Epilogue
Summer had gotten icing on her stomach again. She could see the white smear if she leaned back, near the edge of her apron. Until this month, she’d never understood how often she stood right up against the workbench.
At twenty-six weeks, she was learning to leave herself more room. She’d spent the morning trying to decorate Halloween cookies without brushing against the finished ones, and had sacrificed two ghosts and the corner of a pumpkin. Macy had eaten the evidence before Summer could put it aside.
Outside, witches and vampires moved past the bakery window in the pale afternoon light.
A little boy in a green dragon costume had been standing with his face against the glass for so long that his breath had fogged over the bottom of the gingerbread house.
His father was trying to persuade him to go and see the real house they’d come to Salem for.
The boy didn’t appear to understand why a house you couldn’t eat would be an improvement.
Summer waved at him with a cookie. He turned to his father immediately, and she could hear the beginning of the argument before they opened the door.
“We’re closing in ten minutes,” Macy told her from the sink. She’d already untied her apron. “You promised me three o’clock.”
“It’s one cookie.” Summer slid it into a bag, then added another for the father. “And I’m not charging them.”
The boy accepted his ghost with both hands and forgot everything else, including the thank-you his father was trying to extract. Summer told him his wings were lovely. He explained, around a mouthful of icing, that they didn’t work, although he’d tried them on the stairs.
After they left, she turned the sign on the door.
Somebody farther down the street was playing music loud enough to vibrate the glass, and a gust of wind sent dry leaves skittering under the parked cars.
She watched a woman gather the hem of an enormous black skirt before stepping off the curb, then reached past the paper bats to switch off the window lights.
A year ago, she’d closed the bakery with an evening dress waiting at home.
She’d thought about that dress when she woke this morning, before Jonah stirred beside her, and had lain still until he opened his eyes.
He’d known why she was awake. They’d talked for a few minutes, his voice rough with sleep, and eventually he’d asked whether she wanted toast.
She’d eaten two slices in bed, dropping crumbs on his side. Now there were cookies to take home and candy to put out, and she could hear Jonah at the back door, asking Macy whether there was anything left he was allowed to eat.
He came through carrying her coat over his arm. He’d gone home to change out of his work clothes, and there was a pale streak on the knee of his jeans that she thought might be nursery paint. They’d finished the room weeks ago. Apparently the jeans hadn’t recovered.
“Your mother called,” he said. “She wants to know if we need anything.”
“Did you say no?” Summer asked. She tried to wipe the icing off her shirt and spread it farther.
“I did.” He looked at the smear. “She’s bringing soup.”
“Good. I want soup.” Summer gave up on the apron and untied it. “I know I told her we had food.”
“She said you’d say that.” Jonah held her coat while she put it on, then collected the cookie boxes from the counter. “Macy, are these all going home?”
“Those two are yours,” Macy said. She rescued the smaller box before he could tuck it under his arm. “That’s mine. Summer, go before someone else knocks.”
Their car was in the usual lot, a longer walk than Summer had remembered that morning.
She’d needed a different coat this autumn and was still getting used to how it hung on her, how obvious the pregnancy had become to strangers.
A woman passing with two children smiled at her belly.
Summer smiled back before she thought to look away.
For weeks, she’d hated being asked when she was due.
She’d answered February quietly, sometimes adding that it was early yet, even after it wasn’t.
This morning a customer had asked, and Summer had told her about the little snowsuit Lorraine had bought.
She’d still been describing its ridiculous ears when Macy called her back to the kitchen.
“Do we have enough candy?” she asked Jonah as they waited to cross. The question had been bothering her since she’d seen the crowds outside the bakery.
“There’s another bag in the car.” He shifted the boxes to one arm and took her hand. “I bought it this morning.”
“You opened it, didn’t you?” Summer asked. His mouth moved before he answered, and she laughed. “I can smell the peanut butter.”
“I was hungry,” he said. “There’s plenty left.” He let her go ahead of him when the traffic stopped, still holding her hand.
At home, her mother had left soup on the back step in the insulated bag she used for swimming.
