Chapter 6
Kylie came into the bakery on Thursday afternoon carrying a folder under one arm and a paper bag that had begun to tear at the handles.
Summer recognized her through the window before the bell rang.
She was dressed more formally than she had been for dinner, in a stylish blue jacket with the sleeves turned back, and she stopped just inside to look up at the ravens while the man behind her tried to negotiate the door with a stroller.
“Sorry.” Kylie caught the door before it closed against him and held it while he came through.
By the time she reached the counter, Summer had finished boxing a dozen cupcakes.
“They’re much better in person,” Kylie said, setting her bag between her feet.
“There’s one looking directly at me like it’s judging me. ”
“That one looks at everybody. It discourages complaints.” Summer put the cupcake box aside for collection and glanced at the folder. “Was it this morning? The museum interview?”
Kylie nodded, but the hopeful expression Summer expected did not follow.
“They said they’ll let me know,” she said.
“I’ve spent the train journey trying to work out whether they meant it.
” She opened her bag to retrieve her wallet, pulling the damaged handle farther loose.
“Can I have a coffee? Something strong.”
“On the house.” Summer waved away her cash and put the larger end slice of chocolate cake on a plate. Kylie took the little table by the window, one of only two; Summer sometimes imagined squeezing in a third and serving lunch, until she pictured carrying hot bowls through the coffee line.
Macy was taking her break in the back. Summer brought the coffee over herself and found Kylie examining the sugar bowl, a chipped thing with a lid that no longer matched.
She had left her folder shut on the spare chair.
There was a crescent of damp on the paper bag where something inside had leaked, and she moved it away from her shoes.
“I bought shampoo,” Kylie said, following her glance. “That was apparently the limit of what I could manage after the meeting. And now it’s leaked over everything.” She took the coffee with both hands. “Were you very certain about this place when you bought it?”
Summer glanced behind the counter. The man with the stroller was still helping his child select something, an undertaking that had reached the solemn inspection of every cookie with a face. “For about ten minutes after I got the keys,” she said. “Then I tried to turn the oven on.”
Kylie winced. “Please don’t say you needed a new oven. I’m over here reconsidering the shampoo.”
“Wrong switch,” Summer said, wiping a spill from the next table. “There are two beside each other. I’d called an electrician by the time I found the right one.”
“Oh, no.” Kylie was laughing now. “Did you call him back? I’d have been too embarrassed.”
“I let him check the rest while he was there,” Summer said. “Then I paid him and sat on the floor for a while.”
Kylie laughed, then apologized, but Summer waved that away and went to serve the father.
When she came back, Kylie had taken off her jacket.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and checked a message on her phone.
Summer checked the clock; there were ten minutes before the next tray needed to come out.
She brought a cup of tea and took the chair when Kylie lifted the papers off it, arranging herself so she could still see the counter.
“I’d rehearsed all these answers,” Kylie said.
“Then they asked whether I could work with a database I haven’t used.
I said I could learn, which was true, but I could hear how it sounded.
” She broke a piece off the cake without eating it.
“I kept thinking I should have stayed in Italy another month. There was somebody in Florence who might have had something for me.”
“Ask them anyway,” Summer said. “They haven’t offered you this one yet. You could at least find out whether the other thing’s still going.”
“Possibly.” Kylie looked out at the people moving past the window.
“I wanted to come home. I’d forgotten that when you come home, everybody expects to know what you’re doing next.
” She finally ate the cake, then set her fork down.
“My mother’s already told someone I might look at their grandfather’s collection of prints. The bathroom woman gave her my number.”
“You looked at the painting, then?” Summer asked. “Was it worth the trip?”
“She wanted me to say her sister was wrong about it.” Kylie took another forkful of cake.
“I said I wasn’t qualified to value it, and she asked what I’d been doing in Italy then.
” This time they both laughed, and Summer relaxed into the few minutes she had stolen from the kitchen.
She went to check the oven, then came back to the table with the timer clipped to her apron.
Macy came through with her empty mug, and Summer introduced them before she went behind the counter.
