Chapter Twenty-Eight
The bakery had never felt so quiet.
Julia stood behind the counter, staring at the empty display cases. Three croissants. A single scone. Half a loaf of sourdough that looked like it had given up on life. The shelves seemed to mock her, all that gleaming glass with nothing behind it.
A customer peered through the window, saw the desolation, and kept walking.
Julia didn't blame them.
"I've tried the scones twice," Tom said, emerging from the kitchen covered in flour. He looked like a ghost. An apologetic, slightly panicked ghost. "They're… they're not good."
"How not good?"
"I think they could be classified as weapons." He held up something that might once have aspired to be a pastry. It landed on the counter with a thunk that suggested structural integrity well beyond acceptable baked goods parameters. "Also, the first batch caught fire."
"Scones don't catch fire, Tom."
"These ones did. It was impressive, honestly. In a horrible way."
Julia picked up the scone-weapon and examined it. Dense. Gray. Vaguely menacing. She'd seen more appetizing doorstops.
"It's fine," she said, even though nothing was fine. "I'll try to make some biscuits. Biscuits aren’t hard, are they?"
Tom's expression suggested he knew exactly how hard biscuits could be, both figuratively and literally, when Julia Richardson was the one making them.
"I could call Shay," he offered. "Maybe she knows where Elliott…"
"Don't." Julia's voice came out sharper than she intended. "Sorry. I just… don't."
Tom nodded and retreated to the kitchen to attempt another batch of something. Julia appreciated his determination. She did not appreciate the ominous clanging sounds that followed.
She pulled out her phone for the hundredth time.
No messages. Elliott's contact stared back at her, the little thumbnail photo showing a rare half-smile Julia had captured when Elliott wasn't looking.
She'd been photographing a tart for her cookbook.
The light had caught her just right, and Julia had snapped the picture before she could stop herself.
She should delete it. She should probably delete the forty-seven other candid shots she'd accumulated over the past months too. The one of Elliott frowning at a soufflé. The one of her laughing at something Shay said. The one of her asleep on the sofa with flour still in her hair.
Julia put the phone away before she did something unspeakable, like cry. She was desperately trying to keep herself together, at least until she could close the shop.
The bell over the door chimed, and her heart did a stupid, hopeful leap before she saw it was just Mrs. Monmouth.
"Hello, love. I'll take a…" Mrs. Peterson surveyed the wasteland of empty shelves. "Oh. Is everything alright?"
"Supply issues," Julia lied, with a smile so brittle she was surprised it didn't shatter. "Should be sorted tomorrow."
Mrs. Monmouth bought the sad sourdough out of what was clearly pity and left with a worried backward glance. Julia watched her go and felt something crack in her chest.
"Julia?" Jamie was standing in the doorway, takeaway coffee in hand, looking at her with an expression that made her want to either hug him or throw something at him. Possibly both.
"Don't," she warned. "Whatever you're going to say, don't."
"I was just going to offer you coffee."
"Oh." She took the cup. "Thank you."
"She really moved out?"
Julia took a sip of coffee and burned her tongue. Good. Pain was distracting. "She's staying with Shay."
"Have you tried… um…"
"She doesn't want to talk to me, Jamie." Julia's voice wobbled. She hated that it wobbled. "I ruined everything. I was trying to help, and I ruined everything."
From the kitchen came a crash, followed by Tom's muffled swearing.
"Come on." Jamie took her arm. "Let's talk in the kitchen before you fall apart in front of more customers."
"What customers?" Julia laughed, and it came out slightly unhinged. "Look around. No products, no customers. No Elliott, no bakery. I'm finished."
The kitchen was a disaster zone. Flour coated every surface. Something unidentifiable had exploded in the mixer. Tom stood in the middle of it all, holding what appeared to be a smoking tray.
"The biscuits also caught fire," he reported. "I can handle the basics, really. But Elliott has done something to the programming on the oven and I don’t know what."
"Everything catches fire in this kitchen," Julia said. And then, horribly, she started to cry.
Not delicate, pretty crying. Proper ugly crying, the kind that made her face swell and her nose run, and her voice go all high and squeaky. She slid down the counter until she was sitting on the floor among the flour and the failed baking attempts, and she sobbed.
"I'm not a baker," she gasped out between sobs. "I've never been a baker. Everything I make is a disaster. The only reason this place worked at all was because of her, and now she's gone, and I've got nothing."
Jamie sat down beside her. Tom quietly put down the smoking tray and backed toward the door.
"I'll just… front counter," he murmured, and fled.
"I thought I was doing the right thing," Julia continued, words tumbling out between hiccups.
"For once in my life, I stood up to my mother.
I asked her for something. Not for me, for Elliott.
I wanted to show her that someone was on her side.
That someone had her back. And she…" Another sob.
"She looked at me like I'd betrayed her. "
"Did you ask her first?" Jamie's voice was gentle. "Before you went to your mother?"
Julia wiped her nose on her apron. Disgusting, but she'd stopped caring about dignity approximately three minutes ago. "She would have said no."
"Probably." Jamie handed her a paper towel. "But it would have been her no. Her choice."
"I just wanted to help."
