.
But it was home.