Summer checked that she did not need anything before turning back to Kylie, who had discovered the shampoo cap was indeed broken.
Summer found her a clean bag and some paper towels.
Kylie transferred her things into it. A rolled magazine had caught the worst of the leak.
“I was going to show you this.” She pulled the magazine out from under the gloves. It had curled where the shampoo touched it, but the open page was dry. “There’s a woman in here who makes these enormous paper flowers. They reminded me of your birds.”
The flowers occupied a staircase, cream and dull pink blossoms reaching above the banister. Summer leaned closer to see how the paper had been folded. She could make smaller ones for the window after Christmas.
“Keep it,” Kylie said. “I was finished with it anyway.” She wiped shampoo off the bottom of the bottle and put it upright in the new bag. “They’d be lovely at the historical society. Although your birds would be better for this Halloween.”
“They’re staying here.” Summer said it lightly but meant it. October was when she needed the window most, and she was not putting those fragile wings into someone else’s car. “I could tell someone how I made them.”
“I don’t think there’s time to make enough now.” Kylie folded the wet paper towels together and rested them on her empty plate. “I wasn’t asking. I just thought of them.” Summer smoothed the magazine open again. A little shampoo had dried on the corner, and she rubbed it away.
“Did you always want to go to Italy?” Summer asked. She kept the magazine open beneath her hand. “Or did the program come up and you decided then?”
“I’d applied twice.” Kylie rubbed a crease in the cover with her thumb. “The first time, I couldn’t afford it. Then there was a scholarship, and I thought if I didn’t go I’d be here at fifty blaming everyone else.”
“I nearly bought a bakery forty miles from here,” Summer said. “I had the route worked out and everything. Then I started imagining driving it in February.” Kylie smiled, and Summer hesitated before asking, “Was Jonah upset about Italy? Before you’d even gone, I mean.”
“He didn’t make it difficult.” Kylie smiled toward the window. “He never did, when something was important to me. But could have visited,” Kylie said. “I told him that. He said he’d see, and then there was always something at work.”
“You’d broken up by the time you moved,” Summer said. “That’s what he told me.”
“We’d done that before,” Kylie said. “I thought he’d come over to Italy and we’d see how to make it work.” She glanced at Summer’s ring, then at the clock above the counter. “You can’t plan everything.”
Summer drew her hand beneath the table. She wanted to ask whether Jonah had known that was the arrangement. Outside, a child in a plastic mask walked directly into the window and bounced back laughing; both women turned, and the interruption let Summer find another question.
“Would you go back to Italy?” she asked. “If there was work?”
Kylie’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She held Summer’s gaze a beat too long, the silence stretching thin between them. “I’ve only just got home,” she said at last, her voice soft but deliberate. “I’d like to see what happens here first.”
Summer felt the words land like a stone in her stomach.
What happens? She thought, the question sharp and sudden.
What exactly are you waiting for? But Kylie was already turning slightly in her chair, her attention shifting toward the street as a delivery van rumbled past the window.
The moment closed, and the unspoken question hung there, unanswered.
Kylie asked whether they were going to the masquerade. Summer hadn’t thought about it since Jonah had mentioned his mother’s plans; Halloween had meant orders and box sizes and how late they would have to stay open.
“The thirty-first?” Summer asked. “I’ll be at the bakery all day.” She knew the date without opening the order book, knew how much of it she had already sold.
“The thirty-first. Your first one with Jonah’s family, isn’t it?” Kylie brushed a crumb from the magazine before it could work into the fold. “You should go. The historical society house looks wonderful when it’s lit properly.”
“I’ve only walked past,” Summer said. “I keep thinking I should go when it’s open, then I forget until I walk past it again.”
“The rooms are smaller than they look from the street, except the ballroom. You’ll like the stairs.” Kylie reached for her phone. “I’ve got a picture somewhere, if I can find it. My mother takes about forty every year and sends them without deleting the ones with her finger in them.”