Beneath the container were two bread rolls and a note telling them to return the bag before Friday.
Summer put the note on the refrigerator.
Her mother had taken to meeting her at the pool twice a week, although she continued to insist that once was enough for her own purposes.
Jonah heated the soup while Summer changed into leggings and the orange sweater with a jack-o-lantern face she’d bought because it was soft and long enough to cover her stomach.
In the bedroom mirror, she turned sideways.
The baby moved as she stood there, a brief pressure low on her right side, and she left her hand over the spot.
She was well beyond the week they’d lost their first baby.
She’d cried in the car afterward because she’d made it through the day without anything happening, then cried harder when she tried to tell Jonah why.
He’d listened with the driver’s door open and the groceries still in the back seat.
The ice cream had melted before either of them remembered it.
She still had mornings when she checked for blood before she’d properly opened her eyes.
At her last appointment, she’d brought a list of questions and forgotten half of them as soon as she heard the heartbeat.
But she’d also spent the drive home complaining about the price of a stroller.
By the time they reached Salem, she’d persuaded Jonah that they ought to try folding it themselves before they bought it.
“Soup’s ready,” he called from downstairs. Summer took one last look at herself, smoothing the sweater over the curve, then went to eat while it was hot.
They barely finished before the first knock. Two little girls in matching witch hats stood on the step with a mother who apologized for coming so early. Summer gave them each a cookie as well as the candy, and the smaller girl peered past her into the hall at the infant supplies.
“Where’s your baby?” the girl asked. She had a glittery purple star stuck to her cheek.
“Still in here,” Summer said, touching her belly. “We have to wait until winter.”
The girl considered this while her sister pulled at her sleeve. Then she pointed at the orange sweater and announced that Summer looked like a pumpkin. Her mother began apologizing again, but Summer was laughing too hard to help her.
Jonah heard the end of it from the kitchen. He came to stand beside Summer as the girls descended the steps, one of them holding her cookie above her head to keep it out of her sister’s reach.
“She isn’t wrong,” Summer told him. She tugged at the sweater. “That’s why I bought it.”
“I like it,” he said. He bent to kiss her before another family reached the gate. “You look beautiful.”
Summer caught his sleeve and kept him there for a second kiss. Behind them, someone on the path made a small, impatient coughing noise, and she let him go with a laugh.
They took turns at the door until Summer’s feet hurt, then Jonah brought her a chair and put the bowl within reach.
From there she could see the jack-o’-lantern on the step.
One of its eyes was much bigger than the other because she’d slipped with the little saw, and Jonah had tried to fix it without telling her.
She preferred the crooked face he’d left.
A boy dressed as a skeleton dropped his candy bag while Jonah was giving him a cookie. The bottom split, scattering little boxes and wrappers across the step, and for a moment the boy stood staring at the damage without making a sound. Jonah crouched beside him before the first sob came.
“We’ll get it,” he told the boy. He caught a lollipop before it rolled through the railing. “Summer, could you pass me one of those paper bags?”
She held one open while the boy and his father gathered the candy. Jonah checked beneath the chair, then went down a step to retrieve a chocolate bar that had landed in the leaves. The boy inspected the new bag suspiciously until Jonah folded the top over twice and showed him where to hold it.
Summer watched him wait for the boy to try it himself.
She’d seen Jonah with children before, at the bakery and with friends, but lately she found herself watching even when she knew she’d embarrass him if he noticed.
Next Halloween their baby would be old enough to grab for a paper bag, to object when something was taken away.
She could almost hear Jonah using that same patient voice in their kitchen.
He came back inside rubbing his hands together against the cold. Summer held out hers, and he took them, bending toward her chair.
“What?” he asked. He looked down at his shirt. “Have I got something on me?”
“No.” She kissed his cold fingers. “I’m glad we’re having this baby.”
His face changed before he smiled. He stayed bent over her, with her hands between his, while footsteps passed the house and continued down the street.
“Me too,” Jonah said. He kissed her forehead, then her mouth. “I’ve been thinking about next year.”