"I know." He bumped his shoulder against hers. "But maybe… maybe stop trying to fix things for people. Start being honest instead. Maybe, I don’t know, fix things for yourself first?"
Julia stared at the flour-covered floor. Honest. She wasn't even sure she knew how to be honest anymore. She'd spent so long smiling when she wanted to scream, agreeing when she wanted to argue, pretending everything was fine when everything was falling apart. "Honest with who?" she asked.
"Your mother. The town. Elliott." Jamie paused. "Yourself, mostly."
Before Julia could respond, the bell chimed again. Heels clicked across the shop floor. "Julia? Where are you hiding?"
Gabby.
"Oh god," Jamie said. "Sorry, love, but I’ve got to go." He got up and snuck quickly out of the back door.
Julia scrambled to her feet, swiping at her face. Like she could hide the evidence of a complete emotional breakdown with a quick wipe. She’d cried surrounded by so much flour that she was somewhat surprised it hadn’t all turned into glue.
Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway, took in the scene, and raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Well. This is pathetic."
"Mum…"
"Empty shelves. Burned… whatever those are." Gabby stepped over a pile of ruined dough. "Your girlfriend has left you. And you're sitting on the floor crying about it. Not your finest moment, darling."
"She wasn't my girlfriend," Julia said quietly. "Not really."
Gabby went very still. "I'm sorry?"
"It was fake. All of it. She was living upstairs and doing all the baking, and I was pretending I could actually run this place. She was a sitting tenant. I thought you’d have her thrown out, and I didn’t want her to be homeless, so…
we made an arrangement." The words felt like swallowing glass. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this whole honesty thing.
Maybe Jamie had been wrong. "I lied to you.
I lied to everyone. And now she's gone, and I can't bake, and I can't even…
" Her voice cracked again. "I can't even keep a fake relationship going. What does that say about me?"
Gabby was silent for a long moment. Julia braced herself for the explosion. The lecture. The I-told-you-so that had been building for twenty-nine years.
Instead, her mother sighed and leaned against the counter. "Do you know why I bought you this bakery?"
"To torture me? To prove I'm a disappointment?"
"Because my mother never pushed me." Gabby's voice was different. Softer. Julia wasn't sure she'd ever heard her mother sound quite like this. "She let me drift. Let me make excuse after excuse. And I spent years being mediocre before I finally got angry enough to prove her wrong."
Julia blinked. "What?"
"I'm giving you what she never gave me. Support. Tough love. A reason to fight." Gabby met her daughter's eyes. "I thought if I pushed you hard enough, you'd push back. You'd find that fire. Instead, you found someone else to do the hard work for you."
"I fell in love with her," Julia whispered. "That wasn't supposed to happen, but it did."
"So you can't bake, and you can't hold down a real relationship." Gabby's tone sharpened again. "Quite the achievement."
The words hit like a slap. Julia flinched.
"I'm taking the bakery back." Gabby straightened, all business again. "Clearly, this experiment has failed. I'll find a buyer, or I'll shut it down. Either way, you're done here."
"No…Mum, please…" What the hell was she saying? She didn’t want the bakery. On the other hand, the bakery was where Elliott knew how to find her, the place they’d shared together. Jesus, she had no idea what she even wanted anymore.
"You can come back to London. Work for me again. We'll pretend this whole embarrassing episode never happened." Gabby smoothed down her jacket.
"No," Julia said. "No. Not yet."
Gabby looked at her, shook her head, and sighed. "Two months," she said. "Then we put this nightmare to bed." She turned on her heel and left.
Julia stood in the ruined kitchen, surrounded by burned biscuits and failed scones.
Tom poked his head around the door. "Is it safe?"
"No," Julia said. "Close the shop."
"Close it? But we've still got…"
"Another hour to go?" She started untying her apron. "We’re closing early. I can’t do this anymore today."
THE FLAT WAS QUIET. And Julia was done crying. Only because she didn’t have any more tears left. She was so dehydrated that her mouth tasted like sand, and she hadn’t been near a beach in years.
She didn't know what to do. She'd lost Elliott. She'd almost lost the bakery that she’d never even wanted. She'd lost the fantasy that she could somehow pull this off.
Jamie's words echoed in her head. Be honest.
But honest about what? That she'd never wanted this? That she'd spent her whole life pretending to be someone she wasn't? That the only time she'd ever felt like herself was when Elliott was looking at her and actually smiling like she never did at anyone else?
She wondered if Elliott was thinking about her.
Probably not. Elliott was probably already moving on, planning her next steps, figuring out how to get her cookbook published without any help from people who only wanted to fix her.
Without some silly little rich girl pretending to have all the answers.
The worst part was, Julia couldn't even be angry. Elliott was right. She had tried to fix her. She'd seen someone she loved struggling, and she'd reached for the only tool she knew: her mother's money, her mother's connections, her mother's power.
As if Elliott was just another problem to be solved.
What was she supposed to do now?
Go back to London. Fetch her mother's salt. Watch nursing videos in secret and pretend she was happy. The same life she'd escaped six months ago, waiting to swallow her whole again. She didn’t know what other choice she had.
All she knew was that without Elliott, the flat felt small and suffocating. Without Elliott, her life felt small and suffocating.