Summer watched while Kylie searched. The man and his child left, and Macy began restocking the paper bags, the familiar dry snap of them opening behind the counter.
In the window a raven turned slightly in the draft from the door, and Kylie glanced up at it before holding out her phone.
Summer took it expecting a picture of the house.
Jonah filled most of the screen. He wore a long dark coat and a vest with a pocket watch, one hand extended toward the camera in a lavish gesture she had never seen him make.
Beside him, Kylie wore a deep red dress with a full skirt and low bodice.
Her head was tipped back in laughter, and his mouth was open as if he had just said something that required an audience.
Behind them Summer could make out a staircase, but it was mostly obscured by the sweep of Kylie’s dress.
The photograph was dated the previous October, just before Kylie had left for Florence.
Summer had met Jonah a few months later, carrying a cake into his parents’ dining room.
“That’s not a very useful one,” Kylie said, leaning across to see what Summer was looking at. “There are better pictures of the house. Keep going.” She pointed to the side of the screen, but Summer did not move her thumb.
“What’s he supposed to be?” She enlarged the photograph before remembering that it was somebody else’s phone. A dark curl had fallen across his forehead. He looked younger, although she could not have said by how much, and quite certain everybody wanted to hear what he was saying.
“A gentleman thief, I think. He changed the explanation every time someone asked.” Kylie smiled down at the screen. “He’d borrowed the watch from his father and was terrified of losing it. He kept counting the pieces of the costume whenever we moved rooms.”
Summer kept her thumb at the edge of the screen. She had never seen him look like that when somebody pointed a phone at him.
“He looks as though he’s enjoying himself,” she said.
She swiped to the next photograph, where the stairs were clearer and a woman she did not know stood holding a mask away from her face.
The one after that showed Kylie alone beneath an arrangement of bare branches, and Summer handed the phone back before looking further.
“By then he was. He’d complained about the coat for a week.
” Kylie put the phone beside her plate. “Once you get him there, he’s fine.
You just have to get past the part where he tells you he doesn’t want to.
” Kylie tapped the phone, darkening the photograph before Summer could look again.
“He used to tell me everything,” she added.
“I suppose I’ll have to get used to hearing things afterward. ”
Summer set her cup down. Kylie turned to apologize to Macy for the torn bag she’d left on the chair.
“I’ll ask him,” Summer said. She looked toward the window, where the ravens turned above a child’s upturned face. “I’d like to go.”
Kylie brightened. “I’ve got things you could try.
Not that dress, unfortunately. It was rented, and I was told quite firmly I wasn’t getting my hefty deposit back if it wasn’t returned.
” She picked up her jacket and began turning one sleeve the right way out.
“But there are masks and bits at my mother’s.
It’s silly to buy everything for one night. ”
“I might like buying it,” Summer said. “I haven’t had an excuse for a while.
” She had liked the pants she wore for the wedding: they fit, had pockets, had made that unfamiliar morning easier, but they had been something she’d already owned.
It had seemed silly to buy something for a courthouse wedding.
She could like a wide skirt too, something she would have to lift with both hands to climb stairs.
“Then you absolutely should.” Kylie stood and gathered the folder, careful to keep it out of the new bag.
“Send me pictures. I’d love to see what you find.
” She asked for Summer’s number, and Summer gave it, waiting while Kylie sent a message so she would have hers too.
The exchange was quick and ordinary. Summer saved the contact before putting the phone away.
After Kylie left, Summer began clearing the table. She could still see the photograph, Jonah’s hand extended, Kylie laughing beside him. There had been pictures that showed the house better. Perhaps this one had simply been easier to find.
She was washing her cup when Macy came in for another stack of bags. “Your friend left her coffee,” she said. “Do you want me to clear it?”
“Yes, please,” Summer said. Jonah’s friend, she’d nearly corrected, though she had stayed at the table long after finishing her tea. She returned to the kitchen with the magazine under her arm.
Summer took out her phone and wrote, I’d like us to go to the Halloween thing at the historical society. Can we talk about it tonight? She sent it before returning to the cakes waiting for icing.